All their little plans and schemes

Time is a perpetual motion machine. Yet consider, also, its alarming elasticity. With the Beatles’ release of “Now and Then,” we’re as far from “Free As A Bird” now as “Free As A Bird” was from Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. And an analogy suggests itself: “Free As a Bird” and “Real Love” are to Please Please Me as “Now and Then” is to Abbey Road. The gusts of Zeitgeists that have blown through all of those years and time- and date-stamped eras, the equivalent for humankind of the pencil...