ARE DEAD BLACKBIRDS AN OMEN OR JUST AN ODDITY?

If “four and twenty blackbirds” make a pie, Beebe, Arkansas, for the second New Year’s in a row, had enough dead blackbirds falling out of the sky to make more than 10 and perhaps as many as 20 fresh pies.

I’m not a conspiracy theorist, per se, because I don’t think human beings, as a whole, can keep Big Secrets or, for that matter, small secrets either. Humans are blabbermouths. Yak, yak, yak. If you don’t believe me, just go to the mall and count all the people on their cell phones. Yak, yak, yak, bla, bla, bla. Is there really that much to talk about?

However, the puzzle in Beebe is more than a little interesting. Rise Earth, a conspiracy nut’s site for all things conspiratorial, reported that “5,000 blackbirds dropped dead from the sky last night in the early hours of the new year.” However, the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette out of Little Rock said it was more like 250 birds and the Beebe News estimated between 200 and 400 dead birds.

Still, that’s a lot of blackbirds plopping out of the sky – and there are pictures of them scattered across streets and lawns.

Rise Earth tied it to the supposed Mayan prophesies about the end of days, and suggested that the blackbirds were the first harbinger of doom for 2012. (I’ll keep track of these harbingers as the year goes by and report on them in December.)

Admittedly, scientists are baffled, although some suggested the birds were scared to death by fireworks or freak weather or both. When the weekly Beebe News came out, it reported that malicious pranksters shot off fireworks in the bird’s roosting area and the blackbirds were so traumatized they flew blind, perhaps into a cloud system and were struck by lightning.

A link in the Arkansas Times took me to God Discussion, a site offering “News-Opinion-Reviews for Spiritual Seeks and Activists Who Cherish Freedom of Conscience.” There I learned that “some Christian leaders saw biblical prophecy in Hosea 4 (‘which describes Biblical animal deaths because of Israel's disobedience to God’) being fulfilled…” when the birds fell. Additionally, and sadly not surprisingly, another link took me to an article in which Cindy Jacobs, described as a Christian dominionist, "apostle" and "prophet," blames the dead birds on gays and lesbians, specifically “America is violating God's prohibition on homosexuality with support for gay marriage and the repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell.”

What intrigues me as much as the mass feathered fatalities is the fact that the birds were flying at night. Dr. Kevin McGowan, a Cornell University ornithologist, pointed out that “Most of these birds don’t see any better at night than you or I do. They aren’t adapted to see at night like owls so if they went off from their perches at night they're blind at night just like you would be.”

I don’t believe Beebe’s dead blackbirds are a sign of the End of Days. However, I have a hard time buying the lightning strike hypothesis, too. Tis a mystery.

MORE OBSERVATIONS FROM EVERYWHERE

The following is excerpted from Fia Tarrant’s December 30, 2011 column in Euro Weekly Online:

“One of my friends scared the living daylights out of me by telling me the world was going to end on December 21, 2012. I Googled the hell out of that date and the more I read the more frightened I got.

“So if like me you are freaking out, don’t. My mother’s got a bunker at her house we can all hide in that until it all passes.

“I am hoping that this is your year and don’t forget, if the world is coming to an end in 2012 bring chocolates and wine and we can sit it out in mum’s bunker.” 

This next is a series of excerpts from Jody Paterson, a columnist for the Victoria Times Colonist in Canada:

“I find it kind of sweet that people still get caught up in a good old-fashioned doomsday prophecy once in a while. 

“It's difficult to be certain of anything in this world, so I don't mean to poke fun at those who believe the apocalypse is coming in 2012. It could be.

“But what's charming is that the belief has gained so much traction that even the well-regarded Guardian newspaper in England felt the need to run a rather serious story this month featuring a German scholar disputing rumours that the end is nigh.

“I like that. We seem all sophisticated and rational as a society, but just below the surface is a wide-eyed kid who still believes in things that go bump in the night.

“Prepare for a good year on that front regardless of what's up with the apocalypse, seeing as the ancient Mayans aren't the only ones predicting intense times in 2012.

“It seems perverse to wish for disaster. But working ourselves up about a possible apocalypse is obviously something humans enjoy every now and then, and we do it well. Who can forget Y2K?

“The 2012 doomsday prophesy revolves around a stone tablet carved by an ancient Mayan civilization from the Tortuguero region of Mexico. The tablet marks 2012 as the end of a 5,125-year cycle of the Mayan long-count calendar.

“Some have taken that as indication that the world will cease to exist as of Dec. 21, 2012.

“Of course, you have to put a lot of faith in ancient Mayans to believe that. But that's the thing about faith - it doesn't need to make sense.”

And finally, this snippet from the December 30, 2011 opinion page of the Bangkok Post:

“…if the Mayans are correct and we only have until December 21, 2012 to improve our lives before we all get obliterated by the alien invasion/zombie apocalypse/[*insert your own doomsday ending here], then there's no room for failure in the upcoming year.”

