By the next time we gather here, it’ll be Daylight Saving Time. What used to be a transition barely worthy of a Monday-morning — or Sunday-morning at church — comment now seems to yield a week of whining and, lately, policy re-examination.
After years of this, I’ve come to realize it’s all about where on the time-zone line you live. The three main states I’ve lived — Ohio, Indiana and Michigan — are all on the west-ish part of the Eastern zone, and so I don’t have that early-darkness extra winter sucker punch that…New Yorkers and Chicagoans have to endure. When we went to London for an insanely low package price in December one year, we got a clue that the insanely low price might have had something to do with darkness lowering around 3:30 in the afternoon.
But sorry, year-round DST is not the answer. Who wants to confront winter with a late-rising sun contributing to the misery? A girl in my high school got hit by a car walking to school in 1970-something, the year Congress decided the way to confront the energy crisis was to adopt DST in, like, January.
There are only so many hours in a day, and only so many of them are daylight. Trying to stretch the clock to fit over them is like pulling a too-small T-shirt over a pot belly; pull it down, you’re gonna show too much chest, pull it up then someone’s gonna see your gut. Winter is a prison term, and the only way through it is through it, so: Get through it. Enjoy DST when it arrives and brings those long summer evenings. If you’re going to whine about it, then never take a vacation that takes you across time zones again. Three days, maybe four, and you’ll be adjusted.
Why didn’t anyone tell me Geraldo Rivera had moved to Ohio? When did he do this? And now he’s talking about running for the Senate? (I don’t take that part seriously, but honestly — an Ohioan. I’m amazed.
Oh, here comes the weekend. Warm spell is over, but the next one won’t be forever arriving. Spring, soon. Finally.
Sherri said on March 11, 2021 at 8:36 pm
I hate DST, but I hate switching even more. I would prefer just sticking with standard time. No matter what time you call it, we only get 8 hours of daylight in the winter, and kids are walking to school in the pitch dark here regardless. It’s finally light in the mornings now, and we have to go back to dark mornings again for several weeks.
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David C said on March 11, 2021 at 9:11 pm
Put the states from New York down on Atlantic Time. Move the line for Eastern time to Minnesota down, etc. So everyone’s daylight moves a half hour later. Then leave it alone. There’s a solution everyone would hate. Most people seem to hate springing forward the most but that one is a breeze for me. It’s falling back that’s a killer. My body just doesn’t adjust to that extra hour of darkness. It’s like Nancy said eastern part of the time zone and dark at 4:15 in the afternoon. Our neighbor’s sister lives in Ecuador and says we should retire there. Even Steven all year around sounds sort of good.
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Suzanne said on March 11, 2021 at 9:16 pm
I do love the looong summer evenings with DST. Sitting on the porch and reading until 9:00pm makes me so happy. I do hate resetting all the clocks. And I do hate having to listen to all the people in the fall blaming the early sunset on DST or the people who claim that it takes them months, I mean MONTHS, to adjust to the time change.
I would be ok with staying on regular time all year. Indiana should be on Central time, though, in my opinion. But I have no power…
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jcburns said on March 11, 2021 at 9:37 pm
Geraldo lives in Shaker Heights? I can’t process that as a reality. Geraldo. Cleveland. No.
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Julie Robinson said on March 11, 2021 at 9:53 pm
Yes, Indiana does belong on central time. No one on the east coast cares about the state anyway; let’s go with Chicago.
I’d rather have standard time year round so I can garden before the heat builds. But I’d settle for daylight if it meant not changing twice a year. How do you tell your animals it’s not time to eat because the clock says so?
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Colleen said on March 11, 2021 at 9:54 pm
I love DST. I was happy when Indiana joined most of the rest of the country in observing it. Late summer nights are just the best……
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basset said on March 11, 2021 at 10:04 pm
Late post on one of yesterday’s topics: Sherri’s and Dexter’s stories were indeed powerful and there’s a lot to be learned from them. Again, thanks for sharing.
Time… I remember growing up with “fast time” and “slow time” down in Martin County, and the show times on Terre Haute TV: “Tonight at seven, six in Illinois…”
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Margaret said on March 11, 2021 at 11:37 pm
I want to stay on only one time, preferably standard time. I don’t mind DST, but as far north as I live, it’s light until nearly 10 in the summer. It’s hard to sleep.
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alex said on March 12, 2021 at 4:21 am
I love DST and late summer nights. Having lived in Chicago, I would advise the people of Indiana to be careful what you wish for. Being on the eastern edge of Central time sucks.
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ROGirl said on March 12, 2021 at 5:44 am
I had to walk to school in the dark (and snow and cold) that year of DST. It was also the year after my parents got divorced, so it was pretty terrible all around.
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Deborah said on March 12, 2021 at 6:00 am
I love DST too, and I live on the eastern edge. My grandmother who lived in Iowa used to keep 1 clock out of the many she had on standard time in case someone got confused about the real time. Some of her clocks chimed and they were all a few minutes off.
Doesn’t Eric Clapton live in Cleveland too? Or somewhere in Ohio.
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alex said on March 12, 2021 at 6:50 am
Last I ever saw Geraldo was on Celebrity Apprentice, which I didn’t really watch except when channel flipping. Sucking up to Captain Combover wasn’t a good look for him but evidently he can’t let go of it.
