Tomorrow, Americans -- those who remember to change their clocks, and who arise before midmorning -- will awaken to find dawn occurring at a different hour. The breaking light may not be bright and cheery (more like wan and subdued), but it will at least not be pitch black and foreboding. That's because our Orwellian masters have decreed that the nonsensically named "Daylight Saving Time" ends during the wee small hours of Sunday morning.
But relief will be temporary. Big Brother himself (otherwise known as Rep. Ed Markey, chair of the House Energy Committee's Subcommittee on Energy and the Environment) decrees this brief hiatus in DST as a form of mental torture. In the fall, now that it's still dark until almost 7:00 AM DST, he permits us a handful of tantalizing days when we can see a few pitiful glimmers of weak indirect sunlight (if it's not too cloudy) at 6:00, before the continuing winter shortening of the daylight hours deprives us of it again. And, just when it begins to get light by 6:00 AM in the spring, the shutters slam shut, we shift to DST, and are condemned to another 45 days of early-morning darkness. It's a lot like keeping a man in a cell on a bread-and-water diet, but letting the aroma of a sizzling grilled steak waft in on him every 9 months or so.
Big Brother enjoys this kind of mind game, but of course it's important to have a way of justifying it. So, if "War Is Peace," "Freedom Is Slavery," and "Ignorance Is Strength," now "Darkness Is Light." To which I might add, "Idiocy Saves Energy," since the energy-saving benefits of DST are much touted but little demonstrated.
Care to read another classic about DST? Check here. Or a book about DST? See the right-hand margin for links to buy.
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