the society of pluviometers

The society records rain. Each member maintains, in their own garden or on their own balcony, a small rain-gauge of a standardised design, and reads it at the same hour every morning. The reading is entered in a notebook with the date, the time, and one word for the weather. That is all. There is no theory, no model, no forecast. The members are not meteorologists; the society is not, despite the seriousness of its calibration, in the science business.

The society meets each autumn, on the first day after the equinox on which it does not rain. The meeting is held in a room with a window. Each member reads aloud one entry from the year's notebook — chosen by the member, not by lot — and gives the date. After all twenty-four entries are read, the room is quiet for the time it takes the kettle to boil. Then everyone goes home. The yearly entries are bound, eventually, into the collective almanac, which is the only document the society publishes, and which only its members read.

The pluviometers are on good terms with the dawn walkers, who often pass each other in the morning street, and with the larger and more philosophical silence-observing society. Several members are also amateur readers of painted rain, but this is not, properly, the society's concern.