Saving Daylight

So, for those of you whose area has the joy of resetting the clocks twice a year, did you remember to fall back?

Around here, i have to be careful about that. There's noting quite so embarrassing as showing up for church an hour off, either way.

The biggest problem is when to reset them.

If i wait until right before bed, as is recommended, i end up only doing the one in my bedroom, as i'm not a night person and i'm so sleepy in the evening it's too much trouble to do all of them.

If i do it too early, i end up confusing myself and everyone else in the house.

So each time it comes around i wrestle with myself, and i'm not sure why. After all, my most important time piece, my phone, resets itself.

Now there's a non sequitur. Never did i imagine my phone would replace my watch and my alarm clock.

Since that has happened, though, it's got me wondering if and when we will ever drop this madness of resetting the clocks twice a year anyway.

No one has ever been able to logically explain to me why it's so important to keep up this tradition.

There is one scientist, whose name escapes me, who has an interesting idea, though. It's been several years since i read about it, but it really did seem like an interesting way to approach this.

He wanted to reprogram all clocks to be able to incrementally gain an hour over the course of a week, all of them at the same rate, so no one would be off.

Then, every Saturday night, we would set the clock back and get that extra hour, as that's the one change most of us like best.

This way, at the beginning of the week, the sunlight would be earlier in the day, and by the end of the week, when we want to stay out late on Friday and Saturday night, it would be dark early but stay light until later in the evening.

Since it would require a complete change in how clocks keep time, i don't think it will catch on.

It's a shame the original idea of daylight savings ever did, at least to me.


Today is:

Birth of Tiamat -- Ancient Babylonian Calendar (mother of gods, goddess of primeval chaos; date approximate)

Constitution Day -- Dominican Republic; Tajikistan; Tatarstan

Daylight Saving Time ends -- US (Fall Back Day)

Eid al Adha -- Islam (through the 9th)

Finnish Swedish Heritage Day -- Finland

Fish Returning Days begin -- Fairy Calendar (the fairies borrow centuries old fish in sealed crystal boxes from each other, and why they prefer each others or what they do with them, they will not tell)

Green March -- Morocco

Gustavus Adolphus Day -- Sweden

Halfway Point of Autumn

International Day for Preventing the Exploitation of the Environment in War and Armed Conflict

Marooned Without A Compass Day -- internet generated; how's your sense of direction?

National Nachos Day

Saxophone Day

St. Illtyd's Day (Abbot, cousin of King Arthur)

St. Leonard's Day (Patron of prisoners, blacksmiths, porters, horses, locksmiths, coal miners, greengrocers; against robbery)

St. Paul of Constantinople's Day (Eastern Orthodox Church)

Zero Tasking Day -- spend the extra hour gained when turning the clocks back doing nothing, just practice being


Birthdays Today:

Pat Tillman, 1976
Rebecca Romijn, 1972
Ethan Hawke, 1970
Maria Shriver, 1955
Glenn Frey, 1948
Sally Field, 1946
Mike Nichols, 1931
Walter Perry Johnson, 1887
James Naismith, 1861
Ignace Paderewski, 1860
John Philip Sousa, 1854
Adolphe Sax, 1814 (yes, the musician who invented the Saxophone)


Today in History:

Shipwrecked Spanish conquistador Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca becomes the first known European to set foot in Texas, 1528
Spain grants independence to the Dominican Republic, 1844
Scenes of Clerical Life, the first work of fiction by the author later known as George Eliot, is submitted for publication, 1856
Canada celebrates its first official, national Thanksgiving Day, 1879
Mohandas Gandhi is arrested while leading a march of Indian miners in South Africa, 1913
Colonel Jacob Schick patents the first electric razor, 1928
Edwin Armstrong presents his paper "A Method of Reducing Disturbances in Radio Signaling by a System of Frequency Modulation" to the New York section of the Institute of Radio Engineers (hello, FM radio!), 1935
Parker Brothers acquires the forerunner patents for MONOPOLY from Elizabeth Magie, 1935
Plutonium is first produced at the Hanford Atomic Facility, 1944
The United Nations General Assembly passes a resolution condemning South Africa's racist apartheid policies and calls for all UN member states to cease military and economic relations with the nation, 1962
Cuba and the United States formally agree to begin an airlift for Cubans who want to go to the United States, 1965
Green March begins: 300,000 unarmed Moroccans converge on the southern city of Tarfaya and wait for a signal from King Hassan II of Morocco to cross into Western Sahara, 1975
Australians vote to keep the Head of the Commonwealth as their head of state in the Australian republic referendum, 1999