A Grand and Glorious Morning

April 5, 2009 by Dick.

Sort of…

It was 80 degrees and 80 percent at 8 o’clock ante meridiem with both the thermometer and the hygrometer headed for the high 80s here in Paradise. I’ve managed to avoid firing up the air conditioning although that is getting more difficult; the house temp is reasonable even during the heat of the afternoon but the humidity keeps on climbing.

It is only sort of grand and glorious because at 2 o’clock this ayem all the older clocks with Daylight Savings Time settings and all un-updated computer systems thought the Eastern Time Zone, the Central Time Zone, the Mountain Time Zone, and the Western Time Zone should lose an hour of sleep. That is exactly what my clock radio did. I could not imagine why the radio was blaring at seven o’clock on a Sunday morning.

I like Daylight Savings Time.

I do not like getting blasted out of bed at seven o’clock on a Sunday morning.

New Zealand entomologist George Vernon Hudson first proposed changing the clocks forward and back to take better advantage of late afternoon sunlight in 1895. The U.S. House of Representatives considered “saving” daylight in 1909, but that initial effort died in committee. Germany wanted to conserve coal during WWI and imposed the first nationwide Daylight Savings Time in 1916. The U.S. established it in 1918 as a direct result of the Great War; Congress repealed DST just a year later but put it back in place for WWII. Peacetime DST began here in 1966.

I have now reset the clock radio.

Thanks to the U.S. Congress, I’ll have to do that four times this year instead of two and I won’t be sure which devices will set themselves correctly, which still think it is 1967 when the federal Uniform Time Act became effective. I do know the ones that don’t screw up; they’re the ones with counterweights or springs and a winding key.

I like Daylight Savings Time. It would be better if we simply stayed on it.

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