The Home Front
BOHN, WILLIAM E.
THE HOME FRONT Fixed Point in a Changing World By William E. Bohn During the past ten years, most of those who write and speak with an air of authority have done their best to start an epidemic...
...You can learn on what day in 1780 New York Bay was frozen to Staten Island...
...It may comfort you to know that there were great hurricanes in 1817...
...Each month brings with it a little essay suited to the season of the year...
...When the great day arrived, the condemned man proudly announced that he was still alive...
...The assumption from first to last is that the farmer knows his business and that if he is left alone he will take care of himself...
...Editor Bob tells us in a generous Note to Reviewers that in England and on the Continent of Europe calendars were known as far back as the 15th century...
...The death of Captain Cook is carefully recorded, as is the date of the death of the last surviving participant in the Boston Tea Party...
...Most of the earth's population is poor and ignorant and hungry...
...The news provided is...
...They are not afraid that the world is coming to an end soon...
...With a real gift for publicity, he predicted the death of a rival calendar publisher on a certain date...
...From the start, apparently, the routine tables of astronomical events were made more palatable by the addition of shreds of humor and philosophy...
...It represents the minds of people who have been beaten into fatalism by the ceaseless monotony of life...
...you see...
...1883 and 1949...
...In every respect, Editor Bob has stuck to the norm...
...I would but that some friends of mine won't come to meet me until this train arrives--and I don't want to be waiting around the depot for two or three hours...
...It is the sort of news that old people pass back and forth as they sit about the fire on a winter evening...
...It is getting more and more smart to be hopeless...
...But you will search in vain for any such evidence of discontent...
...Robert B. Thomas published the first edition in Massachusetts in 1793...
...Soon there followed the notion that the earth itself might disintegrate --and then where would we be...
...The Constitution had been in force for about four years, and Washington was winding up his first term as President...
...But...
...And now, on a desk heaped high with the dictates of doom, appears the Old Farmer's Almanac...
...You might expect to find in such literary efforts by a man who is obviously a farmer some complaint about taxes, prices or lack of Government support...
...In a world constantly threatened with destructive change, here is one thing which has remained essentially the same for 163 years...
...Anecdotes about slow trains were one of the staples of American humor in those days...
...It never has before...
...The latest joke repeated is one attributed to Mark Twain...
...This clever exchange marks the top of the Old Farmer's wit...
...THE HOME FRONT Fixed Point in a Changing World By William E. Bohn During the past ten years, most of those who write and speak with an air of authority have done their best to start an epidemic of the jitters...
...If you are curious about the time of the birth of Cain and the death of Abel, you need not remain in ignorance...
...The editor who achieved most success in this direction was Benjamin Franklin, who started his Poor Richard's Almanac in 1733...
...if there is lack of up-to-the-minute information and discussion, there is abundance of curious facts...
...There is also smartly imparted information about dealings with witches and ghosts...
...From that day to this, the format and the cover design have remained the same...
...The crops, the weather, the philosophy are all such as go with the rugged hills and picturesque valleys of New Hampshire or Vermont--with now and then a suggestion of Maine...
...First it was suggested that in the next war practically the whole population of the earth will be wiped out...
...good, old, well-seasoned news...
...Everything about it suggests permanence, security, confidence...
...The first one printed in America appeared in New England in 1639...
...And the famous humorist is said to have replied snappily: "Well...
...And hardly ever is there allusion to any sort of innovations in the arts of soil cultivation...
...of course, geared to New England...
...Far from being embarrassed, Franklin calmly proclaimed: "You are already dead--just don't know it...
...This almanac is...
...The very notion of a calendar suggests unexciting repetitiveness...
...Mark is said to have been on a train journeying to a lecture engagement...
...Only once is there mention of the Government as a source of assistance to the sturdy agriculturist...
...When he complained to the conductor about their tardiness, this stodgy official is said to have replied: "If you don't like the rate of speed, why don't you get out and walk...
...It is peasant news and peasant thinking...
...Even in our thinking about our more intimate human problems the cult of despair has had the best of it...
...The hours of the sun, the phases of the moon, the heights of the tides, the gyrations of the stars and planets, even such seemingly unusual events as eclipses of sun and moon, proceed with dull regularity...
...We cannot possibly solve the population problem...
...Bob Sagendorph now does the printing and publishing in Dublin, New Hampshire, but he stoutly resists any temptation to introduce modern foolishness...
...It is deadly dull--as it always was--but I greet it with joy...
Vol. 38 • November 1955 • No. 47
