Turn! Turn! Turn!

Who Knows Where The Time Goes?

Dust Bunny Queen linked this video in a comment, which got me all interested in Sandy Denny. Sandy Denny recorded a duet with Robert Plant. I failed to acknowledge her back here: link

As for the question "Who Knows Where The Time Goes?"  I suspect that time is conserved somehow, like other physical quantities such as energy.

Thanks DBQ!

Elvis-"Unchained Melody"

RIP (1935-1977)

Your Move

I've seen all good people turn their heads each day
So satisfied I'm on my way

Take a straight and stronger course to the corner of your life
Make the white queen run so fast she hasn't got time to make you a wife

'Cause it's time, it's time in time with your time and its news is captured... 

...for the queen to use

Move me on to any black square, use me any time you want
Just remember that the goal is for us all to capture all we want, (move me on), yea, yea, yea, yea, yea

Don't surround yourself with yourself, move on back two squares
Send an instant karma to me, initial it with loving care
(Don't surround yourself)

'Cause it's time, it's time in time with your time and its news is captured... 

...for the queen to use 

Diddit diddit diddit diddit diddit diddit diddit didda
Diddit diddit diddit diddit diddit diddit diddit didda 

'Cause it's time, it's time in time with your time and its news is captured 

For the queen to use 

Diddit diddit diddit diddit diddit diddit diddit didda (all we are saying)
Diddit diddit diddit diddit diddit diddit diddit didd (is give peace a chance)
Diddit diddit diddit diddit diddit diddit diddit didda

Diddit diddit diddit diddit diddit diddit diddit didd

'Cause it's time, it's time in time with your time and its news is captured.

It's About Time, It's About Space

Two habits of mind that chemists use are what I call space and time dilation. Space dilation means a habit of thinking about the very small (like molecules) at a visual level. We can't yet really "see" molecules--for good reason--yet it helps immensely to visualize them as if we could.  What we see and call chemical structure is a visual metaphor for the invisible. Time dilation is a way to understand chemical reaction mechanisms--how things change and interact--which happen on very fast and unfamiliar time scales. Slowing things down a bit--dilating microseconds into seconds--brings understanding.

Right after I thought about that title, the inane theme song from the 60's TV comedy "It's About Time" appeared in my brain after 45 plus years of dormancy.

Last Letters From Stalingrad: #9

...Around me everything is confused, so that I don't know how to begin. Wouldn't it be better to start at the end?

Dearest Anne, you will probably be surprised to receive such a relatively funny letter. But if you take a closer look, you'll find that the letter is not funny at all. You always seemed to take me for a philistine, and I have to concede you a point--for example, in the way I stowed my lunch in my briefcase. One sandwich on the right, one on the left, and on top of them I put the apples, and on top of that the thermos bottle. The bottle had to lie across the apples, so that it would not melt the butter. It was a---how did Uncle Herbert always call it?---a tranquil time. Today I am not a philistine any more. You should see how I go to my "place of employment." It is cozy and warm in our bunker. We have dismantled a few trucks and rerouted the pieces to our stove. It's strictly against regulations, but that is the least of our worries.

My "place of employment" is right next door, as I already wrote you a few days ago. It too is a bunker, in which a captain lived a short while ago. Here I am telling you in great detail how things look around here, and all the time I want to write about something entirely different. Then again, I don't want to, but it is advisable and even of some importance that I do write about it. I don't want to cause you unnecessary anxiety, but things are supposed to be pretty murky here. You hear it from all sides. We are stationed a long way behind the lines; once in a while we hear a shot. If it weren't for that, we wouldn't be reminded of the war at all. As things are right now, I could stand it for another hundred years. But not without you. And it won't last that long anyway; we expect to get out of here any day. But this hope doesn't fit well with the rumors.

The army has been surrounded now for seven weeks, and it can't last another seven. My leave was already due in September, but it didn't come through. I consoled myself with the others, who had to kiss their leaves good-bye. Yesterday morning the word was that one-third of us are going home on leave towards the end of January. The master sergeant from the staff company claims to have heard it. Or it may take a few days longer than that. Nobody really knows what is up around here. I haven't been with you for eight months now; a few days won't make any difference. Unfortunately I won't be able to bring you much, but I'll see what I can do in Lemberg. I am looking forward to a real day on leave, and even more to seeing you and Mother again. When you receive the telegram, send news to Uncle Herbert immediately. It is good to be looking forward to something; I live on this anticipation, especially since yesterday morning. Every day I mark off a day on my calendar, and every mark means that I am a day closer to you.

________________________
The key to understanding this ongoing series may be found here, and here. Each letter (39 in all) was written by a different and anonymous German soldier who knew he was going to die. I associate these letters with Christmastime for reasons explained at the links.

Sometimes Being Cool Is Just Uncool

Back in 1977, Elvis came through Madison, Wisconsin on what turned out to be his last tour.  My mom and dad went and my dad asked me if I wanted to go too -- my brother was in the navy at the time -- but I declined because at age seventeen, I was just too cool to go see Elvis.

We openly mocked Elvis then. We were just too young to remember what he had done by fusing white hillbilly music with black rhythm and blues. We couldn't see past his bloated 1970's image.  Instead, we paid dearly to go see bands like Led Zeppelin play Whole Lotta Love, unknowingly helping them to pay off the settlement they made with Willie Dixon over plagiarism.  Still, our derision of Elvis never rose to the outright animus of Public Enemy's Chuck D in Fight The Power:

Elvis was a hero to most but he never meant shit to me you see, straight up racist that sucker was, simple and plain, mother fuck him and John Wayne.

Elvis never lost something, even in the months before his death: watch him flash that boyish smile at the 1 min 15 sec mark here in Unchained Melody. Then back it up and watch the whole thing.