I'm not a big proponent of prognostication. Really.
Over the centuries, A.D. and before that, B.C., prognosticators were known as prophets and seers. The Bible's Joseph is a well-known seer, being called upon repeatedly to interpret the King's dreams. More recent terms for prognosticators are psychics, mystics, spiritualists....to name a few.
A recent morning found me chuckling as I remembered a dream I'd had just hours before. In my dream, I was driving a huge station wagon like my parents always owned. (We used to refer to these more-than-full-sized, three-hundred-fifty horsepower with V-8 engines automobiles as boats.) I drove the station wagon down a steep set of water-front steps, settling smoothly into relatively shallow water. No harm done to me or the vehicle. I could use a Joseph on this dream. I spent only a few minutes attempting to decipher what the dream meant but quickly gave up and decided that was just wasted time.
Another synonym for prognosticator is forecaster and forecasting, weather-wise, is what is on everyone's mind this morning. For those of us who have weekend plans, the weather forecasters have our rapt attention as a possible storm moves our way from the plains states. Possible is the key word here. Depending on many meteorological factors, the 'front', as the professionals call it, may track north or south, slow (thereby dumping more snow) or fast (thereby producing less snow), blah, blah, blah. Weather forecasters and meteorologists always give so many possible variables that it could turn out to be eighty degrees, instead of a winter storm, and there would be some reason why that remote scenario happened. For those of us who live in areas where snow is a fact of winter life, it is almost as if we need to pack winter-survival trunk bags with not only a blanket, hat, mittens/gloves, road flares, but also shorts, tees, and sandals to be ready for any type of weather that Mother Nature may throw our way.
The other type of prognosticator is the economic market analyst. I won't even go there. These are the people who tell us the market reacted because someone with blue blood sneezed at a cocktail party somewhere on either the east or west coast. Remember the dream I mentioned a paragraph or two ago? I wonder how many market analysts could fit in a full-size station wagon?
If anyone can interpret the content of my blog postings, I'm all ears.
Ancora imparo
