Answer #23 - No, The Farmer's Almanac must be read in wire-rimmed glasses

Arbutus Responds to Monkey Drool:

Sanctimony came first, followed by Patrimony (by Alimony, out of Matrimony). The anthropologists say it's all ass-shaking, bared teeth and chest-banging. The anthropophagists say "Pass the salt", or "I'd like another slice of the loin, please." I sometimes conflate etymologists with entomologists, but then I'm buggy.

That was a funny blog. LOL.
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I've just finished breakfast at The Cracker Barrel, this, in no way, being an endorsement of said establishment, it is, however fact that I was there this morning eating the Egg Sandwich and Hash Brown Casserole.  The roaring fire in the stone hearth, the wooden sleds and farm implements on the wall, pictures of someone's great grand daddy & baby aunt vivian in oval wooden frames, old metal signs for shoe shine polish and dairy products.  Some genius' idea of dragging Norman Rockwell right outta the grave and teaching him to shuck biscuits & gravy.

It works, apparently, because the things have sprung up all over the country.  And look at me, ma, feeling all warm and cozy in the land of trans-fats and high-fructose-corn-syrup-syrup...

We love the past these days.  Look at TJ Max - we love stuff that looks old even if it's not old.  All of the Architectural Renovation places gathering up all the hinges and doorknobs and floor grates that people used to toss in the garbage... we're grabbing on to something that seems to be receding rapidly - is it our history, our perspective, or just the same nostalgia that kicks in for everyone past the age of 22? (for reference, folks, all of the fodder for nostalgia you're going to build will probably have been stocked by then).

I don't know.  The natural world's being replaced by the sharp-edged steel one alarmingly quickly. And me, I write songs - sometimes about people in other times and places.  I don't feel nostalgic about it - just feel the sense of looking back at a time or place that appears more colorful due to the lenses I put on when writing - big, prismy rainbow glasses, like the kind Elton John used to wear - beams of light shooting every which way, and outlining a single image in a halo, like the Virgin of Guadalupe, but not like an aura, because I just can't take much of that crystal munching stuff.   I like writing.  This is why.  Prism rainbow glasses and sometimes I put on platform shoes and pretend I'm Elton.  Not often, and certainly not when anyone's looking.

So, is it appropriate to wear Elton John Rainbow Glasses in Cracker Barrel?

In Cracker Barrel, rainbow glasses and platform shoes would break the spell.  No, in Cracker Barrel,  my glasses are round, wire-frames and my collar buttons high on my neck.  I speak of the weather, what the Almanac said to expect of the Spring rains and how the aunts and uncles are.  I glance at the holiday tchotchke made by small Chinese children on my way out to my car.  It's all a bit of a nasty illusion, the whole thing, and my dog wouldn't approve, but it speaks to something, even in all its schlocky corporate contrivance.

My mother loves the oatmeal there.  I put on the glasses.