Week 10 of Tara's Gallery and the prompt for today was to paint a picture of the world we live in. I've titled this post 'Beauty and the Beast', so let's get the bad stuff out of the way first and start with... cue 'Jaws' type music... The Beast.
Doesn't look very beastly, does it? Just some yellow paint or pollen on the ground. Of course, this being Moscow, that's not what it is at all. What you see before you is the remains of the most recent 'cloud seeding' episode over the skies of the city. Husband used to tell me when he lived here in the mid-90's that before major celebrations the City would send planes up to shovel various substances into the cloud to disperse the rain and ensure fine weather for important events. Like, for example the forthcoming 65th Anniversary Celebrations of Victory Day in The Great Patriotic War (World War II, to you and I - more of which another time). I didn't really believe him. It sounds like something out of science fiction, right?
Wrong. They do do it. And whilst it doesn't seem to have any environmentalists up in arms right now, personally I can't believe that shovelling concrete dust, dry ice and and various other chemicals (which are apparently a closely guarded secret) into rain clouds can be such a good thing, either for the fabric of the city or the people living in it. Of course, I wouldn't want to rain on anyone's Parade - pun intended, obviously - but I can't shake the feeling I should be running around in a biblical styley shouting 'Doomed! We're all doomed! No good can come of this!' every time I notice the stuff on my car... (Click here if you want to find out more about this...)
And now, since this is the Gallery and you really came here looking for pretty pictures, here's some Beauty; a shot of the view this morning from the back of our house. Please note - this is not our garden...
