I HATE going back to "standard" time.

[TomSlick]

Its dark when I go to the office and dark when I leave. It's all just too depressing. The winter weather is bad enough. Do we have to also live in perpetual night?

[Rhiannon12866]

1. I feel the same way.

It was already getting dark way too early - now it's even worse.

[dchill]

2. Depressing is right.

Regardless of time zone, the days are just plain shorter in the winter. Somebody should do something about it. Stat.

[greatauntoftriplets]

3. You and me both!

I had an email this morning from Change.org wanting me to sign a petition to abolish DST. No way was I going to sign that thing. Like you, I hated going to work in the dark, then coming home in the dark. I felt like a mole. It's not nearly as bad now that I'm retired.

[Delmette2.0]

37. I'm retired ,too

But the time change still mucks me up. Right now it is 3:30am and I have been up for an hour. I had a long day day yesterday and I tried to stay up to my usual bed tome, but didn't make. Now I I'm f'ed up again by being wide awake in the middle of the night.

[doc03]

4. Why in hell can't we stay on daylight savings time or move the clock

back 1/2 hour and leave it there?

[SergeStorms]

20. Daylight Saving Time.

There are no "savings". Just a stickler for crap like that, sorry.

[smirkymonkey]

5. So do I.

I love getting the extra hour. For about a day or two, but the early dark is so depressing. Is there a good reason why we still keep doing this? I can't think of one. Not everyone is up very early, but almost everyone is up in the early evening when we could use the extended daylight.

[jimlup]

6. For me standard time is much better ...

I don't have to drive to work in the dark. Yes, I drive home in the dark for a couple of months but that's better than having to get up while it is still dark.

I hate daylight saving time. It saves nothing and moved to November by the Repubicans a couple of decades ago as an excuse for an "energy policy."

We should abolish daylight savings in my opinion.

[pnwmom]

10. Year round DST came during Jimmy Carter's days. It wasn't a Republican plot. nt

[jimlup]

38. No I was referencing the extension of it which

while not a Republican plot was a Republican excuse for not having an energy policy. I'll look up the reference for you.

[jimlup]

44. This was the Republican excuse for not having a real energy policy in 2005 under Bush II

This is what I meant, have a look if you are interested

http://www.webexhibits.org/daylightsaving/e.html


The Energy Policy Act of 2005 extended Daylight Saving Time in the U.S. beginning in 2007, though Congress retained the right to revert to the 1986 law should the change prove unpopular or if energy savings are not significant. Going from 2007 forward, Daylight Saving Time in the U.S.

begins at 2:00 a.m. on the second Sunday of March and
ends at 2:00 a.m. on the first Sunday of November

[joshdawg]

16. I'm with you.

DST has to go.

[SergeStorms]

21. I'll add my name to that petition.

It serves no useful purpose whatsoever, except for screwing everyone up. Well, the dogs love getting fed an hour earlier, but they hate me in the spring. They adapt though.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

7. So if it's dark when you go to the office, and dark when you leave, it would still be

the same even on year round DST. The problem is where you live, not the time, be it Standard or Daylight Saving.

Alternatively, see if you can get a job where you go to work midday, say anywhere from noon to 3pm. That way you will always go to work in daylight. You will also always come home in the dark, but that's not so bad.

The real problem is working a "normal" job. 40 hours a week is ludicrous. I figured that out a very long time ago, and even though all of my working life I had a 40 hour work week, often combined with lots of involuntary overtime, I also figured out that I was not my job. No matter how much time I spent at it, the job was not what defined me.

[pnwmom]

8. Not true. I lived through it here, and year round was better. Getting dark by 5:30 is better

than 4:30, at least for many people.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

22. How about the morning?

An important reason why year round DST was abandoned was because the sunrise was so freaking late in the middle of winter. Not to mention kids waiting at bus stops in full dark were being mowed down.

If we're going to go to a single year round time, better that it be standard time. The real problem, in my opinion, is that right now DST starts too early and lasts too long. It should start no earlier than mid April, and end at the end of September. By waiting until November, we're already deep into fall, with short days rapidly getting shorter, so the change is far more jarring than it would be a month earlier.

I do like the later daylight in late spring and throughout the summer. After that, no need. Go back to standard time.

I recall what it was like before 1966, when different places went on and off DST at different times. It was a nightmare. A uniform DST was a huge improvement, but I still maintain that the current system starts too early and lasts too long. Alas, I am not Dictator of North America.

