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| German infantry assaulting a French position called Le Mort Homme during the Battle of Verdun, March 1916. By Hermann Rex Source |
Even the reason we were given as kids "well, it's for the farmers" was absolute bovine excrement. Farmers work when they have to, doesn't matter if the sun is up or down. I knew dairy farmers back in the day, most were up well before sunrise. At least the successful ones were.
Where did it really start? Well, the picture above provides a clue. Yup, Germany and Austria in World War I. Though apparently some areas in Canada were using it prior to 1916. Save on electricity in the factories dontcha know?
Anyhoo ...
This return to Daylight Saving Time is much despised by me. I've heard some say that we should do it the year round. Well, guess what, you want school kids catching the bus an hour before sunrise? It's been tried and it doesn't work.
If you like it, well more power to you. I'll just sit in the cheap seats and bitch about it.
On the bright side, other than Sundays, I don't care what time it is. Hey ...
I'm retired.
As always, your mileage may vary.
Sorry for the short post, I'm a bit out of sorts at the moment. I expect things to improve shortly, until then ...
Ciao.
Daylight Savings time, the true indicator of government dysfunction. Even with it fairly unpopular and both parties saying they want to abolish it, they cannot even get that done.
ReplyDeleteNothing Congress touches seems to make any sense. The Senate had a bill in 2022 to make daylight saving time permanent, they even called it the Sunshine Protection Act, the House never acted on it. And here's how Congress "works" - it passed the Senate unanimously, but several Senators indicated that they wouldn't have voted for it if they thought that it was going to pass. Hey morons, that's how a bill passes, you vote for it. It's like that damned Obamacare, "we need to pass it to see what's in it," Pelosi and her ilk. A pox on both their houses.
DeleteIf this does not define "terminal government", I am not sure what does.
DeleteAgree!
DeleteDST = PITA in my book. Too many clocks to reset by hand, can think of three I missed yesterday.....oh well.
ReplyDeleteThe only purpose it serves is to let people play golf after work in the summer. That's my take anyway.
DeleteGolf after work... THAT makes sense. I've heard folks gripe about SAD, too. They make lights that help with that. At our latitude, there is just so much daylight during winter. Less up in RI, a bit more in south TX.
ReplyDeleteFarmers I worked for were up at all hours when watering cotton. Each "set" had a certain run time. Most were around 10 hours. Looooooong rows of cotton. When I started working, they used vee shaped ditchers to dig the ditch along the high end of the field. Then, the irrigation engines would roar away and the water would run in the ditches. They would use bent aluminum tubes to siphon the water into the rows. It wasn't work for the weak. My buddy Tick would sleep when ever he could during irrigation season. Sometimes a set would need to be moved at wee hours. Took a couple hours to move all those tubes. You could start more tubes that the pump could supply, and then you'd have to start them again... It was like juggling a ping pong ball and two cannon balls. Those guys were something else. That's why I mucked out the pig barn and was a plow hand. I wasn't any good at starting tubes. I got tired just remembering all that....
I got tired reading about it!
DeleteI hate DST. Not because it's hard for me to adjust, but because STANDARD time is STANDARD for a reason. Frankly, the harder change for me is the change form DST back to ST, As I seem to be one of those insufferable people who wakes up well before sunrise, and with so many business establishments not opening until 0900 or later, once I've adapted to the DST cycle, it feels as if I'm waiting an extra hour for them to open.
ReplyDeleteDairy Farmers. The people who go into that business, unless they are successful enough to be able to hire people to do all the work, NEVER get a day off. Fever of 104, outside temperature 20 below? Gotta get up and tend the kine. Just died? Sorry, no time for that, need to shift them to the other field. Or feed them. Or milk them. Or tend to birthing. Or...or....or....
Our government. The Founders and Framers designed "gridlock" into it. Three branches, really 4 if you think about how the original Constitution was written. Four, you say? Yes, four. Because of the bicameral (NO, Joe not "Buy Caramel!" ) is by its nature had a built in conflict between The People's House and The States' House. A conflict that was somewhat removed when the Senate became nothing more than an exalted House of Representatives. OK, so maybe it was three-and-a-half branches. It was set up to NOT do anything that wasn't of pressing and national importance. Also, somewhere along the way our society turned our Constitution on its head, or at least the teaching about it. Rather than being something to describe how the Federal Government is CONSTITUTED, with finely limited powers and authority, the Federal Government has become an omnipotent Juggernaut bestowing limited "rights" on the people. If we are given something by the Government, it's not a right, it's largesse granted, and which can be taken away. And, rather than being somewhat self-sufficient (I before E except after C my sorry butt!) and solving problems at State or Personal level, we are now taught that Government is a demigod that is supposed to Do Something!!! about every tiny issue in our daily lives. Now, the usurpation of powers not given to the federal government by said government is nothing new. By the early 1800s several of the Founders and Frames were decrying the Feds ignoring the Constitution and taking on powers not given to it and which rightly belong to the States or the People, reducing the Constitution to nothing by the "General Welfare" clause. Which has the effect of nullifying the entire Constitution. If the Federal Government has unlimited authority to act however it wants on any issue, what's the point of having a limiting Constitution?
17th Amendment should be repealed. In fact, 1913 should probably be erased from the history books! 16th and 17th Amendments, Federal Reserve Act. Hell, while we're at it let's remove Woodrow Wilson from the books as well!
DeleteHey! He "kept us out of war!"
DeleteJust yesterday my lovely wife asked me what time it was and I replied, "Saturday". Why? Because we're retired! The only two days of the week are Saturday and Sunday, and clocks can go to H-E-double hockey sticks!!!!
ReplyDeleteirontomflint
Hear, hear!
DeleteThe "spring forward" time change always had the low life's showing up an hour late to work. Then somehow I seamed to be working nightshift when "fall back" occurred.
ReplyDeleteSeems to be the way!
DeleteI was in construction. Time meant very little, except as reference to delivery times. I adjusted the work time to fit the time when the sun was most beneficial, when I could. Of course - and I have relatives that say this - the days are "longer", and regardless of how ridiculous that sounds, many feel they are.
ReplyDeleteOur bodies are attuned to circadian rhythms, when it's light out we're active, when it's dark we're not. Days feel longer in summer because we're more active because of those circadian rhythms. It's how we were designed.
DeleteI hate time zone shifts, and see DST as just part of that same infection. I don't adjust well to time changes, so "springing forward" is always greeted with malevolent thoughts.
ReplyDeleteNow, I do an annual trip from the frontier back to the east coast, and most years it turns into a triple whammy, with DST on Sunday. Then Tuesday I enter the twilight zone of Kansas and am forced to surrender another hour. Then on Wednesday we hit Indiana, and they have some secret time nonsense going on where parts of the state kinda sorta changes back and forth between Central and Eastern time, and the state may or may not participate in DST. I gave up trying to understand and just wait until we get there and change timepieces accordingly. By the time we hit Ohio (and their plentiful Highway Patrol protection racket) we know we are on Eastern time, a net change of 3 hours in 5 days, inflamed by the monotony of long drives every day.
Westbound, as we claw back a couple of those stolen hours, is merely annoying rather than obnoxious.
So, "Bah, humbug" to the whole DST racket.
John Blackshoe