I browsed at fivethirtyeight this morning on my old laptop while my new computer downloaded an excruciatingly long software update. They’re prognosticating about the GOP presidential primary in 2024. They pooh-poohed Nikki Haley and Josh Hawley as too wonky, and Hawley also as too phony. They sorta pooh-poohed Mike Pence as too uncharismatic. They talked up Cruz, pointing out that he’s disliked only by his fellow GOP colleagues, not the GOP electorate who loves them a bomb-thrower. Which brings us to Kristi Noem and Ron DeSantis, bomb-throwers who can beat Cruz in a beauty contest and hold their own with him at bomb-throwing. This is all predicated on the supposition that He-Who won’t be running. Nate Silver didn’t say anything about the odds that he’ll be flat broke and rotting in a prison somewhere but perhaps he knows something we don’t.
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Suzanne said on March 12, 2021 at 7:09 am
We lived in the Chicago area for a few years and yes, winters were awful when it got dark at 4:30 pm or so. Long cold nights. When we visit New York (remember traveling?) it always surprises me how early it gets light out.
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Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on March 12, 2021 at 7:35 am
Clapton’s wife is from the Columbus area, and they lived part of the year in Powell — I once got to exchange a smile, a nod, and my “after you” with him in line at the North Market waiting for doughnuts (good ones, too) — but I haven’t heard of a Clapton sighting for some time. They may be leading a very quiet life (possible) or spending more time in England or Florida and not Ohio (more likely, I’m thinking).
My dad died a year ago today, and I’m definitely experiencing this retrospective week differently than some; I spent these next few weeks aware of the spreading pandemic response, but I now realize how much it was contingent for me on all the other logistics of getting to Texas, getting Mom sorted out and on a plane with my sister, and loading out and driving north a van packed with gear and Dad’s ashes on the passenger seat as my talisman and token against what seemed like possible state line checkpoints. I didn’t start really engaging with “wait, what’s going on with COVID?” until Easter.
And thank you again to the many kind words and supportive messages from last year. They were more help than you might realize! Strange days indeed.
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Deborah said on March 12, 2021 at 8:33 am
Did anyone else out there watch President Biden’s speech last night? I thought it was fine. I would characterize it as a good dad speech, not an authoritarian dad, but a kind, sensitive yet firm dad. He basically said, bad stuff happened, there’s a lot to do to fix it, you need to do your part and chip in, and if you all do we can have parties on July 4th. His delivery was solid. I was impressed.
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basset said on March 12, 2021 at 8:47 am
I was as well; he’s never gonna be a whip up the crowd charismatic speaker, but he made the challenge and the path forward clear, no attacks, no denial.
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LAMary said on March 12, 2021 at 9:06 am
The year Ford moved to DST in January it was on my birthday and I will forever hold a grudge for taking away an hour of my birthday, January 6. I also take it personally that a bunch of assholes decided to stage an insurrection on my birthday. Dizzy Gillespie died on January 6 too. I can’t win.
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JodiP said on March 12, 2021 at 9:24 am
Not really related to anything but COVID: we talked to my 22-year-old niece last night. She’s a licensed practical nurse at a nursing home in northern MN. We asked if she’d been vaccinated yet, and were flabbergasted when she said, “No, I’m not going to do it yet.” After I said “I would f-ing kill for a vaccine!” (Really helpful, I know!) We asked her about it. She’s worried about the safety. She stated she doesn’t think she would get that sick. A co-worker who was vaccinated still tested positive and they had to go back into lockdown. She has read very little about the the vaccines, but at least it’s from Mayo. She had never heard of long COVID, even with young people. And: She had never heard of Dr. Fauci. C’mon! So we spent some time talking about why it would be a good idea. I sent her a link from Mayo on long COVID and explained why her co-worker still tested positive. I validated that the information is complex, and it’s taken me a while to understand most of the nuances.
It makes me wonder what the nursing home admin are doing about educating their staff. I tried to find fun videos supporting vaccines on IG, but just official sites came up plus quite a few anti-vax, COVID-is-a-hoax tags and pages.
She is newly engaged and they are postponing the wedding until 2022 for sfety reasons, so that’s encouraging.
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LAMary said on March 12, 2021 at 9:47 am
That’s pretty depressing, Jodi. I’m not sure if LPNs and LVNs have CEU requirements like RNs do. I hope they do. You’re right that the nursing home should provid Covid training. Unfortunately there are too many nursing home owners, either individuals or corporations, who don’t have a lot of concern about keeping the staff trained.
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Peter said on March 12, 2021 at 9:53 am
Does southern Indiana still do “slow” time?
Some years ago, we stopped at French Lick, and when we checked into the hotel, the clerk told us that they were on slow time. My wife looked around the well worn lobby, checked out the retirees asleep at the bar, and said to the clerk “you can say that again!”
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Icarus said on March 12, 2021 at 9:56 am
I never really cared much about DST until becoming a parent. I recall once in college we got to have an extra hour of something but otherwise, it never mattered. Now I wish we would just pick one or the other.
given all that is happening in our country, I do believe that if Democrats came out against DST, Republicans will come out against it. But if Democrats tried to keep it, Republicans would claim DST is against God or something.
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Mark P said on March 12, 2021 at 10:23 am
JFC. Given all the deaths in senior care facilities you would think the management would require staff to be vaccinated. And how can anyone know so little about the biggest event in history since WWII?
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Deborah said on March 12, 2021 at 10:48 am
This is a very interesting article about how anti-depressants might possibly be helpful in preventing Covid or lessening the effects of it if contracted. It’s an interesting story about how a Dr in France started studying this possibility https://www.inverse.com/mind-body/best-covid-treatment-discovery. LB takes one of the antidepressants listed in the article, so that’s good news to me.
