gno·mon /ˈnōmän/ noun plural noun: gnomons the projecting piece on a sundial that shows the time by the position of its shadow.

Here are more than seventy gnomons from the Sundial Writers’ Corner.

A gnomon is the part of a sundial that sticks up and casts its shadow on the dial to show the time; thus we use that label for these three-minute pieces, which have appeared on WLRH-FM, the National Public Radio station for Huntsville, Alabama in the past decade, on a program called “The Sundial Writers’ Corner.”

Judy Watters was there when WLRH-FM first aired (89.3 on your FM dial!) in 1967. She was soon joined by her husband, Harry, and they started the Writers’ Corner to showcase all sorts of word-people of the Tennessee River valley. Over the years a crazy-quilt collection of poets and prophets and preachers and people has been drawn together; their words are heard every weekday morning at 9:30 and each evening at 6:44, in two or three minutes of verbal trapeze acts.

One of these wordsworkers is Huntsville’s Houston Hodges. He has been a Presbyterian minister since 1954, and a Sundialer for more than a decade. He enjoys musing about the intricate variety of God’s world and how we interact with it. These little sunbeams were culled from the station’s podcast archives to respond to the question, “What time is it, anyhow?”

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These commentaries were recorded and produced at WLRH Huntsville Public Radio and are shared with permission.

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