Sundials. What are they?
That is a question I have been pondering lately, and I believe the residents of Moose County deserve an answer. A sundial, for those who don’t know, is a device that tells time using the sun. It sits in a garden. It has numbers on it. The shadow moves. That is how it works. You’re welcome.
I became interested in sundials after Koko knocked a book about ancient timekeeping off the shelf in my library — the third-floor library of my converted apple barn, which the Klingenschoen Fund maintains at a perfectly reasonable annual cost that is nobody’s business. Koko, as my readers surely know by now, does not select books at random. He selects them with chilling prescience. When I opened the volume to a chapter on Roman sundials, my moustache tingled violently. What did it mean?
Yum Yum, meanwhile, sat on the windowsill watching a squirrel who has been brazenly stealing birdseed from the feeder I purchased — at my own personal expense, I might add, not through the K Fund, despite what certain auditors have implied. Do squirrels understand sundials? Probably not. But one wonders.
Pickax once had a lovely sundial in the town square, before it was stolen in 1987, the same year as the Trevellyan arson and two of the five murders that month. Nobody thought much of it at the time. Small towns have their quirks. I happened to be in the vicinity of the square that evening, but I am frequently in the vicinity of things. That is what journalists do.
Some people prefer sundials to clocks. Why? I couldn’t say. They don’t work at night. They don’t work when it’s cloudy. They are, frankly, unreliable. Rather like most people in Moose County, though I would never say so in print.
Polly Duncan mentioned she wanted a sundial for her garden. I told her they were prohibitively expensive, which may or may not be true, but I have found that discouraging gift expectations is essential to maintaining one’s financial equilibrium. The K Fund does not cover sundials for lady friends. I checked.
Koko sneezed twice while I was writing this column, which I take as confirmation that everything I have stated is correct. He is, after all, a cat of extraordinary perception — a Siamese of almost unsettling intelligence. His sneeze is worth more than most men’s opinions.
In conclusion, sundials are old. They are round. They sit outside. They tell time, sometimes. I have written about them at some length, and Moose County is better for it.
Sundials.
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