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Deggjr said on March 12, 2021 at 10:54 am
I know some people with dogs who really hate ‘fall back’ and how their dogs act for a week or so. Personally one vote for long summer days.
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Deborah said on March 12, 2021 at 11:07 am
LAMary, in the ecclesiastical world, Jan 6 is Epiphany. It’s also my ex’s birthday.
My husband’s 101 year old mother (she’ll be 102 in April) will possibly be moving to Chicago in a few months. My husband’s younger sister is moving to the Chicago area, she currently lives in Charlotte NC where my MIL is in a retirement home. They don’t want to leave my MIL in Charlotte with no family around. She loves her retirement home, but now that her mind is slipping she may not really know much of the difference. Although she does have lucid days from time to time. We will be happy to have her in this area but it’s been a huge quandary in my husband’s family. My SiL is moving to Hillsdale a suburb of Chicago because her daughter’s husband got transferred here by his employer. My SiL is very close to her daughter, she lives by herself but spends a lot of time with her 3 grandsons and wants to live near them. She has been very tired of living in Charlotte, and is ready to leave. All of my husband’s siblings have been agonizing over this for weeks since we heard about the SiL’s coming move. Everything is up in the air right now.
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Scout said on March 12, 2021 at 11:29 am
One benefit of living in AZ is that we do not participate in the DST madness. No clock changes for us and it’s great.
President Biden’s speech last night was so very refreshing. What a marvel to have a mature, intelligent, compassionate adult in charge again. I’m feeling really hopeful and less depressed now that there is light at the end of the tunnel.
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JodiP said on March 12, 2021 at 11:32 am
MarkP, there are many, many people who do not stay current with world events. Aside from work, this pandemic has not touched her at all. The families still get together, even the grandparents of her fiance and her own gparents who are very frail. It drives me crazy. I won’t asking who she voted for because I could see Trump just becuase she is so uninformed. I think we need to talk to her more often. She seems interested when we talk about things.
We took her to Paris for a HS graduation gift. A young German friend came and stayed with us a couple days–he’d been an exchagnge student in her school. During one dinner, he, my wife and I all talked politics, state of the world, etc. She had absolutely nothing to add. It was remarkable. I was not like that as a kid. In 9th grade, we had an assignment to watch and write about the news and I have been hooked ever since!
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Suzanne said on March 12, 2021 at 11:39 am
JodiP, how could your neice have not heard of Fauci?? I am continually amazed at the ignorance of people.Do they simply not pay attention to anything? What do they spend their time doing? Most are not stupid, but do they simply not pay attention at all? Fauci is everywhere (the man has more energy at his age than I did at 20) on tv, newspapers, radio, SNL skits. HOW does anyone not know who he is?
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LAMary said on March 12, 2021 at 12:11 pm
I know my birthday is epiphany, AKA Three Kings Day. Until this year we went to a local Mexican restaurant on my birthday and I would get a piece of King’s Cake from the kitchen staff and the waiters would sing happy birthday in Spanish, calling me Panchita because most of them didn’t know my name. If I got the piece of cake with the little toy baby in I had to bring a treat for the waiters. I got the baby the last time we were there. I am very sad that the restaurant is no longer open, a victim of Covid.
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alex said on March 12, 2021 at 12:13 pm
Deborah at 23–
Last Sunday on 60 Minutes they talked about that very discovery. In fact, if I were to suddenly find myself ill with COVID and having respiratory issues, I’d ask my doctor to prescribe me Fluvoxamine.
I just read more about the proposed DST legislation and could reconsider. If they leave us with later daylight hours year-round I’d be fine with that, and that’s what’s being proposed.
Indiana used to do what Arizona is doing. I think it was the old petulant “government can’t tell me what to do” attitude that made us quit DST. Then Mitch Daniels made the case that being out of step with all of our neighboring states was costing businesses money and told GOP legislators to pull their heads out of their asses, perhaps the only worthwhile thing he ever did as governor.
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Sherri said on March 12, 2021 at 12:46 pm
When the long summer nights last until 10 pm, they’re too long. But DST or standard, I just want to pick one and stay there! The difference in length of day here between summer and winter is too big to be mitigated by a one hour shift in time, and it’s just a pain.
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Jeff Borden said on March 12, 2021 at 12:53 pm
I’m fine with DST, though in the kitchen alone, there will be five clocks to reset. And I don’t understand those who don’t dig the Central Time Zone. Nightly news at 5:30 p.m. “The Daily Show” at 10 p.m. NFL football at noon. What’s not to like? It’s one of the unexpected things I’ve come to enjoy during my almost 32 years of Chicago living.
Alex, by now the QOP has pretty much nothing left but culture wars and oooga boooga on immigrants and, of course, abortion and guns. They have nothing going on policy. No new ideas. Fiscal responsibility has been rendered a joke as has the party’s embrace of free trade and markets. If the Dems ditch the filibuster and actually make government work again for a majority of citizens, the next presidential election will be very interesting indeed.
I’ve watched in horror as the popularity of Ron Desantis grows despite his shoulder shrugging performance on the coronavirus. And his corruption. Former Illinois Gov. Bruce Rauner –a multi-millionaire asshole who bought the seat and lasted exactly one term of zero accomplishments before decamping to a gated community in the Florida Keys– donated a quarter-million to DeSantis and suddenly the vaccine was available in his millionaire colony. He worries me because Florida gives him a huge stage on which to play and the disgraced slob at Mar-a-Lago loves him. I can’t see someone who governs a state with a few hundred thousand people in it being taken seriously as a presidential candidate, but then, I didn’t think a third-rate reality TV performer would, so who knows?
