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| What time is it, anyhow? Photo by Virginia Bergman |
Several years ago, I arrived at church an hour late one Sunday morning because I’d forgotten about daylight savings time.
Setting our clocks back and hour each fall and then forward an hour every spring has never made any sense to me, even though I grew up in rural America – country folks are said to benefit from the time changes more than others.
Consequently, I’m very appreciative of Howard Mansfield’s witty and informative March 10th op-ed in the NY Times on this topic titled Does Anyone Really Know What Time It Is?
Mansfield writes:
NOT long ago, clocks were thought to be dangerous. Folklore had it that two of them ticking in the same room could bring “sure death.” It’s easy to see how this belief arose. The clocks were almost certain to disagree, and in the space between two chimings of one hour, uncertainty crept in; the machines’ authority was undermined. We don’t like to be reminded that clock time is a convenient fiction.
Daylight saving time, which begins on Sunday, is unsettling in the same way. Winding the clock forward in March and back in November is like biannually changing the measure of an inch.
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