The Wind Clock

Clocks and calendars interest me much. A great wind blows this morning; yes, I can hear it even down here in the basement. Out in our yard a much abused little American Flag is the only indicator for the wind’s direction, but that’s problematical because our street extends from NNW to SSE, and to guess, what with the flag fluttering erratically, just what the direction really is, requires mental gymnastics I’m quite incapable while eyeballing a flag. So on to the Weather channel. Well, our wind this morning is coming from the direction of WSW. Dumb question time. What does that really mean? The compass crowd answered my question. Herewith I present the compass directions (from a site called Reading the Compass, link). You might call it a wind clock. I have the same basic problems with this sort of arrangement that I have tracking the sun’s apparent path through the course of the year. I tend to forget certain kinds of abstract blocks of knowledge unless I use them daily. And to think that, of our platoon in basic training, I was one of four who actually found his way to the designated point during a compass exercise—and then joined the noncoms in rounding up the rest. They were all over the map—or lost in the folds of the compass rose.