Daylight Savings Time is the practice of setting the clocks forward one hour from standard time during the summer months, and back again in the fall, in order to make better use of natural daylight.
—-timeanddate.com
**************************
This is a shifting-time, when all of the pretty golden leaves are gone from Sandy's tree next door,--and from our yard,--and the browner, tougher leaves start falling. The oak trees in the backyard think that they are clever; they let loose all the uppermost leaves from their uppermost limbs. Those leaves are tough, and hard, and leathery, and the wind hustles them out of the yard and onto the driveway, where they, overnight, create thick drifts.
The oak trees hang on to the rest of their leaves, though; lower and middle branches are still robustly leaf-ed. Some of THOSE leaves the trees let go of on, say, the day of the first, perfect, pristine snowfall.
Top leaves dropped, the oak tree hangs on to the ones in the middle and on the bottom...
"Oh, are you LIKING that pretty, clean snow?" ask the trees, and they look at each other, bob their branches (One! Two! Three!), and, on the count of four, throw leathery, black-pocked leaves onto the gleaming whiteness.
"Still loving that pretty snow?" they taunt, gloating, even though their newly bared limbs shiver in the ice cold breeze.
And still they wait, those cagey trees, still hanging on tightly to a goodly number of their leaves, until that day in March when I can SMELL spring on the wafting air that rumples my forelocks, the very day that apple-green tiny shoots first pop up.
"Spring!!!???!!!" the trees say then, slyly. "Wait. What happened to FALL?" And all the remaining old leaves plummet to the ground in a dried up, ugly pile.
I wonder what we ever did to those oaks trees to make them so bitter.
But I digress. Those trees do throw a good few upper leaves down in the right-now part of fall.
*****************************
And the languid sweet gum tree in the front yard starts its throwdown right about now, too. Here, it says, have a bunch!
And then it stops, tired and lazy. And it waits, until I am done raking, to throw down some more.
*****************************
All of this is to say that in Fall, I get a lot of my steps in by raking the driveway and the yard. And I enjoy it, I really do,---being out and stretching legs and arms in that apple-cheeked weather, hustling leaf piles off to the curb where the beloved leaf-sucker chugs along to hoover them up, almost daily, these November weeks.
I like clearing the old brown leaves off Crayola green grass and creating uncluttered open spaces; I like the smell of the damp earth and the loamy leaves, and the crisp clarity of autumn air. And, as limbs are busily working, mind is free, and distractions few. I love the time to let my thoughts roam.
Today I got started thinking about Daylight Savings Time, which ends on Sunday morning, here in Ohio, at 2 A.M.
*******************************
At first, with standard time looming, I thought, "Oh, boy. I'll be able to walk in the morning again!"
I was thinking that because, now, sunrise comes about 8:01. I don't like walking in the dark, so my walks start later and later as fall progresses, until finally, if I wait to walk until 8:05 or so, I barely have time to get home and unmussed before I have to leave for work. On those days, I might go to the gym early, or I might wait until later to walk, and that changes the shape of the day. A brisk early walk seems to jumpstart all kinds of good thinking, and I miss that feeling when it's too dark to take that walk outside.
So more morning sunlight would be a boon. But then I think, "Wait a minute."
If we're turning the clocks BACK an hour, what WAS 6:00 A.M. will be 5:00 A.M., and sunrise will be later, not sooner, and, until the earth revolves irrevocably around the sun toward spring, it will be even darker and even harder to walk outside early on work days.
DAMN, I think, and my momentary excitement seeps away like stale air from a popped balloon.
******************
But there ARE good things about 'falling back.' There's an extra hour of sleep, for instance, on Sunday morning. That is nice, even though I am not much of a marathon sleeper these days. I will be up at whatever hour my body says is 6 A.M. regardless of what any clock dictates. But a quiet morning hour will still be a treat.
There were days, though, days in the hazy darkness of my past, when that extra hour of sleep was a jubilation, an hour of reprieve, before, say, having to tromp down to the early Sunday morning supermarket meat room and slap cold clammy chicken leg quarters into five pound bags for five cheerful hours.
And for some folks, that extra hour meant the music abruptly stopping, the lights going out for closing time in a favorite Cheers-type bar, the kind where everybody knew your name; there would be an announcement: "It's 2. A.M. You don't have to go home, but you can't drink it here!"
And then a breath, a pulse, and that same gleeful announcer would say, "It's 1 A.M.! You CAN drink it here—-for another whole hour!"
The crowd would cheer, the music would recommence, and those who loved to dance would go on back to it. A happy throng would inch, en masse, toward the bar. Another hour to party!
Well, that's what I HEARD, in those days, from dear friends, about the night when daylight savings time ended. Especially if my grandchildren or children or former students are reading this, I was at home on those fall-back nights, reading Middlemarch and tapping out deep thoughts on my portable Olympia typewriter.
Studying, not partying, for this gal.
Of course.
But still: the time change offered reason, if only for an hour, to celebrate.
***************************
Who invented daylight savings time, anyway? I think about this as I wrassle leathery leaves to the curb. I have a vague idea that its inception had something to do with farming—-more time in the fields in the fall, that kind of thing.
