Paging Phoenix.

If we have any Arizonans among the vast and teeming NN.C readership, could they answer this question: Are people as insane on the subject of Daylight Saving Time there as they are in Indiana?

The Hoosier state’s new governor, Mitch Daniels, wants to lead the state, kicking and screaming, into the bright new day of DST. And I do mean kicking and screaming;

Daniels keeps saying that no one wants to do business in or locate a business in Indiana because the state is not on daylight time. I know a farmer who will sell you a load of road apples for a buck apiece, too. Wake up and smell the profit margin, Mitch buddy. What does Indiana have to offer to CEOs who are used to a certain style of life? Zip, zilch, nada, nothing. Indiana is not a cultural mecca and never will be, and a big part of drawing a business to an area is what an area has to offer other than tax relief benefits.

Or this calm, well-reasoned argument:

I spent 10 years in New Jersey, where clocks were changed twice a year with the rest of the country. More than just the clocks get changed. The body has to adjust to a new sleep cycle every time the clocks are moved backward and forward. I remember being tired for two weeks after every time change. I was either falling asleep on the couch at 9 p.m. and waking up too early, or lying awake at night trying to fall asleep and still feeling exhausted when the alarm went off in the morning. I came to dread the semi-annual time change because of the sleep deprivation that occurred. Daylight-saving time is unnatural and hard on one�s sleep cycle, and for that reason, I am definitely against daylight-saving time.

But I don’t want to wreck all your fun. Go and cavort among the Hoosiers.

Posted at 8:34 am in Uncategorized |
 

24 responses to “Paging Phoenix.”

  1. CJ said on February 23, 2005 at 8:43 am

    Jesus Christ! You’re out of Indiana. Move on!

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  2. Connie said on February 23, 2005 at 9:15 am

    Gosh gee whiz Nancy. Now that you’re gone to my great home state you are bashing my adopted state! I had lunch with my state legislator last week in Indy and he told me constituent calls were running 3 to 1 against daylight savings time. I personally miss it, I often sit on the deck reading on summer evenings and am always surprised when the light is gone is gone so early.

    But you know the real reason Indiana doesn’t have DST? Because cows can’t tell time.

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  3. Paul said on February 23, 2005 at 9:26 am

    Aaaarghh. Of course we don’t have cultural amenities in Indiana, because the low-taxers won’t let us establish museums or symphonies or art theatres–and god help the person who proposes improving the universities….

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  4. Dave said on February 23, 2005 at 9:52 am

    You think CJ wrote one of those letters to the editor?

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  5. Nance said on February 23, 2005 at 10:01 am

    No, Dave, CJ is the designated buttboy of a crazy man who has spent the last decade-plus hating me. His name — the buttboy, not the crazy man — is Christopher Something, but of course he’s too chicken to tell us. I usually delete him — I figure, if he’s going to tell me to move on, he has to move on too — but what the hell, let’s leave him up.

    Someone I know once wrote to CJ’s boss, telling him that if he doesn’t get professional help, he’s going to end up in a mental hospital, painting pictures of me on the wall with his own feces. I think that’s pretty much what he’s been doing.

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  6. CJ said on February 23, 2005 at 10:35 am

    While my “boss” may hate you, I do not.

    I think you’re a pretty damn good writer who is wasting your time with a state and city that couldn’t care less.

    Christopher Jay (!)

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  7. alex said on February 23, 2005 at 11:08 am

    Hey, Buttboy, I cared about Nancy’s writing when I was out of this state and I still do now that I’m in it. She’s my home page, matter of fact. No matter what she writes about, she has me hooked.

    Now, for DST. Yeah, the sleep deprivation thing was a royal pain. But if you wanna make lemons out of lemonade, it really is a good time to change your smoke and CO detector batteries, for which I used to write public service announcements in Illinois on behalf a company that sold the stuff.

    I’m all for it, actually. I think Indiana’s a red state because people here don’t get to stay up late enough to watch the shows that laugh at us. In fact, I think it’s a conservative conspiracy to keep people from getting hooked on Letterman, Leno, Ferguson or that flaming liberal Ted Koppel who dares to question the Emperor’s apparent absence of clothing.

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  8. Connie said on February 23, 2005 at 12:13 pm

    In other exciting issues being dealt with by the Indiana legislature, one very important bill would allow chiropractors to treat animals. Gotta get your priorities straight I guess.

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  9. Nance said on February 23, 2005 at 12:15 pm

    Speaking of persisting at something beyond all reason, in the face of an audience that couldn’t care less, well, that’s pretty much the Mediawatch story in a nutshell, isn’t it?

    But don’t let me stop you. I’m sure Rich’s aging heart still flutters when he gets Melissa Long on the phone, when Kevin Leininger whispers a secret or two in his ear, and especially when he can dust off a word like “quidnunc” and feel all erudite ‘n’ stuff.

    Meanwhile, at the house on Kings Crossing, the hangers-on play rock-paper-scissors over who has to prepare the dinner tray tonight. It’s not the blender work that bums them out so much as the outfit he wants them to wear.

    DISCLAIMER: Of course we are kidding. Of course we have no inside knowledge of the Mediawatch empire, including whether Rich makes Christopher or the rest of the guys do little chores for him that may or may not include wearing special costumes. We also have no direct knowledge that Rich, Christopher, Wesley et al are even the sort of shrieky queens we have depicted them as being. We only offer this in the sense of fun and “criticism” that led Mediawatch, for years, to refer to me as “menopausal,” “ugly” and “fat.”

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  10. Dorothy said on February 23, 2005 at 12:35 pm

    Am I the only one whose head is spinning now? Guess I’m hopelessly out of the loop.