PERUVIAN SHAMANS ASKED INCAN GODS TO INTERVENE ON DOOMSDAY

Right before the end on 2011, shamans in Peru had a get-together in Lima where they performed a series of rituals designed to cancel out the dreaded Maya end of the world prophecies.

What a relief. Just when you think it’s our darkest hour, those stalwart Peruvian shamans, like the cavalry charging to the rescue during the American genocidal war against indigenous people, suddenly appear to save the day!

Well, okay, maybe not, but still somehow reassuring…the shamans, that is, not the genocidal war.

So, anyway, wearing their traditional garments from the Andes and Amazon regions, the Peruvian shamans called upon primordial Incan gods and requested a change in the date for doomsday.

Juan Osco, an Andean shaman put it this way: “This is not going to happen, to those who think that way to spread panic, (we say) no, the world is not going to end. The bad things, hatred, revenge, rage are ending. And a new spiritual world of peace and love will be starting.”

Okay, Juan sounds a bit like little Mary Buttercup, a ‘60s hippie high on life, free love and peyote, but still, there’s nothing wrong with a little more spirituality laced with peace and love and a belief that hatred, revenge and rage will end in lieu of the world.

By the way, witches, clairvoyants and shamans are routinely used in Peru to predict the future and have been used since the time of the Incas. Of course, that begs the questions: Did the Incans see their own end coming?

RUSSIANS CONSIDER DOOMSDAY

On the whole, Russians are perceived as pretty darned pessimistic. If you don’t believe me, just read some Dostoyevsky, Chekhov or Tolstoy. More contemporaneously, read Solzhenitsyn’s delightful The Gulag Archipelago. My point is, Russia never earned a reputation as home to the world’s Pollyanna. Seemingly, for Russians there is a bleak side and a bleaker side.

Consequently, when a job recruiting site in Russian recently conducted a survey and five percent of the respondents professed a belief that the so-called Maya-predicted doomsday will be in 2012, it wasn’t all that surprising. Of course, I think if the same survey was conducted in the U.S., Great Britain or all of Europe the five percent figure might hold true.

The website, Superjob.ru, issued this statement regarding their survey results: “The majority of Russians (16 percent) are optimistic and expect changes for the best. Our survey shows that there are half the number of pessimists, almost two times fewer at nine percent. The pessimists don’t expect anything good from 2012 and foresee a poorer quality of life and the rise of prices for goods and services.”

Five percent isn’t all that much, really. One in twenty. If we surveyed Americans I suspected we’d get five percent believing all sorts of nonsense such as Iraq attacked America on 9/11, Obama was born in Africa or Wall Street is full of honest and honorable financial folks.

Still, on the whole, I’d be willing to bet that more than five percent of the world population that is aware of the Maya doomsday scenario believes it’s true. I mean, David Hannum – not P.T. Barnum – said it: “There’s a sucker born every minutes.”

1524: THE GREAT FLOOD THAT WASN’T AND OTHER NON-DISASTERS

Yesterday I recounted a few failed Doomsday predictions. I saved the year 1524 for today since it was such an active year.

A gaggle of British astrologers declared that in June 1523 London would be ground zero for a Great Deluge that would end the world on February 1, 1524. Panic spread and more than 20,000 people abandoned their homes for other places while at St. Bartholomew’s, the Prior had a fortress erected and stockpiled with a two-month supply of water and food. When 02-01-24 came and went without so much as a decent shower, the astrologers put their heads together, recalculated and, lo and behold, determined they had made a miscalculation. Sheepishly, they announced they had been off by a century. As it happened, on February 1, 1624 a new crop of true believers were disappointed to learn that they, too, would not be drowning on that particular date.

However, beyond the Great Deluge scenario, other astrologers had predictions for 1524. For example, Nicolaus Peranzonus de Monte Sancte Marie, added to the 1524 panic by declaring that when the major planets were in conjunction in Pisces, swoosh, a great flood would sweep everyone away.

Johannes Stoeffler, also an astrologer, foresaw the Great Deluge occurring on February 20, 1524, way back in 1499. His prophesy was so highly regarded that it is reported that more than one hundred pamphlets were published about his pronouncement.

The dire 1524 predictions set Europeans to work planning to save their lives. The president of France had an enormous ark built as did Count von Iggleheim, whose ark was three stories high. Unfortunately for the good count, when the end did not arrive, the people became agitated and stoned him to death and then stampeded, killing scores more. Who needs a deluge to amass a body count?

Many Germans had smaller boats built; obviously Doomsday was a profit center for the neighborhood boat builder. 

Another astrologer, George Tannstetter, who was also a mathematician at the University of Vienna, scoffed at the predictions. Once he calculated his own horoscope and discovered he would live beyond 1524, he mocked the others.