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LAMary said on March 12, 2021 at 1:00 pm
When I worked in hospitals I had to get the flu shot. Everyone was required to or they had to wear a mask at all times which pre-covid was sort of weird. You see docs and nurses wearing masks on the units but if you’re in accounting or IT it looked strange to wear a mask when no one around you is. I don’t think I ever saw anyone take the no shot mask wearing choice. There were always people who claimed flu shots gave them the flu. I sat across from one. She didn’t believe me that it was a killed virus and that whatever she was feeling after the shot was not the actual flu. My friend the infection preventionist NP was good at convincing her to just get the stupid shot.
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Deborah said on March 12, 2021 at 1:28 pm
Alex, I watched that 60 minutes spot on You Tube on my iPhone, I’d include a link here but I’m on my iPad now and I can’t seem to get the whole segment to come up on it. It’s remarkable that this isn’t front page news, but I guess everyone remembers the Hydroxychlorquine fiasco and doesn’t want to get caught up in something similar. LB doesn’t take the same anti-depressant that’s used in the 60 minutes story, but she takes one that’s listed in the article I linked to up thread that also could be a helpful drug for Covid. I think she tried the one in the show (unspellable) a while ago but she had side effects that made it not helpful for her. She’s had quite a few versions over the many years she’s taken anti-depressants.
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Julie Robinson said on March 12, 2021 at 2:58 pm
These last two years I’ve taken Lexapro to get me through my winter depression, but I’ve stopped in the spring, when the sun makes itself known again. I’ve got 30 or 40 left in the bottle, so maybe I’ll keep taking them until I get both my shots.
It’s also incredible to me that someone like Jodi’s niece could be so unaware as to not even know who Dr. Fauci is, but our group here is way more dialed in than the vast majority of citizens. In my childhood home, dinner conversation started and ended with the news of the day. As far as voting for the Orange Former King, I’d be willing to bet she didn’t vote at all.
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David C said on March 12, 2021 at 3:11 pm
Even God had opinions on DST.
https://www.openbible.info/topics/daylight_saving_time_countries
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beb said on March 12, 2021 at 3:13 pm
Sherri@1 expresses my feeling about time changes. Hate the change, would prefer standard time to DST because that’s closer to the real time. Long evenings on the porch is fine but try to get a child to go to bed when it’s still daylight outside.
When I was a boy in IN the time zone ran straight down the middle of Indiana. St. Joe County where I lives was Central time while Elkhart, just a couple miles away was Eastern. It was a PITA for people living in one county and working in the other. Considering how close Chicago is to the Indiana border it makes sense for Indiana to be on Central time but sense has never mattered for politicians.
LAMary@19 I’m not sure if LPNs and LVNs have CEU requirements like RNs do. — Yes, they do. My wife is an LPD (retired) and had to earn credits every year for it.
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Deborah said on March 12, 2021 at 4:06 pm
Julie, LB takes the generic for Lexapro and it was one on the list in the article I linked to, Escitalopram. She doesn’t take it for depression exactly, she takes it for her neurological condition, hard to explain.
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Dave said on March 12, 2021 at 4:53 pm
21,733,312 is a few more than a few hundred thousand but no matter, I fear how far DeSantis may go, too.
DST, I remember way back when I used to listen to static-laden KYW, later WKYC, out of Cleveland, and that when I discovered that part of Ohio went on DST while my part and most of the state didn’t. I don’t know how long they had been doing that but I’m talking mid-60’s here.
Side note, KYW was a far more progressive AM station than the local rocker, WCOL, and they had a far more entertaining group of jocks, including one who called himself Jerry G, who was a big Beatles fan, at least, he played the role and had gone on tour with them a couple of times. I realize I’m far off topic here but: https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-2013-09-18-ct-jerry-bishop-obit-20130918-story.html
Later, of course, we all got DST but when we moved to Indiana, we found ourselves living on two times for six months out of the year because my employer operated on DST but Indiana did not. Oh, how I hated that.
When living in Fort Wayne, folks would talk about how Indiana should be on Central Time but I always argued that the evenings were dark enough, why make them a hour darker, that would have been so depressing and my wife never did well with dark winters, as some of you here have also revealed.
Now, our fine Florida senators, who do nothing for the state of Florida that I can see, want to make DST permanent for the nation the year around. This is the best these two can do, Rubio with his daily Bible verse and juvenile opinions, and Scott who is just a crook who got away with it. Ugh. I’m thinking that I’m against it just because they’re for it and what someone said about children has a great deal of validity, too, something I had forgotten about until I saw my children struggling with their little ones at time change. Just do away with DST altogether, that would be ok with me.
My son, the anti-vaccer, pays little attention to the news but he’s always up on the latest thing that Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., has posted. It drives me nuts. He has sent us several e-mails, texts, phone calls, to plead with us not to get the vaccine. We don’t bring it up and we didn’t tell him we got the first dose and our second one is scheduled for the 24th. Yippee for us, I wish it were sooner. I so wish I knew exactly what happened to start him down this path, it drives me nuts.
Hard to believe your niece has never heard of Dr. Fauci, JodiP, I believe it but still, has anyone been on the news more than the doctor?
