This week we had a friend from upstate New York staying with us. The other night I reported that we had a winter storm moving in and he started to laugh– “What does ‘winter storm’ mean in Phoenix?” he asked. “Oh, a few hours of rain,” I said. He left before the storm hit. When it came were watching a Fellini movie — La Strada– and wandering outside every few minutes to check the progress of the lunar eclipse, which was made decidedly unglamorous by the cloud cover. We could see the uncovered edge of the moon but none of the weird colors of eclipses past. As the clouds thickened, the sky got brighter and turned yellow. It looked like about 6 am instead of 10 pm. I don’t know if all the lightning was diffusing through the clouds or what. The thunder shook the entire house, including the light bulbs in their sockets. Fellini just couldn’t measure up. His movies are just too circusy for real life.