Last night I was talking to my sister Cheri, who lives in North Carolina. We were having a little supper together at the end of the day even though we live many hundreds of miles apart. She commented that it was already dark, and I said, wait, wait, I have a lot of light yet! and, after a moment of incredulous silence, she said, well, yes, Gerry, but I live quite a way east of you. I tried to argue her into the notion that she lives a long way south of me and therefore has longer days, which should compensate . . . . Cheri waited patiently while I rambled on, tangling myself up in circular reasoning before finding my way back to common sense.
As you might imagine, the semiannual timeshift flummoxes me every time. Wait, wait, I say. You cannot “save” daylight! There is just so much of it, and that is all you are going to get, no matter what you do to the clocks! And every year we go ahead and do it anyway. We have just done it, for better or worse.
Here is my favorite overlook in blessed sunshine on the late afternoon of Monday, March 3 (6:11pm).
If we had that much sunshine today I could go take a similar photo at 7:11pm. On the other hand, when I got up this morning, it was still dark when the clocks said it should be light. (Not my clocks, of course, because I forgot to set them ahead when I went to bed last night, but other, more provident people’s clocks.) No daylight saved.
On the third hand, no matter what anyone does with the clocks, Mama Nature will provide me with a little bit more light every day, right up until midsummer, when she will start thieving it away again. A person who lives this far north notices these things.
I also notice blue skies, and spend a lot of time gazing at them in a sort of rapture. This is how I happened to catch the moon hanging around in the branches of the beech tree.
I don’t keep good track of the moon’s travels, which is why I’m always pleasantly surprised when it pops in for a daytime visit like that. It looks suspiciously snowy, but I’m fairly certain that the lake effect does not extend that far.
Time. In a way, it’s all we have, and generally we want more of it, especially as it runs out. And yet . . . we waste it. In fact, I can hear a lot of you saying I am wasting time right now horsing around reading this blog post. Ah well. It could be worse. You could be watching Fox News.
Torch Lake Views 
shoreacres
March 10, 2014
If I’ve bored you with this before, please forgive me, but I rarely have occasion to trot out one of my favorite bits of random knowledge. Part of our trouble with time is linguistic. The Greeks, being wise, have two words for time. One is “chronos” – that’s pretty obvious. It’s clock time, measurable time, regular tick-tock time. It’s the basis for our “chronology” and “chronometer.”
But their other word, “kairos”, refers to time as event. Biblical phrases like “in the fullness of time” use “kairos”, not chronos. A poetic line like “spring arrives in its own time” would use “kairos”.
So. “What time is my dentist appointment?” would be purely “chronos”. “It was the best of times…” would be “kairos.” “Does anyone know what time it is?” Well, it depends on whether you’re checking your chronometer or your kairometer. It could be nine o’clock. Then again, it might be time for spring!
Chicago got it!
Gerry
March 10, 2014
I forget everything but I don’t think I would have forgotten that bit of random knowledge, especially as it’s very useful knowledge. Now I understand that I’ve been consulting my trusty kairometer and ignoring my chronometer! That explains a lot about my life.
Martha
March 10, 2014
Golly. I think I’d be visiting that sister in NC a whole lot.
We are melting, melting, melting here. The hour change is just to get people out spending money earlier and longer.
Gerry
March 10, 2014
I have had some very good visits to North Carolina, but I must tell you this winter has been one for the books there, too. All over the South people have been astounded by Mama Nature’s bad mood.
Dunno about the underlying philosophy of the Daylight Savings crew. Here in Michigan, at the very western edge of a time zone, we grouse that the shift causes us to have to send our children to school in the dark in the morning and then have to try to get them to bed in broad daylight during the summer. It’s all nuts. But like most things I find incomprehensibly dense, it just is and there’s not a whole lot I can do about it . . . except live by my kairometer instead of my chronometer! I love my new word.
Martha J
March 10, 2014
I am always thrown off a little with the time change as well, and think that since the days are getting longer anyway, it seems a bit cheap to chalk up the extra time to ‘daylight savings’. How strange it is this year that we are in Arizona for a month, where they do not change the clocks – unless you live on one of the reservations, where they do change. How confusing must that be? As for the moon, it reminded me of a time a few years ago (I can’t remember what time of year) when I saw a beautiful ‘moon set’ in the morning over the bay, looking west. I had never seen this and wished I had a camera to record it.
