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Cosmo Doogood’s Urban Almanac, 2006
Eric Utne
By
Published: Jan 01, 2005
Category:
Self Help
Cosmo Doogood’s Urban Almanac, 2006
Eric Utne
Year after year, if you’re like me, you buy a Farmer’s Almanac. You do it because the local weather report is always wrong, and the Farmer’s Almanac, you’ve heard, has a much higher percentage of correct predictions.
What I overlook (and you may too) — I’m not a farmer. I live in a city. I am, in Woody Allen’s phrase, "two with nature." I don’t even have a window box. So what do I care about the best time to plant corn?
Eric Utne — the long-ago founder of a great, self-named magazine — shrewdly saw the need for a new kind of almanac. Its readers would be urban/suburban, not rural. They would care more about the environment, fitness and spiritual development than about agriculture. And they might like tart proverbs, poems and alternative wisdom along with the weather.
Thus was born ‘Cosmo Doogood’s Urban Almanac’, a 288-page paperback filled with the sort of reading you don’t expect from a fact-based book. And speaking of facts: its weather forecaster — "Doc Weather" — claims to be more accurate (71%) than the Farmer’s Almanac (51%). But the facts, as we used to know them, are regularly upended here. Indeed, the book’s first quotation is "Start slow and taper off." Yeah, this isn’t your father’s Almanac.
Sure, here’s an explanation of the seasons and the phases of the moon. And a detailed weather forecast for the year. But then comes a theory of exercise — and life — that is a major thought-provoker: Health doesn’t depend on running a million miles without stopping, it’s all about a "wave." Stress your body. then recover. Sprint, then stop. Like animals. They dive, race, flee. And then they rest.
Next up: six "urban treasures," people who "embody the spirit of their dwelling places." And an essay about farming and gardening — well, no, it’s really about biodynamics. Here’s Walter Issacson on Benjamin Franklin, the patron saint of this almanac, who would be 300 in January, 2006. And some quotes from the founding fathers on religion and politics.
The bulk of the book is a daily calendar, with the usual information about the sun and moon and then the kind of factoids I’m happy to see gathered together. J.D. Salinger — born on January 1. Lynda Barry: "Love is an exploding cigar we gladly smoke." You get a poem by Goethe and a deathbed fragment from Raymond Carver. Thich Nhat Hanh’s "walking meditation" is summarized in a paragraph. And there’s a list of Essential Places (Old Cutler Road in Miami and the Plaza at PPG Place in Pittsburgh, among others) and Urban Sanctuaries (the Alfred Caldwell Lily Pool in Chicago and Omaha’s Joslyn Art Museum, for example) that are nominated by readers.
Cosmo Doogood’s motto is "Look up. Look out. Look in." This almanac helps you do all three — although I don’t believe for a minute, as Cosmo claims, that "Martha Stewart and Donald Trump use their Cosmo’s to bring order to their busy schedules while maintaining an intimate connection to nature." Oh yeah, Cosmo also has a sense of humor. Can the Farmer’s Almanac say the same?
To buy ‘Cosmo Doogood’s Urban Almanac’ from Amazon.com, click here.
