The latest rainstorm is the first one the precise meteorologist was willing to attribute, at least in some direct, if partial, way to El Niño. In this brief pause, our flooding basement has had the chance to dry out (under the constant vigilance of two floor fans). In some ways we're remarkably well tuned to this house by now, in this our sixth winter here. We folded the rattan rug back just before the constant seepage first flowed across one whole edge of the unfinished basement floor, and then two or three days later, we lifted and folded the whole thing up, draping it on folding chairs the same night that the water crept across the entire floor in trickles and pools (it's uneven cement, with several seeping points - we discovered the rug was wet in obscure areas).

Meanwhile, my brother Peter sent us a local paper from the Philippines, including a brief account of a mass said in order to ask the intercession of Santo Niño versus El Niño. But what can this obscure saint do against the Christ child, or His southern-oscillating namesake?