Several hundred words about daylight saving time, for instance. I don’t have to write those words, because this is a blog, and I only write what I want. Still, I thought of the following DST-related items:
My maternal grandmother used to complain twice a year about daylight saving time. Her argument was always the same … cows didn’t know the clocks had changed, so DST just screwed up the lives of farmers. As I write this, I realize that for all I know, she never even lived on a farm. She was from Kentucky, but I don’t know what her family did when she was there. And one other thing. Daylight saving time was implemented in the U.S. in 1918. So my grandmother, unlike everyone I know who is still alive, actually lived before we had DST. Lots of us lived without DST, though, since the initial try lasted less than a year, and it wasn’t until 1966 that the Uniform Time Act gave some semblance of organization to daylight saving time. As far as I can recall, California has had DST since before I was born.
I lived in Indiana in 1971-2. A few years ago, Indiana elected to observe DST, but when I lived there, things were confusing in the extreme. First, much of the state did not observe daylight saving time. Much, but not all … there were a couple of areas near big cities in other states (Cincinnati, Louiville) that did use DST. Also, there were two different time zones in Indiana, which was mostly in the Eastern Time Zone … the part of the state near Chicago was on Central Time (I assume so workers who commuted to Chicago wouldn’t change time zones every time they went to work), and they practiced DST.
Finally, there’s the act of changing the clocks. In our house, I’m the one who performs this chore. But in recent years, it barely needs doing. In rooms where there is a cable box, we use the box when we wonder what time it is, and they reset automatically. For the 18 hours a day I spend on the computer, I use its clock … and it resets automatically. I don’t wear a watch anymore … I use my cell phone if I’m out and about and need to know the time, and it resets automatically. In the bedroom, my Internet radio sits at my bedside … and it resets the time automatically. I think when we were first married, it was some odd mark of incipient adulthood when I, rather than my father, reset the clocks. Now, that job is up in the clouds.
And that’s 452 words about daylight saving time.

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