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JodiP said on March 12, 2021 at 5:02 pm
I was just able to make a vaccine appointment through a community effort from a hospital in my area! 10:20 Sunday the J and J gets in my arm! I was crying a little on the phone, but the person couldn’t have been sweeter.
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bb said on March 12, 2021 at 5:10 pm
We Columbus locals owed Clapton’s wife a big thanks. There was a stretch in the mid aughts where he played a concert in town pretty much every year, taking turns between Nationwide Arena and the Schott. One year he double-billed with Steve Winwood, came out to play on “Dear Mr. Fantasy.” Needless to say, great show.
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Deborah said on March 12, 2021 at 5:10 pm
Dave, I don’t know if your son participates in social media but anti-vax stuff is all over it for a certain age bracket especially young people with toddlers and young elementary school kids. They influence and perpetuate each other it’s remarkable how effective it can be in convincing people.
I went to a Robert Kennedy Jr, lecture once, it was about design, he talked a lot about his architect wife who I think if I remember correctly later killed herself. My point is that he came across as trying to sound like the worlds leading authority about design when really he just happens to be a member of an extremely prominent family. His family owned the Merchandise Mart which is the big design Mecca in Chicago, which was where the lecture was. One of his younger brothers managed the MM.
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LAMary said on March 12, 2021 at 5:14 pm
beb, I’ve recruited very few LVNs/LPNs. Tons of RNs and nurse educators. All the hiring I’ve done for subacute, home care, long term care has been for management positions. I know CEU opportunities are much appreciated by RNs and good hospitals make them possible as much they can.
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Jeff Borden said on March 12, 2021 at 5:16 pm
Dave,
I was making reference to Gov. Noem of South Dakota, which has a population of 885,000. She’s a rightwing darling for flouting Covid-45 restrictions.
All,
Bet you wish you had a kickass senator like Tammy Duckworth repping you. When TV dinner trust fund boy Fucker Carlson smeared women in the armed forces, Ms. Duckworth, who lost both legs in combat in Iraq, didn’t mince words. She told the Fox face to fuck off and reminded him that while he was performing on “Dancing with the Stars,” warrior women were battling insurgents and al Queda. Carlson has some real issues with women. Then again, what man on Fox doesn’t?
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Charlie said on March 12, 2021 at 6:23 pm
I’m late to this but I wanted to add that I enjoy waking in the dark and seeing the sun rise. I hate being woken too early by bright sun and I think getting to see the sky lighten and the sun come up is kind of an inspiration for the rest of the day.
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David C said on March 12, 2021 at 6:48 pm
My wife is an anti-vaxxer. I’m sure she has no idea who Dr. Fauci is either. Those groups are master propagandists. It’s really like Q-anon. They get people thinking that they have special knowledge that “most doctors don’t know”. She knows better than to get on me about getting the Covid vaccine. I’m eligible on the 29th and I’m getting it as soon as I can. I don’t like it but it’s her health. If she wants to roll the dice like that there’s nothing much I can do.
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FDChief said on March 12, 2021 at 7:40 pm
I’ve never understood the tsuris about the whole “spring-forward-fall-back” time change thing. What, you never flew over more than a single time zone? Never pulled an all-nighter? You must have led a fucking sheltered life, dearie.
And the point of these clock changes is that humans are a diurnal species and we’re bred to rise with the sun. Prior to industrialization we did “standard-time-to-daylight-time” but we did it a couple of minutes every day, rising with (or just before) the sun and retreating indoors with the sunset. As the day grew longer our workday did, too, and then shortened with the increasing winter nights.
But now that we’re slaves to the clock on the nightstand, resetting it a couple of minutes a day is beyond impractical. So we make the “big” one-hour jump twice a year so “dawn” remains about 6am.
I mean…we had a tangerine-colored semi-sane pathological lying real-estate grifter with his finger on the nuclear button, people. And you’re stressing about a one-hour clock change? Seriously?
Jesus wept.
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Mark P said on March 12, 2021 at 9:17 pm
Sleep habits are nothing to make light of. Humans are not uniformly diurnal. Some stay up late and rise late. Some go to bed early and rise early. But essentially all of us have an internal clock that tells us it’s bedtime, and it screws with us physically to disrupt that routine.
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Dave said on March 12, 2021 at 11:11 pm
Deborah, my son doesn’t participate in most social media. He and his wife dropped out of Facebook several years ago when they had a rift with her brother’s wife. He dropped out of other things, too.
Our other son’s birthday was today, he is 33 today. He told us he’d talked to his brother and his brother told him not to get the vaccine.
Jeff Borden, I saw DeSantis’s name and that’s all I could think about, thinking about the governor of South Dakota didn’t register at all. Which makes me remember our son was talking about moving his family there almost a year ago but, on top of everything else, they’re having marital troubles, which ended the SD talk. Anyway, my apologies, Jeff.
Meanwhile, they were burning masks in Idaho last weekend.
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Dexter Friend said on March 13, 2021 at 1:48 am
Provencal, Ewhurst,UK… LA, and Dublin, Ohio, just north of Columbus, Ohio are places where Eric Clapton has homes or did have homes. I read a story about Clapton in The Dispatch years ago about how he loves Ohio because it reminds him of the bogs and rural areas of England. He was know to pop ’round a bit in a sports car, stopping in shoppes for coffee and chocolates and little things like that. Once he sneaked into a Columbus pro soccer match via a private entrance and a freight elevator and was still spotted and had to leave quickly when fans kept trying to get near his box. When his Ohio bride had their baby in a Dublin hospital, my daughter’s friend was working the floor as a nurse-in-training, and said Clapton’s security detail were placed strategically in the hallways , and Clapton again had to use the freight elevator to avoid disruptions by fans. All the security may seem like a bit much but then years ago George Harrison was stabbed by a lunatic years before cancer took him. George was on his own private grounds and still got stuck.
