Since I have absolutely no idea what I want to write, just know that I want to write as I said yesterday, more regularly, I intend to squeeze the brain and hope for the best.
Marrianna and I have taken up a small game while riding in the car. It's a game begun by Anastasia on a long trip, and it has become almost second nature for us, to the point that we play the game even on short trips around town. We call it License Plate Scrabble and the game is to find words using letters on other automobiles' license plate. The words have to use the letters in the same order as they are on the plate. Some letters are easy, but others are impossible, or at least it's impossible for me to pull a word from my vocabulary. PLN, for instance, is easy, XJS not so much. I fall into a trap of only trying words that begin with the first letter rather than allowing the mind to find a word with the letters in order that begins with another letter or letters.
Very likely for most, and certainly for me, the most fearful part of aging is losing mental capability. Small games like this one give us some small but significant confidence that our minds are still working. Marrianna does the puzzles in the paper every day. I try to find something to write. I write as much for myself as for the reader. Perhaps that is partial reason why I have so few readers on an average day.
Has anyone wondered how certain parts of living got to be that way. Why does an hour have sixty minutes? Why are there 24 hours in a day? How did those numbers become established? I recently read an article explaining how the Greenwich Latitude became the international standard. And I seem to remember a book available a while back that was supposed to explain how things got to be what they are. I'll have to look that book up and find a copy. All of a sudden I wonder why.
A friend once sent an explanation why railroad tracks are their width. It goes all the way back to Caesar. I like the story, even though it may not be true. It illustrates so nicely how we are often constrained by what has occurred many centuries ago.
In most cases that constraint is good, or at least not particularly harmful. I was taught when very young that it was not a good thing to develop a habit. I should not do anything out of or through habit, but instead should always think about what I was doing, and why. I suppose almost everyone has heard the warning, "You better hope your face doesn't freeze that way." But, when I go to somewhere and watch people it's obvious that their faces have frozen. Years of living have set their faces into a certain frame, and it is easy to tell many of those years have been good or bad. Some faces turn into a scowl when relaxed, others are much more pleasant. I try to keep a smile on mine, though I'm not successful.
I wear a sweatshirt with the Disney character "Grumpy" embroidered on its front. A friend was shopping in the Disney store with her daughter and found the shirt, held it up, and both she and her daughter said it was a perfect shirt for me. I don't agree, but many people have told me it is the perfect shirt for me, so there must be something to it. Every time I wear the shirt people tell me they need one for themselves or someone they know. I'm doing my best to get to a place that someone will tell me "That's not you at all." It hasn't happened yet, so I have lots more smiling to do.
I didn't have much when I started, and truthfully there isn't much solid material here, but once more I've written more than I expected. Sitting and letting the fingers think works. I'll try to keep it going.
UPDATE: Marrianna and I were watching 60 Minutes this evening. Andy Rooney, their resident curmudgeon, finished the program. Marrianna said to me that I would be an excellent replacement for Andy Rooney. According to her, I am as good curmudgeon or Grump as he is. I'm not sure whether that's a compliment or not.
You may be interested to know that sixty minutes in an hour, sixty seconds in a minute, goes even further back than the Caesars – they originate in the invention of astronomy and of number itself by Babylon and the other oriental states in the second millennium BCE.
Two cultures merged, one counting (as we do) in base ten, the other counting in base six. In order to make administration and commerce possible, a merged system evolved which accommodated both – with the astonishingly cumbersome but pragmatic base sixty.
When the world's first successful time measurement system emerged from Babylon, it was in their number system ... to base 60.
Posted by: Felix Grant | November 11, 2009 at 02:33 AM