Forkender

This morning, the sun and I got out of bed together. I don’t mean that we actually slept together, although that would be pretty hot, but we stuck our noses out from under at the same time. Well, I was up earlier, but there have been many days when old Sol has been up and working for hours before I managed to lift a cup of tea to my lips.

There was a time when I couldn’t sleep in late at all, probably due to all of those years of waking early to deliver other peoples mail. I like being an early riser, the world seems so fresh and full of promise when the sun is peaking over the horizon. I remember reading in a Robert Heinlein book (Time Enough for Love) a quote that tickled me then and still tickles me to this day.

“They say the early bird gets the worm, but that just shows that the worm should have slept late.”

My grandmother was an early riser. She had to be I guess, raising three kids by herself. Louise and I had a tough enough time getting the kids dressed, fed and off to school on time and there were two of us. Gram took the early rising to a new level though. I can remember one Saturday morning at the cottage when she was banging a pot with a wooden spoon, crying “WAKE UP! WAKE UP! HALF THE DAY IS GONE!” It was 7:30, but I imagine she had been up since five…ish, breakfasted, moved some rocks, done some painting, trimmed a tree and was now having her mid morning break. Grand parents are so cool because they treat your parents like they are kids and can get away with it.

Earlier this year, March 17^th, I was amazed that according to the Weather Network, the sunrise time and the sunset time were exactly the same, except that one was AM and the other PM. I am pretty sure that I learned about this in one of my grade school geography classes, but it must have been stored in the “Neat but Useless” section of my brain. It makes sense I suppose, since time on earth is based on the rotation around the sun.

 

I just can’t figure out how those people of ancient times managed to put together a clock and calendar that seemed to work pretty well. Sure, they have had to tweak it every now and then, but that’s pretty small potatoes when you consider the complexity of the calculations and the lack of computers.

 

Sixty seconds beget a minute, sixty minutes beget and hour, 24 hours beget a day. Once we get into days begetting into months, it seems to become a little arbitrary. Four months have thirty days, seven months have thirty one days and one poor, pathetic month only has twenty eight days. I would have taken a day from two thirty one day months so there would be seven thirty day months and five thirty one day months. Is that right? Since I am changing the calendar and quite possibly time itself, I’d make all of the months have thirty days and every six years we could add a month, let’s call it Forkender, and it would be an extra four weeks paid holiday for everyone.

Forkender should be a summer month, but it could be put pretty much anywhere in the calendar. I vote to put it between August and September to stretch the summer and give the farmers some extra time for harvesting. Forkender babies would get stiffed on birthday presents, but we could tell them that anyone born in Forkender will live a blessed life. It won’t be true, but because Forkenders are gullible and basically stupid they will believe anything we tell them..