Formerly Lovely Cloud Enhanced with Fear (photo by Maria Ruth)

    I am probably going to get in some hot water for this blog, but a cloud-alert reader sent me a link to a whopper of a YouTube video to promote our National Day of Prayer, celebrated in our oh-so-tolerant national on May 5th.
   Sadly, the filmmakers have portrayed our friends the Clouds as death-and-doom machines (cue "Jaws" theme music) seem capable of destroying our fine nation if we forget to pray on this one special day (cue "O, Fortuna" from Carmina Burana or an unhappy cut from the  Lord of the Rings soundtrack).
    Click here to endure the blessedly short video.
   I have nothing against prayer. But, I take offense at the attempt to nationalize what I consider to be a private and personal time of self-reflection and focus and the maligning of the meteorological phenomenon that makes life on Earth possible. Without clouds, we are, in fact, doomed. The Weather Channel does a pretty good job of giving clouds a bad rap, but to turn these glorious forms into a symbol of wrath and a back drop of the Apocalypse is dangerous.
   So, this week's Cloud of the Week (#11) is cumulus manipulatus eupteron. (BTW: "eu" is Greek for "right" and "pteron" for wing).