By JeffreyLSalisbury@gmail.com
Sleeping for eight, rolling my clock back one, does not mean I got nine
hours of sleep
Each spring and fall the Lakota Nation posts this proverb on its web site: When told the reason for daylight saving time the old Indian said…‘Only a white man would believe that you could cut a foot off the top of a blanket and sew it to the bottom of a blanket and have a longer blanket.’
Anyone else besides me remember life before Daylight Savings Time? Michigan did not observe DST from 1949-1967. Since I was born in 1948 and graduated high school in 1967 – that helps.
My Grampa Harry Harwood and his son Harry Jr. who we all called Uncle Junior, both worked at the same factory — Arrowhead Steel in Howell — Grampa was the factory foreman and I recall very clearly they had seasonal hours. The purpose was really the same as DST I suppose — the principle being that since the building had large skylights they wanted to be able to take advantage of daylight hours seasonally.
In addition, I can recall some if not all of our many retail stores in our downtown area also posted “summer hours” which were slightly different than those in winter. I am not sure how much of the rationale had to do with daylight – some of course – but also I just think the longer days meant potential customers were out and about longer because of the additional daylight.
This past weekend we all had to remember: “Spring forward and fall back” for daylight saving time.
Here, according to an article I spotted online at USAToday.com, are five things that we need to know about the time change this weekend and the ongoing debate on whether to get rid of the practice.
- When do I need to change my clocks?
Officially, the time moves back one hour at 2 a.m. local time Nov. 1; you should reset your clocks before going to bed so you won’t arrive at appointments an hour early.
On the second Sunday in March, move your clocks ahead one hour.
- What effect does the time change have on my body?
The effect depends on a person’s age and work, eating and sleep schedules, according to David Earnest, a professor of neuroscience and experimental therapeutics at Texas A&M University.
“Our internal clocks have to shift, be it only an hour, and the ability to do that varies from individual to individual,” Earnest said. Sleep-wake cycles change as people age, so adults 65 and older may struggle with the time change more than others. “(They) tend to go to bed earlier, wake up in the middle of the night and have sleep interrupted in the middle of the night by frequent waking and difficulty getting back to sleep,” he said. A typical person should be able to adjust to the new time change within a day or two, he said. The key is fighting the urge to take advantage of the extra hour.
“When it falls on the weekend, sometimes people think they get to sleep in an hour later, and they decide to stay up two, three hours later,” he said. “When you celebrate the time change and the extra hour, you overshoot, and irregularity adds to the problem.”
- Which states have ditched the time change?
Arizona and Hawaii are now the only two states that don’t observe daylight saving time. During daylight saving time, parts of Arizona match up with Pacific Time instead of the Mountain time zone that the state is in. U.S. territories Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, American Samoa, Guam and the Northern Marianas also do not observe daylight saving time.
Other states have tried to pass bills that would end daylight saving time and failed. Most recently, the Utah state legislature rejected a bill that would have ended it and another hasn’t made it out of the House Rule committee, KSTU-TV, Salt Lake City, reported.
Indiana was once like Arizona, but in 2005 the state joined most of the rest of the USA in observing daylight saving time. Before that year, the only counties in the state that observed the time change bordered parts of Kentucky and Illinois.
- When was daylight saving time signed into law?
In 1966, President Lyndon Johnson signed the Uniform Time Act into law. The U.S. Department of Transportation is the keeper of daylight saving time.
- Why does it exist?
One argument for daylight saving time is that fewer accidents happen during daylight hours, so extending morning daylight in winter and evening daylight in summer results in a slight reduction in automobile accidents. The idea behind daylight saving time is to take advantage of daylight hours and save energy. According to a 2008 federal Department of Energy study, U.S. electricity use decreased by 0.5% for each day of extended daylight saving time, resulting in a savings of 0.03% for the year as a whole, KING-TV, Seattle, reported.
The savings are small in percentage terms, but in absolute terms, they added up to 1.3 billion kilowatt-hours — enough to power about 122,000 average U.S. homes for a year. These savings come in the summer months of daylight saving time, not the Standard Time months we are about to enter. The time change actually is rooted in an agricultural society, Earnest said. The idea of “extending” daylight was meant to provide more time to work in the fields.
“General consensus is that really most of those things that were used as arguments for having daylight saving time in the past are really not applicable nowadays,” he said. “Every year, the question is: ‘Why are we continuing with this, particularly when in some cases, it is more of a nuisance than benefit?’ ”
(Contributed to USA Today by: Jolie Lee, USA TODAY; KING-TV, Seattle)
Michigan lawmakers say they want to ditch DST
They may not be able to decide on a way to finance road repairs but a couple of Michigan lawmakers say they want to ditch DST. Rick Pluta from Michigan Public Radio reports that two state lawmakers have forged a bipartisan effort to take Michigan off Daylight Saving Time. If they get their way, Sunday would be the final time Michiganders have to re-set their clocks to accommodate the time change.
State Representatives Jeff Irwin, D-Ann Arbor, and Peter Lucido, R-Shelby Township, say the twice-a-year time change is inconvenient, confusing and can even be dangerous to people’s health and safety.
More on this here – http://michiganradio.org/post/lawmakers-want-ditch-daylight-saving-time
Good luck with that, Reps. Irwin and Lucido.
I hope you get at least eight hours of sleep the night before you take the floor when you make your case for changing the law.