Falling

It's that time again

my friends.

Time to fall back

to standard time.

On Sunday morning,

November 7th,

North America,

Europe, Asia,

parts of Central America

and parts of Africa

will push back their 

clocks one hour.

Daylight Savings Time {DST},

known as Summer Time

in British English, is the

custom of temporarily

moving the clock ahead

one hour in the summertime

so that there is less light

in the mornings and more

in the afternoons.

This controversial system

was first proposed by

New Zealander George

Vernon Hudson in 1895.

Hudson was a shift-worker

whose hobby as a

bug collector was dictated

by the number of sunlight

hours available to him after

work hours.  

Englishman William Willet

independently thought of

DST in 1905 while riding

his horse before breakfast,

when it was light, while many

of his countrymen were still

sleeping, but it was not

adopted by most of Europe

until 1916.  It was adopted

by the United States in 1918.

Benefits of DST include

economics {retailing,

sports and tourism}

 and safety.  The thought is 

that people spend more 

when there is greater evening

daylight and there is thought

to be reduced traffic fatalities 

and violent crime during DST.

Drawbacks of DST include

less working hours for farmers 

whose day laborers have fewer 

hours of prime time sun

and less darkness for 

evening entertainment

venues such as drive-in movies.

Our friends in the Southern

Hemisphere have just

started DST in the last month,

since they are currently 

entering springtime.

Daylight Savings Time

has been wrapped

in controversy since

its inception.

Winston Churchill said

that DST enlarges "the opportunities

 for the pursuit of health and

 happiness among the millions of 

people who live in this country."

Opponent Robertson Davies

argued that DST is "the bony,

 blue-fingered hand of Puritanism, 

eager to push people into bed earlier,

and get them up earlier, to make them 

healthy, wealthy and wise 

in spite of themselves" 

Do you like the ritual

of falling back or 

springing forward?

When my family lived in

Indiana from 1993-1997,

the portion of the state we lived

in didn't follow DST.

I liked that.

Is it better to

put children on

the bus in the dark....

or to have them

alight from it into

darkness?

Thoughts?

{Don't forget

to set your clocks!
2AM USA; 1AM UT}

xx

Suzanne

images:  1,5-7, 9 flickr {click for attribution}

2, 3 Privet and Holly

4 & 8, Google Images

Posted in history , time