A publication called The Old Farmers Almanac has been appearing for the last 117 years. The OFA is a compendium of information that might prove useful to an audience largely employed in working the land and anxious to take advantage of any break to be had in that very tough game. One of the OFA’s strong points for its original rural audience and for a large number of modern folks who dig either for fun, for a living or for science’s sake is the publication of “moon signs”. OK, no more smirking. The moon signs are said to clue farmers, gardeners and others of the agra persuasion about when to plant and when to hold off. According to accumulated lore, when certain lunar positions obtain, the weather on earth is mild and good for letting crops get a head start. Conversely, when the signs are of another configuration, the weather will be cooler and more unpleasant. Long range weather forecasts are also a feature of the OFA. These are made by a man with the pleasant title of Prognosticator. What a cool thing to say at a party, when somebody asks what line of work you’re in! Oh, I’m a Prognosticator, you say, and watch the faces. The current Prognosticator at the OFA is a a retired math prof, who uses methods old and new to predict what the weather will be a year from now. So, how does he do? May, he gets mostly right. The winter months are trickiest. I used to love Almanacs when I was a kid. There were about half a dozen on the market. They had everything in them: the Constitution, the names of all the States with capitals, stuff about science, history, politics. I could stretch out on the carpet for hours and just flip through the thing. A lot of them are gone now, casualties of the Web. But the OFA trudges on, in the light of the moon.
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A weblog prepared by the staff of the Moody Medical Library about trends in scholarly publication, information technology and library service.
