Saturday, March 19, 2011

Celtic Prayers

Open our eyes to Your presence
Open our minds to Your grace
Open our lips to Your praises.
Amen

May the raindrops fall lightly on your brow.
May the soft winds freshen your spirit.
May the sunshine brighten your heart.
May the burdens of the day rest lightly upon you.
And may God enfold you in the mantle of His love.
- Old Irish Wish

As the rain hides the stars,
As the Autumn mist hides the hills,
As the clouds veil the blue of the sky,
so the dark happenings of my lot
hide the shining of Thy face from me.
Yet if I may hold Thy hand in the darkness
It is enough….

Since I know that though I may stumble in my going,
Thou dost not fall.
Amen

Saturday, March 12, 2011

Time Jumps Around


I'm not quite sure what to make of Daylight Savings Time - are you?

Daylight saving time, which begins on Sunday, is unsettling... Winding the clock forward in March and back in November is like biannually changing the measure of an inch.

This tinkering with clocks is our inheritance from a people obsessed with time. Clocks spread rapidly in early America... But all these clocks were like many Americans themselves: individual, conforming to their own notions. There were hundreds of local times, each city setting its city hall or courthouse clock to match its own solar noon. When it was 12 p.m. in Chicago, it was 11:50 a.m. in St. Louis and 12:18 p.m. in Detroit. But that wasn’t a problem because local time was all that mattered.

That changed when the railroads began to unify the country. The railroads ran by their own time, which vexed travelers trying to make connections. Many stations had two clocks, one for railroad time and one for local time.

To eliminate the confusion, railroads took it upon themselves in 1883 to divide the country into four time zones, with one standard time within each zone...


That explains it. The Railroads messed up our sense of time.

Be sure to set your clock ahead tonight!
GHT