The Buckets by Greg Cravens for March 22, 2024

The tradition (not always followed) is for clock faces with Roman numerals to use IIII instead of IV. This helps keep people from misreading the sequence “VI V IV” as is appears at the bottom of the dial. (I once played a hidden-object mystery game in which the programmer-artist had mistakenly painted “VI V VI”, showing that such mistakes can happen.)

The Time Lords!!

When I was in the 5th grade (1960) I didn’t know how to tell time, because I didn’t need to. Mom got me up in the morning, school bells told me what to do when, etc. Teacher said I need to learn, so I was sat down at home next to the Grandfather clock and waited for it to ding dong. Hey, it’s 3 o’clock! Okay, I did finally learn.

To me, a lot of the old mantle clocks are works of art.

Kind of like cursive.

Without movement there is no time. Time is the measure of movement over distance. Without movement there no distance. That’s why it makes no sense to talk about outside the universe or before the Big Bang.

Mr. Cravens, I don’t know how you do it, but you capture kids’ way of thinking pretty clearly. Bravo!

Strangely enough, it was always Now.

This is also why we write in cursive, to keep secrets from you.

Scary world. The technology is so amazing.

It all started with sundials; the shadow points to the time.

With an old-fashioned (meaning, analog) clock, you can easily tell “how long until”. At least, approximately. “It’s almost 4, time for my show!”

With a digital clock, you have to be able to subtract to know “how long until”.