The Lord knows I hate to mention the subject of time in a Hoosier-based publication such as this one. I know it’s like waving a red flag in front of a peacefully grazing bull or throwing gasoline onto a reluctant fire. But it’s got to be done. Even in a state where until recent years even natives needed a calendar and a roadmap to figure out what time it was, it’s got to be said.
March 11 is just too damned early in the year to begin Daylight Saving Time, and Nov. 4, when we’re scheduled to “fall back” this year, is equally too late to end it.
After a week now of being plunged back into early morning darkness — as though we had traveled back in time to mid-December — surely the accuracy of complaints that we start “fast time” too early and embrace it for too long is evident.
Health officials have observed that the time changes both — forward and backward — are injurious to health. The numbers of heart attacks increase in the spring and the number of strokes in both the spring and fall. Additionally, as people change their sleep patterns, they often complain of fatigue and exhaustion. Recently in states as diverse as Florida, Massachusetts and Maine, state legislatures have approved measures to convert either to year-round Daylight Saving Time or to switch to another time zone.
I’ll acknowledge that when it comes to arguments about the time change, I have some prejudice. I have a farm background, and farmers are notorious for seeing through the silliness of a scheme. Country folks have always pooh-poohed the idea of turning the hands on the clock back and forth. For them, the workday begins at daylight — or, as former President Jimmy Carter noted in one of his autobiographical sketches, an hour before daylight — and ends at sundown or a little later. Daylight Saving Time is meaningless to them.
And I’ll admit I’m probably cool to the concept, too, because in more than 40 years of working in the public arena, I never had a job that ended a quitting time. One might come to work at 8 a.m. or earlier, but the day wasn’t done until the work was finished. In the smalltown newspaper business, in addition to late-evening editing or doing page layout, that often meant attending city council or school board meetings until 10 p.m. or later.
While getting off from work with four or five hours of daylight left in a summer day was never an option for me, I realize a lot of people are afforded that privilege and that they like it.
Because of that, and because I like to think myself a fairly reasonable person, I’m willing to accept some amount of Daylight Saving Time. Or, since we currently have only about four months of standard time, just moving to year-round Daylight Saving Time.
But we’re going to keep making the change, March is too early. For a couple of weeks now, the lengthening days have made it light again when kids head out the door for school and when many people go to work. Making the switch last Sunday has rousted those people out again into darkness or, at best, half-light. Additionally, this time of year, the weather isn’t exactly conducive to doing much out-of-doors in the afternoons.
Similar arguments can be made for continuing Daylight Saving Time into early November.
To me a reasonable compromise, one based mostly on the school calendar, would be to start Daylight Saving Time at Memorial Day and end it at Labor Day. That wouldn’t adversely affect students’ sleep patterns and would assure that folks would have decent weather for outdoor activities after work.
If that’s not enough to satisfy the majority of folks, how about six months of standard time and six of Daylight Saving Time — April 1 through Sept. 30?
What we’re doing now is just a little too much.