A WELL ESTABLISHED, BUT RARELY PONDERED, COMMENTARY ON RELATIVE TIME.

Having just watched "The Whole Truth" on PBS with David Eisenhower, a discussion of developments energy in this great land of ours, I was attracted to the varying attitudes about the time required to develop renewable energy as a viable replacement for fossil fuels. 

I can recall that in the early years of the automobile, electric and external combustion power was tried for automobiles, but was probably politically discouraged in favor of internal combustion. 

Without the plentiful and cheaper fuel with prices limited by law, I think it is likely that development of alternative fuels could have come much further along.  When the price limits were removed, the "traditional" vehicles had b
become habitual.

By the time I began driving legally, at age fourteen, no one was considering anyrhing other than a gasoline powered passenger vehicle.  Diesel was for long-haul trucks.

ABOUT "the time required" for changes...

During the half a year before I became four years old, my family lived in four different places in four different towns.  It seemed to me that we were in each place for a long time.

We then returned to live in the city of my nativity for what I have often deemed "the longest year of my life" (which was actually no more than three-quarters of an actual year, but experienced as a four-year-old).

Now that I am significantly older than four, and my mind is filled with joyous experiences of many, many years, I read of the battle of Little Bighorn and think of it as {slightly) less than sixty years before I was born.  The last of the Indian-fighter solders left Fort Davis only forty-five years before I began my earthly visit.  In the context of the years I have witnessed, the passage of time seems so trivial now.

A lady lies in our old town cemetery, who was born when George Washington was President, and died less than forty-four years before my birth.  I will always wonder how she felt about all that happened to our country within her ninety-eight years.

But most of all, I ponder my own life, and all that has transpired through the years.