[pnwmom]

24. School times can be changed more easily than work schedules.

Our elementary schools don't start till 9. No one was getting mowed down in the dark.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

27. Wow. 9 am. Where do you live?

So many schools start well before 8am, and for high school students that's deadly. Kids that age need about 9 hours of sleep every day, and since their natural circadian rhythm makes it almost impossible to fall asleep before about 11pm, they are chronically underslept. As are most adults, although for somewhat different reasons.

Almost my entire life (and I'm now 71) I've tried to get sufficient sleep. Not always possible, between work schedules and personal responsibilities, but I've generally done a decent job of it. I'm honestly convinced that getting enough sleep is an important reason why I am so very healthy.

But elementary school not starting until 9? I'm genuinely impressed. What time does the high school day start? 10am, I hope because the high school students naturally tend to stay up later and need to sleep later than the little kids.

[pnwmom]

30. Seattle area. I agree that high school students need sleep, and they've been trying

to fix that. But I'm more comfortable with a high school student waiting for a bus in a half-light than I am with a 6 year old.

https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2018/12/12/676118782/sleepless-no-more-in-seattle-later-school-start-time-pays-off-for-teens

In Seattle, school and city officials recently made the shift. Beginning with the 2016-2017 school year, the district moved the official start times for middle and high schools nearly an hour later, from 7:50 a.m. to 8:45 a.m. This was no easy feat; it meant rescheduling extracurricular activities and bus routes. But the bottom line goal was met: Teenagers used the extra time to sleep in.

Researchers at the University of Washington studied the high school students both before and after the start-time change. Their findings appear in a study published Wednesday in the journal Science Advances. They found students got 34 minutes more sleep on average with the later school start time. This boosted their total nightly sleep from 6 hours and 50 minutes to 7 hours and 24 minutes.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

31. I do agree with that.

But still, high school students are the ones who should start at the later time, not the little kids.

I honestly think that a lot of issues, not the least of which is overall health, are strongly connected to most people not getting enough sleep. Whenever I see the sentiment "You can sleep when you're dead" I want to do damage to whoever says or believes that. Because lack of sleep will seriously kill you. So yeah, get dead a whole lot quicker so you can sleep.

Anyway, I'm going to guess that at your schools the high school students start at 8, which is still a huge improvement over the schools that start at 7am.

[pnwmom]

32. I guess you missed this part of the post. The starting times for middle and high schools

have been moved to 8:45. (Elementaries in Seattle now range from 7:55 to 8:55.)

In Seattle, school and city officials recently made the shift. Beginning with the 2016-2017 school year, the district moved the official start times for middle and high schools nearly an hour later, from 7:50 a.m. to 8:45 a.m. This was no easy feat; it meant rescheduling extracurricular activities and bus routes. But the bottom line goal was met: Teenagers used the extra time to sleep in.

[Salviati]

25. I really would like it if WA state can switch to DST full time

I think it would be marginally nicer in the winters, but I'd really hate to be on standard time in the Summer, it gets bright out too damn early as it is, it would be awful for sunrise to come an hour earlier, and I like the late night sunlight.

[pnwmom]

26. It was nice while it lasted! I agree. The late night summers are wonderful,

and we definitely don't need the sun waking us up an hour earlier.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

29. The problem isn't so much the early daylight in the summer, but the late daylight in the winter.

I've lived in Arizona, which is on standard time year round, which genuinely makes sense. I lived there the one year (1967) they did DST, and because it's so freaking hot in the summer, there's no point. But the daylight starts awfully early, I'll agree.

Lucky me, I don't live there any more.

[pnwmom]

33. WA has never had late daylight in the winter -- even on DST -- but why would that be a problem?

I love long evenings here in the summers.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

35. Long evenings in the summer are great, I agree.

The problem with those who advocate DST year round is that they don't look at what sunrise and sunset times will be in the middle of winter on DST. And they forget what it was like when we had the brief experiment with year round DST, which was cut short because of silly things like kids waiting for school busses in the pitch dark or the morning and being mowed down by careless drivers.

[pnwmom]

42. I haven't forgotten. Year round DST was good in Seattle.

Arizona stays off DST even when everyone else goes on it. Maybe WA and some other northern latitude states would rather be on it full time,

[DFW]

34. Geography matters a lot

Here in Northern Europe, we have short days in the winter, and there is no way around it, DST or not. From now until late February, I leave for work in the dark and get home (when I do at all!) in the dark. Today, sunrise was at 7:30, sunset will be at 17:01 (5:01 PM), In six weeks, sunrise will be at 8:33 and sunset at 16:25 (4:25 PM). It's even more extreme in Scandinavia, especially around Oslo or Stockholm, which are both a two hour flight to the north of me, not to mention points north of there.

