Time to fall back

The popular Chicago song asks: “Does anybody really know what time it is?”

In the U.S., the biannual switch from Standard Time to Daylight Saving Time (and back again) has been a hot topic again over the past year.

Daylight Saving Time (DST) was first implemented in the U.S. with the Standard Time Act of 1918, a wartime measure for seven months during World War I in the interest of adding more daylight hours to conserve energy resources. The biannual switch to/from DST became permanent in the U.S. in 1966. Canada, Australia, and the UK and European Union also follow the practice of setting clocks forward by one hour in the spring ("spring ahead"), and back one hour in autumn ("fall back") to return to Standard Time.

A point to ponder: A man with one clock knows what time it is. A man with two clocks is never sure. 🤨

Today, we are once again talking about making DST the year-round standard but, ironically, we’ve already tried this! Permanent DST was enacted in 1974, but there were so many complaints of children going to school in the dark and working people commuting in darkness during the winter months, that it was repealed a year later.

So, here we are again. In the wee hours of this morning, we returned to Standard Time and can expect more daylight in the mornings again. We grouch about it for a few days, but soon our body clocks adjust and life goes on. Well, until March 12 when we do it again.

As the Steve Miller Band reminds us: “Time keeps on slippin’…slippin’…slippin’…into the future.”