Graduation, Tornadoes, and a Book Recommendation

You're probably wondering how in the heck I am going to tie together graduation, tornadoes, and a book recommendation in the same post. It was actually very easy.

Last Tuesday night was my son's high school graduation. That's him before graduation with me trying to get him to smile, and then after the ceremony with my daughter. It was an amazing accomplishment not just for him, but for our entire family. We really had a hard time with him because he didn't want to be in school and never really tried to get good grades. Just barely passing every year really wears on you, especially when credits are needed in order to graduate. He got there and graduated, but now he has no clue what to do with his future. He is obviously not college bound. He thinks he may want to sign up for military service, which is all good if only he can apply himself and succeed. We are still trying to convince him that he can't sit in his room playing video games for the rest of his life since no one is actually going to pay him to do it.

So the arena where my son's graduation was held was damaged in the tornado last Friday. One of the other local school districts had their graduations scheduled for Saturday, but they were cancelled, so one of the local colleges stepped up and offered their facilities to use on Sunday. I'm glad our graduation was scheduled when it was. We were in our basement for a while during the storm, and it turns out that the swirling clouds that passed over our neighborhood didn't form into a tornado until they passed us. There was quite a lot of damage a few miles from us, so we got lucky this time.

So here is the part where I make a book recommendation. Last year I read a wonderful book, The Waiting Sky by Lara Zielin. You can read my review HERE. The story's protagonist, Jane, spends the summer with her older brother chasing storms in tornado alley. It's a great contemporary story, and the author actually spent a week chasing storms with a group as part of her research. I loved watching Storm Chasers on the Discovery Channel, and I was sad when I learned that 3 of the guys from the Twistex group were killed in the tornadoes in Oklahoma on Friday. It just goes to show how dangerous it is chasing storms, looking for tornadoes, and trying to collect data.