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  11. Emily said on February 23, 2005 at 1:08 pm

    RE moving on – Indiana makes it difficult. Now that I no longer live in Fort Wayne I can’t help but maintain a morbid fascination with its weirdness and, yes, frequent dumbness.

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  12. Barry said on February 23, 2005 at 1:27 pm

    Re: DST in Indiana

    I’m not crazy about the idea, “if it’s not broken, don’t fix it” and all that. I’ve worked with businesses across state lines in some form or fashion for 10 years or so, and DST/non-DST isn’t really the big deal that chamber of commerce people would have you believe it is. Every six months you’re aware that you’re in the office an hour earlier or later than certain locations. Big deal. “Enlightened” people on the coasts will ALWAYS mock Hoosiers anyway, simply because “cosmopolitans” always make fun of those in the Unknown Lands (where dragons be). So let’s not change to DST simply to prove to the Coasties that we’re really not so dumb after all, ’cause they’re still gonna think we’re risible dumb asses.

    Re: Mediawatch

    I don’t know who the guy is, or who appointed him Ft. Wayne’s media watch dog, but he cannot write. He’s always using large words in very awkward ways, leading me to believe that he pulls them out of a thesaurus rather than from his mind. He’s obviously got serious issues, and I hope, Nancy, you don’t ever spend 30 seconds worrying about him. YOU are an excellent writer, he’s not, end of story.

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  13. Colleen said on February 23, 2005 at 1:29 pm

    So the big groups against DST in IN are retired people and farmers. Um. What two groups have the LEAST amount of worry about punching a clock, in whatever time zone? They can call it eleventy seven o’clock for all it matters.

    By NOT changing, we effectively DO change, at least relative to the rest of the world. But I guess that doesn’t matter if you never want to deal with anyone outside state lines…..

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  14. mary said on February 23, 2005 at 1:38 pm

    Dorothy, you are not alone. I’m baffled as well.

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  15. Mindy said on February 23, 2005 at 4:16 pm

    I wasted my formative years in an Indiana county that observed DST and bordered one that didn’t. The school system was a blend of both cultures, and the people who had trouble adjusting were the ones who couldn’t find their own asses using both hands anyway. “Fast time” and “slow time” was just part of the landscape for the rest of us.

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  16. Joe said on February 23, 2005 at 9:47 pm

    I work third shift 11pm-7am I would love for it to stay light in the summer till 10pm. It starts to get light at 4am in the summer who needs that?

    I also lived in the western part of the state for a year and lived on chicago time,what a waste, dark at 4:15 in the afternoon.

    No wonder we drank.

    Joe

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  17. Dave said on February 23, 2005 at 11:08 pm

    I’ve missed DST every since I moved to Indiana in 1986, every summer evening, and the arguments I see against it make me laugh, like many other things I’ve had make me laugh since I’ve lived here. Truly can be an amazingly backward place at times, I’m sorry but that’s what I think.

    As for Mediawatch, I’ve never understood anything about what made that guy do what he does, where’s the satisfaction, other than his hatred of Nancy, Sandy Thompson, and others. If he hates it here so bad, why doesn’t he leave? Go to one of those other places he talks of, oh, that’s right, you’re in Michigan now so he can’t go there. What kind of tortured life is that?

    After all, I DO think there’s some backward things about Indiana but there’s some things I like, too, and it’s not torturing for me to live here. Having grown up in Central Ohio, I really don’t have any desire to go back to the even- more-spread-out Columbus area, well to the east of where Nancy comes from. So if Rich and CJ are reading this, I’m sure they’re assuming I’m just another of the ignorant cretins that populate Allen County, anyway.

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  18. Mo said on February 24, 2005 at 4:05 pm

    If you want to live in Indiana and still have DST, just move to Hammond or Evansville or Michigan City. Oh, right, that would imply Indiana is more than farms. Heaven forbid.

    What Mitch Daniels doesn’t realize is that companies don’t want to move to Indiana because it has idiots like Mitch Daniels in it.

    (Signed:

    Born and bred Region Rat)

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  19. Domoni said on February 24, 2005 at 6:37 pm

    Mo, don’t forget the south central part of the state. Those of us across the river from Louisville swing with DST.

    Personally I think the state should not only adopt DST, but move into the Atlantic Time Zone. Wouldn’t those alleged companies love how early Hoosiers came to work? That would show those EDT slackers.

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  20. jeff said on February 25, 2005 at 9:09 am

    Doesn’t anyone remember that Indiana used to be in the Central Time Zone?

    When did IN and Michigan change to the Eastern Time Zone?

    I think they changed because they thought that being on the same time as NY would make them seem to be more sophisticated.

    The UP is still in Central.

    And IN is still in the 18th Century!

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  21. Jim said on February 25, 2005 at 10:49 am

    The annoying part about DST in IN is that y’all seem to allow/disallow it on a block-by-block basis. One can never tell what time it is without calling to find out.

    AZ has it right – the whole state does it the same way.

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  22. harry near indy said on February 25, 2005 at 4:58 pm

    this is a big reason why you can’t keep college grads in indiana.

    i am not proud of these idiots.

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  23. Connie said on February 25, 2005 at 7:12 pm

    Jim, figure it out like this: By county, if it is likely to be considered a suburb of Louisville or Cincinnati, the county follows that city: EDT. If the county is a suburb of Chicago, the county follows that city: Central and CDT. That leaves Evansville down in that far southwest corner, also Central and CDT. Just hope you don’t have to figure out what someone is talking about when they ask “slow time or fast time?”

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  24. Jerry McCrae said on July 8, 2005 at 10:55 pm

    Where oh where has mediawatch gone? No longer around and a password needed for http://mediawatch.homestead.com/. Where oh where has Rich gone? Please Nancy what have you done with him?

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