I'M SINGIN' in the rain, just singin' in the rain, what a glorious feelin', I'm happy again…

Christine Barnes is a resident of Northfield, Vermont. That wonderful melody may tickle a memory or two: the song, written in the 1920s, is from the movie Singing in the Rain, 1952, starring Gene Kelly. If you have been singing in the rain lately, here's at least part of the reason: May was the 11th wettest month on record, and June surely promises to top that.

Now, however, it's no wonder we feel like repeating the mantra Rain, rain, go away, come again some other day, from an old English nursery rhyme. Peter, Paul and Mary sang "It's Raining" in 1962, a medley of tunes from old verse. What in the world do camp counselors do after 15 straight days of rain? Campers are frustrated, and everyone's growing moss and feeling cranky. Rainy day hikes can go just so far as alternative activities for tennis, riding, biking and overnights. In our gardens, the peonies bow low to shed the rain, shattering petals days too soon. Tomato plants, set out in May, look as though they belong to the world of the Munchkins.

Rain drops keep fallin' on my head, and it's getting old, living in this rain forest. B.J. Thomas' rendition played in "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" in 1969. But the optimistic tone of the song offers a stiff upper lip to the mold and slime and multitudes of earwigs now taking refuge in our house.

Again, It's raining cats and dogs. That's an odd one - where did the phrase come from? According to an internet source, its origin is grim. It seems that street drainage in medieval times was a bit inadequate: from Swift's "Description of a City Shower" (1710) we read:

Now, from all parts the swelling kennels flow

And bear their trophies with them as they go

Drown'd puppies, stinking sprats, all drench'd in mud

Dead cats and turnip tops

Come tumbling down the flood.

But What have they done to the rain? The growing awareness that the rains carry pollutants out of the air down to the ground became more clear in the 1950s and '60s in the song, "Just a Little Rain". It was written as a protest song in response to above-ground nuclear testing, which deposited radioactive materials into the soil. It follows that the grasses carried the toxic materials to cows, then to the milk we drink. President Kennedy signed a ban to prevent this manner of nuclear testing a year after the song was written.

However, the rain was just doing its job, cleansing the air, as it did when it dropped acid particulate matter from the mid- West factories onto the trees on our Green Mountains, as first demonstrated by UVM's Hubert Vogelmann in the early 1980's. Documentation of the dying red spruce trees at higher elevations led to the Clean Air Act, passed by Congress in 1990, resulting in air quality improvements for us all.

Hangin' around, nothin' to do but frown, rainy days and Mondays always get me down. Why is that? I'm not sure about the Monday thing, but negative ions are a factor in rainy-day blues. The Carpenters' melancholy melody from 1971 reflects how most of us feel when the balance of positive and negative ions is upset by weather fronts. But it's so good, sometimes, to go with the flow and slow down, pick up a book, curl up for a good read, and slip off into a lovely afternoon nap. Hence, It's raining, it's pouring, the old man is snoring… an old English ritual chant to while away the hours in misty Londontown.

It rained for forty days and forty nights. Surely it has been close to that. Has anyone seen Noah? Where is he when we need him? Genesis 6 tells the biblical tale of the rescue from the Great Flood. Will somebody please send an ark?