On Storms, Earthly and Otherwise

This editor confesses a certain sympathy this week for the gentlemen of the Cape, kept from their voyage among the stars by nothing grander than a thundercloud. It is a fine irony that man may design a vessel to repair a satellite in the black vacuum of space, yet remains as subject as any farmer to the whims of an August squall.

Elsewhere the news this week offers little comfort: a government abroad grown deaf to its own people's suffering and now, more troubling still, resolved that the world shall not hear of it either; an airfield in England scarred by tragedy through the failure of a single ill-repaired part. One is tempted to observe that the follies of nations are seldom so honest as the follies of weather -- a storm at least announces itself.

And yet, amid it all, a small vessel launched from Japan sails true toward a comet that will not return again in most readers' lifetimes, aimed with such precision that its makers needed not correct her course at all. This editor finds in it a modest lesson: that patience and careful craft yet answer, even when the age's larger storms will not be quieted.

As for the Braves, this editor will only say that a losing streak, like a spell of foul weather, is best endured with what dignity remains -- and a stiff drink.