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It finally rained, just in time for Virginia Tech's big ESPN-televised game against Boston College. The fall trees are incandescent, and like the incoming crowds of orange-and-maroon-clad football fans, the leaves are covering Blacksburg in a colorful blanket of damp reds and yellows. I enjoyed the enforced mini-vacation of "get off campus by 4 p.m. or be towed! Work to do? Research? Seeking a cure for cancer? Tough! Off campus with you! We need those parking spaces for beer drinking! You have a class tonight? You have a professor without school spirit who didn't cancel class? In that unlikely event, don't bother to try parking on campus. We won't let you -- find some other place to park (good luck!) and walk or take the bus.

It's impressive, really, how many diehards endured cool temperatures, wind and rain for the sake of tailgating. Walking past the stadium on my way home for my mini-vacation I saw several people bundled up in rain gear trying to get their charcoal grills lit in the pelting rain. But the issues of football, parking and academic priorities are but the flicker of a candle compared with the inferno being endured on the West Coast. We've been hoping for rain for months, and they're wishing they had some of it in California, where forest fires rage out of control. The horrible fires are exacerbated by the lack of National Guard personnel and equipment that would normally be on hand to help battle the flames is, according to Sen. Barbara Boxer, gone to fight the perma-war in Iraq.

Speaking of the war, the Army sergeant I know from high school, Owen Powell, has been having an interesting ride. I've written before of his experiences in Iraq, his survival of a sniper shot to his helmet and his post-combat experiences back in his quiet home in Germany. He was one of the writers on Garry Trudeau's Doonesbury adjunct site called "The Sandbox." It's an online space for military folks to share their experiences. The cool thing is, Trudeau has published a collection of the essays from the site, and Powell has been traveling with another officer, 1st Sgt. Troy Steward, and Trudeau to promote the new book. They have been featured on National Public Radio and in The Washington Post and have visited the Pentagon for book signings. All the proceeds from the book are going to benefit the Fisher Houses, which are "comfort homes," provided by compassionate donors as a place for military family members to stay while their loved ones are being treated for illness, disease or injuries sustained in combat or otherwise. You can visit "The Sandbox" and order a copy of the new book at www.doonesbury.com.

Another type of firestorm is swirling to the north, around King Middle School in Portland, Maine. There the King Student Health Center has elected to give more birth control options to students, such as the pill and the patch, in addition to the condoms that have been available since the center opened in 2000. The reasoning behind this is that there have been multiple pregnancies among the middle-school population in this school district. The health center is available only to students whose parents have agreed to let them be treated there. Once a student is treated, however, that treatment is confidential. Some people are enraged by the center's action only to those 14 and older. I haven't seen anyone offering to help ensure that those under 14 don't get pregnant. No one is volunteering to supervise the students, teach them about sex, give them somewhere to go after school or help take care of the babies they do have. There has been a big outcry about the effect of "the pill," since no one knows the effects of hormones on young girls. But I haven't seen any outcry about the effect of pregnancy on young girls. There hasn't been a big push to find out who the fathers are or how they are getting away with impregnating middle school girls. There hasn't been much in the way of investigation of why puberty seems to be starting earlier and earlier, either. Just a lot of people really angry that their children might have access to birth control, which is willfully misinterpreted by flame-fanners as "the school system forcing children to have sex." Not even the National Guard or the Army could help with this conflagration. Only compassion and the willingness to deal with reality as it is, not as we wish it to be, could begin to solve these issues.

Pris Sears grew up in Florida, lives in Blacksburg and works among Virginia Tech's computers.