No digital wide screen movie projector with surround sound can match the show I enjoy with my morning coffee.

Previously I lived in a beautiful spot but dominated by trees (pine and birches). I walked to the street to look up and see the sky. I walked a distance to the edge of the cemetery or the river to view a sunrise or sunset. To enjoying a thunder-stormy morning, I started the car and drove to a crest of a hill. I stayed safe and dry. The windshield-view, however, only matched that of a small 1980’s TV. So the storms I really enjoyed in high definition happened while canoeing in the wilderness. Some could be scary!

Now, I rent a room with view which today features a storm.

The big lake (or is it a weather front) pushes the storm south over Wisconsin on the other side of the bay which is the view I enjoy from my balcony. They get the rain and perhaps hail and I get the show. Storm cells dump rain on my neighbors and I enjoy the dancing lightening and the cries of the Thunder Bird.

The fancy weather app on my iPad reports 5 storm alerts around me and the meteorologist has reached broadly into his hot colored ‘warning pallet ’ to paint the map and tell me about the dangers I face.

Some of my grandmother’s generation, when I lived up north in the border country, would light candles and gather the children to sit in their cast iron bathtubs. The embarrassed adult children dismissed it as ‘old country superstition’ but I doubt most of those old immigrants had enough money in the old country to afford cast iron bathtubs.

I suspect they knew just enough about the grounding ability of metal plumbing and threw in a bit of religion for added safety.

I can’t see a thing from my bathtub and the landlord advises against candles so I’ll make a second pot of coffee and sit here outside till the wind begins to drive some rain in my direction. Maybe the bright blue sky on western horizon will drive the storm east out over the Lake. Then I’ll put my morning schedule back on track - such as it is these days - and get out of my pajamas.