A surprising percentage of folks on the internet don't actually know How to Look at Pictures (Hendrik Willem Van Loon, 1938).

If you feel that "we are living through a time of unprecedented and troubling change," recall that so did folks in 2004 (see clipping), and verily so did folks in every year of recorded history.  As the archives of old newspapers, magazines, and books make perfectly clear, humanity is always at a crossroads, and it is always the "end of the world."  We might actually find comfort in that, and in the Buddhist conception that past-present-future is all of a piece.  Clipping from Suddenly They Heard Footsteps by Dan Yashinsky, 2004.

"Good manners can cover up the most complex of feelings."  From Dark Shadows episode 357.

"A day of changes."  From Wid's Daily, 1919.

"What a poor soul is the late-20th-century citizen.  Perhaps we see flying saucers and aliens now because we can't see angels anymore."  From UFO Newsclipping Service, 1992.

From Baptized with a Curse by Edith Stewart Drewry, 1870. 

"Now clear your mind."  From Wid's Daily, 1919.

This is like when bands shout the name of the city they're playing that night.  San Francisco knows what you want ... or maybe it's Miami, Memphis, Chicago, or Portland, Maine.  From Modern Screen, 1952.

When your appointment book is blank but you're still "all booked up."  From Dark Shadows episode 1088.

"Ask the stars": Prof. Oddfellow's Penetralia:

They're being facetious here, but it's common advice.  From Lighted Pathway, 1981.

"All afternoon, it was obvious to me that things were not going so well."  From Innis Herald, 1989.

A brush with the ghost of derangement: Penetralia After Dark:

"There is no mirror in the washroom."  From The Martlet, 1977.

"The shadow is only touching the moon."  From Dark Shadows episode 1075.

"I am but a small-winged bird: / But I will conquer the big world / As the bee-martin beats the crow, / by attacking it always from Above."  From Poem Outlines by Sidney Lanier, 1908.

The incubus and Prof. Oddfellow.