Gerry
March 10, 2014
You remind me of two things – when I lived in Indiana a long, long time ago, the state was divided into two time zones, and if I recall correctly (can such things be?) only one of those shifted between daylight and standard. Talk about confusion. But I liked it.
Second – One fine March dawn I saw the full moon set over the Bay just as the sun rose over the drumlins. It shimmers in my memory as one of the very loveliest visions of my life, and I’ve been trying to recapture it ever since. (For one attempt, see Moonset at dawn.)
P.j. grath
March 10, 2014
Have you heard the show on NPR where three guys talk about a topic from the perspective (one to each guy) of the 18th, 19th, and 20th century? Yesterday they were talking about time, as we went for a winter (still) drive under a (disappointingly) grey sky. One guy talked about humans “owning” time, another about time “owning” us (I don’t remember which said which), and I sputtered that they were both wrong, because time is NOT A THING. Clearly, they have never read Proust, let alone Bergson. Does a fish own water, or water the fish?
Oh, see what you’ve made me do, Gerry? Go and start THINKING again! Time to get out under that blue sky while we’ve got it —–
Gerry
March 10, 2014
I heard bits of that show when I was out and about on my rounds and I was fascinated. Next time I’m at broadband I hope I can find a podcast of it.
Is that what we’re doing, swimming in time? Or fishing in it? Or . . . being it? No wonder I have such a stormy relationship with my chronometer.
Nannette
March 11, 2014
You have touched on one of my pet peeves – Daylight Savings Time. One of man’s puny attempts to prove he is the master of the Universe and all it contains. However, common sense tells us that even if you cut a foot off the top of your blanket and sew it to the bottom of your blanket you still do not have a longer blanket. I am tired of moving it twice a year.
Gerry
March 12, 2014
That is a very good metaphor. I do not like sewing.
WOL
March 12, 2014
Given an hour, take an hour, daylight savings or no, I just wish they’d decide one way or the other and be done with it. It’s the having to go around changing all the durn clocks in my house twice a year that gets up my nose. Which points up an interesting philosophical difference between my mother and me. I never wear a watch. I have at least one clock in every room of the house. I want to know the time, I just look at the nearest clock. My mother wears a watch. She doesn’t feel “dressed” (as in not naked) without one. They have some clocks around but some of them don’t run. She wants to know what time it is, she looks at her watch. When I go to their house, I never know what time it is. I’ve either got to get up and go into the kitchen to look at the digital clock/radio or use theTV remote to bring up the schedule guide, which shows the time.
Gerry
March 12, 2014
Back in the day when everything I did all day long had to be done by a clock (this is what happens when you freelance and bill by the hour) putting on my watch ranked just after putting on my glasses in importance. Now I look at the computer or the phone . . . or the microwave . . . if I really need to know what time it is. Just think, one day people will find analog clocks as quaint as sundials.
Dawn
March 12, 2014
Longing for NC myself about now….I’m still adjusting to the time thing. I liked when it was light out as I took the dog out before I headed for work, liked to drive in semi daylight. Am not appreciating the new darkness in the mornings…and work too much to enjoy (yet) the light at the end of the day. I think the whole thing is messing with me.
Gerry
March 12, 2014
You know, I like the feeling of beginning the day with a little more light each day. Personally, now that we’ve done it again, I think we should just stop. Do not fall back. Stay sprung forward and move on into the darkening winter.
Craig
March 13, 2014
I’m finding “spring forward, fall back” ever less useful as a mnemonic the older I get–I now have a tendency to fall forward, spring back. This new tendency led to a full face encounter with a snowbank behind the DIA during the heaviest of this winter’s snowfalls (but a little thing like a blizzard will never stop me in my pursuit of cultural consumption).
Gerry
March 13, 2014
Now you’ve done it. You’ve assumed that you’ve already experienced “the heaviest of this winter’s snowfalls” – but here it is only March. Mama Nature has plans for you, boyo.