September Sunrise

When we awoke this morning at the “usual time” it was pitchy black outside – the “big dark” as a four-year old of my acquaintance once called it.  That’s because it wasn’t the usual time at all, at least not by the clock.  Our day was starting an hour late because, like most people in the western hemisphere, we set our clocks ahead as in “Spring Forward, Fall Back.”  So, five ayem was really four ayem and we rolled over for another hour…  So much for this Sunday’s time schedule!

As a morning person, I really dislike Daylight Savings Time.  I don’t care about it being lighter at the end of the day.  I’m done by five o’clock anyway.  That’s when I hit the wall and nothing else of a productive nature is going to happen.  Dinner, a little TV, and off to bed.  I don’t need it to be light until the late night hours.  It was bad enough when DST began the last of April but the beginning of March is ridiculous by my thinking.

December Sunrise

It’s amazing to me that Benjamin Franklin with his “early to bed, early to rise” advice was the first one the propose this DST system.  He wrote about it in 1784 during his stay in Paris and published an essay titled “An Economical Project for Diminishing the Cost of Light.”  He proposed to economize the use of candles by rising earlier to make use of the morning sunlight.  Obviously, the proposal fell under his “pennywise and pound foolish” adage rather than that other one.

It wasn’t until World War I, though, that DST was seriously introduced and adopted as a way to save fuel for the war effort.  We are still using the “saving energy” excuse these days – never mind that businesses no longer close at five or six o’clock and we’ve extended shopping hours well into nighttime.  A gazillion brightly lit malls must more than make up for any “savings” that might have been made during those old nine-to-five work days.

February Sunrise

With eight months of DST now, it is fast becoming the new normal.  Every year we talk about changing the world clock permanently but I doubt that there will ever be agreement on such a proposal.  For the sake of all us morning people, I hope not.  Of course, in this instance, the ‘morning people’ concept is predicated upon the belief that those of us who feel at our best before noon are responding to our genetically driven circadian rhythm and response to sunlight.  Maybe.  Maybe not.

I’ve also heard that the gift (some say “curse”) of waking up at dawn’s crack and feeling bright-eyed-and-bushy-tailed has something to do with how you metabolize food.  Whatever the reason, I’m pretty sure it’s not genetic in my case.  I come from a long line of night owls and, although that trait passed me by, my son has it in full measure.  If it weren’t for Facebook and email these days, we’d be hard pressed to communicate…  On the other hand, Osa and the chickens are silent on the entire issue.  (Come to think of it, that’s probably not quite true.  Osa is seldom silent.)