Page 60 - James Rodger Fleming - Fixing the sky

modern weather control technology or traditional methods. The weather bureau
attributes the rain to unexpected changes in a naturally occurring system. Tension
returns as a second storm rapidly approaches, which could cause the dam to burst.
At the risk of his life, Sky King takes off, flying into the weather front to divert it,
again by cloud seeding, while Tai-Lam begins a new chant, this time to stop the
rain. Through the mixed agency of the Kachina doll and silver iodide, all turns
out well at the end of the half-hour episode. This fictional episode has its counter-
part in the actual practices of the era. A. J. Liebling described a magazine clipping
from 1952 titled “old order Changeth: Navajo Indians near Gallup, N.M. have
become skeptical of—or just plain bored with—their ancient rainmaking rites.
During a recent drought, they hired professional rainmakers to seed the clouds
over their reservation. Result: one-and-a-half inches of rain.” 22
The futurist Arthur C. Clarke, of all people, wrote about the Zuni tribe of
New Mexico, who are famous for their rain dances. At the beginning of the cer-
emony, just after the summer solstice, a boy representing the Fire God torches a
field of dry grass. This serves as a signal for the Zuni dancers, painted with yel-
low mud and carrying live tortoises, to begin dancing, which continues as long as
necessary, until it rains. Clarke editorialized: “That is one beauty of rain making.
It always works eventually, though sometimes you have to wait a few weeks or
23
months for the pay-off.” A cartoon contrasting traditional and scientific meth-
ods accompanied Clarke’s article (figure 1.4).

1.4 Rainmaking old and new.
(Cartoon by Charles Addams,
in Clarke, “Man-Made
Weather”)

StorieS of Control | 43