I‘m not mentally prepared for winter. This cold snap has reminded me that our days of pullovers are numbered. It’s sad. I went through a phase a couple of years ago when shoveling and pushing snow was ok. That phase is over. Not sure why I thought it was ok, but I was young and stupid. Now, I am old(er) and more mature and I realize everyone should hate winter.
Speaking of being a curmudgeon, this weekend is Halloween. Before I tell you this, I’d like to acknowledge that I am selfish and have learned to embrace this self-love; I’m not disappointed in this character trait at this point. Anyway, I don’t have young children or grandchildren and therefore I find Halloween to be the worst of holidays. I don’t really ask friends to come to my house, so I certainly don’t welcome strangers. I’d like to think people could take a hint by the lack of lights on at my house and the window shades pulled, but that is probably an unreasonable expectation and here we are, at an impasse of selfishness. You want candy, I want my peace. Please pray for me.
While we are complaining, let’s get to next weekend. Daylight saving time ends. This is one of the silliest developments of humans. The same government that we allowed to make decisions during a worldwide pandemic is the same government that decided to “meddle” with the actual keeping of time. It did not work out well. In fact, it should have been a good case study on why we should not let government do much more than buy big missiles, fix the streets, and collect wastewater.
Honestly, this is an epic failure and falls into my category of the human species arrogance. We are so arrogant that we think we can control a virus, global climate, and time. We can’t. The sun rises and sets without any human intervention. It’s all up to the earth and the sun and the axis in no particular order of importance. Time was originally a product of this process, until government decided to get involved.
Actually, that’s a bit of a stretch. Time to us is generally what was referred to as “time keeping.” Archaeologists say that the Babylonians and Egyptians began to measure time some 5,000 + years ago to organize and coordinate communal activities and schedule the shipment of goods and particularly to manage harvests. That seemed to work for a few thousand years until Sir Sandford Fleming developed time zones.
In 1895, time began its descent. George Hudson of New Zealand came up with daylight saving time. Seems George was an entomologist (bug scientist) and he reasoned that this change would give him more after-work hours of sunshine to go bug hunting in the summer. Maybe change your work hours instead of worldwide time, but maybe he was selfish as well.
In 1916 Germany was the first government to implement daylights saving time. A few years later this is the same government that invaded Poland and gave us our 2nd World War.
The United States fiddled with various forms of daylight saving time for 40 years until they found a crisis that was worthy of making the change for good. Congress initiated a trial period of it in 1977 as part of the oil embargo crisis and it has basically been extended and implemented in various fashions since that date; similar to modern day vaccine policy.
Remind you of anything? Remember, two weeks to flatten the curve became a couple of years? Remember how getting the vaccine was going to solve everything and now we are onto boosters and vaccine passports? That is basically how daylight saving time was implemented. Crisis, extension, extension, mandate.
This is how government works, folks. It’s a steady case of “messing” up things they should have stayed out of. So here we are.
We are basically 0-3 as a species on defeating virus, climate, and time. In the words a wise man once shared with me, “if you find yourself in a rut, quit digging,” comes to mind. Or maybe I’m just cranky about the upcoming winter.
(Guy Speckman can be reached at gspeckman@me.com or boarding up his windows for Halloween)