Daily Cascade

On Daylight Savings Time

Prompt:
What are your feelings on daylight savings? Do you think it still has a purpose or is it time to end it?

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This daylight savings thing annoys me to no end. Some countries have given up on that, and we still go on with the one thing that upsets the internal clocks of the American people. I've tried all my life, every six months so, to be indifferent to the change, but I have never succeeded. Maybe I'm not so adaptable, but studies show that the DST (a.k.a. Daylight Savings Time) has some major negative consequences on our health. Then, who does it benefit?

It benefits those who spend the majority of their time outside such as construction workers. Hello? Not many of us are construction workers and most of do much better with routine. If construction workers ruled the earth, where would the rest of our civilization go?

Needless to say, DST can cause a decrease in people’s productivity, including students and employees because of the early sunrise or the late sunset. I know from personal experience that, a long time ago, I had difficulty with calling my sons indoors during the late spring and early summer days, so they could do their homework and calm down and go to sleep at a decent hour, which was a lost battle, mostly. Then, of course, I had difficulty waking them up early in the morning, for them to go to school on time. Luckily, they've grown up and I don't have to keep after them with this, anymore.

Experts say Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) is one of those results of DST. Plus, USC's nursing school assistant professor Michael Wirth said, about waking up to the dark in the morning, "All kinds of hormones start moving. Your digestion starts moving. Your immune system starts moving. All this stuff starts happening. When you wake up and you don’t get that morning sunlight, those things are delayed.”

I checked to find out who the numbskull was to start the DST. It was the entomologist George Hudson back in 1895. He wanted to have more sunlight in the summer so he could hunt for bugs longer in the day. As the result, all our lives turned upside down because of a bug-hunter!

This doesn't say much about our civilization, does it!