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Sam Muller, author of Making a Clock-Accurate Sundial has written a great
small paperback on how to make a sundial that is customized to your own individual
location. As most folks know, the sundial is quite an accurate instrument, once one
learns how to adjust for man’s arbitrary time designations.
Sam takes folks through the learning process by having them first make cardboard
sundials. He offers very workable patterns, which can later be followed up by sturdier
models.
So what possessed Mr. Muller to write a book about sundials? As a teacher he
ordered a mass-produced sundial to demonstrate to his students, but much to his
embarrassment, when it arrived, it failed to work correctly. Gathering all the
knowledge he could about the earth’s tilt, rotation and changing orbital speed,
Mr. Muller created a sundial that really worked. In fact, on a moonlit night, it
becomes a “moondial.” One can notice that the moon’s counter clockwise orbit of the
earth shows a small loss of time hour after hour, explaining why a lunar month is more
than a day shorter than a solar month.
The book “Sundial” is available for $8.95 plus shipping and handling from
Naturegraph Publishers at: Box 1075 Happy Camp, CA 96039. Since 1946 Naturegraph
have been offering books from the Native point of view. Ask for a free copy of
their great catalog. Tell them we sent you.
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TIMELY VERSE
Silently marking the sun’s slow passage o’er
Flower-scented gardens of tranquility.
The firmly anchored sundial
Humbly serving it’s maker’s intended purpose.
Beyond the cool, insulating garden walls
Obnoxious alarms, buzzers and beepers
Reinforce the arbitrary parameters
Of mankind’s selfish post-Edenic struggle.
Feeling blindly, we traverse the exhausting
Desert of years, months, days and hours, only
Dimly aware of two opposing time lines,
One linear, the other, one eternal round.
Restrained by bonds of temporal existence
Homesick for a time when time shall be no more—
Glimpses of eternity are granted carefully to
Children of high purpose and heavenly agenda.
-Laura Martin-Buhler
 Spring 1998
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