Mt St Helens released a plume of steam at approximately noon local time. Within an hour, the “eruption” was over and only wisps could be seen emerging from the crater.

I remember my mom calling me downstairs early in the morning of May 18, 1980, when St Helens first erupted, flattening over 200 sq miles around it. I sat on the sofa and ate breakfast in my PJs while watching the first natural disaster of my young memory. Days later, an extremely thin layer of dust-like ash settled upon my hometown in South Dakota. Not enough to collect, but enough to wipe off with your finger and go, “Wow”. I still have a baby food jar of MSH ash that I bought for $1 at the Hot Springs, SD, mammoth site later that year.

I kind of like volcanos, hurricanes, tidal waves, and tornados. I don’t like the deaths and ruined lives that inevitably come in their wake, but I enjoy seeing the earth scour and transform itself. Kind of reminds you that you aren’t where you are because of your job, or your health plan, or homeland security, but because the planet is allowing you to be there. And whenever she wants, she’ll take you out.

(Mucho gracias to Hekate for grabbing the screenshot from her computer when my browser was unable to connect to the US Forest Service’s webcam.)

–On the lighter side, Tomato shares with us this column that asks the question: does god hate Florida?

I didn’t watch most of the debate last night. We were both tired and fighting off some bug that’s trying to set up base camp in our immune systems. Besides, the aquarium needed to be cleaned, and the well-being of my sharks is much more important than the canned rhetoric that was sure to be slung by the candidates (though most assuredly not directly at one other, thanks to their “Memorandum of Understanding“). (There is also a .pdf version of the full memo, if you have the bandwidth and the patience to wade through it.)

I half-listened to the debate during the moments when Arial flipped over during commercial breaks in the other shows she was watching. I didn’t hear enough to draw a well-informed conclusion (that’s what transcripts and archived audio streams are for). However, the parts that I did hear left me with the feeling that Kerry came across and clear and concise, with Bush pausing and fumbling at many points. I would like to have heard more specifics about the plans Kerry repeatedly said he had, and further explanation of his policy shift regarding that $87 billion Iraq spending bill. (I have a pretty good idea why, but I want to hear it directly from him.) As for Mr Bush, I wish he would have justified his own policies a little more and not engaged in so much “How can you listen to this guy? He changed his mind!”

Having seen Kerry’s oratorical abilities shine in previous debates over the course of his career, and seeing how well he appears to have done in this one, I’m looking forward to how he performs during the next two.

Here is a good analysis not of the debate itself, but of the veracity of what the two men said. You’ll probably need one of these Bugmenot registration codes to view it.