I”m trying my best to stay awake as I write this. No, it isn”t late at night; it”s the middle of the afternoon on Friday; but I”m so sleepy. Every year when we are forced to “spring forward” an hour for Daylight Savings Time (DST), my biorhythms are thrown out-of-kilter for a couple of weeks.
I normally go to bed around midnight and get up, usually before the alarm goes off, at 6 a.m. But, when we make the switch to DST I automatically awake at 5 a.m. until my body finally adjusts to the change. I don”t want to sound like I”m whining, but what the heck, I feel like I”ve paid enough dues, and taxes to have the right. And, I”m certain that many of you feel the same as I do.
We”ve been changing to DST for many years. The Uniform Time Act of 1966 made the annual change official. Legally, the act really doesn”t force anyone to observe DST. All it said was that if DST was going to be observed, it was going to be uniformly. Some places and people have decided not to observe DST at all. Arizona and Hawaii don”t have to deal with it. My wife”s grandmother, who lived her entire life on a farm in Kansas, refused to make the change and I”m sure there are many others like her. Most of us have to make the change because if we didn”t we would be out of step with everyone else.
I guess we have Benjamin Franklin to thank for DST. He was one of the first to propose the change. In 1784 he wrote a piece called “An Economical Project for Diminishing the Cost of Light.” Prior to 1966, America did officially adopt DST once before. It was done in 1918 as a way to conserve resources during World War II.
Historically, DST has been sold to public with a one-two punch sales approach. We have always been told that it helps us conserve energy and then there is the wonderful fact that we have more daylight to enjoy during the nicest months of the year. Some researchers have tried to prove that DST reduces lives lost to fatal traffic accidents. From what I can tell, that seems to be debatable.
Actually, even the energy savings factor has been questioned, too. There are those who say that there is a wash in energy usage because of the need to use more in the early morning and because of the need to use more air conditioning earlier in the day.
In a March 12 article on the Web site “Walletpop,” author Aaron Crowe formulized that the average American would save $11.90 per year due to DST. He was quick to also point out that the savings would be quickly devoured by additional air conditioner use.
If it wasn”t for the fact that I do like the extra daylight hours in the spring and summer to enjoy outdoor activities I would be very quick to say that I would love nothing more than to see a grassroots movement develop to abolish DST once and for all. I suppose my loss of sleep for a couple of weeks every spring is a small price to pay to be able to still go for a bike ride, hike or even play nine holes after work on a summer day.
Gary Dickson is the editor and publisher of the Record-Bee. Call him at 263-5636, ext. 24. E-mail him at gdickson@record-bee.com.
