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Show The Utah Statesman SpecialFeatUies £e$acu 'Village Apartments Resort Style Community Spacious floor plans •24-hour fitness center •Laundry facilities •Pool & year-round hot tub •Professsional office atmosphere •Convenient location Now accepting applications for 2 & 3-bedroom apartments. Mention this ad and get the FIRST MONTH FREE! LA Times photo BOTH SIDES NOW. Gavin Pretor-Pinney's surprise bestseller on clouds was passed up by 28 publishers before one finally accepted his book proposal. The Englishman believes his book rekindles the natural fondness for clouds we enjoy as children. Cloudspotting: Clear sunny days not i your thing? Don't worry you're not alone above resorting to more colorful language. As when he describes the puffy stratocumulus as looking "like someone couldn'tfindthe 'off switch on the cotton candy machine." A nimbostratus, he tells us, "won't be winning any cloud beauty contests." Underneath a child's lovely drawing of a family and clouds, he offers this trenchant observation: "Sixyear-olds are generally rubbish at drawing but, being amongst the best cloudspotters in the world, they are actually quite good at drawing Cumulus." Perhaps the most appealing thing to Pretor-Pinney about clouds, though, is their inherently democratic nature. "The great thing about clouds is that everyone has something to say about them because everyone has a perspective on them, literally," he says. If we choose, we are all cloud witnesses, free to watch as they reimagine themselves, moment by moment, with nothing to restrain them. So deep down, maybe we really do like clouds — maybe they're even good for us. A cigar may sometimes be just a cigar, but a cloud is almost never just a cloud. "Clouds are for dreamers," Pretor-Pinney writes, "and their contemplation benefits the soul. Indeed, all who consider the shapes they see within them will save on psychoanalysis bills." Wouldn't you know it, there are even studies showing that face time with the sky and clouds really can make us feel better. "There's actually a lot of work on the effects of nature on physical, emotional and social well-being," says Nancy Etcoff, a psychologist and director of the Program in Aesthetics and Well Being at Harvard University. One study showed that patients recovered faster from gallbladder surgery and took less medication BY JOE H E I M The Washington P05I As metaphors, clouds are almost never good things. There are clouds of suspicion, clouds of anger, clouds on the horizon, cloudy judgments. Clouds loom, darken, threaten, menace. Clouds get in the way of our tan. Oh, we do not like clouds. And with them, of course, there's the rain: the tears of a cloud that wash out weddings, poison picnics, send us all running for cover. Keep on the sunny side of life, the song tells us, for the clouds and storm will in time pass away. If ever a feature of nature was ripe for a PR makeover, clouds are it. Enter Gavin Pretor-Pinney, a deliciously wry writer whose book "The Cloud spotter's Guide" (Perigree, $19-95) just may rescue clouds from ignominy — or at least get us to look up as they slip by, ever-changing, right over our very noses. Published earlier this year in the United Kingdom and just this summer in the United States, the 38-yearold Englishman's treatise has been a surprise hit — at least in Great Britain, where it rests comfortably among the top-10 nonfiction titles. Never mind the silver lining. It turns out the cloud is the thing. Delving deep into cloud science, but also the lore, literature, art, history and even religion associated with them, Pretor-Pinney provides a thoroughly readable narrative about these wonderful "expressions of the atmosphere's moods that can be read like those of a person's countenance." Clearly these lofty masses of millions of water droplets and ice particles can bring out the poet and philosopher in one. when their For Pretor_ _ ^ ^ ^ ^ _ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ _ ^^^^^^^^^^mmm^^^^^^ Pinney, it all started hospital beds as a bit of a lark. A faced winfriend who knew of dows rather his peculiar fascina- Comments to remember 2ZZ a brick 3E1] than tion asked him to wall. talk on the subject "It's time to fight the sun fascists and their In conat a literary festitrolled obsessions with blue-sky thinking..." val. Fearing that everyday no one would show work enviup, he declared the ronments, Author Gavin Pretor-Pinney "our attentalk "the inaugural tion is really lecture of the Cloud Appreciation Society." It was a burst of mete- stressed," says Etcoff. "We are constantly orological genius that helped fill the room multi-tasking and focusing on minute for the lecture. Not only did people show up, things." Stepping outside, she says, we pay they wanted to join the society — a society attention in an effortless way, because nature that, oh right, didn't actually exist. is inherently fascinating and always changing. "The birds, the trees, the sky and clouds Amazed by the response, Pretor-Pinney are very pleasing to us because they capture wasted little time creating a real Cloud our attention without us doing anything. Appreciation Society (www.cloudappreciationsociety.org), where the only requirements They restore our attention, recharge our batteries." for membership are about $6 and a shared desire to "fight the sun fascists and their Nowhere is the feel-good vibe of clouds obsessions with 'blue-sky thinking.'" The more evident than on the Cloud Appreciation online society has made a global village of Society's Web site, where members have subout-of-the-closet cloud lovers from 40 counmitted thousands of cloud photographs (even tries. So far, more than 5,000 members have a cloud of the month!), paintings and poems signed up. ("The Banality of Blue Skies," "Clouds -11 A Reverie," and "The Other Side (of God). ) Soon, new members were contacting There is also a discussion area that is "open Pretor-Pinney asking him to recommend to those with thoughts, questions and opinbooks on clouds. Finding only coffee table ions about absolutely anything. Anything, books or rigorous scientific journals, he that is, so long as it is about clouds." decided to write his own. "It just seemed weird to me that there wasn't a book for the But let's be perfectly clear about this: general reader about this subject, which, Clouds are not suddenly cool, hip, happenwhen I talk to people about it, everyone has ing or stylish. There is not a cloud movement something to say," he said in an interview afoot. There is nothing the least bit "it" about last month. "There's that universal relationthem. A few Weather Channel geeks might ship with clouds, whether people like them be able to rattle off the names of the most or hate them." After 28 publishers rejected prominent types of clouds, but for almost his book proposal (he still has the rejection everyone on the planet they remain a little letters), onefinallytook the bait. noticed backdrop to the daily sally through Pretor-Pinney says his book and burgeon- life. We all see clouds, yes, but do we see them? ing society are rekindling a fondness for clouds that is cultured in childhood and then "I was trying with the book to get people gradually tamped down as we grow older. to look at something that was so familiar, but "There's something established in people, to just try and think about it in a slightly difa connection with clouds when they're young, ferent way," says Pretor-Pinney. "And that's and then it gets buried or goes dormant," he a kind of shift that I think can happen. They says. "I think one reason why the book has look up and these clouds have been there the been this surprise hit is that it has reawoken whole time, but they look up and go, Wait a that childhood interest." minute, they are incredibly beautiful and I never really stopped to think about it.'" Though his lucid descriptions of clouds meet scientific rigor, Pretor-Pinney is not * • * • The Sunshine Academy PrQ-fichool The Sunshine Academy: A private, full-day, year-round preschool exclusively for children of USU faculty. 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