"The Earl of Extremes" (Sept. 2010)

End of summer musings on hundred-year weather events, the history of political histrionics, and other oddities.

By most any living memory, these past few months have brought bizarre and unusual circumstances to these Virginia hills. Three epic blizzards in a winter, summer with nearly 60 days of above 90 degree temperatures, and of course there was that little earthquake on July 16th to ice the cake of strangeness. While I ruminate, a hurricane named Earl is churning up the Atlantic currents, bound at least for a brush with the beaches and who knows what else.

Weather in particular is a tricky thing. They've been keeping good records only since the 1880s or so - long enough to have scores of statistics but not long enough to know how meaningful many of them are. I've noticed the meteorologists have gotten much better with predictions these past few years, and none of the big snow events caught us by surprise thanks to that. Hurricane forecasts have surely improved as well.

But it does seem like a year of "extreme". The media are constantly blaring at us about the opinions and actions of people, especially those in the political arena, who seem hellbent on monopolizing our attention by taking outrageousness to new extremes. The Dukes of Doom and the Archbishops of Apocalypse have taken to their high-tech peach baskets to scream at any and all. Even in print, it seems shrill and deafening, and I find myself looking for a volume control to turn down. 

I am inclined to think that is a natural, if lamentable, outgrowth of our obsession with reality TV - the more outlandish, the more attention (and of course, more profit!). It's enough to make one think that life is an entire circus overstuffed with sideshows, and by the fact that our own simple lives are less than that, somehow, we are being left behind.

The lines between fact and fantasy seem more blurred than ever. News comes delivered and packaged in line with the guidelines of the parent corporations who produce it, opinions are tweeted and then rebroadcast as news, and all the while the ticker tape scrolls along the bottom of the screen screaming for mercy with all the "breaking news" overstuffing it.

So, has humanity changed? Culture? Or is the difference that technology now gives us a real time look into our collective teetering on the brink of sanity with every status update?

I remember a few years ago being fascinated with David McCullough's epic book about John Adams, our second President. Reading his accounts of the vitriolic "news" printed by the "journalistic" supporters of Adams and Jefferson during the Campaign of 1800, one can see that perhaps at least a finite minority has always had this collective tendency towards extremes of rhetoric. The collective howling of both sets of partisans seems strangely familiar even if the language is not.

Imagine if they had Twitter or Facebook two centuries ago:

#Jefferson is naught but a dandy and a charlatan
@ThosPaine: #Adams will become king and heir throne to son!
@JamesMadison: The Revolution lives in hearts and minds of VA planters, not MA traitors who coddle Eng over Fr

(thanks to Ann Robinson for the best couple suggestions!)

Maybe the times they are-a changing, but the people? Maybe not as much as we might seem. Our American mood is certainly negative as the 9th annual rememberance of 9/11 approaches, and we ponder the journey from then to now with a mix of trepidation and uncertainty. But history offers hope that despite pouring acid upon our foundations, they remain strong through adversity. Much adversity has been endured in the 210 years since Adams v. Jefferson went to the voters. There is great comfort in our collective resilience.

Meanwhile, I'm digging out the Farmer's Almanac to see what mischief the meteorologists have in store for this winter while I still have time to buy a snowblower!