Spring forward

 I turned the clock forward this morning not long after the Little Cat did her usual meowing, myurping "OMFG I AM SO HUNGRY!!!" dance on my pillow, the sixty-fourth time in my life that change has occurred.

I've always lived with the time change, one hour in the spring, another in the fall, part of the cycle of the year like the solstices and equinoxes. I don't really even think about it, or, at least I hadn't until recently. It was just something you did twice a year.

But apparently the time change is now a Thing. Twice a year now I run across messages from friends and acquaintances complaining about the time change as if it was the biannual equivalent of flying across eleven time zones. The news feed always seems to cough up a piece about how many people die or are maimed each year by the time shift.

This is all relatively recent; as short a time as a decade ago I don't recall seeing this bellyaching about the clock or, if I did, it was treated like a sort of flat-Earth crankism.

Now?

The Oregon state Senate passed a bill requiring the state to remain on daylight savings time year-round.

We're not alone; apparently something like a fifth of the U.S. states have one of these "permanent DST" bills as state law. Doesn't matter if the feds don't concur, mind, you. But there's federal legislation, too, so who knows?

Here's the weird part about all this.

Humans have been doing this time-change thing since before the Paleolithic. It's call "sunrise", and it's because humans are predominantly diurnal and our activity is largely confined to the daylight hours. Mostly because our night vision sucks, but for whatever the reasons we tend to become active in the light and retreat into somnolence in the dark.

But that change occurs two or three minutes a day over the course of the year. To try and do that now that we're slaves to the mechanical clock? 

Unpossible.

So, instead, we do it all in a jump twice a year, so that "sunrise" will match roughly with the old liturgical hour of Lauds and "six a.m." with Prime and Vespers with "the lighting of the lamps".

I'm not sure whether it's me, or just peculiarity of fussing about something that is a practical accommodation to human behavior that predates the relentless ticking of the clocks, that seems so weird.

Vous pouvez me demander ce que vous voulez, sauf le temps

Every year at this time I get to read through a round of e-mails and/or Facebook posts about the change from Standard to Daylight time.

DST is, admittedly, a sort an oddity. My understanding is that it was one of those wartime expedients first cooked up in 1918 and repeated in the Forties to reduce the use of things like coal and electricity. The mystery to me is how it generated a constituency to be continued after 1945.

I admit to liking the long sunny evenings under DST while not minding the dark mornings. But there seems to be enough bitching and moaning every year on this weekend that I can't imagine that mere preference was enough. And it seems that the U.S. largely went off DST in the late Forties and returned in the mid-Sixties...why? The Wiki entry on "Daylight saving time" says that:

"(i)n the mid-1980s, Clorox (parent of Kingsford Charcoal) and 7-Eleven provided the primary funding for the Daylight Saving Time Coalition behind the 1987 extension to US DST, and both Idaho senators voted for it based on the premise that during DST fast-food restaurants sell more French fries, which are made from Idaho potatoes."

Clorox? French fries? WTF? Clorox and Idaho solons managed to push DST through the national legislature? Seriously?

My thought would be that if everybody who wants DST to be a thing wanted more people to want DST to be a thing they'd push to make it happen they'd push for it to happen Friday afternoon at 4pm instead of in the pre-dawn of a Sunday morning. Push beer-thirty up one hour? Where do I sign up for that..?

From The Past Is Never Really Past...a short history of Trump Steaks^TM. Best quote from the link?

"Martha Stewart, however, had perhaps the most unique response to Trump Steaks. In an interview with Joan Rivers, the lifestyle mogul and former Apprentice contestant replied “Too bad!” when Rivers said that the steaks weren’t actually from a slaughtered Donald Trump."

Sorry, but there's not enough Trump Vodka to wash that down...

Speaking of nasty water-like things, here's an interesting version of DST; again from the Wiki entry:

"Roman water clocks had different scales for different months of the year: at Rome's latitude the third hour from sunrise, hora tertia, started by modern standards at 09:02 solar time and lasted 44 minutes at the winter solstice, but at the summer solstice it started at 06:58 and lasted 75 minutes."

There are other applications I'd be okay with time working that way, too. Hmmm...

The hip seems to be rehabbing decently. I've been trying to get up and walk on it per the orthopod's direction, and it moves fairly well with relatively minimal discomfort. It's still a little unsteady but I've ditched the walker for a cane. If I work it too hard as I did yesterday it's achy enough that falling asleep is difficult without 5mg of hillbilly heroin.

The photos that I've included with this post are from the day out that Mojo, Missy and I enjoyed yesterday. A couple of rounds at Trackers Portland indoor archery range let our Inner Mongol out for a stroll, followed by a trip south to Aurora, where the Colony museum and the local handspinners were having a field day that included everything crafy, from dropspinning and weaving through adorable furry bunnies. We all enjoyed the hell out of it, especially crafty little Miss who acquired her own backloom and has been weaving away on her doorknob ever since...

Right now I'm killing time waiting for friends to come over for the Timbers match this afternoon. Mojo and Missy are out at Crystal Springs feeding the ducks, and The Boy and his pal Michael are playing some sort of hack-n-slash videogame.

Just another Daylight Sunday.