by Lee Shainen

LIVING IN THE desert where the annual rainfall is perhaps ten inches, one paradoxically, learns a lot about rain. Considering that all of the rain falls in two distinct and short seasons, one also learns to distrust annual averages. We have winter rains and summer rains with only a rare surprise rain in between. Commonly but inaccurately known as monsoons, the summer rains, or chubascos, are accompanied by a rolling orchestra of thunder and lightning. The storms come quickly on driving winds, down narrow corridors of terrain, dump enormous amounts of water, cause rapid and often violent flooding, and then they're gone, sometimes in just minutes. They are brilliant, exciting, even life-changing events but, arguably, more destructive than beneficial.

It is the longer, gentler, and more widespread winter rains that fill our aquifers, support our ecosystem, and bring forth the incongruous colorful splash of desert wildflowers each spring. Such rains are needed in higher education today. There has been a drought of sorts. Money, attention, fairness, and good will have been withheld from those who teach the majority of college students. Yet in such a dry climate grow the conditions for chubascos: intense but localized outbursts. Educated, impoverished, angry voices are howling in the wind. But there are also others who are talking softly, reasonably, joining hands and moving together, perhaps forming a circle, with a chant, and a dance, a rain dance.

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