Helio, there. Depending on the time of day you read this and whether you do so on or near the day of publication, there will have been about 25 rotations of the Earth on its axis since an uncommonly aligned U.S. Senate approved making daylight saving time permanent starting in 2023, assuming you're going by the Gregorian calendar, which you probably are, because the majority of the world does, just as the majority of the world uses, you know, the metric system.
There since have been several words spilled on the subject, with many of them expressing rapt joy at the prospect of later light year-round, and many others — including those of this newspaper's Editorial Board, of which in this case I am a member in contretemps — encouraging the U.S. House to be more deliberative than the Senate was (huh!) and consider making standard time permanent instead.
There have been too few arguments for leaving well enough alone.
Despite my inability to approach the topic with complete and dreadful seriousness, I do make my case with the heat of a thousand burning suns. Changing the clocks twice a year gives most of us, but especially those of us in northern latitudes like Minnesota's, the best of all possible worlds. And changing whether we change the clocks will affect all of us.
It's true that many people consider springing ahead and falling back an inconvenience too great to bear. I can see it. I don't manage the clocks in my house so much as make mental conversions for half the year. I also need to correct for each clock's idiosyncrasies. If I really need to know the exact time, I can check my phone, while wistfully remembering the days when you first had to dial a number. (You still can if you really want to, at 202-762-1401.)
We also hear much about our bodies' circadian rhythms being aligned with the patterns of day and night. I suppose most people's are. Mine are not. My body wants to stay up late and sleep late, so my preferred method of timekeeping would involve physically turning back the Earth's rotation — with levers and pulleys or whatever — by two hours every day at sunrise, whenever sunrise is wherever I am.
Of course, I share the planet with the rest of you, so my plan is unworkable — despite the obvious brilliance of the levers-and-pulleys thing — and I must adapt. Therefore, an alarm on my phone shocks me awake each morning at the exact moment past which I could not meet my obligations. Unlike the singer of the Prince-written Bangles song "Manic Monday" who sets the alarm for 6 so she might possibly get to work by 9, I cut it as close as I can. (Helpfully, there are no actual nor perceived children in the house for whose care and feeding I am responsible.)
Having tried various alarms and having found them alarming, I wake at present to a Simple Minds song. No, not that one. Forget about that one. Rather, to one that begins soothingly, with pulsating synths until the 17-second mark, when the drums kick in and scare the wits out of me, after which I can say nothing of wit for 20 minutes or longer.
But you're wondering when I might return to the subject at hand, so let's proceed to the following inquiries:
- If we have permanent standard time in Minnesota, the sun will rise at around 4:30 in the morning in June, with civil twilight at 3:50, and it will set at 8 p.m. I don't know how many people not on the clock are up and active that early in the morning. For sure some. Not me — I just went to bed. But I see a great many people out doing a great many activities (and not just golf, a sport that manages to be both popular and pejorative) during the late summer evenings we currently enjoy. Is the trade-off useful to the majority?
- If we have permanent daylight saving time in Minnesota, the sun won't rise until 8:50 a.m. in December. Most of us will get up in the blueblack cold (poet Robert Hayden's words) as we do now, but more of us will travel to work or school in that same lingering darkness, in order to gain an hour of fading light in the late afternoon. Again, is the trade-off worth it to the majority?
Maybe, but I was a first-grader in Prior Lake in 1974, when we previously ran an experiment with daylight saving time in the dead of winter. And at various points in my life, I've had jobs that required me to be up early. One started at — "well, gosh" is the nice way to put it — 4:30.
I maintain, based on my experiences but without empirical evidence, that darkness in the morning is more disorienting, and thus more dangerous, than darkness in the evening. The cold is colder, too.
Speaking of empiricism, you'll see evidence presented about the physiological effects of time changes. No sense in discounting that, though by way of discounting it I wonder how many of the issues raised could be helped by More Sleep Generally. And let's be realistic: How to manage time is something about which opinions will vary by personal circumstances, rhythms and tastes. The biggest factor in deciding will be whose desires are voiced the loudest and longest. That's why I need to muster so many burning suns to make my case for the status quo. I'm either in the minority or a very somnolent majority.
We're really going for the greatest good for the greatest number of people, which for Minnesotans involves changing the clocks in March and November. The local impact of sticking with one time year-round in the U.S. depends on how far you are from the North Pole and how close you are to the eastern edge of your time zone. Here I would point out that the champion of the Senate bill, Marco Rubio, is from Florida, where the length of day varies by only 3½ hours throughout the year, compared with nearly seven in Minnesota. His bill makes decent sense — for Floridians.
The utilitarian solution to that discrepancy is even more regional variation in local times.
The practical solution is to keep things as they are.
David Banks is the Star Tribune's assistant commentary editor. He is at David.Banks@startribune.com.
