Smith: Perhaps no two raindrops are exactly alike, either

We curse them when they’re obscuring our view of the pavement and traffic ahead, or they’ve blended with enough others to soak our socks.

But what a primordial delight to sit somewhere sheltered and behold the phenomenon of the raindrop. You’d like to single one out and ask it, “Where have you been?”

With the Earth’s cycle of evaporation, condensation and precipitation a closed system, part of that drop streaming down the window may have hydrated a Petrolacosaurus.

Raindrops demonstrate in dramatic fashion the power of one that becomes part of many. Drop, drop, drop, and before long the creeks and rivers are torrents escaping their banks.

It’s estimated that every single minute, about a billion tons of water fall onto the Earth as rain. That’s a lot of drops.

How many are falling hereabout just now? Clearly, more than our fair share.

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ROB & JOSS are signing off and packing up.

For 13 years the morning team on the country radio station Froggy 92.9 FM, Joss VanDerHorten and Rob Taylor are seizing an opportunity in the Southland.

Engaging, fun and community minded, the duo has been offered gigs before and are accepting this one because it’s in (generally) sunny San Diego. Not only is it a pretty cool place to live and work, but Rob and Joss have connections there.

For one, Rob was born there while his late father, Healdsburg High alum and acclaimed teacher Bob Taylor, was serving in the Navy. As much as Rob has loved living most of his life in Sonoma County, he’s always had a soft spot for San Diego.

“It would take something like this to get us out of Sonoma County,” said Rob, who’s had a smile-making presence on local radio since 1981.

His partner, Joss, assures all that she and Rob had no problem with the owners or managers of listeners of Froggy, part of Lawrence Amaturo’s Sonoma Media Group.

“There was nothing that went wrong,” she said. A native of the East Bay, Joss came to work in Sonoma County at the former Q105 FM in 2002, thinking she’d stay a year or two.

So to prepare for the last Froggy show on Friday is as bittersweet to her as it is to her and Rob’s fans. But Joss said she wouldn’t want to question on her deathbed if they shoulda grasped the chance to move down and step up to a morning show in the San Diego market.

“This is a life adventure we need to go on,” she said.

Oh, and this isn’t the only big step Rob and Joss are about to take. They will marry in June.

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A SECOND COUPLE in our midst celebrates the new books that both have published.

The highly intrigued Michael Morey and Barbara Baer live in Forestville. Baer, who once taught and studied dance in south India, has launched a novel set there, “The Last Devadasi.”

And Morey will be at the Occidental Center for Arts on Friday evening to talk about his new work of history, “Fagen: An African American Renegade in the Philippine-American War.”

Published by the University of Wisconsin Press, Morey’s book delves into the life of a young, black man from Florida who joined the Filipino guerrillas after he was shipped to the Philippines as an Army private and deserted.

The talk starts at 7 p.m.

You can reach columnist Chris Smith at 707-521-5211 and chris.smith@pressdemocrat.com.