What Time Is It?

I'm not going to go so far as to say I hate the first Sunday in November. After all, the NYC Marathon is being run and broadcasted with way too many political ads this year, along with the usual come back from medical ailment stories. The Hospital for Special Surgery is getting a lot of free advertising.

This is a tough year for political ads. It's the perfect storm of midterm elections and the presidential race. The midterm elections are giving us ads for candidates that aren't even in our district. Win or lose, I will be happy when whoever is paying for us not to vote for "Radical Sue Altman" goes away. I'm not even in her state.

What I find unlikeable about this day is having to set all the clocks back an hour so that we'll be on the same page as the rest of the country, and most parts of the world. I never counted the number of devices that need this adjustment until today. It is a lot.

Sure there are the smart devices that adjust themselves. The computer, the three cable boxes and even the stove. One smart device is not so smart, my wife's nightstand clock. It's got the old factory setting date for when we used to go through this rigamarole, the last weekend in October. But things change. Therefore, twice a year she doesn't know the correct time when she gets up. Surprise!

We have an outstanding 30! clocks and phones that need adjusting every time they keep Daylight Savings time in effect. Therefore, twice a year there is a lot to do. The three cable boxes are smart, as is the stove. But smart ends there

At the outset of our nearly 50 years of marriage my wife and I started to collect antique clocks. Grandfather, regulator, box clocks, cottage clock, ship's clock, bee hive clock (figure eight clock) All but one is in working order and all keep fairly accurate times.

When these clocks need to be set back the pendulum is stopped and we wait for an hour to pass. This beats plowing through the time by advancing 11 hours and going through all the attendant bonging routines. Going forward is easy because all you have to do is stop the pendulum, move the hands an hour forward and restart the pendulum. Easy.

A room by room march through is done twice a year. There are two thermostats which are the most important. The clock for the front irrigation usually doesn't need adjusting because by now the water's been turned off and the lines blown out. But not this year.

With the drought, irrigation has stayed on. But rather than fight with the outdoor box I've chosen to ignore the time reset and will just wait for them to come and shut off the water and blow the lines out. It will be soon enough. 

Every year we hear stories about end of going through all this. After all, Arizona and Hawaii—entire states—do not bother with Daylight Savings Time. 

We also hear stories about doing away with the penny, since it costs more to make a penny than it is worth.

At 75 I don't think I'm going to live long enough to see either of these two proposals come into effect. Daylight time is here to stay, as is the penny.

After all, if we did away with the penny, Ben Franklin's "a penny saved is a penny earned." would be meaningless.

Ben? Ben who?

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Bag It

We are surrounded by things someone invented and hardly realize someone invented it. Take the flat bottom paper bag. Someone invented that? 

Yes. A woman invented it and wound up in the Inventors Hall of Fame and was the recent subject of an Overlooked No More NYT obituary, those occasional obits that are meant to be a sort of an atonement for ignoring the subject back when they should have received a tribute obit, if a tribute obit existed when they passed away—and if women were more recognized. These obits are always interesting. 

Margaret E. Knight lived from 1838-1914. I always try and think about what the deceased's world was like during their time on earth. 1838 puts Margaret squarely in the world of sailing ships, lots of candles, wars fought with horse pulled caissons, and horses as the best way to get from A to B. No tractors either. Mules or horses pulled plows. 

She was born in York, Maine, and was later brought up in Manchester, New Hampshire, and might have even known someone who fought in the American Revolution, and probably most likely someone who fought in the Civil War. And then of course there's the Spanish-American war. When she was born there were 26 stars in the flag, and Martin Van Buren was president. She read about Abraham Lincoln.

The bag above is on exhibit in the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Margaret was installed in the National Inventors Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio in 2006. She was working in a paper bag factory, making paper bags by hand, when she got the inspiration for making a machine that would make the paper bags, which at the time were really envelopes. No flat bottom sacks to hold the potatoes.

Anyone who's been to a store lately knows that paper bags are back. I get them at CVS, and my wife brings those tote bags (flat bottom) to the grocery store. No more plastic bags, which were great when we had an indoor cat and needed to scoop litter.

When the ruling came down that New York was going to outlaw plastic bags I started to hoard them so I had them for the cat. I kept a few trash bags full of them in the shed. Now the environmental pendulum has swung and paper's back and plastic is out. We're either saving the whales in Italy or trees everywhere. Go figure. 

Margaret in 1912

At an early age Margaret showed she wasn't going to be pigeon-hold into what girls were expected to do. She made her own wooden toys, sleds, and kites.  She told The Woman's Journal in 1872, "the only things I wanted were a jack knife, a gimlet and pieces of wood."  

She was no pushover. When a machine shop owner tried to claim  her invention of the machine that made flat bottom paper bags as his own, she took he guy to court. He claimed that a woman couldn't produce what she did.

But Margaret had the plans, original notebooks, etc. and the patent judge ruled in her favor. Justice prevailed, even for a woman in 1871. She received patent No. 116.842.

She successfully won other intellectual property cases. Her paper bag machine is in the Smithsonian Museum of American History.

And lest if there is anyone at the NYT who currently feels that woman were never recognized for anything, they have only to read Glenn Rifkin's Overlooked obituary where he tells us that in 1913 the NYT did a story on the increasing number of woman among the ranks of inventors who singled out Ms. Knight as the oldest and "the one having most to her credit." She had been referred to as the female Thomas Edison. High praise indeed.

She remained single, and lived comfortably, but hardly in a state of wealth, having $300 to her name when she passed away.

Quite honestly, I don't think I'll ever be able to look at a free standing flat bottom paper bag and not think of Margaret Knight. Someone invented that.

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