Troubled skies

"Wenig Neues. Dichte Wolken liegen über der Stadt". This is actually tomorrow's weather forecast for Vienna, which I find rather lyrical, especially for the Austrian national broadcast site ORF. It translates into: "Little new. Dense clouds lie over the city." That forecast does even match for San Francisco. We have heavy clouds right now. And rain. But we also had the brightest sunlight today.

The sun and rain of America... it seems like a metaphor for recent news: Obama brings spring to a long lasting winter under Bush. Yet, in terms of color - the most black follows the maybe most white president. And while this story seems to lean towards the sunny side, aviation is struggling. The "miracle of the Hudson river" is only followed by last night's plane crash in Buffalo that killed 50 people. The so emotional American TV news can hardly deal with that parallelism of joy and grief: Since Monday, America's hero, "Sully" Sullenberger III, the pilot of US Airways flight 1549 who saved 155 lives, had been touring the TV shows, with crew and wife. And while that happy hype is still going on, the crash of Continental flight 3407 is on "Breaking news" for the whole night, showing first interviews with family members, youtube videos, cell phone photographs... It was hard to find sleep.

So, this morning: sun again. I took a little trip to the North Shore. There it was again: extreme sun, black clouds, and blue skies at Pier 39, facing Alcatraz (see picture above). One moment I would sit in the sun, and the next I would be very thankful for the fake fur on my jeans jacket. I went to Barnes & Noble at Taylor Street (the only one in SF!), and studied my own book at their Starbucks. When I was about to leave, it was pouring with rain. So, I stayed for the 4th hour... I browsed the complete bookstore. It sat in the children's section and read a bit in Orwell's 1984. Later - you know what comes now - some sun again, and me riding the cable car, along with a lot of tourists in blue plastic coats. They look *always* the same.