CLOUD LOVERS
In 2006, when Patrizia was an educational consultant in Vancouver, designing curricula for second-language learners, she decided to focus one project on the universally accessible topic of clouds.
That’s how she came across the UK-based Cloud Appreciation Society, founded by an Oxford-graduated “cloud-loving” British journalist. Its mandate, “to henceforth seek to persuade all who’ll listen of the wonder and beauty of clouds,” intrigued her to the point of joining the Society and becoming one of its original 5,000 members. For this she received a certificate and access to “somewhat occasional” electronic newsletters.
In 2017, a new cloud formation, the Asperitas, initially identified by a member in 2009, was formally accepted into the International Cloud Atlas of the Royal Meteorological Society as the first new cloud type identified in 66 years. This action prompted the founder of the Society to travel abroad to lecture about clouds.
When she heard that he was speaking at the Oregon Museum of Science in Portland, Oregon in 2018, Patrizia decided to fly down and learn a thing or two. The London office referred her to Jane, the Portland cloud community contact, for an accommodation recommendation for the one night she’d be in the city.
Patrizia was taken by surprise when Jane instead generously suggested she stay at her home for the night. She wondered if a mutual appreciation of clouds was enough to overnight at a stranger’s house in a neighbouring country.
Jane made it easy to see it as a kindness-of-stranger gesture. They exchanged a few emails and found that they had other commonalities that bridged the unknown between an American and a Canadian lover of clouds.
Since then, the two have become social media friends, exchanging photos of the many ongoing and ever-changing cloud formations in their Vancouver and Portland skies.
While the pandemic got in the way of a reciprocal visit to Vancouver, there’s a possibility that this will happen in the future, when the Canada-USA border reopens.
Cloud lovers know that clouds are poetic and dynamic and ever-changing aspects of nature, and that “a moment each day with your head in the clouds keeps your feet on the ground,” according to the Society’s founder.
In 2021, the Cloud Appreciation Society boasts 55,000 plus members from 120 countries worldwide.
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