THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, October 30, 1994 TAG: 9410270199
SECTION: CAROLINA COAST PAGE: 03 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: Ford Reid
LENGTH: Medium: 60 lines
Now that I have finally gotten back the hour that was stolen from me last April, I feel a lot better. It is always good to get back to the time that nature intended.
Daylight saving time is, of course, a ridiculous misnomer. No daylight is saved, it is simply moved around.
They probably ought to call it daylight borrowing time, which is closer to the truth, or daylight stealing time, which is right on the money.
An hour of daylight is borrowed from the morning and put in the evening. It is daylight that the evening never repays. A loan not repaid is as good as theft.
I am a morning person. That has not always been so. In my youth, I preferred any part of the day to the morning. Except, of course, for that part of the morning that comes just after midnight. I loved that part. It was the morning after daylight that I could do without, or at least sleep straight through.
But things change. We get older, for sure, and, with a little luck, perhaps a bit wiser. The night no longer offers me the magic that it once did. Now, the magic comes in the morning, in the still first light of the day when the world begins to stir.
I suppose the theory of daylight stealing time is that an hour of the sun oughtn't to be wasted on farmers, fishermen and a few nutty people who like to get up at an ungodly hour just to see that nothing is going on. Besides, the reasoning goes, who is going to notice other than the aforementioned collection of strange ones?
So they put the daylight into the night, presumably so that the yuppies can get in an extra round of golf after slaving all day to make another million.
``Time will take care of itself,'' Willie Nelson sang in a slightly different context, ``so just leave time alone.''
But they won't leave time alone. If daylight time is here to stay, and unfortunately that appears to be the case, it ought at least to be confined to the summer.
A U.S. senator from Kentucky used to file a bill in every Congress that would have limited daylight time to the three months between Memorial Day and Labor Day.
The bill got nowhere, partly because it was at about that time that the ever-wise federal government decided that year-round daylight time would save energy.
Apparently, one of the brighter folks in Washington eventually figured out that it takes no less electricity to burn a light bulb at 7 a.m. than it does at 7 p.m. and that idea was dropped.
I suppose I ought to be grateful that as of today we are back on course for another six months. But that is not enough. I want my morning light back. All of it. All of the time.
Because that is impossible, I will settle for this: Call it what it really is.
Six months of sanity, then it's back to daylight stealing time. by CNB