by Curt Kovener 
Perhaps you remember an old TV commercial for a margarine product that ended with a—for family newspaper purposes—a “Put Out” female character throwing some lightning bolts and thunder with the exclamation “It’s not nice to fool Mother Nature!”
That’s kind of where I’m at in light of recent events.
The flooding of the White River basin from Central Indiana record rainfall is incredible.
When Miz Mary (and a very tired from swimming Charley) and I approached the intersection of State Road 135 & US 50 we witnessed water, rolling, rapidly moving water flowing under both roadways.
Navigating around the parked picture takers and nosey sightseers, we made out way onto US 50. For the next five miles, all the way into Brownstown, there was a muddy brown ocean.
It caused Miz Mary to ask, “How does all of that water stay up in the sky?”
Last Wednesday, during a very localized storm, hail about the size of golf balls pounded the office roof. Shortly after I returned to my computer from inspecting the form any damage, there was a bright flash and simultaneous KA-BOOM!
I looked out the front window to see bits of wood falling to earth. Lightning had struck the white pine tree about 50’ from the office. A large split can be seen from almost top to bottom as you can see in the accompanying photo.
I am going to get in touch with a logger/sawyer friend of mine to see if the tree can be used for some purpose other than fire wood.
So with floods and lightning, you maybe can understand how I could believe that Mother Nature is bent out of shape with us. And probably for good reason.
