Sep 22 2008
The First Day of Fall and Onward to Daylight Savings Time
Fall has been in the air, here in Central Oregon, all week. So, it seems fitting that it has begun. With fall comes the end of daylight savings time which will end November 2. “Fall Back” has much more appeal than “Spring Ahead.” Most of us still ask, “why do we have to change the time back and for the again?” It seems like we never get a straight answer. It starts to feel like some conspiracy to keep our body clocks off balance.
There are still some rebel areas out there in the U.S. that refuse to adopt this silly ritual. Hawaii and most parts of Arizona do not use daylight savings time. Indiana just changed their policy in 2006. You have to wonder if they just got tired of explaining why they were all leaving work at 4:00pm instead of 5:00pm to out of staters.
The reason heard most often, if you ask a sampling of people, is that the time change is to help the farmers. I always wondered what it helped the farmers do. After all, why do they have to be watching the clock when they are doing stuff out in the fields. Can’t they pretty much just go out and do their work whenever?
Apparently, daylight savings time actually began during World War I in order to reduce the use of lighting fuel by taking advantage of sunlight. It seems some states continued the practice thereafter, while others picked it up during World War II. Okay, but both wars have been over for quite some time and I’m not sure how it pertains to today’s world. And even so, Congress waited until 1966 to enact the Uniform Time Act which gave us the framework for changing our clocks back and forth. And references to the whole idea of “saving daylight” goes back to 1784. Because Congress can’t seem to leave these kinds of things alone, they changed the time period to increase it in 2007 by starting it 3 weeks sooner and extending it by 1 week at the end.
Sorry, but there still seems to be no definitive answer to why we have continued with this strange practice. If it is to save energy, then why aren’t we just staying on daylight savings time year round? Personally, I’m leaning more towards that conspiracy of messing with our body clocks. Someone with an evil mind who keeps this practice going is snickering at all of us every year. After all, we just follow along like sheeple (sheep people).
