Strange signs: the unruly night

Weird things have been going on lately. Ask anyone – they’ll tell you that it seems like there have been more inexplicable natural disasters (earthquakes in northern Illinois? ominous rumblings beneath Yellowstone, a dormant supervolcano?) than usual lately. While I haven’t seen any hard data on this subject (maybe it’s just another case of media exaggeration – most people, thanks to the media, perceive an increase in violent crime, while in actuality violent crime has decreased over the past decade), it is certainly possible. And the massive quakes in Haiti and Chile weren’t cooked up by media exaggeration.

At any rate, add two more occurrences to the already long list of strange things going on lately. I hate to admit it, but the past few months have left even me with suspicions and whispering doubts in the back of my mind. I typically scoff at doomsday prophets, Seventh Day Adventists, and survivalists… but what if they’re right? I mean, they’ve been saying the world is ending for thousands of years… but if you keep saying something long enough, eventually you’re bound to be right. Right?

So in the meantime, we have a volcanic eruption in Iceland that has led Europe to ground all flights – the largest peacetime grounding of aircraft ever.

Add, on top of that, this bizarre meteor that recently streaked over Wisconsin:

I’m reminded of a foreboding passage from Macbeth:

The night has been unruly: where we lay,

Our chimneys were blown down: and, as they say,

Lamentings heard i’ the air, strange screams of death;

And prophesying, with accents terrible,

Of dire combustion and confus’d events,

New hatch’d to the woeful time: the obscure bird

Clamour’d the live-long night; some say the earth

Was feverous, and did shake.

Let’s hope that the earth’s recent fevers and shakes are not similarly prophetic.