It’s that time again. The season where each of us frantically run around our homes changing the clocks in the bathroom, the living area, the bedrooms and the oven. If that’s not enough, we then head out to adjust those electircal devices that don’t auto-set with the satellite. You know, the ones that need your manual attention. If you can find them all!
So just where did this cockamamy idea of setting those darn clocks back and forth twice a year come from anyway? As usual, I set out with laptop to determine the sacred answer. Apparently, a New Zealander is credited. And his argument resulted in what is a current mandate of our lives. (but you’ll have to do your own research on that one.)
Today, I wanted to know just what is daylight savings time (DST) exactly? Here is what I found: the practice of advancing clocks so that afternoons have more daylight and mornings have less.
hmmmmmmm. What I wanted to know is, why do you and I have no say in this tradition? Who benefits, and just who doesn’t?
Winners? Sporting events, retailers and other functions and activities that rely on sun after work hours. Apparently, there are fewer traffic fatalties during DST.
Losers? Farmers and nighttime events. People in varying time zones that do business and plan meetings with those who do NOT follow DST. And I do hope all of that equipment in hospitals and 1st response units all auto-set! Or someone better be on the ball in the triage unit tonight. I’m just sayin’…
Ok, in fairness, civilizations did adjust their work schedules around the light. It made sense. But they were all locals on their own local time clock. It wasn’t a global village.
Even our own beloved Benjamin Franklin, during his French rock-star years (remember his proverb, “Early to bed, and early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise”) anonymously published a letter suggesting that Parisians economize on candles by rising earlier to use morning sunlight.
These days we forget that Europe during the 1700s did not keep precise schedules like we do today. When the railroad came into our lives, as well as communication like the telegraph, schedules had to be created and kept.
So there you have it. Some thoughts on DST you might not have cared about nor heard before. I hope these tidbits brighten your day. At least until we do it allllll over again – this fall.
Just my thoughts,
S.
