This was taken after a heavy rainstorm, in the Rockridge district of Oakland, California, where my wife & I lived in 1974. The sky is still dark & gray in the background, but the sun, which has just come out, can be seen shining on the houses & in particular, reflecting with blinding intensity off one particular window. Everything has been washed clean & has that fresh, hyper-realistic look that follows that kind of storm. Flash forward 37 years to today. I have gottem up at 4 in the morning, having been unable to get much sleep. In a few hours, my wife & I will drive the 4 1/2 hours it takes to get to Portland. At 6:02 on Friday morning, we will board a plane that will take us to New York City. There, in a hospital bed, unconscious & heavily sedated, lies my wife's younger brother Howie (he has always been & always will be "Howie", never the stiff & formal "Howard" which appears on his birth certificate). A couple of days ago, Howie suffered a heart attack at work (he has been a bartender at Peter McManus Cafe (one of the oldest bars in NYC) for many years), was given cpr by a trained medic who happened to be on site until an ambulance arrived & has been unconscious ever since. When we spoke to his doctor yesterday, she sounded very grim, said that they were doing all they could for him, but that his prognosis was poor, that they couldn't tell if his brain function was going to be impaired if he recovered at all & that my wife, as his next of kin, should start thinking about making a decision about sustaining his life - in case it came to that. Since then, we have received some news that they have somewhat stabilized his respiration & blood pressure, but he is still in critical care & very much teetering between life & death. I am an atheist. I don't believe in the power of prayer. I believe Howie's fate will be determined by his will to live & the medical skills of the doctors attending to him. But I don't think I have all the answers & there's still a lot about the world that remains a mystery to me. I can still hope & offer up this thought to whatever unknown cosmic forces may be at play here: May this be a cleansing rain & passing storm for Howie & may he get to see the bright sunlight once again...