'Urry Up, Please, It's Toim.

 Isle of Whithorn, Scotland: the Bow Set for All Time

Jet lag: time's revenge on the technologically smug who pride themselves on how easy travel is from here to there.

My ancestors left the Isle of Whithorn, Scotland, in 1821 with six other families aboard the ship Warren (built in New Bedford, Mass., and whose master -- skipper -- was William Webb).  The families first sailed from Isle to Liverpool, there meeting the Warren, and then sailed on to Philadelphia, PA.  From there they moved west to Pittsburgh, then further west.

What's a Packet? Model of the Shenandoah Packet Ship (1840) on the Liverpool-Philly Program

The Master of a Similar Packet Died of Frostbite in a December Crossing [Link]

The trip from Liverpool to Philly took six weeks at sea, which is a great deal of time to be neither here nor there.  My great-great-great grandfather's first wife, Janet Martin, of Drummoral Farm at Isle, died in Pittsburgh soon after she and James G. arrived in the US.  After six weeks tossing on an ocean, it's more likely that mal de mere, not jet lag, got her, eh?

Time is funny stuff, and there are the laws of time that we seem to operate under unquestioningly; we cannot escape it, try as we might.  But there are human-made laws of time.

For instance, one such law of time was found years back in English pubs: when closing time approached, the barman or barmaid (or barmistress, or merely a bar-stressed worker) would bellow over the public-house crowd, "Hurry up, please, it's time!"  This meant that -- as the law prohibited drinks to be served after the bar itself (not the pub) closed -- you could quickly get your last drink and sit to drink it as long as you like, but no more drinks would be pulled or poured after time was called.

T. S. Eliot incorporates this shout in The Waste Land, marking time-running-out for an urban humanity that had lost its social connectedness.  Was that a more realistic or pessimistic time?

Time.  Time and again.  Time's up.  Time's a wastin'.  Time and tide wait for no man.  Long time no see.  Have a good time.  Chicago time: "Does anybody really know what time it is?"  A New York minute.  Time flies.  Have you got the time?  Sure: I have time.  A wrinkle in time.  Isn't that a stitch?

So.  Jet lagged because of the attempt to skip over time (up since 3:15 a.m. and writing now at 6:00), I imagine other students from the group have been up and wondering why this world is asleep.  It's long past time to get up -- in England.

This time in England was a time to remember.  During this trip I was able to spend some time with one student who hurt her back (time and again to the hospital and to a doctor), and whose pain grew worse as time went.  Painful for her, but that time was, for me, a delight, allowing me two visions.  One vision was of myself in the past -- in England for the first time as a grad student; I looked back on those days somewhat as Wordsworth looked back at his first visit to Tintern Abbey through visiting it again five years later with his sister, Dorothy.

The second vision was through the student's eyes -- her first experiences of England.  Even though I told her about my first time in England as a student and could show her about London and Oxford, it was most enjoyable forgetting my prior visits and then watching another person experience these things in the present -- allowing me to re-vision parts of England through another's eyes.  That was a gift.

But the great gift from Time for me today is this: I've been married 23 years.  It has been a deeply connected time, these years.  And the irony for today, our anniversary, is that Joni and I will attend the wedding of a close friends' son, Michael, and his lovely fiancee, Anna.  It's both an old and new time to remember, a time that others will remember fondly with us for both of these times and the time in between.  United by time, in time, and throughout time.

Early in this blog I pondered the red thread that connected us with one another.  My threads tugged at me during the time in London, and pulled me through that time back to my love and to friends here.  During that time, new threads were tightly tied between me and others.  I think of the threads that we have tied to us, not merely in the present moment but throughout our time in "middle-earth."

Thank you for your time reading.  But it's time I had some more coffee, time's liquid assistant.