Compressing history.

I was born in 1947 and grew up Quaker. I remember a very old lady named Selma Brown. She had very white hair and wore granny glasses and she attended the same Meeting... (Quaker churches.) Selma used what we called "plain talk," meaning she used "thee" and "thou" and "thine." Example: "Has thee had a good week?" or "Don't forget thy Bible."

Now here's an interesting factoid: when he was a boy, Selma's grandfather knew George Washington! Isn't that weird? But it's true. Work it out:

Washington died in early 1799. If Selma's grandfather was ten years old in 1799, and if he fathered  Selma's father at forty, that man would have been born in 1830. And if he'd fathered Selma at the age of forty, Selma would have been eighty when I met her in 1950. But she could have been a lot older.

Thinking about the world problems today and how immediate they seem, it's fascinating to think that I knew someone whose grandfather knew George Washington. It puts something in prospective, but I'm not sure what....