On a Saturday night a little over a week ago a tornado touched down about a mile from my house. It took out a small barn, a few roofs and fences. It brought down tree limbs and a couple entire trees. No one was seriously injured, but it made a mess of my neighborhood.

As tornadoes go it wasn’t particularly fierce, but all tornadoes are terrifying, and when one comes to your town the recommended place to be is in the cellar. My cellar is a scary one, I’ve written about it before, but it’s not as scary as a tornado, and we are not fools, so down we went.

We sat on the stairs, my kid and I, and the air was cool and smelled of damp red clay earth, and it was not exactly comfortable but not quite awful. And then the lights flickered once, twice, and went out, and we were left in the pitch darkness amid the sound of a billion bits of randomness hitting our house from all sides.

So that was fun. And, you know, quite the metaphor.

In other news, I’ve learned how to sew a facemask.

Speaking of a billion bits of randomness hitting the house from all sides, I’m trying to stay reasonably well-informed — how else would I know how to sew a facemask? — but nearly all of the news right now comes with a flaming dumpster full of Trump, which is so hard to abide. So I’m grateful for newsletters that show up in my inbox. I get quite a few. This one is particularly good.