Who’s the fool?

Apr 7, 2006 by Naomi.

There is a fun exercise USA citizens go through twice annually. It is called fool thy self. The wonderful title is “Daylight Savings Time.” But it involves a drastic change. The changing of the hands on your clocks (if you have any clocks that technology doesn’t change for you) is almost a life threatening experience — to listen to the doom sayers. Do you suppose your clocks care if you are getting up an hour earlier now that the days are getting longer?

Who is saving what daylight, I ask? What is it about us Americans that we have to fool ourselves? It is a practice suggested by Benjamin Franklin somewhere in the 1700s and went over real big with the factory owners — they had longer hours to exploit their workers. You wouldn’t know that most of the colonists at that time were farmers and the cows, pigs, and chickens woke when the sun came up anyway. In dead of winter cows were milked once before sunup and once after sundown. So much for daylight. Maybe that is why most folks didn’t rally against it. They didn’t have time to look at their clocks. They had chores. And most of us still do.

I think it would be easier all around, if on March 31, employers announced: “Be at work an hour earlier next Monday morning until I tell you different.”

I can’t change the world. Clocks are but a human invention anyway so make like a robot and set them according to Gorp. Businesses all around have schedules and if I want have fun and participate I best be on their time.

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