Daylight Saving Time seems to be way too early this year

By Mychal Wilmes
wilmes@agrinews.com

Date Modified: 03/18/2010 10:38 AM

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.Are you ready to spring forward on March 14?

Someone seems to be rushing Daylight Saving Time. I awaken much easier when eastern sky hints at the dawn of a new day. After March 14, the sky will remain mostly dark until 7 a.m.

Although the sun will be with us longer at night, it isn't likely that many people will be planting spring wheat or oats come late March or early April. A weather forecaster — who claims at least 50 percent accuracy — says April will be wetter and cooler than normal.

Daylight Saving has been with us a long time. Benjamin Franklin first proposed it, but the idea didn't go anywhere because the young and mostly unsettled nation didn't yet have a standardized time.

It wasn't untilWorld War I when Daylight Saving became accepted practice in Europe based on the need to conserve energy. The United States followed suit in 1918, when Congress passed a law that created standard times across the country and established Daylight Saving time for seven months in both 1918 and 1919. It was so unpopular among farmers who said it would disrupt their operations and other early awakeners that Congress repealed the Daylight Saving provision.

President Franklin Roosevelt ordered year-around Daylight Saving. — called "War Time" then — from early 1942 to Sept. 30, 1945.

After that, states and towns were free to decide if they wanted to use Daylight Saving. Larger cities tended to embrace it and rural areas were more hesitant.

Regardless, local choice cause massive headaches for airline, bus and other businesses. In Iowa during the 1950s, 23 different start and end times for Daylight Saving was established by various communities.

It wasn't until 1966 when Congress established uniform Daylight Saving time, which started on the last Sunday of April and ended on the last Sunday in October. During the height of the OPEC oil embargo in the mid-1970s, President Nixon extended it to eight months in hopes of conserving fuel.

Some nations, including Japan and China, don't use Daylight Saving. The Japanese were inspired by the United States to try it right after World War II ended, but farmers and traditionalists staged mass protests against it, forcing the government to drop Daylight Saving.

There was plenty of opposition to it in the United States, too. Hawaii and Arizona don't have Daylight Saving and Indiana was a divided state until 2005, when the eastern half of the state finally adopted Daylight Saving.

The Amish remain divided on it, with some following what they call "fast time'' or "English Time.''

That's probably more than you wanted to know about Daylight Saving.

Is Daylight Saving worth it? It depends on who you ask.

In Nixon's time, the government estimated that each month Daylight Saving reduced demand for oil by 300,000 barrels. Others say that claim was widely exaggerated. Police departments in metropolitan areas say that crime goes down because bandits have fewer dark hours in which to work. Critics argue that because there are more dark hours, school children who would otherwise be doing homework spend the time playing outside. Given the alarming problem of childhood obesity, that might not necessarily be a bad thing.

We could — and many people have — simply ignore the time change and adjust their schedules accordingly.

That wouldn't work with me because I have difficulty enough keeping track.

We can blame the loss of one hour of sleep onFranklin. Although a spectacular inventor and writer, old Ben had at least one other bad idea. He wanted the turkey to be our national symbol.