A Few Thoughts… On time, new works and short-lived famous folks

By Sandy Compton
Reader Columnist

I’ve not been writing a lot of late — mostly, just this column. The best days of writing are dark and wet, when I’m glad to be inside and gladder still to have something to do that I love to do. But now, the long light of the season demands to be used. Lingering day calls, “Don’t just sit there. Do something!” Not that writing is not doing something. It surely is, but a window in my writing room frames a green hodgepodge of trees, a wild bit of lawn that needs taming, wilder roses, blooming dewberry vines, the beginning of a trail to the river lined with blood-orange honeysuckle clusters and a pile of cardboard that needs to be recycled. I can’t see my eternal house project from here, but I surely feel its presence. 

It all calls to me. “Come outside. Go for a walk. Work on the house. Mow the lawn.” The recycling can wait, but if I don’t mow the lawn soon, I won’t be able to find it to recycle.

Today, spring is waning spectacularly and summer waits to pounce, but by the time you read this, the solstice will be passed. Past or not, the solstice is a precision celestial event defined by culture in an arbitrary manner. If we were to give up our version of time and skip leap years, the precise moment of the solstice would move backward — occur earlier — on our unadjusted calendar at a rate of about six hours per solar cycle. Our rotation around the sun takes just a bit more than 365 days, so the world loses 24 of our sort of arbitrary hours to the universe every four years. Modern humans figured out how to get them back. We gave ourselves an extra day to catch up, or more accurately, wait up. (Don’t think about this too much. It’ll make your head hurt.) 

Related question: Why is Leap Day in February? Why not add a day to June, when the weather is a hell of a lot better than February’s almost anywhere above the 30th Parallel. February un-Leap-Dayed is also a nearly perfect month — four weeks and no extra days. March follows it exactly for much of the way to April, which is cool, especially if a Friday the 13th is involved. But every four years, Leap Day comes along and screws things up. 

Of course, with no Leap Day, the Solstice would be in February about 8,500 years in the future. At some point, the solstice and Valentine’s could be on the same day. Party central!

Why do I know this? I’m a curious sort (smart-ass friends can keep your comments to yourself) and I like learning new stuff, though I can go for weeks sometimes without remembering that. Life and stuff I already know about gets in the way. But there’s always something new (to me) if I go looking. 

One place I go looking is the American Heritage Dictionary. I’ve been reading it word-by-word for about two years — I can’t remember when I started. It’s a source of many interesting words. It’s a dictionary, right? To me, it’s also an inexhaustible supply of weird and wonderful ideas. Who made some of this stuff up? Medical terms and chemical compounds make me glaze over. I don’t try to comprehend them, much less pronounce them. Well, maybe if they’re less than four syllables. The occupants of Greek mythology, which is not so much about happy endings, seem to rate a lot of exposure, as do kings, queens, famous scientists, explorers, writers, etc. 

Speaking of happy endings, why did so many famous people die relatively young? And what got them? Alexander the Great didn’t see 35. This is not completely morbid interest, but one held in search of better understanding of who the less-than-old mortalities were. 

Unless the life-defining moments of someone are exceptionally juicy (Marie Antoinette, for instance), the dictionary generally just tells the dates of birth and death and something of their accomplishments. For instance: Flannery O’Connor; (1925-64), U.S. novelist and short-story writer; full name Mary Flannery O’Connor. Her short stories are notable for their dark humor and grotesque characters. 

So, what happened when she was 39? That is the question. And to tell you the truth, I don’t know. But, it’s a start; a reason to dig deeper. Let the research begin. 

I’ll keep you posted on Flannery and Alexander. And, maybe even “antiferromagnetic.”