JACK'S WINNING WORDS 8/9/06
“Everything happens to everybody sooner or later, if there is time enough.” (GBS)
This acerbic freethinker had a way with words, to say the least. He won the Nobel Prize for Literature, accepting the award, but refusing the money. It was a matter of principle. I like his quote about time. How about Jim Croce’s song about time? ;-) Jack

TIME IN A BOTTLE - Sung by Jim Croce
If I could save time in a bottle The first thing that Id like to do Is to save every day Till eternity passes away Just to spend them with you If I could make days last forever If words could make wishes come true Id save every day like a treasure and then, Again, I would spend them with you But there never seems to be enough time To do the things you want to do Once you find them I've looked around enough to know That you're the one I want to goThrough time with If I had a box just for wishes And dreams that had never come true The box would be empty Except for the memory Of how they were answered by you But there never seems to be enough time To do the things you want to do Once you find themIve looked around enough to know That you're the one I want to go Through time with.

* While in his third year of college, one of Jim's bands was invited to perform in a tour of Africa and the Middle East. "We had a good time," Jim recalls. "We just ate what the people ate, lived in the woods, and played our songs. Of course they didn't speak English over there... but if you mean what you're singing, people understand."* Early in his career, Jim injured his right index finger with a misplaced sledgehammer, forcing him to developed a new method of fingerpicking using only four fingers.* Croce wrote his hit song "Time in a Bottle" for his infant son AJ. Adrian James, who was born only two years before his father was killed in a plane crash (9/20/73).

Time is the one element over which we have no control. We have constructed clocks to measure it. We have broken it up into periods, era’s, and calculations in terms of generations beyond ‘our’ time, but reality for us only exists in the here and now. Romantics have written about bottling it like one would a commodity, but physically we can do nothing to stop its march.
Time is the issue upon which current life hinges, we can analyze it but we have no control over it. We can only choose what to do with the time we do have, focusing beyond our time looses credibility. Another intangible issue that influences our existence is the fact we possess morals.
The moral dimension is something that invokes heated debate in all manner of topic.
Some Theologians argue for instance against the concept of cloning. Many folk are prone to leaping to the conclusion that it is fundamentally wrong to “play God.” Yet how many of those same people would instantly change their tune if tomorrow they were faced with the prospect of a loved one or themselves dying from a disease or ailment that cloning technology could provide, and cure.

The clock of life is wound but once And no one has the power
To tell just when the hands will stop, At late or early hour.
Now is the only time you own; Live, love, work, and with a will;
Place no faith in tomorrow, for The clock may then be still.