There are times when signs occur in a minor way, and times when they are seen (or should be noticed) in a major way, whether with our personal lives or larger venues.
Every year at this time is a New Age-Saturnalia-Woodstock kind of event called the "Burning Man" festival in the northwest desert of Nevada that attracts about 66,000. It started as a tiny ritual in the Haight-Asbury section of San Francisco (on the summer solstice) in 1986 before expanding and moving to the desert, where naked folks traipse about past signs encouraging all to engage in casual sex while others flaunt androgynous costumes with that spandex-purple-hair-extraterrestrial-transvestite motif that brings to mind gay parades in places like San Francisco, New Orleans, and Greenwich Village.
Halloween in September. Custom leather suits. The festival is highlighted as The New York Times describes it as a "strut and frolic for eight days, while anticipation builds for the giant man-shaped bonfire that is the raison d'etre of Burning Man."
That hearkens to the burning of another effigy -- a giant owl -- at the annual (but this one for the elite) confab in Bohemia Grove, California .
It seems like every year there are little signs. This year, they were more than "little." First off (and prayer need here), this year an important figure in the event died while helping to fashion the infrastructure. One could easily write off a single death (we do all die). But it was followed by gusty winds that in the words of USA Today "swirled the fine desert dust into sandstorms on (August 29, 2015), causing near whiteout conditions during final preparations for Burning Man. Several encampments suffered collapses early Saturday morning as gusts bent poles and flattened tents."
This was preceded by an epic invasion of "stink bugs."
As USA Today (which seems to have quite a fascination for the festival) reported during that occurrence, "Staff and volunteers working to set up the annual gathering in the Nevada desert have reported swarms of bugs at the build site for Burning Man, according to a Tuesday (August 18, 2015) blog post."
Similar to a swarm of locusts (in pharaonic Egypt that ancient place of similar paganism)?
Stink bugs, noted the news item, "seem to be a combination of false blister beetles, which are largely associated with rotting wood; false chinch bugs, which sometimes can release a stinkbug-like odor; and Say's stink bugs, also known as green stink bugs are the three types of bugs that Knight has informally identified based on images."
We'll take locusts.
But then, modern America has many resemblances to ancient Egypt, when it comes to paganism and rituals.
Signs, signs, everywhere signs.
Everywhere, warnings too, and not just in Nevada. .
