Daylight Saving Time

Here it is. The first calendrical harbinger of spring: Daylight Saving Time. A bit early this year. Though we have to plod through a few more weeks of darkened mornings just when we were getting used to rising to the gentle rays of dawn, we will now come home at the end of the day and still have time to play and garden and run outside. (Okay, it may just be me, but in the wintertime, come 7:30 pm, with dinner behind me, three hours into night’s darkness and the dishes out of sight, I am beginning to wonder just how early can I go to bed without feeling odd, old, boring and useless.)

So, if all DST did was to trick my body into thinking there are more hours in the productive day, dayyenu!. That would be good enough. How wonderful to come home and imagine that there are hours yet to bedtime and the end of day.

Which is good, because that may be all DST is good for. I went on line to see exactly what we were saving with this magical shift of the clock. How much energy; how much money; how many lives; etc.Truth be told, it looks like the answer is not much. Best estimates are that we save perhaps 1% of our electrical consumption - which is something, but much smaller than I imagined. And the price may be high. One study I read said that the number of pedestrian deaths (people hit by cars) the week after DST is 2-3 times as high as the week before. Seems like drivers are not making this transition easily.

Surely we should look again at this leap of time that most of America undergoes twice a year. But if we can prepare ourselves to avoid accidental tragedies, and if we can at least not use more energy making this transition that we would without it, then we can truly celebrate the spiritual and practical benefits of feeling like we have two days in the time span of one. That must be why summer always feels as long as all the rest of year combined.