50+ Lifestyles

Just Saying…

By Q.C. Jones

Could this be the end of life as we know it?

Pulling from a line from one of my father’s favorite poems, and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s moneymaker, Paul Revere’s Ride: “Hardly a man is now alive, who remembers that famous day and year.” The future of daylight savings time teeters on the head of a pin.

Here’s a few historical data points to consider. Before the widespread use of trains, time zones didn’t exist. Thinking a bit about it, why worry about precise time if there wasn’t a fixed schedule. School and farm work began and came to a halt with the sun. Farmers didn’t care much about watches.  Time was measured by the weather, sun, and rooster crows.  City folks and my ancestral coal miner types began work or left for home based on the blast of the factory whistle or big town clock. When the trains started pushing from town to town, uniformity became important.

In 1883 the major railroad companies decided to create the concept of time zones to eliminate confusion and reduce train crashes caused by the confusion of time differences.  At the onset of World War One the US Government took over the task of the whole time zone issue and jurisdiction fell to the Interstate Commerce Commission.  Further, this governmental body decided to institute Daylight Savings Time (DST) as a tool to save energy through the war effort.

For some reason, our grandparents (or great grandparents) decided to eliminate it shortly after the war ended.  Some states continued the process, others did not. Illinois was one of the states which decided it was a good idea. The record is different for Iowa. According to the experts at TimeandDate.com, Iowa did not institute DST until 1970.

Why 1970? In 1966, the Feds once more seized power and were determined to force DST across the whole of the nation. Apparently, Iowans are still not happy with the whole-time shift thing. Records indicate Iowa House Bill 2331 has passed through the House and is currently in deliberation in the Iowa Senate. This bit of legislation would essentially lock Iowa into a state of perpetual DST forever.  No springing ahead or falling behind forever. We would be able to set our clocks once and then forget about them forever.

The Iowa Capitol Building isn’t the only place where the topic of time shifting is being explored. The US Senate took time from their arduous tasks of balancing the budget, ratifying treaties, and fighting inflation to pass Senate Bill 623 called the Sunshine Protection Act. This bill was passed to the House on March 15, 2022. This bill will make DST the permanent time for Americans on November 5, 2023.  Daylight Savings Time will either be toast or toasted (as in with Champaign) very soon.

Daylight Savings is Killing Us – I believe it’s an evil plot. Doctor Mathew Walker is a Neuroscientist and the world’s most prominent sleep scientist. He is the author of a book titled, Why We Sleep, Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams.  Walker has made some major discoveries. Who else but ardent journalist, QC Jones, to bring you the facts?

Walker states, “Daylight Saving Time is a global experiment using 1.6 billion human Guinea Pigs performed twice a year. Rates of heart attacks, strokes, and car accidents all increase right after we set our clocks ahead one hour in the spring.” Here are some facts we discovered in further research into these claims.

• An increase of 24 percent in cardiac events following the Spring change in time, according to a study published jointly by the University of Michigan and University of Colorado in Denver.
• A 6 percent increase in fatal car accidents in the week following the spring DST transition, which amounts to about 28 additional deaths each year according to Healthline.com

Our research uncovered dozens of articles and publications pointing out the effects of the one-hour sleep loss most of us undergo as we transition through the DST cycle. A few of these have surfaced in QC Jones’ lifetime. For instance, at the ripe old age of 12, I broke my first watch while adjusting the clock for daylight savings time. It seems my Timex, which could take a licking and keep on ticking, could not take the force of a youngster adjusting for DSL with a pair of pliers.  And, last year, I broke my cool bathroom clock (the one with bird chirps to mark the hours) as I fat-fingered the hands around the dial.

Now the good news, on Sunday November sixth at exactly 2:00 AM Federal Regulations demand we turn back the clock and relive the hour between 1:00 and 1:59 AM. I thought the point was for us to recapture that hour of sleep lost in March.

I plan to consult with my attorney on what might happen if I refuse to comply with this Federal Mandate? While I am consulting with her, I might ask about that label on the mattress I removed five or six years ago. Hopefully, the statute of limitations has run out.

Just saying… QC Jones