Column
By: Jana Mitcham
No such thing as perfect timing
I like it.
My mother doesn’t.
I like that there’s daylight when I leave work.
She doesn’t like the change in sleep patterns.
“So soon?” she asks. “It seems like I just got used to the other time.”
Now that I think about it, I wonder about convincing a toddler that it really is bedtime, even though it’s still light outside. Daylight Saving Time means nothing to her.
My sister swears by some sort of dark covering over the windows.
But my daughter has a pretty defined sense of what’s “right” and I imagine her indignation – “That’s not right! That’s not right!”
Whether we are ready or not, Daylight Saving Time is coming, and it is “so soon.” In the past, we’ve usually had about six months of Standard Time and six months of Daylight Saving Time, but that changed in 2007, with the DST span stretching out. This year, we’ll have March 9 to November 2 or “spring forward” time, almost eight months of “Summer Time.”
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From the very beginning of time (at least as we know it), there have been disagreements about what to do about it.
For years, people relied on the sun and sundials to tell the time. When clocks were invented, a city might have one standard clock, but each city might have a slightly different time.
In the United States, the increase in railroad activity in the late 1880s necessitated a “Standard Time,” one upon which everyone could agree.
By the time of World War I, DST made an appearance because of the need to conserve fuel for electric power. An act was approved in 1918 to “preserve daylight and provide standard time for the United States.” That DST was followed for seven months in 1918 and 1919 and then was dropped because it was unpopular. The decision to have DST or not became a state issue.
During WWII, DST was reinstated — it was called “War Time” – and was year-round for three years to conserve fuel and energy.
But from 1945 to 1966, time was a free-for-all. What time was it? No one could really agree because DST or no DST was a local option. After years of confusion, DST became federal law again in 1966. The most recent change in time came with the passage of the Energy Policy Act of 2005 which — effective last year — extended the DST to eight months. The idea is that we save energy in the evenings if it is light longer.
Still there are protests, with some saying they use more energy in the long summer evenings, not less, while others say sleep issues related to the time change cause more accidents and less productivity.
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There are some interesting DST-related anecdotes listed on a website provided as a public service by the Institute for Dynamic Educational Advancement (IDEA) (http://webexhibits.org/daylightsaving/k.html).
•One man dodged the Vietnam draft by using a DST loophole.
•A 1999 bombing in Israel was thwarted because of DST. The bomb went off an hour earlier than expected.
•The new DST allows longer light at Halloween, thus reducing the number of children’s pedestrian deaths.
•Twins born on a DST day can technically have different birthdays.
•During the years of non-uniform time, passengers on one bus route between Ohio and West Virginia had to change their watches seven times in 35 miles.
Column
By: Sherri Stephens
Things aren’t always what they seem
The other night I got out of bed around 2 a.m. to get some water. As I walked down the hallway, I felt something brush up against the side of my face. With another next step I felt it again, this time on my forehead. I screamed and ran to the nearest light switch.
After waking up everyone in the house, I quickly saw what I thought was trying to reach out to get me — curling ribbon! One of the children had received a bouquet of balloons earlier in the day. Although they had been left it in the den, a ceiling fan in a nearby room had coaxed the balloons down the hallway, where one by one they were staggered against the ceiling.
The long strings dangling from above had brushed up against my face as I passed by each one. Needless to say, it was a creepy feeling, especially when unexpected during the middle of the night!
When I was a youngster, I remember playing a game at school in which you had to put on a blindfold and reach down into a brown paper bag and pull out an object. Without looking, just by touch you had to guess what the item was.
There were objects such as seashells, feathers, rocks and leaves in the bag. However, one time when we were playing the game, someone in class had the nifty idea of sneaking a lizard into the bag. Guess who was first in line to play that day? After all of the excitement passed, the whole class ended up begging to take turns petting the terrified little creature.
Many times when the unexpected takes us by surprise, we don’t quite know just how to respond. Many times we overreact and later realize that it wasn’t as bad as it seemed, after all.
Like with the balloons. Instead of staying cool, I panicked and woke the whole family up with my jumping and screaming. If I had only held my breath and quickly tiptoed to the light switch, I would have probably been laughing when realizing that it was only a loosely tied bouquet of pretty balloons that had caused the scare. This was just another reminder that we as humans are guilty of quickly jumping to conclusions, when many times things aren’t always what they seem.
Sherri Stephens is a contributing columnist for The Banks County News. She may be contacted at charmbug5@hotmail.com.
