Well, gang … it looks as though we might have permanent Daylight Saving Time in our immediate future, as Congress appears set to send a DST law to Donald Trump’s desk for his signature.
I’ve written on this matter before. Truth be told, I don’t have a particularly strong preference, but were you to ask me and demand an answer, I guess I would say that if we’re going to have one measure of time each day, I prefer Daylight Saving Time over Standard Time.
DST long has held up as a more environmentally conscious method for humankind to keep track of time. It’s generally invoked to save energy because we keep the lights turned off later in the day than we would under Standard Time.
I hear the arguments against DST, such as it delays the rising of the sun; it means children have to wait in the dark for school buses. Maybe I should be more sensitive to that issue, given that I have one school-age child in my immediate family. I also know that my granddaughter’s parents also are highly sensitive to the issue of her safety, so I don’t believe they would ever expose her to undue risk.
As for the inconvenience so often expressed by those who bitch about the time change every spring and autumn, that is a non-starter for me. I learned to live with the change in my body clock that occurs when we switch from DST to Standard time and vice versa. The change is not a big deal, man … you know?
So, I suppose that Congress is going to mandate that our afternoon daylight hours will extend a bit longer throughout the year.
My prediction? We’ll get used to it.