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Dexter Friend said on March 13, 2021 at 2:08 am
OK, Clapton’s address may indeed be Powell, Ohio…his house is sort of a point of a triangle between Powell and Dublin, but closer a bit to Powell. I have driven in that area many times in the past 25 years, down Route 745 usually, before I switched routes by using Route 33 from Marysville. Clapton’s house is off Harriot Road, but I never tried to go visit him! And I knew he started the alcohol/drug rehab in Antigua, and I have a friend here in town who is a past drummer for a big-time rock-and-roll band, travelling all over the world before alcohol damn-nearly killed him, and he got sober at Crossroads Rehab in Antigua, which is a place funded by Clapton for dependent musicians . My friend said it is quite awesome. And…Clapton, of course, has another home there as well, and I am thinking he has more homes yet that I know nothing of.
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alex said on March 13, 2021 at 7:31 am
Fucking pigs. And I’m not talking about the cops.
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Mark P said on March 13, 2021 at 8:54 am
Poor widdle police officers. Such snowflakes that they can’t control themselves when someone calls them a mean name. Maybe the cities should be cited for not controlling dangerous animals.
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FDChief said on March 13, 2021 at 9:41 am
“But essentially all of us have an internal clock that tells us it’s bedtime, and it screws with us physically to disrupt that routine.”
True dat. And it screws with us physically when we get injured, or as we age, or when we break our favorite chair and have to sit in a different one, or when the Costco is out of our favorite breakfast cereal and we have to eat cornflakes instead.
Yet somehow we adapt and overcome.
It’s not so much that jumping ahead or back an hour doesn’t mess with some people’s heads. I get that. But in recent years the pitch of the griping about it had risen to the level where it’s audible to dogs. That’s the ridiculous thing. The choices are fairly simple; let the clock get way out of sync with the sun, or change the clock.
We’re not uniformly diurnal…but we’re diurnal. We’ve been doing this time change thing since before the paleolithic. In a different way, but that’s our bad luck for being born in a time of mechanical clocks (tho we got a smallpox vaccine out of it, so there’s that…)
Seems like a pretty small thing for such a whole lot of bellyaching.
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Deborah said on March 13, 2021 at 10:22 am
When we were in Finland a while ago the sun was still out after 10pm and fully out again at 4am. I loved it. but I wouldn’t last long there in the winter.
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David C said on March 13, 2021 at 10:48 am
I read someone suggest we just do away with the concept of time zones, all go on GMT, and adjust our own schedules as we see fit. The thought that you step over an imaginary line and suddenly the time changes doesn’t make a lot of sense.
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Heather said on March 13, 2021 at 11:11 am
The Clapton stories are reminding me that Steven Tyler of Aerosmith lives in the town outside Boston where my brother lives. One day my brother was out running and he saw an older woman driving a cool vintage car. He was so focused on the car that it took a few seconds for him to realize the “woman” was actually Tyler.
I don’t really care about Daylight Savings Time, I just wish I could sleep more than five hours a night.
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Jakash said on March 13, 2021 at 11:20 am
“The choices are fairly simple; let the clock get way out of sync with the sun, or change the clock.”
I really don’t have much of an opinion on this topic, but will just note that in Chicago, Solar Noon has been at — ta da! — Noon for the last 4 days. Tomorrow, it will occur at 12:59 p.m.
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Mark P said on March 13, 2021 at 12:03 pm
What’s the difference between complaining about DST and complaining about people who complain about DST?
If you don’t mind DST, or broken chairs, or getting old, then more power to you. I don’t like DST. I don’t make a big deal about it, and I haven’t noticed anyone else making a big deal about it. I don’t see why I can’t talk about it without pissing someone else off.
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basset said on March 13, 2021 at 12:25 pm
I must be moving in the wrong circles here in Nashville, we rarely see anyone famous out in normal life. Or maybe I’m just out of date and don’t recognize the current crop of manufactured country stars.
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Sherri said on March 13, 2021 at 12:33 pm
I’d be fine with switching to GMT, or UTC, but I suspect that would go over about as well as switching to the metric system did.
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David C said on March 13, 2021 at 2:13 pm
We sort of did switch to metric it was just a soft conversion. Customary units are better for every day life anyway. Metric is great for science and engineering but a foot being about as long as a foot is useful in a way that that a meter being one ten millionth of the distance between the North Pole and the Equator by the Paris Meridian isn’t. So since we’re to the moaning about moaning about moaning about DST part of the show maybe it’s time to moan about units of measure.
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Mark P said on March 13, 2021 at 2:37 pm
OK, I’ll bite. I wonder how everyone in the entire world, save only those in Myanmar, Liberia, and the US, manage to figure out how big something is using only that stupid SI meter? It must be maddening going around not knowing how long one’s foot is.
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Sherri said on March 13, 2021 at 3:34 pm
Maybe your foot is close enough to the length of a foot to be useful, but mine is only about 10 inches, so it’s not really a great approximation. And I’m probably equally good at stepping off yards and meters, which is to say, not that great.
Whichever system you use, you learn approximations and shortcuts for frequently used and encountered measurements. Traveling to Canada regularly, I learned that 20 degrees was a reasonable place to put the thermostat (68 degrees), that 65 kph was about 40 mph, and that when I bought gas, I should multiply by 4 to approximate the cost in gallons (gas is sold by the liter there).
