The Buckets by Greg Cravens for August 11, 2024

They just don’t make them like that anymore.

Sundials are inherently cool, especially when they have the little table to tell you how to adjust for the different times of year.

“Where do the batteries go?”

If they really want to get amazed, let them find a moondial. They’re only accurate on the night of the full moon.

On cloudy and rainy days…O well…

The problem is they aren’t accurate during DST.

I’m still amazed that a twenty dollar watch from the average drugstore will tell you the accurate time and date in a straightforward numerical display for years of use and abuse without changing a battery, or even knowing if its possible to change the battery.

I love the idea and the use of a sundial. But, to paraphrase the Harvard Lampoon’s “Bored Of The Rings”, I don’t like any tool more complicated than a pointed stick…

These little guys understand how to read it? Very cool in this day and age!

I’m surprised these kids know what it is and that it’s working. But I suppose the great grandkid has been educated on the matter.

Husband and I are 18th century reenactors. We don’t have a sun dial, but I have rather interesting conversations with the public both as my 21st century self and my 18th century self (I do first person interpretation most of the time, I am someone in the year/day matching our event and know nothing past that date in history – “I certainly do not see that we would ever go to war with our mother country… It would be impossible and we would be foolish to fight against the greatest army in the world”

I will point out to people that while days and months and years are set by the moon and sun, the rest of time is mostly set by man and not by nature.

Why a 24 hour clock- and not a 25 hour one or a 20 hour one? Why not 50 minutes in an hour or seconds in a minute (though we do very little with seconds – watches and clocks do not have them)? Why is a week 7 days instead of having 4 weeks of 10 days each?

I have had some people walk away really considering the ideas.

One problem now – is that it next to impossible to find a pocket watch which looks correct. Mine died and I now have my wristwatch hidden in my pocket (large tear shaped bag which is tied around my waist and is accessed through a slot in the side of my petticoat) and take it out hidden in my hand to use it until I get a new watch.