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David Spates Ben is messing with my
For two weeks I had to drag myself out of
bed, and I place the blame squarely on Ben Franklin's shoulders.
I normally pop right out of bed with very little trouble -- usually
I wake up on automatic pilot a minute or two before the alarm
clock goes off -- but not during the few weeks out of the year
when we're all forced to adjust to daylight-saving time. This
coming from the same man who wanted to make the turkey our national
bird. I say it's time (no pun intended, not at least
as far as you know) to end daylight-saving time and stop fooling
around with our clocks. Let's pick a time and go with it. DST, for those of you who prefer to wallow
in the pig pen of acronyms, was recommended by Franklin when
he was serving as U.S. minister to France as a way to open and
close shops earlier, thereby saving the cost of lighting. Also,
according to my trusty almanac, the move was made official in
1918 by President Woodrow Wilson, but it was repealed after the
war. In World War II, however, national DST was reestablished
by law on a year-round basis, and in 1973 it was adopted as a
fuel-saving measure. So why, in the age of the behemoth SUV which
sport nearly single-digit miles-per-gallon figures, are we still
worried about saving energy? And even if we were to ignore skyrocketing
gas prices coupled with "family vehicles" that are
thirstier than a Kennedy, why do we feel that setting our clocks
back or forward an hour is going to make that significant of
a difference? Daylight-saving time is an idea whose time
has past, in this country at least. Drive by your favorite retailer
one night at 11:30 and take note of the lighting. The most popular
stores don't even bothering closing anymore, much less cutting
off their lights. Ol' Ben was worried about reducing lighting
costs back in his day, and today our stores never close because
we Americans want things when we want them, regardless of the
time. Millions of fluorescent lights remain burning 24 hours
a day, 365 days a year so that we may traipse into our favorite
mart at 2 a.m. for a pint of Chunky Monkey, a bag of Funyuns
and the latest copy of People. Ben would be proud. Let's stop fooling ourselves and stop playing
with our clocks twice a year. It's a hassle. It's been more than
two weeks since the time changed and I'm still finding clocks
in my home that I haven't changed. Plus, it takes me even longer
to be able to guesstimate the time by simply looking out the
window. Let's follow the lead of our fellow Americans
in Arizona, Hawaii and certain parts of Indiana who just say
no to daylight-saving time. The trouble is that I'm not sure
who we need to petition to end this crazy idea. Since three states
don't follow daylight-saving time, that makes me think that it's
not one of those national policies that the federal government
forces states to play along with. It's not like the extortion
Washington did when the politicians wanted to increase the national
drinking age to 21 by withholding highway funding from states
that didn't play along. Maybe I need to focus my efforts at the state
level. The trouble with the state government is that
a lot of people, including politicians, think daylight-saving
time is a help to farmers. I'm not sure I see how. The few farmers
I've talked to seem like the kind of people who do whatever needs
to be done whenever it needs to be done. Farming isn't the kind
of job where you can punch in at 9 and end the day at 5 o'clock
on the nose. From what I've seen and been told, farmers don't
pay much attention to clocks. They get up when it's still dark,
utilize whatever daylight the Earth's tilt and revolution around
the sun has afforded them and call it a day whenever the work
is done. I doubt seriously that farmers begin or end their days
any differently because of daylight-saving time. And the last thing a politician in Tennessee
wants to do is appear to be anti-farming, even if the proposal
has little or nothing to do with farming in the first place. So as we muddle through our third week of
the daylight-saving time switch, I wonder if anything will change.
My internal clock will get used to the shift soon enough, but
I anticipate I'll have a few more mornings when I'll grumble
and moan as I stumble to the shower. I'm not much of a morning
person anyway, and Ben's grand old notion just makes mornings
even tougher. Ben, you did a lot of wonderful things for our country. I just wish you'd stop playing around with my clocks. |