I had thought about entitling today’s piece with some combination of the words spring, forward and suck but decided against it. As expected, we woke up later than normal to discover a dreary and surprisingly cold and windy morning too late to dress for services, so instead went to the local coffee shop on Forsyth Park for vegan breakfast sammiches and a 2 egg, bean, spinach cheese and sriracha sauce wrap.
While there, I noticed all the parents with children. The kids were boisterous and joyful. Their parental units were cranky and bleary eyed with drawn faces and baggy eyes. This brought forth the following sprightly image that was similar to those in local papers to our minds.
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On a more serious note, I wondered aloud why the spring forward day and time was not on a Friday afternoon, say around 3 PM. Oh yeah, said W with a wry grin, the US Government is gonna spring for that.
I smiled a snarky smile. We reminisced about our own parenting days around the EST to EDST switch when we rued sending our off-cycled kids back to school once again in the dark. We hated this mandated advanced darkness period. The true sufferers, however, were the poor grade school teachers who had to deal with their classes the next Monday.
Another of my solutions to this dilemma was “falling back” two times a year and skipping a Monday every ten years. Sounds something that POTUS 45 might approve, I opined. Yeah sure, muttered one tired-looking coffee sipper next to us.
“Springing forward” has known public safety side effects, most notably the higher incidence of car crashes and workplace accidents due to everyone still operating in zombie mode.
The “standard” period used to be six months long but has been shortened by 2/3’s majorities in both the House and Senate during the Global War on Terror to a mere four months. While it takes humans a few days to get used to it, routinized farm animals like cows might take longer. Our pets likely think that we hairless bi-pedals have become a bit confused, if not downright addled
This time traveling isn’t as modern as most of us think. First suggested by Benjamin Franklin in 1784, DST was at the time shot down by many sensible people as being pointless. During WW I, it was introduced – first by the Germans – to save coal during war time.
Somehow in that age of austerity, the concept soon caught on and everyone started doing it. Sadly, nobody’s really thought to change back. Except Arizona, and it hasn’t fallen off the face of the planet as a result. On the other hand, Zonians continue to re-elect John McCain as one of their two US Senators.
Studies have also shown that American energy savings and healthier lifestyles are simply DST myths. Clock shifts disrupt our circadian rhythms. Studies have further shown that, around the times of the spring clock changes, there are spikes in suicide rates and an increase in the number of recorded heart attacks.
Let’s face it, one of the most backward stan-nations – Kazakhstan – ditched DST in 2005, citing health reasons. So, why didn’t the leader of the free world?
Perhaps, Russian hackers were at work here . . . . or over there.
In any event, it could be worse. We could be living in the perpetually confused state of Indiana with its two time zones.
Before 2006, most of Indiana did not observe Daylight Saving Time. However, some counties decided to use DST, creating confusion about what time it was around spring and fall.
To avoid the confusion, Indiana passed a bill in 2005 ensuring that the entire state would use DST from April 2006, regardless of the time zone.
Many Hoosiers are still pissed off by these changes. See http://www.timeanddate.com/time/us/indiana-time.html
But to the Hoosier state’s credit, it has a county called Ohio and one named Switzerland, which makes Indiana super-crazy about time-space in a most awesome way.
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