And later, I get on history.com ("Why Do We Have Daylight Savings Time?") and I find that, yet again, I am wrong, wrong, wrong. Most farmers, I learn, aren't crazy about the whole daylight saving time (DST) concept; it disrupts the natural rhythms of their work.
It was energy that actually brought DST into the realm of reality. The concept had been bandied about before; Ben Franklin suggested such a scheme in 1784. A New Zealand entomologist pressed his government to adopt a daylight savings program in 1895, but they declined. And a British industrial magnate, in 1905 or so, suggested that clocks in the United Kingdom change by 80 minutes every fall and spring, "…to give people more time to enjoy daytime recreation" (history.com). That idea never even floated all the way through Parliament.
No, war brought the change. Germany and Austria, during World War I, changed their clocks to conserve energy for the war effort. During the long and brutal fighting, Britain and other European countries followed suit.
The United States adopted Daylight Savings Time in 1918, but the next year, the war over, they repealed it.
The first towns to adopt DST as a permanent thing were Canadian.
The United States would not make DST a mandatory part of daily life for many years after World War I.
During the Second World War, Franklin Roosevelt once again put it into play. When that war ended, many states went back to standard time while others continued on DST, which must have been confusing if, say, one lived right on the edge of a DST state and worked a mile away in a standard time state.
So Congress decided, in 1966, to make things consistent: they passed the Uniform Time Act, and Daylight Savings Time was the norm across the land, with clocks changing in April and October.
Then in 2007, our legislators changed the changes to occur in March and November, and here we are.
Although two states, Hawaii and Arizona, have opted out; those states are on standard time all year long.
**************************
So, if the farmers don't like it, and the arguments of once-a-year partiers for extended pub time are not persuasive, why DO we have Daylight Savings Time?
Energy is the most popular argument; if we adjust our days according to natural light, we'll use less artificial light.
And people will be more active; they'll go out after dinner, if daylight entices them; they'll, maybe, enjoy outdoor recreation. The tourist trade will flourish more readily than it would in the early dark.
And the world will be safer; in the light, there are fewer pedestrian auto accidents and fewer robberies.
All of these assertions, timeanddate.com tells me, have data to back them up.
But there are cons to the concept of DST, too. Some places see no energy savings, especially places where sunny days mean more air conditioning.
More worrisome is the thought that we all have to adjust to a change in our circadian rhythms, and for some, that has more dire consequences than for others. Some people get truly sick; their constitutions do not adapt the whole six months. And the lost hour at the beginning of the Daylight Savings season, in March or April, sees people LOSING sleep. Car crashes, industrial accidents, suicides, and miscarriages increase then. The early evening darkness after DST ends contributes to depression.
Also, some nay-sayers contend, DST is costly. Some places have had to pay for ad campaigns to warn people of the dangers of transition tiredness. Computers must be programmed to change the time, and other devices, clocks and such, must be changed by hand.
There are often bills before the US Congress asking for a return to standard time. So far, those bills have not become law, but who knows what may happen?
************************
For now, though, at least in the great state of Ohio, and in most other states, we live on Daylight Savings Time.
If I look at it in one light, it almost seems like magic by fiat: the government says time will change NOW, and change time does: a stroke of the pen and what was Later becomes Earlier, or vice-y versa. Kind of time-travelly, that.
As I rake, I think about other similar programs I wish we could have, like Faux Pas Savings Time. In that, we would set the clock back to before we said stupid things, like guessing ten years older when someone says, "Well, how old do you THINK I am?" Or not realizing that a person is not still pregnant and saying, "Gosh! You must be so ready for that little one to arrive!" when the baby, in fact, is two months old.
Under Faux Pas Savings Time, we'd go back to those situations and say the RIGHT things, and whole awkward chapters of life could be smoothed out.
Or how about Avoirdupois Savings Time, where we'd turn the clock back to thinness, and then be able to decline the luscious piece of cheesecake, no matter how delicious it looks, and, in general, institute, early on, healthy, nutritious habits. Then when the clock surged forward again, we'd be leaner, meaner, and much more energetic…
In fact, any kind of Undo Stupid Mistakes Savings Time would be a wonderful thing, especially if I could carry the learning from the wretched situation forth into standard time, while erasing the situation itself altogether.
*********************
I suppose, though, we each have our own ways of retrofitting unsatisfactory past happenings. We carry it forward, making sure we never again make such an unnecessary gaffe; we turn the painful time into art; we write about it. And when we write about it, we can change the story, turn the story into say, late nights with classic literature in halcyon, mythic days.
************************
But, anyway. At 2:00 A.M. on November 6, it will become 1:00 A.M. on November 6, and a few hours later, I will pad softly downstairs in the darkness, brew some lovely decaf, open my book, and steal a luxurious hour in the reading chair. And other people will enjoy the bonus hour for sleeping or working, creating or just enjoying...maybe someone will catch a Christmas movie on the Hallmark channel! If we live in DST zones, we'll adapt; we'll do it because we have to, because if we don't, we'll be late for work, we'll be trying to shop after hours, and we'll be missing appointments.
I wish I could put my oak trees on Leaf Dropping Savings Time, —-get all those leathery leaves down at once—, but that's another reality I'll just continue to learn to live with.
It's something to think about, though, when I'm raking.
The driveway, which I raked, and Mark cleared with the leaf-blower on, less than 24 hours ago...
No comments:
Post a Comment