And, by the by, according to the 1878 edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica, 1524 was “a year…distinguished for drought.”

A FUNNY THING HAPPENED ON THE WAY TO DOOMSDAY

As predictions go, calling for the end of the world is the biggie. And, of course, it’s happened several times over the last several centuries.

John of Toledo, an astrologer, predicted in 1179 that when all the planets (including the sun) that were then known were in Libra – KAPOW! – End of Days! Depending on which calendar John used, the end would have either been September 23, 1186 or October 3, 1186 at 4:15 in the afternoon GMT.

John’s prediction, written up in a pamphlet, spread far and wide and in Constantinople, the Byzantine Emperor had his windows walled up while the Archbishop of Canterbury ordered a day of atonement.

Both dates came and went and the world remained.

Seventy-four years later, Joaquim of Flore in Northamptonshire, England, pronounced 1260 as the “exact” date that the world would cease to be. Joaquim got his fifteen minutes of fame which ended when the world didn’t.

The years 1532 and 1533 were slap happy with End of Days predictions. First, in 1532, Frederick Nausea, a bishop in Vienna, declared that the end was here after receiving a series of bizarre reports. Let’s see, there were bloody crosses in the sky along with a comet, black bread falling from the heavens (not manna, apparently) and three suns and a burning castle also were spotted in the sky. Not surprising, Freddie was pretty disturbed by those reports, but when he heard that an eight-year-old girl in Rome had breasts spurting warm water, well, hell’s bells that was clearly a sign of the End of Days and he announced as much to the masses. Perhaps he would have been better off looking for someone smoking a little Maui-Wowie rather than declaring the end of the world..

In 1533, Anabaptist Melchior Hoffmann, who had already declared Strasbourg, France as the New Jerusalem, declared that the world would end in flames that year and that while mighty and somewhat vicious angels burned the world, 144,000 people would be allowed to live. Predictably, the rich and powerful freaked out. Rent records were destroyed, debts forgiven, and fortunes and properties given to the poor. Of what use such thing would be when the world was burning seems not to have mattered and, let’s face it, the poor were happy as clams to get what they could.

Needless to say, 1533 came and went and there was no great conflagration. However, Hoffman was supported by a fellow named Matthysz who declared that Hoffman’s Doomsday had been delayed – what? it missed a connecting flight? – and the promised End of Days would occur in the following February. In anticipation, scores of people flocked to Amsterdam to get themselves baptized to hedge their bets against Doomsday.

A real cautionary takle came that same year when Michael Stifel, a Bible student and mathematician, determined that October 3, 1533 at eight in the morning was, indeed, the End of Days. His reckoning came after studying the Book of Revelations. He announced said Doomsday to the good citizens of Lochau, the German village in which he lived, and when October 3 came and went without the world ending, the villagers were so grateful they dragged Mike outside, flogged the bejesus out of him and made sure he’d never work again in their village at as ecclesiastic.

MY PREDICTIONS FOR 2012

Happy New Year!

And especially this year, 2012, because some “experts” want us to believe it’ll be the last year!

While everyone is making resolutions so there will be something to break come February, I’ve been pondering 2012 – the last year…not! – and I have a few predictions:

• As the year progresses, more and more nutcases will pop out from under their respective rocks to make absurd pronouncements regarding the END OF DAYS!
  
  
• Many unfortunate, deluded people will give away their property and money in anticipation of the END OF DAYS!
  
  
• Many other people will bankroll fly-by-night pulpit pounders in the hope of securing a heavenly place in the afterlife following the END OF DAYS!
  
  
• Somewhere, someone will conclude that with December 21, 2012 rapidly approaching, it’s a sign that he/she can commit mass murder because, after all, it’s the END OF DAYS!
  
  
• Local and national TV newscasts will all carry a similar story sometime during the year that shows Mr. and Mrs. Panic-Like-It’s-the-End-of-the-World with a basement/bomb shelter/ark filled with enough flour, pasta and canned goods to feed a small Central American country because it’s the END OF DAYS!
  
  
• Church attendance in some areas will increase because where better to find solace and comfort with the approach of the END OF DAYS?
  
  
• Pat Robertson and his ilk will spend much of their time pointing fingers at the gay and lesbian communities for bringing about the END OF DAYS!
  
  
• While national media will largely ignore this whole silly thing, local media, especially TV, will happily trot out some itinerate end-of-the-world guy sporting a funky soul patch, a 1987 mullet, Buddy Holly glasses and one eye that looks everywhere but where it should and wearing a natty black suit over a black shirt and a black bolo tie. This “expert” will tell us, while we’re rolling on the floor with the giggles, that it is, in fact, the END OF DAYS!
  
  
• President Obama and all Democrats will be blamed for the END OF DAYS!
  
  
• And, finally, in 2012 there will not be an END OF DAYS!