Daylight Saving Time

"For in walking thro' the Strand and Fleet Street one morning at seven o clock, I observed there was not one shop open tho it had been daylight and the sun up above three hours -- the inhabitants of London choosing voluntarily to live much by candlelight and sleep by sunshine, and yet often complaining a little absurdly of the duty on candles and the high price of tallow." --Ben Franklin, Autobiography

Factoid: Daylight Saving Time, for the U.S. and its territories, is NOT observed in Hawaii, American Samoa, Guam, Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, most of the Eastern Time Zone portion of the State of Indiana, and the state of Arizona (not the Navajo Indian Reservation, which does observe). Navajo Nation participates in the Daylight Saving Time policy, due to its large size and location in three states.

"I don't really care how time is reckoned so long as there is some agreement about it, but I object to being told that I am saving daylight when my reason tells me that I am doing nothing of the kind. I even object to the implication that I am wasting something valuable if I stay in bed after the sun has risen. As an admirer of moonlight I resent the bossy insistence of those who want to reduce my time for enjoying it. At the back of the Daylight Saving scheme I detect the bony, blue-fingered hand of Puritanism, eager to push people into bed earlier, and get them up earlier, to make them healthy, wealthy and wise in spite of themselves." (Robertson Davies, The Diary of Samuel Marchbanks, 1947, XIX, Sunday.)

Useful References: http://webexhibits.org/daylightsaving/

Most Hoosiers are happy leaving time alone. The reasons for this are many and varied.
1. There aren't that many "strange quirks" for Hoosiers, so let's try and keep the one.
2. We don't want to be particularly associated with either Chicago or New York.
3. We're too far West to be East, and too far East to be Central.
4. Sun's gonna come up on its own schedule. Not on ours.
5. Tell us again why you all change your clocks?
6. Okay, say we do change our clocks. Do we really want the sun shining at 10:00 PM?
7. Say we go to Central time. Do we really want the sun to shine at 5:00 AM?
8. How many clocks did you say you changed twice a year? VCR's? Microwaves? Tsk.
9. Keeps the blue states guessing.
10. 15 Indiana counties already do what they want with time. Think that's gonna change?

It's good sport to watch the Indiana legislature wrestle with this one. Seems like a lot of people care enough to harass their state legislator. This kind of belies the idea that Hoosiers are indifferent about it. It now occurs to me that by the time this is settled, we will have lost every hour that we would have gained by DST in the first place, just arguing about it.