Standard Time – Wednesday Blog by Seán Thomas Kane
This week on the Wednesday Blog, I argue that we should stick to Standard Time.
I missed the switch to Daylight Savings Time this year as I was in Puerto Rico that weekend which doesn’t do the time change, meaning we went from being 2 hours ahead of home to just 1 on the night of our return journey. So, my usual annoyance at the transition to Daylight Savings Time, and the hour lost in the process, wasn’t as severe. Yet as we return to Standard Time after a long summer I have some thoughts about why we ought to stay where we are now.
It baffles me that “Standard Time” lasts only 5 months, though it doesn’t feel that long, while Daylight Savings Time, or Summer Time as they call it in Europe, lasts during 9 separate months from mid March through early November. Daylight Savings has effectively overrun the calendar, leading to the calls in March for us to permanently adopt DST as our new standard, year-round, time.
I had no major complaints with this proposal earlier this year, though I figured that Standard Time is probably closer to the natural solar time than Daylight Savings which fiddles with the clock like a crafty accountant. All that changed when I began to leave home before dawn for this new teaching job, and I found myself barely seeing the morning sun on most days. As we returned to Standard Time this week I’ve felt far happier leaving home in the early dawn hearing the birds whistling away in the trees, welcoming the new dawn as they do.
I may not feel quite as euphoric as Edvard Grieg’s “Morning Mood” from his Peer Gynt suite would evoke, yet I am much happier seeing that Sun high in the sky above me as I begin my day. So, let’s make Standard Time the default and eliminate Daylight Savings, as those two time changes each year cause such a bother.
I find that our cities have long been built to be seen more at night amid the glow of streetlights than during the daytime. We gain more evenings under their sway, more evenings too away from the city lights to gaze up at the stars high above us. I’m fine with the Sun setting so early in the evening. I’ve lived in cities where it sets far earlier than it does Kansas City in winter, and there’s something about that which evokes a sort of seasonal sense of nostalgia in me, a memory of Christmas and all the other midwinter holidays to come.
Standard Time is as close to our original local solar time as we’ll be able to get. Not that long ago, each city and town had its own time based on its own local noon. I’d rather have our clocks tick closer to that local noon than not. Consider this my vote.
Wednesday Blog by Seán Thomas Kane 