The last of the summer visitors are leaving this weekend. You can hear the cars and campers, motorcycles and vans passing on the route principal, Avenue Jean Moulin. Down at the corner bar, the regulars are whooping it up, raising glasses and cigarettes to the departing motorists. They are also giving bravos to the first vignerons headed to the vineyards for the vendange.
The view from the heavens is, as usual, clean and clear. Most of the planet is covered with dense, swirling clouds, so it is hard to tell where the space explorers are in relation to the surface.
A canny watcher might have seen the asteroid passing by. Apparently, it was a big one, massive enough to cause an extinction incident on the level of the one that wiped out the dinosaurs.
As if we needed another reminder of just how precarious our existence really is.
But we go on.
studio arago 