Stepping into a hornets’ nest is not new to me. To use a hopelessly worn expression, Been there, Done that.

Yesterday it was a nest of a different color.

Many posts ago, I discussed the discovery of a Roman shipwreck. Yes, I was thwarted in getting any further details, but in that pursuit I kicked up the hornets nest.

Harkening back to some lost point at Alexandria Twp. School, I know that I studied the method of identifying periods in time. It was so easy, a cave man could do it. BC was before the birth of Christ.

AD, anno domini, Latin for In the Year of our Lord, was/is time since Christ’s life. If I don’t have that right, please forgive me Lord. I think I was baling hay that day.

In attempting to learn more about Roman shipping, I come to find out that that method has since been messed with, no fault of the Romans.

Now there is BC, AD, CE and BCE . To further add to the confusion there is also WTF.

CE, Common Era, is apparently used by non- Christians. BCE, of course, Before Common Era is used by non- Christians in their assumptions regarding traceable time.

Do ya see what I mean? Why did they have to futz with this? I know. Some hapless souls of wayward erudition saw fit to mess with us all! Now, those of us not quite in the know have to scratch our heads over some new acronyms.

Will mankind ultimately figure this out? And what the Hell is the Common Era, anyway ? All of this just confuses the masses who have other things to worry about.

I offer this simple observation from Henry David Thoreau :

“Our lives are frittered away by detail. Simplify. Simplify .

Do you think Thoreau was worried about what time it was, or, for that matter, the Era ?

I posit that he was much the better off.