Signs and Portents?

Good thing we don’t believe in signs and portents like the ancients did.  First, on the winter solstice, when light is supposed to start its victory over darkness, the moon goes out.  Then on New Year’s Day, 4000 dead birds drop out of the sky in Arkansas.  Dead birds have also been raining out of the sky in Louisiana, Kentucky, and Sweden. Arkansas was also the site of 100,000 or so fish mysteriously going belly-up.   Mysterious fish kills have also turned up in New Zealand and Brasil. These cannot be good omens for the new year.  Not that we believe in omens.   I’d be curious, though, how the ancient augurers (some of them Christian) would interpret these portents.

I myself failed to stay up to see the New Year in, something I have nearly always done before. I also forgot to eat black-eyed peas, considered in Oklahoma to be essential for good luck in the new year. Nor did I eat pickled herring, which Wisconsinites require. I’m getting nervous.