Information Junkies (of which I am one) take
many forms. Some keep a television set
tuned to 24 hour news channels running day and night. Others hole up in cluttered offices, surrounded
by memorabilia of a bygone era: printed books and almanacs and
encyclopedias. Younger IJs may have
Wikipedia on their computer's speed-dial...
Science has not yet discovered the cause of
this particular form of madness that drives a man or woman to know things
normal people don't really care about.
Is it a kind of Geek Power? The
IJ would dispute this and claim it's simple curiosity. He or she would deny any interest in winning
big cash prizes on TV's Jeopardy game show. But a true IJ would never forget to remind
you the current version of the word Jeopardy comes from Middle English's jeopardie which came from the Anglo
French ju parti of the Norman
Era. Nor will you escape learning ju parti derives from jeu parti, Old French for Modern
English's "divided game"...
 |
| Advertisement for 1903 edition of The World Almanac. |
Having an almanac handy is no proof that one
is prone to being an Information Junkie.
Many of the families I knew as a kid growing up in Alexandria owned a
thick and occasionally used World Almanac
and Book of Facts. Since 1868, the World Almanac has rescued anyone with a
sudden and overpowering need to know the population of Belgium, the average
distance from Neptune to the Sun, or who was Senate Majority Leader twenty
years ago...
 |
| Born Elizabeth Jane Cochran, Nellie Bly added an "e" to her last name so she would appear more sophisticated. She was forced to use a pen name as a journalist because her editors didn't believe men would take a woman writer seriously. |
To be honest, the World Almanac didn't appear on newsstands from 1876 to 1886. It takes its name from the New York World newspaper that served the
Democratic Party and Gothamites well until 1931. For most of the Civil War and early days of
Reconstruction, a gentleman named Manton Marble owned and edited the journal. He was shut down for three days in 1864 when
he published forged documents allegedly authored by President Lincoln. Marble stepped into financial quicksand and
had to sell the World. Joseph Pulitzer bought the struggling paper
in 1883, transforming into an influential periodical (with nearly one million
readers) that chose sensational headlines over boring facts when push came to
shove...
[Pulitzer hired Elizabeth Jane Cochrane, a
pioneering female journalist who wrote under the name Nellie Bly. Cochrane was a fearless adventurer who
boosted World readership when tens of
thousands of people followed her record breaking hop across the globe as she
tried to beat the time set by Jules Verne's fictional hero Phileas Fogg in Eighty Days Around The World. She made it in 72 days, 6 hours, 11 minutes,
14 seconds after stops that included a visit to a Chinese leper colony and a
visit with Jules Verne himself in France.
Unchaperoned, Nellie Bly dallied briefly in Singapore where she bought a
monkey to share her journey. Her courage
had another side that ultimately benefitted others. She spent ten days as an anonymous mental
hospital patient to expose the brutal "treatment" used to cure
insanity. As a result of her exposeˊ, new
examination procedures were instituted to prevent a false diagnosis of mental
illness and $850,000 was added to the budget of the Department of Public
Charities and Corrections.]
 |
| Benjamin Franklin, shown here conducting his famous kite experiment in a painting by Benjamin West, edited colonial America's Poor Richard's Almanack, selling roughly 10,000 copies annually. |
The World
Almanac, despite its impressive pedigree, is far from being the oldest data
treasure trove in the US. (British
almanacs date to at least the 12th Century and listed solar and lunar positions
vis-a-vis the Zodiac as well as the
location of the then known planets. Such
information was useful to those who planted crops or needed to know when to
expect high and low tides. It also
provided the basic data needed to practice astrology and divine the
future. On the continent, Johannes
Gutenberg used his now famous printing press in 1457 to produce an almanac--
eight years before he utilized it to print the Bible.) Colonial America saw William Pierce of
Harvard College compiling An Almanac for
New England for the Year 1639...
Benjamin Franklin published Poor Richard's Almanack for twenty-five
years, beginning in 1733. It contained
the required daily calendar, weather forecasts, astronomical data, and doggerel
expected of an almanac. But Poor Richard
was true to his secret identity of Ben Franklin, adding mind-sharpening
mathematical puzzles and pithy aphorisms reminding colonists that early to bed
and early to rise made them healthy, wealthy, and wise...
 |
| Robert B Thomas' The Old Farmer's Almanac has appeared annually since 1792. It is famous for its generally accurate seasonal "weather indications" computed by a secret formula. |
He was not the first of the Franklin family
who hoped to meet the data needs of 18th Century Information Junkies. Ben's brother James published his first Rhode-Island Almanack in 1728. But Poor
Richard's was the almanac destined to become a pop-quiz item for American
History classes in US high schools. And
it also helped Ben become wealthier if not healthier and wiser: his almanac sold as many as 10,000 copies yearly. Franklin provided 500 copies free of charge
to James' widow for her to resell as a way of supporting herself without asking
for charity...
But now comes the hour of confession, when my
secret must be revealed...
As dearly as I love the World Almanac and the almost bragging way it seems to say
"everything you really need to know can be found between my covers",
I must admit to eagerly awaiting the coming of each autumn since I was a
youngster in Louisiana: Halloween AND
Thanksgiving AND the next year's edition of The
Old Farmer's Almanac "containing, besides the large number of
Astronomical Calculations and the Farmer's Calendar for every month in the
year, a variety of New, Useful & Entertaining Matter"...
 |
| Pogonip, seen here in Spring Creek, Nevada, was believed by Native Americans to be injurious to the lungs-- a fact known to any devotee of The Old Farmer's Almanac. |
No matter the name of the current editor,
each issue contains an introductory note to patrons that reminds almanac
readers: "However, it is by our works and not our words that we would be
judged. These, we hope, will sustain us
in the humble though proud station we have so long held in the name of Your
obedient servant, Robt B Thomas...
