Atomic 'clock'

Dear Joan:
Help! As of Sept. 19, POPCORN (the number to dial for the correct time) has been discontinued. Now how do we get the correct time when our power has gone out? We're clueless -- or timeless, as the case may be.

Can you, with your infinite power, help us out here?


V. Flan, cyberspace



Dear V.: OK, here are some suggestions. The obvious ones are to keep a wind-up or battery-operated clock that's not disturbed by a power outage, although they are vulnerable to dead batteries and forgetful winders.

You could check your mobile phone, GPS, cable service or your computer, although my work computer is five minutes fast. You also can buy a clock that sets itself automatically when the power comes back on, getting its time from a direct link to an atomic clock.

You could buy a wrist watch. Those have been going out of style since most people check the time by looking at their phones, but they're still handy.

If you have to have the precise time, you can call the National Institute of Standards and Technology in Boulder, Colo., where ticks away an atomic clock that is the country's official time source. By calling 303-499-7111, you'll get a coordinated universal time, more commonly known as Greenwich Mean Time. But you have to do your own math to figure local time.

You also could hop in your car and drive to a bank that still has the flashing time sign. You can get the temperature there, too.

Or you can adopt
a devil-may-care attitude and not worry about time, which is likely to get you into trouble at work or with your significant other when you show up two hours late for a date.
Seriously though, one of the reasons AT&T got rid of the time service is that relatively few people were using it. As I sit at my desk writing this, I'm surrounded by no fewer than six clocks, none of which have exactly the same time. It seems we've got a lot of time on our hands.


Dear Joan: My mother would always tell my brother, sisters and me "It's Indian summer." I know there is a song by that title. She would sing a few words to it, but that was all. All we ever heard was: "In old Indian summer, you old Indian summer."

Could you find the words for this song. I think it came out in the late 1930s.


John C., Pittsburg



Dear John: The song your mom used to paraphrase is called "Indian Summer," and it was recorded by the Glenn Miller Orchestra in November 1939. It was written by Victor Herbert and Al Dubin, although the melody was written in 1919 as a piano piece called "An American Idyll."

Here are all the lyrics:

"Summer, you old Indian summer/You're the tear that comes after June time's laughter/You see so many dreams that don't come true/Dreams we fashioned when summertime was new/You are here to watch over/Some heart that is broken/By a word that somebody left unspoken/You're the ghost of a romance in June/Going astray, fading too soon/That's why I say/'Farewell to you, Indian summer.'"

Dear Readers: Last week I answered a question about the value of Kennedy half dollars. Jim, a reader, sent a note reminding me that the real value of the first Kennedy coins is in the silver content. Coins minted in 1964 were almost 90 percent silver. The composition of the coins was changed the following year, greatly reducing the amount of silver in the coin. And in 1971, silver was eliminated completely.

So the 1964-1970 coins, if sold for their silver, are worth far more than 50 cents.

Thanks, Jim. I overlooked that important detail.