Permanent Daylight Savings Time?
Congress may be about to make Daylight Savings Time the permanent time in the US, rather than shifting back and forth seasonally between Standard and DST. The seasonal shifting is annoying to many people, but the change would pit the Morning People against the Night People.
Summer isn’t the problem; it’s winter that creates the issue. Do you want you or your children to get up in the dark to go to work or school – something you may be doing already anyway if your start time is early? Or do you want the depressing experience of night falling long before the afternoon is finished? Your answer matters not only on whether you favor Night or Morning, plus how early work or school starts, but on your latitude and your east-west location in your time zone. The more north you live and the more to the east in your zone, the more extreme your winter/summer sunrise and sunset times.
I live in the north, and I live in the east of a time zone, and let’s just say I’ve never been a Morning Person. Even as a little child – and I mean aged 2 or 3 – I would balk at going to bed for the evening in what I considered the daytime. Luckily, though, because I lived in NYC, school began at 9 AM and I never had to get up for school in the dark until I started junior high.
I’d like to see school begin at 9 AM for everyone. There’s evidence that children, especially teenagers, have trouble with the early start times because they need a lot of sleep. My junior high and high school were overcrowded and we had split sessions at times, and I still remember what it felt like when school began at 7:30 AM. And no one cared that we were going to school in the dark, either.
I’m not at all sure this bill will pass the Senate, so it could all be moot.
I will now quote Robert Louis Stevenson’s poem which I loved as a child, for obvious reasons:
BED IN SUMMER
In winter I get up at night
And dress by yellow candle-light.
In summer, quite the other way,
I have to go to bed by day.I have to go to bed and see
The birds still hopping on the tree,
Or hear the grown-up people’s feet
Still going past me in the street.And does it not seem hard to you,
When all the sky is clear and blue,
And I should like so much to play,
To have to go to bed by day?
And now I’ve updated it for the present dilemma. I only took about ten minutes to do it, so it’s not one of my better efforts. But I couldn’t resist:
Would you prefer the winter dark
In morning to delay the lark?
Or have it be in afternoon
That you can spy the rising moon?Because there’s no way to evade
The shortened days that winter made.
You have to choose your times, and then
In summer find long days again.The Morning People rise with joy
In all seasons, but they annoy
We Night Folk, who would like to sleep
While birds are silent, not a peep.But summer is the season all
Are happy with the late nightfall.
The further north that you reside
The more the daylight does abide.
Maybe better than this bi annual clock change. Would rather permanently standard time. Worse will be in far north winter won’t see sun rise until maybe 8am.
President Nixon tried going to Daylight Saving Time in February (I’m quite sure) during the early-1974 oil crunch, thinking it would lead to less energy consumption.
I never quite bought into the reasoning, but I do remember reports of little schoolchildren being harmed early in the morning due to the darkness.
I would be much happier with year round Standard Time.
I agree with Skip, largely on the grounds that I do not approve of people deceiving themselves. The sun is supposed to be highest at noon, not at 1:00 pm — in the center of the time zone, at least. (Did I just now refute my own argument??)
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Edit: . . . and I agree with SCOTT OLSON.
I’d go with Standard Time.
Daylight Savings Time is for golfers. I was a surfer.
I have nothing to add to anything that I said the last time this came up here. The tl; dr version is that we don’t need Soviet power to redefine noon for everybody:
I’m retired, so I don’t care. I go to sleep when I’m tired and wake up whenever — I don’t even have an alarm clock anymore.
I am a old Boomer, soon to be 80. Didn’t have clocks changing when I was a kid. I survived.
ambisinistral (7:26 pm) said: “I’m retired, so I don’t care. I go to sleep when I’m tired and wake up whenever — I don’t even have an alarm clock anymore.”
I’m retired, too. My bladder doubles as my alarm clock — unfailing!
I wake up predawn regardless of clock time. If it is light enough to see, I’m up. Doesn’t matter if I go to bed @8 or 1am. I never needed an alarm. I made first breakfast today @4:30. Obviously, I get way more sleep in the winter.
I serve my wife breakfast in bed everyday. Sometimes there is a follow-up brunch in summer around 10.
I would prefer permanent standard time, but I will accept permanent +1 hour time. What I hate is the spring and fall changes.
I think I have to correct, you, Neo, however. The bill, if passed, would allow states to opt into permanent daylight time. You’d still be dependent on what your state legislature and governor choose to do. Some states may choose to stay on standard time.
Excellent response to Robert Louis Stevenson, Neo!
People keep claiming we would have different daylight hours in winter with permanent standard time. We wouldn’t. Daylight saving time ends in November and restarts in April. With permanent DST, northern states wouldn’t get daylight till after 8 AM. Sun up on Dec. 21 where I live would be 8:55 AM. But, of course, a politician will always misidentify a problem and choose the worst solution, it just stands to figure.