Mother Nature plays rough.
I’ve got an inside tip for all of you who like to entertain, and, though I’d caution you against trying this at home, I have found that nothing sets the party mood better than a good old tornado. That’s right, one of those big spinny things that can do stuff like clean out your house in point-zero seconds. Now, I don’t expect hosts and hostesses here in the genteel south to fall all over themselves taking advantage of this keen insight, in terms of planning their next soiree, as the tornado theme does come with a certain amount of downside, but I do have strong anecdotal evidence to support my unlikely sounding claim.
Not long ago, I had occasion to venture to northern Virginia’s Bull Run Event Center, about thirty miles outside of the nation’s capital (and capitol), in the first small foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains. 150 years ago, blue, gray, and red dyed these rolling lands, in the terribly bloody Battles of Bull Run, or, as these early Confederate victories in the “War of Northern Agression” are referred to in the south, the Battles of Manassass.
Now, in the 21st century, the area sprawls, sub-urbanly, and it is hard to reconcile the malls, car lots, and sub-divisions with the brutal history that lies underneath. Life itself has shown a callous resiliency and determination in forging ahead and building over the tracks of the past. That weekend, the lush grassy slopes of the regional park were the site of “Vintage Virginia”, a major area wine, art, and music event. 30,000 people, about 1/6th as many as fought over this terrain, and roughly equal to the number killed, injured, and missing in the internecine battles, were expected to turn out for a two-day event.
Weather forecasts for the show, the most recent of which I garnered from area radio stations, indicated that we could expect early sunshine on Saturday, warming to the 80s, changing to clouds, scattered showers, and isolated thunderstorms in the afternoon. Sunday looked like a better day, cooler and drier. Why I trust the forecasts, as though their validity is confirmed by the mere fact that they emanate from the speakers in my van, is somehow beyond my mental reach. I managed to stifle my own special weather instinct, the one that has sounded the alarms in the past, and sublimate my own primeval intuition for the ostensibly more educated (and therefore more accurate) prognostications of teams of meteorologists, replete with their Doppler and satellite imagery.
Great story. I’ll have to invite a tornado to my next party just to liven things up a little 
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