H. M. Barrett 2000-05-28
12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
When I first noticed this Handbook Of Unusual Natural Phenomena, it was laying on a book shop's discount table. And I didn't realize that it was about to become one of my most precious possessions. I refer to this book whenever I see any of nature's best sky shows. The cover of my 1977 edition, on a hardback I have carefully covered with plastic, shows a hand upraised in the dark. There are two types of lightening in the sky, and the Aurora Borealis, then a miniature rainbow emanates from each of the fingers spread out. Inside the book are hundreds of other drawings, accompanied by clearly written text, to define and discuss many kinds of unusual occurrences. At first you should just casually go through this book, getting a sense of all the things cataloged, because it will prepare you for noticing far more than what most people realize is happening over their heads. This is not a book about unidentified flying objects, unless comets with halos will do, but it can be just as exciting to identify natural mysteries. When you see rainbows, for example, you will be able to discern what's common or rare. Some rainbows are doubled, some join clouds together, some connect with objects, some only seem to connect to objects. Different categories for sunsets are also defined. I once kept a written log of the sunsets I saw, describing each day's display for a month. Although most of them were simply pleasant to watch, and not really that weird, on one occasion the round shape of the sun became a near perfect square! As I saw this from an area in San Francisco called the Sunset District, a local newspaper editor appreciated and published the sighting. In that article I credited this book, and later received a nice letter from Mr. Corliss. The square shaped sunset, which appeared on a Valentine's Day, generated so much interest that I wished I had brought along a camera. Then there was another notable natural event, one which occurred while I was visiting a friends house. I stood on his back porch after the sun had set, and noticed two peculiar lines which seemed to be dividing the sky into three parts. These stretched like telegraph lines all across the sky, just as if the Egyptian sky goddess, Nut, was responsible. I wiped my glasses and looked away, but each time the lines appeared. Finally I asked my host to come out, without any descriptive hints, to tell me what he saw up there (Just in case I was the nut). The sighting was soon confirmed, as he also saw the lines, and he ran in to alert his wife. When I got home I opened up this book and read the paragraphs which applied to this particular phenomena, where lines divide the sky. I was even more surprised that Corliss listed it as a highly rare occurrence. This may be because the lines are rather thin, and easy to miss. I kind of tingled all over, because I knew I was fortunate enough to experience something that few people even knew existed. Each person who gets this book is going to use it a bit differently; appreciating it mostly for whatever they can apply it to personally. A Japanese lady I know looked through my copy and soon joyously shouted out: "I've got a photograph of that!" She had been vacationing in Hawaii, and taking special notice of a rainbow which was doubled, managed to get a perfect photo. I received this as a gift, and it sits in my book alongside a photograph I shot of some rare clouds (This handbook has one similar to mine and defines it as a "Morning Glory"). Photos became the only place markers I use for this particular book. Although Corliss didn't mention it, a natural phenomenon is associated with Bolinas, California, just north of the Golden Gate Bridge. One day a man was sitting in his car reading a sports page, he was parked on a cliff overlooking the ocean outside Bolinas (Where Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds was filmed). After a while he peered out over the ocean and realized he was looking at the illusion of an island. It was sitting just a short distance offshore. This island even had castles with turrets and walls, and a jeweled sparkle almost like an advertisement for Disneyland. The man got out of his car and shouted down to a park ranger and a tourist. They too acknowledged that they could see it. At the Bolinas Post Office the postmistress told a reporter she had seen it on a previous occasion. None of the witnesses, nor the reporter, had seen Corliss' book; so the story was published without anyone knowing that the scientific name is Marine Morgana. Good luck, and good hunting.