We just don't have a lot of daylight in the winter here. It drives some people crazy--literally. In Norway, it is called "mørketiden (the dark time," and is when most suicides occur. The flip side is the glorious time of June and July when it's light outside before 6 in the morning, and still light out at 21:45 or even 22:00 (9:45 PM to 10:00 PM). Some people here in northern Europe just head south for the winter. Anywhere from Spain--though Barcelona is the same latitude as Boston--to North Africa, the Canary Islands, or all the way over to North America. In the 1970s, the German Chancellor, Helmut Schmidt, sometimes used to take his vacations in Florida, and Canadian PM Pierre Trudeau sometimes went to Mexico.

[Major Nikon]

48. I was in Thule, Greenland in June many years ago

The sun never set for the 10 days or so that I was there. There wasn't even twighlight. Broad daylight at 3am.

[DFW]

50. Once you get above the Arctic Circle in late June

The midnight sun is pretty wild. I once traveled all the way to Kiruna in Sweden just to have seen it. But I sure as hell wouldn't want to be there in the dead of winter, when the sun doesn't rise for a couple of weeks straight.

[Major Nikon]

54. Thule is about halfway between the arctic circle and the North Pole

I think they get over a month of zero sun so I was told.

[DFW]

55. That far up, four weeks sounds about right.

It's bad enough here in northern Germany. I wouldn't want to live any farther north than København. I fully understand why those that can arrange it and afford it "go south for the winter." Not just because of the cold, but also because of the darkness.

[Tikki]

9. I Totally agree with you TomSlick

Tikki

[Historic NY]

11. I work 10p-6a shifted for 10yrs...

it sucked not having a hot sit down dinner because most places would close or stop serving. Night after night in some of the brutish subzero weather. I've been retired now over 12 yrs and still it gets to me, sometimes I find it screws up my sleep - wake cycle.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

23. The essential problem with shift work.

Most of my working life I worked shift work, although never an overnight. Mostly it was some kind of afternoon shift, with the exact hours varying depending on when or for what company I worked. So you have my sympathy.

Many years ago I did a paper on shift work, and the research was quite interesting. Perhaps the single most interesting factoid was that a lot of overnight shift workers preferred those hours, because management was home where they belonged. Not at the workplace, interfering with the workers.

[MFM008]

12. exactly

HATE it.
Seasonal depression..............

[Canoe52]

14. A full spectrum light has really helped me with that.

[MFM008]

39. Thanks

[rusty quoin]

13. I lived I Indiana post the time change east coast. That was about central Illinois it changed

They were on about the same sun as Illinois. I lived both places, and it’s weird when the sun goes down at 9 in the summer.

[EveHammond13]

15. I try to think of it as "go to ground" time

this is my time to focus on my health, on good eating, on working out on my Total Gym, on centering myself in the dark and the quiet when things are calm, and when spring comes - I'm ready to re-emerge, with good health and mental rest.

[Skittles]

17. I wish we could stay at standard time

I'll take the dark ANYTIME over the light

[progree]

18. Today was horrible -- pitch black at 530p, then the evening was so slow-w-w-w, was

tired, and looked at the clock, and it's only 800 pm but I'm feeling ready to go to bed. Then it's 820 pm, same thing, then 830 pm, on and on it dragged on. Finally took a nap, and now I've really screwed up my biological clock.

Sunset was 459 pm in Minneapolis today. Will bottom out at 431 pm or so on December 9.

For Green Bay, Wisconsin it was even worse (because they are further east but still within the Central Time zone).

Sunset was 438 pm in Green Bay today. Will bottom out at 412 pm or so on December 9.

People can find their times of sunrise and sunset any day of the year here:
https://www.timeanddate.com/sun/usa

[pnwmom]

28. 4:40 sunset here. And that will get worse over the next 7 weeks. nt

[yuiyoshida]

19. Know what you mean

Had to set my clock so I know that the GrubHub driver won't be late!

[dewsgirl]

36. This is my favorite time of the year. I realize how deeply

unpopular that is. I always have, I guess being more of a night person, I don't really know. There doesn't seem to be very many of us.😔

[Shrek]

40. Potential safety issue with kids waiting for the school bus in the dark

But it's usually not dark yet for the afternoon drop-off.

