The people who bring us the weather seem deeply attached to history. It is no longer enough to talk about storms, they are “Superstorms,” they must have names and dramatic stories. This weekend’s “Superstorm” is called Neptune, and we are now being told that this storm will not only bring “historic” amounts of snow and wind, but “historic” cold as well. Sunday, say the people who profit from predicting the weather (they make much more money on bad weather than good) will be the coldest day in decades in much of the country, -20 at least.

This storm, they say will bring 50 mile an hour winds to my farm and the Northeast, and wind chills, they say, that can freeze and burn skin in seconds.

Be frightened, be prepared. Be cold.

There is a partly comic, partly tragic convergence of events that is coming together this winter. First off, there is the very real, obvious and dramatic change in climate. I have seen many days and nights up here that were much colder than the temperatures predicted for Sunday. When I moved to the first Bedlam Farm, there were at least a dozen nights that were -30, since the animals and I didn’t look at the weather channel – they were just beginning to sniff the money in weather hysteria then, storms were not named – we didn’t know how cold we were, how much we were threatened, how frightened we ought to be.

It was just cold, we bundled up and went about our business.

Those few years have brought incredible changes in our relationship with the weather and Mother Earth.  And great changes in weather forecasting as well, the weather was once the province of meteorologists and nerds, there was not much money in it. There is now. The climate has changed drastically in the past few years, we have unbroken stretches of storms, snow and bitter cold. They go on for months, not days, and they are very real and severe. Elsewhere in the country, there is drought, forest fires, tornadoes, torrential rains. The weather calls to us to pay attention to the earth and what we are doing to her.

But we do not.  We will travail the globe to rescue puppies on a foreign beach, we won’t cross the street to save our own planet. Mother Earth is trying to get our attention. She is getting angry. We live in a country whose Congress has refused to allot one dollar to even study climate change and the way it will affect us. The head of the Senate Committee on the Environment tells us climate change is a hoax, I am sure that will be comforting news to the people in Boston, trying to find their cars and get to work in mountains of snow.

We have been left at the mercy of our new Corporate Weather Masters,  we can just wait for the Weather Channel to scare the piss out of us, reminding us for days, even weeks, that we are about to suffer great and unprecedented calamity. What kind of a country leaves our perceptions of the earth to a profit-making corporate broadcasting company, raking in millions at the jacked-up advertising rates and enormous traffic that accompanies each named Superstorm and the panicked audience that hypnotically flocks to it?

The weather channels are part news, part entertainment, party hype and marketing and how are we to sort out one from another? Perhaps it is true that the weather is becoming too important to be left to politicians or TV marketers.

We humans are delicate and ridiculous instruments, we are drawn much more to fear and worry than joy and hope.  The media companies count on it. And this kind of weather challenges us to consider all kinds of emotions. The storms are real, they are frightening, but we are likely to survive them and make it to Spring, just a few weeks away. How difficult for people to be bombarded with so many alarms in such graphic and hysterical detail, and still keep their feet and souls on the ground.

I have decided there is only one storm, I have named him “Pickles”, I don’t care for those puffed-up Roman names. Pickles is the new weather, he held a marketing meeting with the people at the Weather Channel and decided to go for a Perfecta this weekend – real storm, real cold, real tough winter, all in one package. It’s going to be a Blockbuster, the anchor people on the weather channel – I notice many of them are wearing fake glasses to look brainy and geeky, like their forefathers  – have shifted into Apocalyptic mode already, they are excited, and for good reason – bonuses this Christmas for sure, it has been a great winter for weather channels. The Dystopians are happy too, they are digging their shelters, storing cans of soup and ammunition for the inevitable day when the angry hordes from below descend on us to steal our food and shelter.

As for me, I have my white flag in the barn, I am not good at battling ravaging hordes,  I don’t wish to live in a bunker with my canned tomatoes, bow-and-arrow,  and sawn-off shotgun. I will go peacefully and quietly.

We are prepared for historic cold, sort of. Got some pet-friendly salt, we have grain for extra energy for the animals, shelter from the storm and the cold. We have a heated blanket we love dearly, a bar to have dinner in and yesterday I got two bags of popcorn laced with Himalayan salt. Two weeks ago, we canceled our TV service from the cable company. We just don’t watch it.

I don’t know what Himalayan salt is, really but it will be great for a bitterly cold night.

This weekend, I will be thinking of Mother Earth and the messages she is desperately trying to send me. I will hear them, pray on them, meditate on them and devote myself to loving the earth rather than fearing it, understanding our world rather than hiding from it. In the Kabbalah, God warns  his people to take care of Mother Earth, or he will turn his back on them and leave them to their fate.

Words are my livelihood, I keep thinking about the word “historic,’ now a staple of cable weather reporting. Something that is “historic” is well known and  important in history. I don’t quite see how winter storms cut it, unless you accept the idea that what is historic is not the storms but what the storms mean. We have all been abandoned by our leaders, left to figure that out for ourselves.

Perhaps I will talk to the God of the Kabbalah as well, this God is good and compassionate and honest. He is very much an environmentalist, he has trusted human beings to care for the planet he has created, he will hold them accountable for it. I will ask  him to give us wretched people – people like me –  another shot, another chance. We had the drive and ingenuity to wound our planet, perhaps we can help her heal. That would be historic, but I don’t imagine that it will be discussed much on the Weather Channel this weekend by those kids wearing fake glasses.