“Timeline? This is no time to talk about time! We don’t have the time!…what was I saying?” (Cmdr. Deanna Troi, STAR TREK FIRST CONTACT)

OK, fine, I guess I’ll put all of my thoughts on Daylight Saving Time here, since there’s a really good chance we’re going to adopt Permanent DST in the United States, which seems to me a terrible idea. This is in no particular order and is not structured in any way.

::  It is simply beyond dispute at this point that from a standpoint of human health, maintaining permanent standard time would be the best option. Circadian rhythms are best reflected by standard time, and doing away with the disruptive effects of twice-annual clock changes would also be a good thing. There is simply no questioning the biology on this.

::  Americans worship a lot of things: cars, guns, the military. We also worship sunlight, and oppositely, we generally do not like the night very much. This is a very odd cultural artifact that leads us to doing things like pushing for permanent Daylight Saving, on the basis that “I want to have a little light when I get off work!”

To that I ask, “Why? For what?”

Taking those times in the image above: my work shift starts at 7:30am and ends at 4:00pm. Now, I’m rarely actually out of work at 4pm; there’s usually a bit of wrap-up time, and quite a few days I have to stick around to do a bit of shopping. So, many days it’s close to 4:30pm by the time I actually depart work. At that point, by this time in the graphic above, there’s 1 hour, 12 minutes left of daylight.

My commute is about 15 minutes. Now, by the time I get home, there’s less than an hour of light. I have to bring in anything I’ve purchased, put it away, grab the mail, let the dogs out, greet The Wife if she’s working from home that day, and then change clothes and shower. By the time all of this is done, the available daylight is down to well under 30 minutes.

And there’s something else: note when all this is taking place.

January.

An extra hour, on the back end of my day when that hour is already taken up by post-work rituals, during the coldest time of the year. And I’m to believe this is a benefit? Give me a break.

::  As a matter of public policy, there is a lot to criticize about time in the United States. I’d say the biggest fish we could fry here wouldn’t even be fixing DST, but fixing time zones. A lot of New England should probably be on Atlantic time. Part of the problem with the discourse here is that we have a geographical situation where on January 1, someone in Portland, ME is watching the sun set at 4:15pm. Someone else in Kalamazoo, MI will watch the sun set at 5:21pm…and both cities, which are nearly a thousand miles apart, are in the same time zone. This is absurd.

::  No, I don’t know how we fix the time zone issue. Smaller time zones, separated by half an hour? Maybe. But I’ve always noticed that people I encounter online who really like Daylight Saving Time and who think keeping it year-round is a great idea are people who live in the eastern reaches of their particular time zone, making sunset earlier for them than most others. I get that concern, really.

::  The strange argument I keep hearing is along the lines of “Now you’d have more daylight to spend with your kids!” and “Now you’ll have an hour to enjoy your day!” Where did we get the idea that you can’t do any of those things if it’s not light out? Where did we get the idea that the only fun and enjoyment we can have in life can only take place in sunlight? Are we all coming home in utter darkness to sit, lonely and dejected, staring at a wall by the light of a single guttering tallow candle?

The one genuine, and kind of convincing, answer I’ve ever received to my eternal question of “What the hell do you all need all this LIGHT for at the end of the day, anyway?” came from a local friend who is also a sports coach for young people. In reply to a version of that question, he simply answered, “Playing baseball.” I really can’t argue that particular point. If the park you play in has no lights, and you want to play a lot of baseball, then yes, later summer light is clearly your friend.

But I keep coming back to my original thought: WHAT IS SO DAMNED AWFUL ABOUT NIGHT AND DARKNESS? Seriously, why do we venerate sunlight and hate the night so much in this country? I will never understand the American fixation on sunshine and light. Is the night not beautiful? Is it not wonderful to watch the world at Golden Hour become the world at Blue Hour and then see the night?

::  In the end, fixing the problems created by DST, and by changing the clocks twice a year, is likely more complex than this one simple bill will achieve, and it’s pretty clear to me that this bill will just make things worse. Sadly, we are not living in a time when American government is particularly oriented toward making nuanced policy changes. To the extent that we are able to address policy at all, our approach seems to often boil down to: “We have to do SOMETHING, and THIS is SOMETHING, so therefore we have to do THIS.”

Over the past few days I’ve seen a bunch of Congress people and Senators posting to social media: “Look what we did! We’re fixing an issue! Yay!” And look, I’m never one to get deep in the weeds of “Why are you thinking about X when Y is so much worse,” but…seriously, this was a priority, but fixing just about any other issue was not.

Anyway, I hope this bill dies and if it doesn’t and it becomes law, well, I reserve the right to point back at this post when a whole lot of the country concludes that this was, and is, a bad idea. Sadly, this being America, it won’t be the first time.

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