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Deborah said on March 13, 2021 at 4:24 pm
I’ve done projects in the UK, Portugal and the Philipines where we had to use metric and for some buildings for the federal govt here. I got really used to it, but it’s been a long time. Occasionally when I order something online the dimensions are listed in CM or MM and then I have to convert to inches because I’ve lost the sense of it.
I’m pretty good at guessing short distances visually, without measuring, I dealt with measurements all the time. When I did print graphics it was all picas and points.
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Mark p said on March 13, 2021 at 4:49 pm
I worked in the defense industry, and hated the stupid customary units that some old programs used. Once you get past things like miles, the units start getting absurd. Slugs? What the hell is a slug?
“ A slug is defined as the mass that is accelerated by 1 ft/s2 when a net force of one pound (lbf) is exerted on it. One slug is a mass equal to 32.1740 lb (14.59390 kg) based on standard gravity, the international foot, and the avoirdupois pound.”
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LAMary said on March 13, 2021 at 5:05 pm
Basset, if you were a fan of the show, “The Office,” the US version, you might remember the character, Packer. He was the awful jerk who used to work in the Scranton office. Well the actor who played him, whose name I don’t know, walks his dog along the LA river and my son, the merch roadie, is now working clearing brush along the river. He sees Packer every day.
The other son lives in Los Feliz with his girlfriend and he sees Rob Cordrry every day. Rob lives across the street. He has a Corvette but also likes to rent exotic cars to drive on the weekend, so there are frequently very expensive cars parked on the street. You’re just not hanging where the cool people are, Basset.
o
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David C said on March 13, 2021 at 5:07 pm
Just ask a Brit or Canadian how tall they are or how much they weigh. They’re going to tell you in feet, inches, and pounds (sometimes kg in Canada, usually not). They both measure their land in acres. Britain measures distances in miles. Converting to metric isn’t a flip the switch process and is expensive. There’s no reason to stop using customary units. It’s what everyone’s comfortable with and there’s no good reason to change. I use both at work every day and it’s not a problem. The only three countries thing is nonsense too according to the NIST.
https://www.nist.gov/blogs/taking-measure/busting-myths-about-metric-system
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Deborah said on March 13, 2021 at 5:19 pm
Took a walk today but didn’t realize this is the weekend before St. Patrick’s day and we made the mistake of walking up Dearborn past Division. Super spreader location central, lots of drunk young people, the vomiting hadn’t started yet, thank goodness. We walked back from Lincoln Park a completely different way.
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Mark P said on March 13, 2021 at 5:23 pm
Customary units are familiar to you. That’s the ONLY advantage to them. There is a good reason to switch to the world standard, and every company that wants to sell internationally can tell you why. I think people are smart enough to figure out SI units if they had to. We should have switched decades ago, but Americans are too backward to do it. Yes, I know, we officially “switched” decades ago, but most people don’t use SI consciously.
And you ought to actually read the link you give.
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Jim said on March 13, 2021 at 5:45 pm
David Koeschner played Todd Packer (and the weather guy in Ron Burgundy). Another one of those always working (nearly 200 credits listed on IMDB) actors.
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susan said on March 13, 2021 at 6:40 pm
Remember the Mars orbiter that was lost because one team measured in metric and the other in “English”?
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LAMary said on March 13, 2021 at 7:18 pm
I’m watching Mean Girls and I thought the other famous thing both sons were involved with, John Marshall High School, was used for the exteriors so i googled. No mention of Mean Girls but it was used in Grosse Pointe Blank, so there you go. It was in lots of movies and rock videos and commericals too. But I thought the hostess would appreciate that it was called Pointes High School in Grosse Pointe Blank.
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Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on March 13, 2021 at 9:06 pm
If you want a scale for measurement, you have to bring it yourself sometimes.
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basset said on March 13, 2021 at 9:38 pm
Afraid you’re right, LAMary, I am not even adjacent to a cool kid. Never seen The Office and have no idea who this Cordrry is.
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LAMary said on March 13, 2021 at 10:28 pm
from wikipedia:
Robert William Corddry is an American actor and comedian. He is known for his work as a correspondent on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and for his starring role in the film Hot Tub Time Machine. He is the creator and star of Adult Swim’s Childrens Hospital and has been awarded four Primetime Emmy Awards.
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Dexter Friend said on March 14, 2021 at 1:11 am
On common rural roads, the speed limits are mostly 55mph. I always liked the dual reading speedometers with kmh and mph, as I focussed on 100 kmh which is 62 mph, and I would set the cruise control there. The last few cars I have bought no longer have kmh. Maybe foreign brands do?
Liv Tyler was interviewed a few years ago on radio. She said being a teenager in the Tyler household was maddening, as Dad stole all her tops to wear onstage. She was serious.
In my time I have seen various famous people, athletes and politicians, entertainment folks. During this past pandemic year I have seen not only no famous people, I have barely seen any of my family. I am very glad we have the vaccine now. Masks work, but I watched a few college tournament basketball games Saturday and the fans that were privileged to be allowed in showcased the way most young people and some oldsters wear masks, which is under their chins or maybe barely covering a lip. So the vaccine has to work with fucking idiots spraying snot and spit around.
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Deborah said on March 14, 2021 at 3:37 am
On our walk yesterday we saw a lot of people wearing their masks dick-nose style. It’s after 1am here in Chicago and I can hear St. Patrick’s day revelers hooting and hollering outside. I’m not fond of this weekend in Chicago.
