"Passing Time as Time Passes"

When I was younger, just a lad, I had a thing for model aircraft.

My reward for enduring visits to the dentist was to get a new model kit to build.

Eventually all these painstakingly assembled and painted models wound up as targets for my BB gun in the barn, but before they went down they spent years suspended from my bedroom ceiling on black thread. They weren't really "playthings" as such, but they did spark my imagination and a lifelong interest in the ways of war.

Be that good or be that bad, that's what they were: educational.

In recent times, now forty five years later, I visited a garage sale where a woman was selling a plastic bag full of miniature cars for a couple dollars, and I bought them. Now I have accumulated more... and although they are small, to me they are interesting to paint and put into homemade displays.

It's not an expensive hobby, and as you can see from this picture, it can take any form your imagination cares to give it. These vehicles are not complete or finished, merely "in the yard"

waiting for my inspiration and paintbrush to make them real.

I hope that you, too, find a hobby to spend time with, no matter what it may be.

A place to escape reality, perhaps, and create a world.

"Trinidad Beach 1140"

"Nope, Spring's Infernal!"

“If we had no winter, the spring would not be so pleasant; if we did not sometimes taste of adversity, prosperity would not be so welcome.”
----Anne Bradstreet (1612-1672)

Hey, look... I can be as romantic as the next guy (that's easy, if the next guy is a guy) but something about this “Spring” nonsense sticks in my craw like a stale marshmallow at Easter.

We've all been duped into gratefully accepting the change of season, and we dance around May Poles in celebration, just because we've suffered a little snow and maybe a bit of ice. Well, maybe a ton of snow and a river of ice, but so what?

Was Old Man Winter all so bad? At least he was honest with us. He said, “get your rear in gear and change that battery!” or “don't forget your mittens!” or “OK, so lie down and die then, fool...I mean business!” Winter is a what's what and don't-forget-I-said-so time of year.

You may not like Winter, but he's here for your own good. He's the stiffener in your spine. The tester of your fortitude. The twinge in your wisdom tooth that sends you running to the dentist.
But then good ol' Spring ambles in, the Great Enabler. You made it this far, take a rest! Take a few months off! Cheat on your taxes... go ahead, you've had enough for awhile. You deserve a break today. Go ahead and dream.

It's a form of mania... “our little gift of sanctioned madness,” as David Assael called it. Four or five months of relative sanity is ended in one joyous burst of degradation. It's Spring. Free passes for everybody. Anything goes. Any fantasy can be delivered, any wish fulfilled.

Robin Williams said that Spring is nature's way of saying, “Let's party!” But it won't be Mother Nature picking up the tab, my friend, it will be you! That big screen HD TV you bought for yourself in high hysteria? That new convertible that beckoned you as the birds twittered enticingly in the trees? That “new life without the wife” you plumped for? No problem! Just tell the kids the Devil made you do it!

But Spring is not only an enabler. She leads you on, and then she creams you.

Did you ever get socked by an inch of freezing rain in the middle of March? If not that, then how about a nice little landslide triggered by all that snowmelt? How about mud... you like mud? Suck off your shoes and plaster your car and spin your tires, boy, 'cause here she comes!

The Great Flood was just a springtime shower, at first. You can ask Noah.

It makes me shudder inside, I'll tell you. But then I remind myself that Spring, like Winter, will pass. We can get through this thing, I think. We just have to keep a stiff upper lip and never, never ever, let down our guard!

"Time Out of Mind" by Stefan Klein

(graphic art by Michael Serafin)

New York Times, Opinion Editorial
March 7, 2008

IN 1784, Benjamin Franklin composed a satire, Essay on Daylight Saving, proposing that Parisians get up an hour earlier in summer. By putting the daylight to better use, he reasoned, they'd save a good deal of money that might otherwise go to buying candles. Today this switch to Daylight Savings Time

is an annual ritual in Western countries.

Even more influential was something else Franklin said the same year: "Time is Money." He meant this only as a gentle reminder not to sit idle for half the day, and might be dismayed if he could see how literally, and self-destructively, we take his metaphor today. Our society is obsessed as never before with making every single minute count.

