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Authors: David Feldman
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Wisconsin; and Scott Wolber of Delmont, Pennsylvania .
Why do so many sundials have Robert Browning’s lines “Grow old along with me! The best is yet to be” inscribed on them?
Although not every sundial has a motto on it, most do; the tradition dates from antiquity. None of the many sundial makers and books about sundials we consulted could explain the reason for putting the motto on the sundial in the first place. Timothy Lynch, president of the sundial maker Kenneth Lynch & Sons, speculates that it was originally put there “for the personal gratification of either the maker or the receiver.”
The sundial makers we spoke to have standard mottoes or will custom-inscribe a customer’s personalized motto. They unanimously agreed with Lee Brown, a designer at Whitehall Products, who told Imponderables that virtually all mottoes refer to the passage of time.
Why are Browning’s lines the most popular? (Their only competitor in popularity is Tempus Fugit —“time flies”—apithier if less poetic motto.) Ben Brewster, president of Colonial Brass, the largest manufacturer of sundials in the United States, has a simple theory with which the other sources agreed: Most quotations about time are depressing, or at least downbeat. A look at some of the suggested inscriptions used by Colonial Brass will give you the idea:
“Time takes all but memories.”
“Time waits for no man.”
“You ask the hour, meanwhile you see it fly.”
“Watch for ye know not the hour.”
“Time passeth and speaketh not.”
Not the kind of words to send your losing football team bursting out of the locker room in renewed spirits, are they? But Browning’s words are reassuring, making old age seem secure and downright romantic.
In her book Sun-Dials and Roses of Yesterday , Alice Morse writes:
One almost unvarying characteristic of the sun-dial motto might be noted—its solemnity. A few are jocose, a few are cheerful, nearly all are solemn, many are sad, even gloomy. They teach no light lesson of life, but a regard of the passing of every day, every hour, as a serious thing.
Morse’s book was written in 1922, when most mottoes were biblical quotations. (Her favorite was this far-from-upbeat citation from Chronicles: “Our days on earth are as a shadow, and there is none abiding.”)
For better or worse, we live in a society that has a relentless need to find optimism in any situation. Perhaps our fondness for the Browning quote shows a deep-seated psychological need to evade not only death but some of the hardships of old age. After all, better to spout platitudes than to confront the pain in this actual motto sent to us by Brewster, who remarked that its message was a little less uplifting than Browning’s bromide:
What Cain did to Abel
Brutus to Caesar was quick.
What Kip B. and Esther’s sister
Edith did to Esther and me
Was Torture—slow and fatal
May God forgive them.
Submitted by Sheryl Aumack of Newport Beach, California .
For a whole collection of sundial mottoes, see The Book of Sun-Dials by Mrs. Alfred Gatty.
Why do babies sleep so much? Why do they sleep so much more soundly than adults or older children?
This is Mother Nature’s way of preserving the sanity of parents.
And there’s an alternative, less cosmic, explanation. Dr. David Hopper, president of the American Academy of Somnology, told Imponderables that sleep is crucial to the brain development of infants. After birth, the average infant spends sixteen to eighteen hours asleep per day. Up to 60 percent of that time is spent in REM (rapid eye movement) sleep, more than twice the percentage of adults. What is the significance of their greater proportion of REM sleep? Dr. Hopper explains:
REM sleep is the stage of sleep that dreams are associated with. Brain wave activity is very active during this stage and closely resembles an awake state. It is sometimes called paradoxical sleep
Why do so many sundials have Robert Browning’s lines “Grow old along with me! The best is yet to be” inscribed on them?
Although not every sundial has a motto on it, most do; the tradition dates from antiquity. None of the many sundial makers and books about sundials we consulted could explain the reason for putting the motto on the sundial in the first place. Timothy Lynch, president of the sundial maker Kenneth Lynch & Sons, speculates that it was originally put there “for the personal gratification of either the maker or the receiver.”
The sundial makers we spoke to have standard mottoes or will custom-inscribe a customer’s personalized motto. They unanimously agreed with Lee Brown, a designer at Whitehall Products, who told Imponderables that virtually all mottoes refer to the passage of time.
Why are Browning’s lines the most popular? (Their only competitor in popularity is Tempus Fugit —“time flies”—apithier if less poetic motto.) Ben Brewster, president of Colonial Brass, the largest manufacturer of sundials in the United States, has a simple theory with which the other sources agreed: Most quotations about time are depressing, or at least downbeat. A look at some of the suggested inscriptions used by Colonial Brass will give you the idea:
“Time takes all but memories.”
“Time waits for no man.”
“You ask the hour, meanwhile you see it fly.”
“Watch for ye know not the hour.”
“Time passeth and speaketh not.”
Not the kind of words to send your losing football team bursting out of the locker room in renewed spirits, are they? But Browning’s words are reassuring, making old age seem secure and downright romantic.
In her book Sun-Dials and Roses of Yesterday , Alice Morse writes:
One almost unvarying characteristic of the sun-dial motto might be noted—its solemnity. A few are jocose, a few are cheerful, nearly all are solemn, many are sad, even gloomy. They teach no light lesson of life, but a regard of the passing of every day, every hour, as a serious thing.
Morse’s book was written in 1922, when most mottoes were biblical quotations. (Her favorite was this far-from-upbeat citation from Chronicles: “Our days on earth are as a shadow, and there is none abiding.”)
For better or worse, we live in a society that has a relentless need to find optimism in any situation. Perhaps our fondness for the Browning quote shows a deep-seated psychological need to evade not only death but some of the hardships of old age. After all, better to spout platitudes than to confront the pain in this actual motto sent to us by Brewster, who remarked that its message was a little less uplifting than Browning’s bromide:
What Cain did to Abel
Brutus to Caesar was quick.
What Kip B. and Esther’s sister
Edith did to Esther and me
Was Torture—slow and fatal
May God forgive them.
Submitted by Sheryl Aumack of Newport Beach, California .
For a whole collection of sundial mottoes, see The Book of Sun-Dials by Mrs. Alfred Gatty.
Why do babies sleep so much? Why do they sleep so much more soundly than adults or older children?
This is Mother Nature’s way of preserving the sanity of parents.
And there’s an alternative, less cosmic, explanation. Dr. David Hopper, president of the American Academy of Somnology, told Imponderables that sleep is crucial to the brain development of infants. After birth, the average infant spends sixteen to eighteen hours asleep per day. Up to 60 percent of that time is spent in REM (rapid eye movement) sleep, more than twice the percentage of adults. What is the significance of their greater proportion of REM sleep? Dr. Hopper explains:
REM sleep is the stage of sleep that dreams are associated with. Brain wave activity is very active during this stage and closely resembles an awake state. It is sometimes called paradoxical sleep
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