Damn Daylight Savings Time

"Time is part of the measuring system used to sequence events, to compare the durations of events and the intervals between them, and to quantify the motions of objects. Time has been a major subject of religion, philosophy, and science, but defining it in a non-controversial manner applicable to all fields of study has consistently eluded the greatest scholars." According to Wikipedia.

For countless millennia, time had been judged strictly by the simple binary system of day or night.

Shamans for the Neanderthals discerned the sun's, planets', comets', and stars' infinite passage through the cosmos thanks to the learned knowledge of the Ancients. The autumn equinox signaled the time for retreat to warmer refuges for winter. The religious hierarchy weren't the only ones who could tell the time, but for the rest of humanity, day or night worked just fine and still does for modern man.

Dark - sleep.

Light - work.

That process wasn't good enough for everyone.

Today all that changed with the annual adoption of Daylight Savings Time and I curse William Willett, the British busybody, who convinced His Majesty's government to shift the hours of sunrise and sunset, so he didn't have to play golf in the cold autumn darkness of dawn, but also because he was angered by the lower classes sleeping away useful daylight hours, even though they all rose before the dawn.

The desire to standardize time across the globe was the dream of Western men such as Benjamin Franklin, who proposed to the Paris police that they fire cannons at sunrise to wake the hoi polloi to take advantage of his adage, "Early to bed, and early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise."

Germany adopted Willett's suggestion during WWI and the rest of the world followed suit to attack the slumber of the working man.

So the only two reasons for this 'innovation' were war and golf.

I don't do either.

Today the sun set around 6:55 pm, as I crossed New York's Inner Harbor from Staten Island. Montauk.

I am not happy for the extra hour of sunlight on the back of the day.

Damn DST and I'll vote for any politician who campaigns for its repeal.

Except for Donald 'Damned' Trump.

I Love My Sleep

The end of Daylight Savings Time meant that I was happy to sleep another hour this morning. After waking before the dawn I pulled the covers over my head and arranged the pillows for renewed comfortability.

The next forty-five minutes belonged to a blissful slumber.

Sleep is the drug.

ZZZZZZZZZZZZ.

Paradise according to Ernest Hemingway, who said, "I love sleep. My life has the tendency to fall apart when I'm awake, you know?"

Times of Nothing - BET ON CRAZY

Thanks to Daylight Savings Time sunset will come an hour earlier this evening.

I hate the winter shift of an hour.

Back in the early 21st century I was working at a diamond store off 5th Avenue. A good address.

Not West 47th Street. The Diamond District. A squalid block which processes 89% of the diamonds in America. Dusk was always a little scary from November to March and one afternoon I received a phone call from a friend in Bruxelles.

"Are you all right?"

"Sure, why not?" I hadn't drank anything the previous evening. That's a lie, but one martini in the Oak Bar couldn't hurt my system.

"There was an armed robbery in the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel." Alan was an art dealer. Criminals in that field never use guns. "A guard was shot by the robber."

"It doesn't surprise me." My police friends have been warning about the rise in crimes of opportunity. Times are tough. Budget cuts deplete patrols. Criminals are freed from prison. "The city feels a little like 1976."

"Rome seven days after the Huns burn it down." He quoted a line from my book about punks. "You be careful."

"I will." With two kids in Thailand I have no interest in getting shot.

At least not over money.