Good morning. ☕☕☕

19 February 2026

The grandfather clock has just announced that it’s nine o’clock. You know, I’ve gone more than seven decades saying “o’clock” without ever stopping to think about what it literally meant. I finally looked it up: it’s shorthand for “of the clock.” You’d think I would have known that, but I honestly didn’t. Nobody ever says, “It’s nine of the clock,” do they? I don’t recall a teacher—or anyone else—ever explaining it. It was just one of those things you absorbed: you picked the hour, like nine, and added “o’clock” to signal that you were talking about time.

There are things I don’t remember learning, and others I remember clearly. One of my earliest memories is of a small chalkboard I had as a child. I would pretend to write the way I saw my parents do. Only scribbles came out, of course, but maybe that was the beginning. Maybe I sensed that their marks carried meaning, or maybe I didn’t, but I imitated them all the same. That memory is vague but still there. I must have been younger than five but older than two—so probably three or four. Somewhere along the way I picked up some rudimentary math skills too. God bless the teachers.

I have three granddaughters who all want careers in education. One is already a college counselor, and the other two are in college, each preparing to teach grade school. What would we do without teachers.

“We learn by example and by direct experience because there are real limits to the adequacy of verbal instruction.” — Malcolm Gladwell

“A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops.” — Henry Adams

“The world is full of magic things, patiently waiting for our senses to grow sharper.” — W.B. Yeats

#photo #photography #photographer #photographylovers #nature #morning #time #teachers #plants #flowers #daffodil #lily