A small minority

Monday is always Monday but *this* Monday happened to be the Monday after our annual switch to daylight savings time. Everybody except me was kvetching at our daily stand-up this morning. Well, I may have been kvetching but I was not kvetching about DST. I know I am in a small minority of people who like the change to and from standard to daylight savings time.

Instead, I told a story. You know the one. Back when I was a kid I had to walk 8 miles to and from school through big snowdrifts and it was uphill both ways.

Okay, that wasn’t the story I told, although schlepping to school in Sault Ste. Siberia in the winter could be a slodge. We didn’t *close* the schools in those days. If the weather was bad, the kids that got bused in from the country missed school that day. All of us town kids walked to school as usual. No buses. Two feet of snow? Glare ice? Keep on truckin’.

We’ll talk some other day about what it was like to walk to school when the temperature (and I DO NOT mean the wind chill) was 32 below zero in a miniskirt with nylon stockings and a cute but not-warm fake leopard fur coat and some sort of silly hat. I did get a good laugh today when I told my colleagues that when I was a teenager, my appearance was more important to me than warmth.

Today let’s talk about the year that some politician decided it would be a good idea to change the entire yooperland over to the Central Time Zone. That equals year-round DST, which is what I THINK people are discussing in various states now. If you’ve ever looked at a map of Michigan – I mean a map that shows BOTH peninsulas, not all maps do – you might be able to see that the *upper* peninsula (aka the yooperland) extends waaaaay west. There are parts of the western UP that *are* in the Central Zone. That makes sense. Sault Ste. Siberia (look up the map) is waaaaaaaay over in the eastern UP, more or less directly north of Detroit.

My main memory of living through the winter of Central Time Zone was that the sun did not rise until sometime after *9* AM. Like maybe 9:20 or so? Fortunately, that experiment got scrapped after that year. Our politicians made a good decision for once. Some of the far western yooperland counties used Central Time before and after the experiment, as they should.

Why do I like switching time? I like the “midnight” sun in the summer. I like the early dark of winter evenings. I actually like the switch! I don’t think I can put that into words. I know that people struggle with SAD and that the time change is hard for kids and dogs, etc. to adjust to. Been there, done that. I allowed myself to sleep a little later than usual on Sunday but I was okay with getting up on time this morning and enjoyed the return of darkness to my morning walk. To me it is calming to be outside in the dark.

To sum it all up, I love the change of seasons and the rhythm of changing light and dark at either end of the day, even when it happens abruptly. I hope that people who want to toy with these settings think through all of the possible unintended consequences before taking action.

P.S. My cousin Pooh sent me this magnet that she picked up in Key West a while back. KW (Kayak Woman) and tie-dye. Thanks!

3 Responses to “A small minority”

  1. Margaret Says:

    I love the change of seasons, but not changing all my clocks. You already know that because I whine every year. School gets cancelled here if there is even the threat of snow. We are wimps, even in our AWD and 4 wheel drive. Most of us have little experience driving in the snow/ice. Better for us to stay off the roads!

  2. Tonya G Watkins Says:

    I especially like THIS time change. I LOVE having extended daylight into the evenings. When I was working, losing that hour did hurt a bit, but only for a day or two. I’ve always enjoyed the payoff. And ESPECIALLY being retired, I see no good reason to fret about it either way!

  3. Pooh Says:

    You’re Welcome, KW!