But the quest to spend time the way we do money is doomed to failure, because the time we experience bears little relation to time as read on a clock. The brain creates its own time, and it is this inner time, not clock time, that guides our actions.

Inner time is linked to activity. In 1962, Michel Siffre, a French geologist, confined himself in a dark cave and discovered that he lost his sense of time. Emerging after what he had calculated were 45 days, he was startled to find that

a full 61 days had elapsed.

And on the opposite hand, time seems to expand when our senses are aroused.

The brain's inclination to distort time is one reason we so often feel we have too little of it. One in three Americans feels rushed all the time, according to one survey. Even the cleverest use of time-management is powerless to increase the total minutes in our life,so we squeeze as much activity as we can into each one.

Believing time is money, our shortage of time is stressful. Our fight-or-flight instinct is engaged, and the regions of the brain we use to calmly and sensibly plan our time get switched off. We become fidgety, erratic and rash. Tasks take longer. We make mistakes, which take still more time to iron out. The perceived lack of time becomes real:we are not stressed because we have no time---

we have no time because we are stressed!

In scrambling to use time to the hilt, we wind up with less of it.

The remedy is to liberate ourselves from Franklin's equation.

Time is NOT money!

"Time..." as Joyce Carol Oates put it,

"...we are either borne along by it, or drowned in it."

(Stefan Klein is the author of "The Secret Pulse of Time":

Making Sense of Life's Scarcest Commodity)

Mail From Gail

I couldn't remember when I wrote you last so looked in my sent box -- it was that short letter about my nose and my nose for jokes. The less said about that the better. I clicked on "One Single Impression" and saw the header (which looked good) and some out-of-usual-form haiku, but didn't click on anything else, the names, etc., because I wasn't sure what I'd be getting. I didn't think any of them were YOU anyway.

Last Monday I responded to a blurb in the church newsletter that there would be a "brainstorming" mtg. about activities for Earth Day!! I figured I should go, as this is one of the few areas I have some experience in. It looks like I may be organizing a poster contest. The reason I say "may" is that everyone is enthused about the idea but I haven't got stuff really firmed up for putting in the press release and flyer.

One biggie is that it's for all kids in the school district, so I think something should be said in the small print about the fact that even though a church is sponsoring this, entries should reflect themes everyone in the community can relate to, rather than religious themes.I don't want people wondering if they're expected to say something like "Protect the world because God made it." Or wondering if extra credit would go to those who do.

Today I went to breakfast with two women from the church that I like. It lasted about 2 hours and was very enjoyable conversation. Mary is probably 50-55 and involved in many education-oriented aspects of the church, including heading this Earth Day committee. The other is Juanita, probably in her 80s, sharp as a tack and friendly with all ages. I wish I could be like her when I'm that age (but I think I'm too serious).

Then I had to do some shopping, took a walk, fell asleep for about half an hour, and here I am. I better get going on that flyer for the poster contest. I haven't done anything much on InDesign since moving here. I will not let myself be too much of a perfectionist on it!!

Tomorrow I was planning to go see a rather different musical act (will tell you about it later ... for now let's say Nerd Perfect meets Cabaret via an English Music Hall). Was supposed to go with Laure, but I heard that Frances Lappe was gonna speak in Arcata and I will not be surprised if she calls and says she wants to go to that instead ...... of course they're the same time.

(Gail Slaughter is our California Correspondent)

"Stranger in My Mirror" by Mary Stebbins Taitt

It's an old story, as old as the human race. But for every individual it's brand new, all over again.

We are young... and then we age. No matter how gracefully we age, we lose some of our vitality and some of our beauty. My mother always used to say how she felt the same inside, old or young, and was shocked when she looked in the mirror. Who is that old hag? Not the lithe and winsome creaure she used to be!

Mother got old... and then she got older... and then she died. And now it's my turn.

I don't recognize myself in current pictures. Only just barely. My mother reached a point where she didn't recognize herself at all. "Who is that old lady?" she would ask. At first, it was a joke, but later she really meant it. She truly didn't know it was herself.

And I'm almost there already.

Free Haiku..."Change"

Through the mirror
I see years flee
Yet unchanged am I...