Posted on 07/29/2005 3:57:42 PM PDT by BenLurkin
LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP) As Congress voted to extend daylight-saving time, some parents whose children wait for school buses in the morning darkness doubted whether an extra month of daylight is such a bright idea.
"I don't think that it's safe," said Nikki McIntosh of Little Rock, whose children Myah, 12, and Alex, 11, occasionally ride a bus to school.
Congress on Friday gave final approval to an energy bill that includes a four-week expansion of daylight-saving time in an effort to save energy. If President Bush signs the bill, most Americans would see their clocks "spring forward" the second Sunday of March and "fall back" the first Sunday of November, beginning in 2007.
Daylight-saving time now starts on the first Sunday of April and ends the last Sunday of October.
According to Congress' thinking, if Americans can wait an hour to turn on their lights at night, the nation should be able to conserve at least some energy.
"It won't be a huge savings, but it'll offset fuel costs. Every little bit helps," said Sue Clothier, 40, of Gansevoort, N.Y.
The extra hours will also give her more time to garden and spend outdoors with her three dogs, she said. "It's like extending the summer for four weeks," she said.
But the tradeoff for parents with school-age children is an extra 20 weekdays of sending pupils off to class in the dark and having them stay up later at night.
Lynnette Ryan of Colorado Springs, Colo., is already anticipating the battles with her children, now aged 1 and 5.
"It's going to be hard on them because they'll be going to day care in the dark. Then they come home, and it's going to be light in the evening -- and they're not going to want to go to bed," said Ryan, visiting her mother Friday in Morgantown, W.Va.
The change, though, would be beneficial for some farmers who would get an extra hour of daylight for a longer portion of the year.
Al Davis, who raises cattle in southwestern Cherry County, Neb., said the new daylight-saving plan will be helpful for his operation on the eastern side of the Mountain time zone.
"It gets dark here at 4 p.m. on the darkest day of the year," Davis said. "So this will be advantageous to us."
Jan Koch, who with her husband milks 250 cows and farms 500 acres near De Forest in southern Wisconsin, was mostly disgusted with Congress, but not for any effect the change would have on her farm.
"If that is the best Congress can come up with for an energy idea, we are in trouble," she said. "They should be able to come up with something better than that to save energy."
Matt Hand, 29, of Manhattan, said that even a few minutes more of sunshine would be welcomed in the fields where he sometimes plays frisbee after work -- even in the chill of autumn.
"It's not the temperature that stops us. It's when you can't see anymore," he said, resting by the edge of Central Park with his bicycle.
Others though, said the change would just add to the list of things to worry about.
"Why screw with my calendar year? I have such a busy life," said Jesse Jette of Albany, N.Y. "This is just one more thing to remember."
The idea of daylight saving time originated with Benjamin Franklin. President Reagan last extended it in 1986. I happen to like those guys.
Heh heh. You ain't seen nothin' yet. (Those were apostrophes, by the way.)
I was pretty close, one of the northernmost cities in Iceland, there is an island there that is inside the artic circle. I tried to go to Tromso, Norway once, a few hundred miles N of the circle, but the flights were full and I was standby.
Nam Vet (holding in his Groucho Marx comment)
No, it's a real problem in the spring and the early fall. Getting the younger ones to bed on school nights is tough to do when it looks like they should still be allowed up. When my daughter first heard about this, she said, "Don't any of these people have children?!!" I can tell you she is not happy about it and I'm sure there are mothers all across the country saying the same thing.
All 20 minutes? You party animal! LOL
The members of Congress pushing this change don't impress me as a "Reagan" or a "Franklin".
Sorry
Good plan. Pers-kon-ally, I don't care that much, but I do like a longer evening time since we like to go boating at 9pm when the sun is just setting on Lake James in NC.
Yes, the latest Chickadee is due in the first half of February, and I take a shower every day, and often wear perfume :-).
(And thanks for the restraint, that Groucho line gets old ... Der Prinz has the option of a celibate life any time he wants!)
Doesn't it on some of the Indian Reservations, though?
It's not a big deal but you will have to manually change the clock on your computer or it would be wrong for half the year.
Watching your mother-in-law drive off a cliff in your brand new Caddie!
Exactly ... especially when you have 3 or 4 kids in a room, south-facing, they think they should stay up half the night.
Isn't it part of the big Energy bill that just passed?
That was what the newsblurb said last night, but I was too busy yakking on my cell phone, steering my car, and trying to avoid a bicyclist to be sure.
There you go bringing religion into it again. I'm smelling ozone.
""and the rest of us will be relieved of the burden of readjusting our bodies twice a year.""
would consider flying from Chicago to New York a burden?
By Mary Jo Palumbo
Saturday, April 2, 2005 - Updated: 08:33 AM EST http://theedge.bostonherald.com/lifeNews/view.bg?articleid=76159
Whose idea was it to start messing with the clocks?
And why move them forward in the spring, when what we really need is more daylight in the winter?
At 2 a.m. tomorrow, clocks across the nation move forward an hour.
Whose bright idea was this?
Politicians and businessmen, ministers and sports fans have debated the merits of this time change for a century.
In ``Spring Forward: the Annual Madness of Daylight Saving Time,'' Cambridge author Michael Downing explores the myths and misconceptions - and just plain confusion - that have characterized the annual adjustment of clocks in the past century.
Here are a couple of longstanding myths Downing is eager to debunk:
Myth One: The concept for Daylight Saving Time started with farmers who wanted more daylight to work the land.
Wrongo. When the first daylight saving plans were proposed, farmers wanted nothing to do with it.
One Missouri farmer dubbed it ``the Daylight Robbing Law'' because it stole the morning light needed to harvest grains and pick fruit, according to the book.
Myth Two: It's called Daylight Savings Time.
``Here's the deal,'' said Downing, ``This is just one more thing Americans are confused about. We confuse (Daylight Saving Time) with the idea of a savings account, as if there really is a way to preserve an hour of time.''
If the farmers didn't support the time change, who did?
``The early supporters of daylight saving were the department stores,'' said Downing, who teaches creative writing at Tufts University. ``They understood that an extra hour of light after work meant that people were more apt to buy retail goods.''
The other big-time player in the push to spring ahead was Major League Baseball.
``(Daylight Saving Time) gave working people and school children an opportunity to see the games because there was an extra hour of afternoon light,'' said Downing.
``The extra hour of light made it possible to finish more tie games. The first year of Daylight Saving (in 1918), the number of tie games went down from 22 to five.''
Fortunately, most VCRs are on their way to the Smithsonian....and judging by the Techie Threads here, most computers get dumped after a year or so anyhow.
(I must be doing something wrong....I bought this HP "Big Boy" over five years ago, and it's been trouble free and still has close to 90 percent capacity available.)
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