Gavel Gamut
By Jim Redwine
(Week of 23 November 2015)
DAYLIGHT LOSING TIME
Peg came into my study and said, “What are you doing with that legal pad you are holding up to the east window?†I tried to stop her but she grabbed it out of my hand and read my “Injunction to the Sunâ€.
Realizing I was busted, I tried to explain my plan to combat the ever-encroaching and ever-earlier darkness. As with any good judicial decision I cited precedent:
The Egyptian god Ra was responsible for the bounty of the sun. I saw no harm in soliciting his help;
Phoebus Apollo’s job for both the Greeks and Romans was to pull the sun across the sky with his chariot. Who knows? It couldn’t hurt; and
I even called upon those contemporary gods, The Beatles, and set forth the lyrics to “Here Comes the Sunâ€.
Not wishing to give Peg even more ammunition for a commitment hearing or, at least, to demand I straighten up the study, I told her I was aware of the Anglo-Saxon King Canute’s futile command to stop the tides; he got wet.
However, I was desperate for relief from the idiocy of whoever is responsible for my bedtime slowly inching ever closer to 8 o’clock postmeridian. For goodness sake, I barely get home from work before the “Dark Pall of Oblivion†turns a daytime opportunity into Orpheus Descending.
“Be all that as it may be, why on earth are you railing against the sun? Don’t you think you’re a little beyond your jurisdiction? This reminds me of this past spring when you were standing out in the yard cursing and threatening the dandelions. As I recall, they multiplied like, well, dandelions, thereafter. That attempt at stopping Mother Nature was also a spectacular failure. In fact, people were stopping to take photographs of the exceptional crop you incited with your extreme volume of carbon dioxide.â€
Ah, Gentle Reader, need I point out the inequity of such treatment? Anyway, the Winter Solstice is only a couple of lifetimes away. I’ll just have to avoid straight razors and hemlock until then.