So for them the switch makes sense.

[Tribalceltic]

56. Why not just move the School times?

That would be a lot easier than Everyone having to change clocks.

[Marthe48]

41. Hard on the cats

so it's hard on me. I have a perpetually starving fat cat who wakes me up every morning to be sure I feed her by 9 am. Guess what time she is waking me the last couple of days?

If I put extra food out the night before, she eats it along with her evening meal.

We will all get used to it in a few weeks, but it is never fun. I'm glad we had a very sunny day yesterday, and that it stayed clear into the evening. It was daylight longer than on the overcast days we had last week.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

43. Don't they make devices that will deliver

timed amounts of food for a cat or dog?

I've never understood the problem of being awakened by a cat or dog demanding to be fed, as mine always had dry food out that they could graze on whenever. I only started feeding my last cat canned food when she was elderly.

[Marthe48]

45. Mine are all seniors

Two of them were throwing up a lot, so I stopped feeding them dry food, over a year ago. And then cut out just about all of the canned flavors except chicken. No seafood at all. The diet changes fixed the problems for those 2. Fat cat didn't have trouble, but if I feed her dry, the other 2 will eat it, because they were asleep when I explained the connection between dry food and stomach upset. I basically spend my time at home telling the cats it isn't time to eat, or feeding them.

(nice to run into you! Hope you are ok)

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

46. Ahhh. I understand.

When I had two cats, one would try to hog all the food and keep the other one away. She got fat, the other one got thin. I solved that problem by putting a dish of food up on a counter, showed thin cat where it was. She had no trouble jumping up and eating. I limited how much I put out in the dish on the floor, and fat cat lost weight. She did know where the other dish was, though, and periodically, she'd scramble up on that counter, which was tricky because she still was a bit heavy.

Anyway, when you have more than one furry companion in your house, food issues can easily occur.

[Marthe48]

47. I put their food dishes in different spots

Kitchen, dining room and living room. They eat at their places and then they all check all the dishes. At least they don't bully each other over food and I get some exercise I used to let the fat one eat on the table. I think the jumps are getting too much for her, so her spot is on the floor.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

49. I'm impressed that they know their own places.

My fat one couldn't jump up to the counter where we put the one dish, and that worked well.

Eventually I had three cats, and then moved after a divorce to a much smaller place. In the large house there had been a lot of battling over territory. In the new place, none at all. They figured out very quickly that they were going to have to get along and so they did.

Right now I have no feline house mates, and I've been doing a lot of travelling so it would be irresponsible of me to have any. But someday, someday . . . .

[Marthe48]

57. Cats are smart

Now, I have to brag. My boy cat was getting on the counter after the butter. I put it in the cupboard. He got on the counter while I was gone, opened the cupboard and helped himself. I saw lick marks. If the oven is cold, I leave it there. If it is in the cupboard, I have a rubber band around the handles. He is the smartest cat I've ever had. When he is hungry, he slaps his dish. He opens all of the lower cupboards every morning while he's waiting for me to feed him. If there is something on the floor, he stares at it, then me, until I pick it up. He is the best non-vocal communicator I know.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

58. Just imagine if he had opposable thumbs.

He'd own the world.

I often think that a lot of animals, both individually and species, are smarter than is often credited to them. None of them can manipulate things as well as humans, which holds them back. That and true language, but in a few more million years I bet some more animals will have developed language.

As an aside, one of my three cats was incredibly sweet. However, we used to say that even for a cat she wasn't a rocket scientist.

[madaboutharry]

51. I'm thinking of buying one of those sunlight lamps.

The kind that you set like an alarm clock and it imitates sunrise. I have a friend who lives in Finland who has one and says it saves her sanity.

[wishstar]

52. Good to have some early am daylight for going to work and school and household chores

Guess if we all slept in later it wouldn't matter but in my family we are early risers out of necessity and hated having to get out for the past several weeks in such dark mornings, so the return to standard time is much appreciated to be able to have some daylight to function in the 6:45 to 7:45 hour when we have to leave the house.

[vsrazdem]

53. I never have to worry about it. Arizona is the same time all year.

[OriginalGeek]

59. I love standard time

got my hour back. Feel like I get more sleep in the morning and I don't really care what time it gets dark as I'm up late anyway. I would prefer it was this way all the time.

[PasadenaTrudy]

60. I love it

It's still in the high 80s lately in SoCal. When it's dark, it's cooler out. I can get out and do things then.