Playing Piano With Grandmother In The Rain

As a child and youth – even later in life – when visiting my maternal grandmother, I would often play her baby grand piano.

As a child, when a summer thunderstorm would approach, she would tell me to stop playing, because, as she said, lightning would strike the piano because of the metal wires in it. She falsely supposed it to be an attractive force of some type.

Of course, at the time, I thought such an idea to be preposterously absurd… and still do. And in retrospect, I saw my obedience, then rebellion, and later obsequiousness, more as a reflection of my love to, and respect for her.

Naturally, as a youth, I attempted to reason with her by asking her if she’d ever heard of, or knew anyone who’d ever had their piano struck by lightning while being played during a thunderstorm, and she said

Massive Winter Storm Blasts USA: Satellite pic Feb 01 2011

The original image size is 800×762 pixels, far too large to fit in this space. The photo is linked to the original NOAA source.

Tornado rips severe damage through Albertville, Alabama.

!*! – UPDATED – Tuesday, 27 April 2010, with aerial pics by Eric Shultz, Photographer, Huntsville Times – UPDATED – !*!

Saturday evening, April 24, 2010, around 9:30PM CST, a F3 category tornado twisted its way through the rural north Alabama community of Albertville, Alabama in Marshall County. Ironically, it was on the centennial-second anniversary of a 1908 tornado that devastated the town, nearly wiping it from the map.

Fortunately, though no lives were lost, there were about three dozen injuries reported, some severe, with one transported to another larger hospital facility out of the area.

Damage was severe, wreaking havoc and destruction in Albertville and the smaller, nearby community of Geraldine. Damage was so severe, that Albertville schools will be closed for this week,