Perpetual Ruminations

Saturday

Not quite so late tonight, but late none the less. It's actually about nine o'clock in the evening here in South Dakota, on the east side of the state, but my clocks all read about ten, since we have to make the time switch to daylight savings time tonight.

I don't really understand why we continue to do this, since it doesn't save any time at all. We still get the same twenty four hours in each day, and we still only get the same number of hours of sunshine. All that we do is change the time we have to enjoy the sunshine. How that's suppose to save us an hour of daylight, I don't know. I guess I never actually investigated the whole thing, but I know it was originally set up for an agricultural society. Of course, the guy who came up with this hair-brained idea wasn't a farmer anyway, so he wouldn't have a clue how things work.

Here in our area, we have a lot of farms, some small, some not so small. Many of the farms are dairy farms, and they milk the cows twice a day, just like back in Ben's day. And having worked in a dairy, on the milk receiving end, I know how important it is for the trucks to make their runs on time. They have to get the milk tanks on the farms empty in time for the morning milking and the evening milking. If they don't, the farmer cannot milk his cows on time, and it causes a lot of problems. See, The farmer milks at the same time every day. Let's say he milks at five in the morning and five at night. As long as he holds to this schedule, the cows are happy, production is up, and everything goes great. But if he messes with the schedule, the cows are not happy and will make milking difficult, production drops, quality and milk fat drop, and the cows can actually get infections and have health problems from it.

So, here's our farmer milking the cows at five in the morning and five in the afternoon. He does this day in and day out, like -- well like clock work. He get's up every morning at three-thirty, and turns in at eight every night. Now, here comes Ben with his daylight savings time. He figures he can give the farmer another hour of daylight to get all his work done by simply turning the clock one hour ahead. So, now the farmer gets up at four-thirty and milks his cows at six in the morning and at six at night. He has to readjust everything for the time difference, because the cows don't adjust to daylight savings time.

Only, when he milked at five, he would be done by six, and able to be back in the house by seven to get kids ready for school. Now, he is not back in by seven, because the kids, school, everything is set to daylight savings time but the cows are still on standard time and changing the milking schedule will only cost him in the end, and come fall, he would only have to do it all over again.

Of course, he goes to bed at nine now, since he gets up at four-thirty, and of course his body clock is already in tune with these times, because they are the same times he was getting up and going to bed before the change. Well, technically they are the same time, just the clock reads different. Only the rest of his family is adjusting to the reading on the clock, and now the entire household is out of sync.

So, how did this help him out? What did he gain? for that matter, what do any of us gain? From a business view, it is a costly adjustment to go through every year. From a personal view, it is difficult to adjust to the change and causes fatigue and difficulty for a lot of people. For professionals, it can create problems. All around, it serves no purpose except negative ones. We are creatures of habit and routine, and do well with a nice schedule. But daylight savings time only alters our schedule and upsets our routine. As for the daylight, I lose an hours worth of it every morning and gain an hour at night.

Since I work very early, it means I have more of my day in the dark and less of it in the light. Yes, it will cost me daylight. How you ask. Simple mathematics; see I get up at three in the morning and am at work by five. Right now, it's getting light around six or a little after, and soon it would be dawn shortly after five in the morning. So, with the time change, I will have an hour more dark in the morning now. Also, since I get up so early, I try and go to bed around eight. Right now, it's dark already by then, but soon enough it will be light for another hour. Only with the time change, it will be two more hours of light after I am in bed sleeping. So, I get another hour of dark in the morning and don't get to enjoy the two hours of light at the end of the day. No savings there, unless I switch over to about five or six hours of sleep a night.

So, what's the purpose? Why do we go through this every spring and every fall? It's like cutting  a board off an inch too short for the job, so you cut an inch off the top to add to the bottom thinking it will make the board longer. Nope, just went through a whole lot of effort to end up with the exact same thing.