Up here, we call it “Weather Panic.” Anyone who lives on a farm knows quite well that climate change is very real, we see, feel and live it every day, only a Washington politician could look in a camera with a straight face and deny it. But there are different ideas about how to deal with it. Up here in upstate New York, we know how to handle lots of snow, but Weather Panic is something new.

In our hype-driven, warning weary world, there is a fine line between acknowledging our new environment and responding to it primarily with panic.

I went online this morning to see what the weather reports were saying and I realized that I was poorly prepared to deal with this monster storm, this storm of the century, this historic, booming, weather-bombing,  life-shattering weather event. Watching the mayor of New York appear somberly on TV, I realized I wasn’t dressed properly. I don’t have a parka that says “Bedlam Farm Poobah,” I don’t have a windbreaker that says “Emergency.”

I wondered why Mayor deBlasio needs a windbreaker to stand inside of City Hall holding a press conference? Are the windows open? Is he heading out to shovel snow? If so, he needs a better, warmer, emergency jacket. I know this is grave, unprecedented, shattering, they have been telling me for hours. I wonder if they will ever get around to wondering what we might do about it, other than cover their behinds?

Until about 10 years ago, the government handled weather forecasts, they just told us how much it was going to rain or snow.

Now, highly profitable weather cable channels are packaging the weather, this story has been named “JUNO,” a robust and vaguely menacing event. Ad rates shoot up when a Superstorm approaches, people get nervous, traffic to weather websites soars. We can choose from a dozen different computer projections of the track of the storm, and I knew we might be in trouble when a group of blog readers in Iowa decided to pray for Maria and I last night, asking God to get us through the next day or so.

I remember my farmer friend in Hebron coming by one day and telling me that he never knew winter was so dangerous until his wife bought him a TV. When he was a kid, his father would go to the general store and come back with the news that it would snow a lot the next day. Nobody got too excited about it.

Still, I have a responsibility. I mean to get my hands on a windbreaker today, maybe Maria can stencil “Emergency” on it. I will go out to the Pole Barn and address the donkeys and the sheep, I will urge them to take the storm seriously, high winds and much snow. Stay under shelter, do not wander around the pasture, stay inside if possible, if not, good luck, I will say “do not underestimate this storm.”

I want to make it clear that I am not a denier of anything, I take big storms very seriously, Maria will testify that I fret for hours about where the shovels are, how we will get food and water to the animals if the power goes out, whether or not we have enough food. She is more of the Willa Cather prairie school – get up in the morning, see how much snow there is and get the shovels out.

The world is changing, the climate is changing, but what hypocrites we are, us humans. We ignore Mother Earth, we deny the awful wounds we have inflicted on her, we want to pretend nothing is changing, but in the meantime, be terrified of the weather, panic at the Northeaster. There message to us is this: there is nothing you can do about it but be afraid, and maybe boost the Weather Channel’s revenues by watching it obsessively all day. Everything is okay as long as someone can make some money off of it. Those are not good choices for me.

Here at Bedlam Farm, my message to the animals and the people praying for us in Iowa is this: Lets not be afraid, perhaps we can try something else like loving the earth we and our animals live on and helping her to heal. I suspect when all is done, our civilization will be intact on Wednesday evening, there will be lots of snow on the ground but life will look pretty much the same as it does today. Here at the farm, we have a good working dog, soup in pans, water in the bathtub, food in the pantry, firewood in the sheep, good bread and peanut butter. Emergency Preparedness.

The storm may be bad enough, the panic may turn out to be worse.