It's the weirdest sunset with the Canadian wildfire smoke in NYC right now. It's got me thinking about the volcano eruption in Indonesia in 1815, the caused the summerless 1816 when Thoreau's mother was pregnant with him. It was estimated that over 200k people had failing farms and moved west from Massachusetts. You could see sun spots when you looked at the sun through the high ash in the atmosphere.
My cousin sent me a podcast about 536 AD, which is referenced when you look at 1816. There are maybe more than 3 eruptions, and then in 539 and 540 were more eruptions, and Haley's Comet sent a bunch of particulates into the atmosphere. And by 541 there were Justinian plagues, which it's estimated killed 40% of the population in eastern mediterranean. The coldest decade, crop failures, mass famine. "A failure of bread". Cannibalism happened. With a massive dust vail, people didn't get vitamin D which boosts immunity. There were no shadows. Birds died, people fought, did "evil things". The Mayans paused in making historical markers. They probably didn't have the awareness we have now. What is the impact of our current world imagining? What would it have meant to only know local information. They were more likely to use mythology to grasp. When I read about the plague during the pandemic there were two kinds of reactions, one hedonistic, and another sort of moral retrenching and trying hard to be about good.
Things could be worse is a coping statement when things are hard. What was the hardness of the past few years. The plague of Trump and the pandemic where very straining times. We have bread and shadows.
So yin and yang, what was the greatest year? When you google best year ever, you get a self help book about planning for goals (snooze). Supposedly 1990-2000 were intense years of prosperity in general. Other people have defined the long boom from 1982-1997.
What is my best year? Hopefully the one coming up.
No comments:
Post a Comment