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Deborah said on March 14, 2021 at 4:02 am
I just watched it go from 1:59 to 3:00am on my phone. Plus today is Pi day.
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David C said on March 14, 2021 at 7:14 am
I’ve used mostly metric in all my working life and exclusively metric for the past 14 years. So I know both systems very well. The US is converting, industry has mostly converted, and will continue to convert. I have no doubt that the power of electric cars will be given in kW, not horsepower. We change as paradigms change. I haven’t been to Canada in about ten years but last time I was there everyone I spoke to about distance used miles. I know body measurements are still in customary units. Look on Realtor.ca. All the measurements are feet and acres. You can put up signs in metric and change all the packaging but you can’t make people use units they don’t want to use. The US for all its many faults knows this. People use them because they’re human centered and relatable. That’s why I believe and will continue to believe customary units are better for everyday life.
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Deborah said on March 14, 2021 at 8:45 am
When we stayed in the south of France there was a scale in our bathroom. Looking at your weight in Ks is a much more satisfying number. At the hospital where I had my eye surgeries, I had to be weighed in each time, the digital scale was set to Ks, not sure why there.
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Suzanne said on March 14, 2021 at 10:07 am
Today is Pi Day and I do not know if I will have time to bake a pie.
This makes me sad. And hungry.
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alex said on March 14, 2021 at 10:27 am
First time I drove in Canada I didn’t have a speedometer with kph on it. I just winged it by driving the same speed as other traffic. Since then my vehicles have had speedometers with both. What surprises me is that Canada has such slow freeway speeds relative to the U.S. and people for the most part seem to observe them. It’s not as bad as the double nickel of yore but not much better.
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Heather said on March 14, 2021 at 11:53 am
Remembering St. Patrick’s Day last year in Chicago–I was in a neighborhood (Wicker Park) with a lot of bars, running an errand. The bars were packed and I remember thinking, “This doesn’t seem good.” Sorry to hear not much has changed.
Was chatting with my neighbor and she said she’s not going to a bar or restaurant until next year. I think I’ll be venturing out this summer after my vax (first shot in less than 10 days!!) as long as the rates stay down. First trip I’m taking will be to New Orleans.
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David C said on March 14, 2021 at 12:02 pm
If I remember right the speed limit was 110kph so it’s less than 2mph slower than the typical 70mph here. I found the drivers on the highway from Sarnia to London to keep pretty close to the speed limit. The Detroit to London highway moved along quicker. The highway from London to Toronto, especially from Hamilton to Toronto, was as crazy fast as the Tri-State.
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Deborah said on March 14, 2021 at 3:30 pm
I had to pick up some items at Whole Foods so I bought a half of a key lime pie, my favorite. I didn’t want to make a whole pie because then we’d have to eat a whole pie.
I’ve been reading about the kidnapping and murder of Sarah Everard in London. Lots of women out there commenting now about their fear of men when walking alone at night. I will say that obviously throughout my life I’ve felt this. Strangely though I’ve felt much more comfortable in Chicago than I do in Santa Fe. I don’t do it that often now, but I did walk home from work at night for many years from the loop area to our place a mile and a half north. It was always well lit and highly populated, well, most of the time well populated. Occasionally I’d have to work fairly late and it would be less populated but never scary. In Santa Fe however, walking from a store or whatever after dark, I find I feel unsafe. Sometimes LB and I will be walking together and I want to run home. I worry if I know LB is walking somewhere in the winter after dark in Santa Fe by herself. She carries mace but it’s scary. The residential streets have poor lighting and there aren’t many people out and about. It’s creepy.
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Little Bird said on March 14, 2021 at 4:28 pm
For the record, I no longer walk alone at night at all. I walk with a cane because my hip is in constant pain and it makes me even more vulnerable to any kind of attack. I carry mace whenever I walk anywhere.
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Dexter Friend said on March 15, 2021 at 12:51 am
Times must have changed in the many years since I drove to Cape Breton, Nova Scotia. It was 100 kmh on the roadways. The freeways were one roadway, no dividers, with 3 lanes, the center lane for passing only, and it was very smooth driving that way. Almost every gas station was an Irving.
The 401 nowadays from Toronto to London is allegedly the busiest freeway in the world. I mean, look at this: https://tinyurl.com/yf8euwb6
Little Bird, I have using canes for years now, and now I use 2 canes and a rollator. I have been to 4 orthos and several medical doctors about my hip and they always find reasons why I am not a candidate for hip replacement, so I live with it. The pain actually subsided as the years rolled by, and now my arthritic back is worse than the hip joint. Good luck and may a cure for your hip pain be found. I know, for sure, how bad it feels. Best wishes.
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alex said on March 15, 2021 at 5:35 am
I recall seeing 100 kph as the max last time I was in Canada a little less than two years ago.
Kind of a shock to the system to be up at what was formerly 4:00 am. And to go from working outside in shirtsleeves yesterday to freezing rain and sleet, which they’re promising at around noon.
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Suzanne said on March 15, 2021 at 8:23 am
Yesterday, sunny & warm. Today, barely above freezing and terribly windy.
Beware the ides of March indeed.
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basset said on March 15, 2021 at 8:55 am
Isn’t the 401 the scene for the tow-truck reality show on the Weather Channel… big wreckers hauling smashed trucks out of the ditch? Pretty interesting, actually , at least till it gets repetitive.
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