1505 An Old Wristwatch
There’s something comforting about a piece of antique technology. It recalls a simpler time.
When you see a cobblestone street, don’t you just have to walk on it? Of course you do, even if only briefly. There are reasons we don’t make roads that way anymore. Good reasons. But when you spot one, there’s a charm about it, and you just have to try it.
The bentwood rocking chair is not nearly as long-term comfortable as the La-Z-Boy, but it’s a treat to sit and rock in one for awhile.
Old pocket watches make an impression… mostly on your leg. But when someone de-pockets one, other people want to sneak a peek.
Then, there are wrist watches. You remember those, right?
They wind up. If you wind them, that is. There’s one on the workbench here at the Wessays™ secret mountain laboratory. It’s fittingly quirky.
It goes tick-tock so quietly, you have to strain to hear it. And it’s hungry. It needs two windings a day. If it doesn’t get “fed,” it goes on strike.
The people who made it were Swiss. The parts were made in Switzerland. It was assembled there. It did not cost a fortune when bought new more than 50 years ago.
It just tells time. Sort of. Approximate analog time. No counting of fitness footsteps, no alarm, no date. No blood pressure measurement. You can’t use it to answer your telephone or read your email. It isn’t self setting or even self-winding. It doesn’t pick up the time signal from the “official” radio station WWV in Ft. Collins or the enormously powerful Allouis Longwave counterpart in France. There’s no alarm.
It is not nearly as accurate as your cellphone. The hands don’t always align perfectly. But so what? It looks cool. Cooler than your imitation Rolex. Cooler than your Apple Watch. Even cooler than the latest fake antiques from Seiko or Fossil.
At some point it probably will stop. Again. It does that for no apparent reason and has since new. But, really, it’s a decoration with limited utility. So an occasional stall is just fine, thank you.
Anyone got the time?
Shrapnel:
--Scalia has given up one of his two titles. At first he was the wrongest justice of the Supreme Court, but also the most entertaining. His dissent on gay marriage jumped the shark in the entertainment department, leaving him with only “wrongest” in place. We hope he gets his act together.
--We frequently refer to His Honor as Antonin “Tony Ducks” Scalia. When they called Anthony Corallo “Tony Ducks” it was because he always managed to duck conviction (until he didn’t.) In Scalia’s case, it comes from that famous hunting trip with that other master of the universe, Dick Cheney, when a case involving the vice president was on the Supreme Court case list.
Grapeshot:
-Let’s hear it for activist filmmaker Bree Newsome, 30, of North Carolina, star of this video from Vox taken on the lawn of the South Carolina state capitol:
I’m Wes Richards. My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®
Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com
© WJR
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