The Old
Farmer's
cover is as constant as the northern star and as faithful as Penelope awaiting
Odysseus' return from war and adventures with all the Cyclopeses and sirens and
lovely sorceresses who rule enchanted isles that angry gods could throw at him. It changes but to reflect the change in year
number, provided both in Roman and Arabic numerals. And, alas, inflation does occasionally force
a change in the price printed on the cover...
What makes The Old Farmer's Almanac so attractive and addictive to its
readers? I'm out of luck if I open its
pages and try to find the name of the capital city of Angola. But I do have twelve monthly Farmer's
Calendars, each accompanied by an essay whose author is a thrifty and moderate
man who savors the feel of soil between his fingers and who embraces the gifts
brought by each season of the year as much as he values the benefits bestowed
by honest work...
 |
| The mysterious "Sailing Stones" of Death Valley-- a locale, as any Information Junkie can confirm, which has recorded the hottest temperatures on Earth. A claim for Libya's portion of the Sahara as holding the record was recently discredited by meteorologists. |
For the April 2009 essay, the author mused on
how "ever since Adam set out to identify the other dwellers in Eden, men
have given themselves trouble over names."
He talks about the way one man will name a plant and another man who
lives down the road will call it by another name. We have a brief history of how the botanist
Carolus Linnaeus attempted to solve this problem by developing unique
scientific names composed of the genus and species of a plant or living
creature. Then our author muses on
Newfane Hill in his own town and the way it is variously known as Timson Hill,
Hubby Hill, or Spring Hill depending on the speaker. Then he reaches back into history to remind
us that the "never-to-be forgotten Charles the Fat (AD 839-88)" was
simultaneously Charles the Fat, Holy Roman Emperor, King of Italy, or King of
the West Franks-- depending upon which subject was describing him...
Clearly, this essayist is a focused rambler,
a man after my own heart...
 |
| New York Sun publisher Joseph Pulitzer sent ace reporter Nellie Bly on an around the world trip to break the fictional record set by Jules Verne's Phileas Fogg. Verne's novel became an award winning 1956 movie which spawned this Dell Comic as part of its merchandising tie-ins. |
I suspect, whether he would use these same
words, that he might agree with me that a search for connections among things
as apparently unrelated as Charles the Fat and Newfane Hill and the history of
the scientific method leads to an understanding that all things are connected,
no matter how odd that link may seem.
And once we know that all creation is one, it becomes magical and sacred
throughout its entirety, a unity to be loved with the same love we should hold
for ourselves, our families, our friends...
Although the cover of The Old Farmer's Almanac varies but slightly from year to
year, (the pastoral scenes of the four
seasons first appeared in 1851 and were colorized in 1988 and a tiny portrait
of President Franklin Roosevelt did grace the cover in 1943 to reaffirm the
almanac's support for his war against fascist dictators) the contents are a
kaleidoscope of information useful and amusing to agrarians and urbanites alike...
 |
| Nellie Bly traveled to Mexico, living undercover, to expose the the brutality of dictator Porfirio Diaz, seen seated in a 1957 painting by David Alfara Siquieros |
Doe goats, the Old Farmer knows, should not
be mated before they are ten months old or have reached a weight of 85-90 lbs. Two pints equal one quart, measured dry. A teaspoon in the English system equates to
five milliliters in the metric. The wise
orchard keeper will avoid grafting trees until the Moon rolls through the sign
of Pisces, Scorpio, or Cancer. Pogonip, the meteorological term used to
describe the relatively uncommon occurrence of frozen fog, was believed by Native
American tribes living in the mountain valleys of the western US and Canada to
cause damage to lungs...
Blogger for LRNArts, my skeptical reader
challenges, you postulate connections exist everywhere. Prove it-- link pogonip to Nellie Bly! Let us see, I respond with a certain amount
of trepidation. Pogonip begins with
"po". Nellie traveled to
Mexico to prepare reports on living conditions under dictator Porfirio Diaz. His name begins, it appears, with
"po"...
Oh, my dear skeptical reader, being, like
Robert B Thomas who edited the first The
Old Farmer's Almanac in 1792, ever your obedient and humble servant, I
would never try to link Nellie to farmers or things agricultural by noting she
received US Patent 697,553 for inventing an improved milk can...
 |
| Michelangelo completed painting the Sistine Chapel, my almanac informs me, in 1512. This detail depicts the Temptation of Adam and Eve and their subsequent expulsion from Eden. |
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 |
| Jeniffer Stapher-Thomas: The Moon, The Mountains, Cacti, A Cat |
 |
| Karen Slagle: Comanche Moon |
Fine Arts America now
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CREDITS
Note:
All photographs for this essay were located through Google Images or Wikipedia,
without authoritative source or ownership information except as noted:
Mysterious Sailing Stones of Death Valley from planetoddity.com; Pogonip in
Spring Creek Nevada from wunderground.com; Benjamin
Franklin Drawing Electricity From The Sky
by Benjamin West from ushistory.org; 1903 World Almanac from bookcalendar.blogspot.com
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