Time.  Old and new.

I guess humans have always kind of figured on the passing from day to night.

Artifacts from the Paleolithic suggest that the moon was used to reckon time as early as 6,000 years ago.  To the moon, Alice… to the moon.

And then…. we started to have “lunar” calendars….  at least…. those were among the first that we know of.  They came in  either 12 or 13 lunar months (either 354 or 384 days).   The calculations were a bit goofy back then.

Next….  there were the reforms of Julius Caesar era in 45 BC….. which put the Roman world on a solar calendar. (This was off a bit too.  By 11 minutes per year.)  Hail a cab, Caesar.

So then…. leave it to the Catholics.   Pope Gregory XIII introduced a correction in 1582.   The Gregorian calendar was only slowly adopted by different nations over a period of centuries.

And now….it is the most commonly used calendar around the world.  By far!

We keep time everywhere.  In hourglasses, and watches… walk clocks and smart phone.  We keep time with our feet and in our heads.

But that is a bit of an oxymoron isn’t it?  Keeping time?

We can’t keep it at all.  It passes…. well…. with each passing second.
My personal favorite is the zeptosecond… which is 10 to the negative 21st of a second.  That’a fast.  It can’t really even be measured.  Or kept.

But with time… things come and go.   Days, trees, flowers, frogs, Soap Operas, cookies, people…. you name it.  It goes.

And it also gets reborn again.  In some other form… or some other place.   At least…. that is what I think.

The thing that got me started was an article I read on the oldest tree.   In Sweden…. there a Yule tree which has root system that has been growing for 9,550 years.  That is stinking OLD.  That is like WAY back to around the end of the Ice Age.

But above ground… the actual offshoot of the tree is only 600 years old.  Who could have more years than that?  The oldest living-standing tree on earth is a bristlecone pine that is found in California.  Scientists believe it to be over 4600 years old. They keep the exact location of the tree hidden.

Some things last a long time… and others pass quickly.

Take, for instance, the good old house fly.  Four weeks tops.   And the Mayfly?  It only lives from one hour to 24 hours.  Mayfly doctors are BUSY!  They are constantly saying…  “You only have one hour to live.  Holy crap…. I just have about an hour more than that!”

But who’s counting?  I guess anyone who is keeping time.

 “We don’t have an eternity to realize our dreams, only the time we are here.”  –   Susan Taylor