Caffeinated Politics

For all the chaos and turbulence that blast their way into our lives, some constant mainstays continually comfort us and remind us that not everything needs to be upended. A few weeks ago, James and I bought the latest edition of The Old Farmer’s Almanac, that humble, yellow-jacketed companion of what is described as a companion of hearth and field. For rural dwellers and those who live in the heart of urban centers, the planting charts, weather lore, and country wit feel as warm and welcoming as any well-worn book left at a favorite reading nook.

The Old Farmer’s Almanac started in 1792 when Robert Thomas published the first edition. It is the longest-running publication in North America, having been published continuously since its founding. When I pick it up to read a story or often ‘check on the weather’, there is a reminder that our nation’s story began as Thomas Jefferson strongly desired, in the rich furrows of earth, as people took note of the turning of the seasons. Though I did not live on a farm when growing up, there were still so many examples of how we lived by the sun and drew awareness of the coming frost. Over the years, as I get older, the Almanac with rustic humor and its version of ‘forecasting weather’ gives a certain hope and faith that the land will bloom again each spring and produce each fall. As the unprecedented events in our nation inundate us, there is every reason to find a foundation from the past to lean on for needed balance. Sitting at my desk today, my eyes landed on the Almanac, and it dawned on me that the publication deserved a few words written about it.

What strikes me in this fast-evolving media age, where digital means of accessing information and reading books have taken hold, and with the nation as a whole so far removed from its agrarian roots that Jefferson viewed as an essential way for our nation to be structured, is that the Almanac is found in city homes. It might be a banker in Boston, a cab driver in Chicago, or a plumber in Phoenix, but across this nation, the publication is still bought and read by a wide swath of people. I can only speak for myself in this column, but what connects for me is that long unbroken narrative of continuity that runs backward through the generations, where the spring planting, the summer heat and storms, the fall harvest, and then mounded snow drifts were collectively understood. There was a shared commonality from such understandings that united people regardless of state or region. As a lover of reading history, I note the simplicity of how times were once measured by the fall harvests and not the crudeness of the fiscal quarters.

In simple terms, I suggest the Almanac gives us now, as readers found a hundred years ago, and regardless of how advanced we consider ourselves to be, a dose of humility. After all, Mother Nature will have the final word. That type of humility was once considered a virtue. I suspect most people who buy a copy of the Almanac turn its pages slowly. The pacing of the quaint forecasts and the rather familiar jokes seems to require a more calm and soothing perusal of the publication. I suspect many a reader thinks about the continuity of the publication over the centuries and ponders the pull of history as they hold the yellow-covered edition in their hands.

Finally, I am reminded that too often in a fast-paced society, traditions become fragile. Many high school graduates would be hard-pressed to explain how our nation was once rooted in the earth. So, as I look at the Almanac at my desk on the Madison isthmus and reflect on how the rhythm of the seasons impacted our family life when the publication could always be found on a small bookshelf in the dining room, I am pleased that in so many homes the Almanac still shapes us.