Tag Sunlight

In The Dark

Michael Leave a comment

I was on the road around 7:30 in the evening the other day and I noticed something. It was almost dark. It hadn’t yet turned into Fall and it was already dark before prime time television began. You do realize what that means. Don’t you? Yes, another time change is coming.

When I saw that the cars around me had their headlights on and it was only 7:30, I flashed on what it would be like only six short weeks from now. We go through this every fall. On the last Saturday of October we will turn our clocks back an hour, gaining an hour of sleep that night but losing many, many hours of sanity as the trade-off. That’s because you can’t be sane when it gets dark before the six o’clock news comes on. Or in the deepest throes of winter, before the five o’clock news comes on! The only good thing about this year will be that I won’t be leaving for work in the morning and coming home in the evening, both ways in darkness. Little consolation that will be only because I won’t be working. Instead I’ll get to sit at home and see how short the day really is as those few daylight hours march on. And march on they will, quickly, and too few of them, until March when we get to reset our clocks to DST (Daylight Saving Time or as I prefer Daylight Sanity Time).

This blog is loaded with posts on time changes. Why we change our clocks, why we change them back, who doesn’t go through this ritual, and other thoughtful answers for inquisitive minds. There are so many I can’t list them here. If you’re interested, type in Daylight Saving Time into the search box on the home page and pick a couple to review. I’ll give you a synopsis here. I don’t like it. I don’t like reverting to Standard Time every fall.

After the last Saturday of October there’ll be nothing fun left to do but wait for Daylight Saving Time to return. Ok, there will be Christmas. And New Years. And Thanksgiving. And Groundhog Day. Mustn’t forget Groundhog Day. But otherwise, the fun will be done until spring springs ahead into Daylight Saving Time and we recapture the evening sun.

That’s what I think. Really. How ‘bout you?

Sights Unseen

Michael Leave a comment

Our most recent post noting that the days have now begun to get shorter (very slightly, but shorter) notwithstanding, tomorrow is National Sunglasses Day!

Probably National Sunglasses Day is the brainchild of one, another, several, or all of the sunglass companies to sell more sunglasses.  We wonder why a company would have to encourage the purchase and use of sunglasses in the middle of summer.  That’s one of the best times for them.  But we digress.

People who bother to write about these kinds of things (present posters excluded) seem to relish in mentioning that 14th century Chinese judges shielded their eyes with smoked quartz so as to not give away their emotions.   Not unlike 21st century poker players who do just about the same thing although more probably with hundreds of dollars designer glasses.

However, all those writers (again, present posters excluded) fail to mention that even before written records were made, Inuit hunters were wearing goggle type shields made of walrus ivory to protect their eyes from the harsh rays of the prehistoric sun.  Since that is after all the same sun we stare at, we should take a cue from those northern hunters and shield our eyes when we are outside because sun damage really isn’t cool.  Take it from the breakfast sausage people’s television commercial – didn’t anybody ever tell you not to stare at the sun?

Even on cloudy days you can experience some sun damage to your eyes if they aren’t properly protected.  A light or amber tint can help filter UVA and UVB rays (just like a sunscreen) without impairing your visual acuity.  The same goes for needing protection at dawn and dusk.

National Sunglasses Day might come at the end of June but your eyes need protection during the winter months also.  So if you’re going to invest in a new pair of sunglasses tomorrow, make it a double, pick up a sun visor clip for your car, mount one of your new pair on the clip, and be ready for some stylish protection whether day, evening, June, or January.

The last thing you want is to make your visual searches return sights unseen.  While you’re protecting your skin from those harmful sun rays don’t forget to pamper your eyes.  You can’t rub sunscreen onto your eyeballs but you can go out and pick up some physical protection.  And look cool while doing it!

Now, that’s what we think. Really. How ‘bout you?

 

It’s All Downhill From Here, Or Is It?

Michael Leave a comment

Summer came a few days ago.  On June 21 at 6:51am EDT, the sun was closest to the Northern Hemisphere that it will ever get during the year, or the Earth’s axis was tilted toward the sun at the most extreme angle that it will ever get during the year, or the day was the longest that it was going to be on any day during the year.

That’s a lot of ways to define the start of summer.  But then you also have those other people who claim the summer solstice isn’t the start of summer but the middle of summer and that just confuses things even more.  We just wait for the weather people to tell us when summer arrives each year and then we know when to start singing the blues.

What?  Who’s singing the blues?  And why?  Let’s take a look at this.  The start of summer is on the longest day of the year.  That means every day after that is getting shorter.  Not so much that you’d notice it.  But it’s happening.  Next thing you know, well, if the next thing you notice is 180-some days away, is that it is the shortest day of the year.  And that it’s cold outside.  We just spent five of the past six months avoiding the cold outside.  Finally around the end of May we started getting consistently warmer temperatures.

Those warmer days meant pools were opened, gardens were planted, grass was fertilized (not every summer chore is a fun one), grills were fired up, convertibles were taken out of storage, and shorts were worn – even by non-fat men.  Surely one day three-quarters of the way through June can’t mess up all those plans, even if it does mean that June 22 had just a smidge less daylight than June 21.

Say what you will but we’re planning on still spending a lot of the next 60 to 90 days on summer time fun.  Toward the end we might have to cram some of those activities into days with less daylight, going from 18 hours to twelve.  But anybody who ever ate a tomato fresh from the garden will tell you that it is all worth it.

When the days start getting less than 12 hours long then we’ll prepare for the upcoming assault by winter.  But the best part of that is that sometime, about three-quarters of the way through December, the days start getting longer again.

That means another summer is just around the corner.

Now, that’s what we think. Really. How ‘bout you?

 

Fallen Back

Michael Leave a comment

If you live anywhere in or out of the United States that recognizes Daylight Savings Time then you probably know we lost that gem yesterday morning at 2am.  If you missed it, consider this your reminder.  He of We recalls an employee who wasn’t scheduled to work until the Tuesday after a time change (which change he doesn’t recall) and said employee showed up an hour off shift.  Makes you wonder what he did for those two days.  Or not.

This past Spring we spoke longingly for the entrance of DST (see Springing Forward, March 7, 2013 in House and Home).  We noted then that the vast majority of people respond positively to light.  That’s about to change with the big change.  We’ll soon be making our ways to and from work in the dark, rooting for the morning paper in the dark, and hoping that lump was just the morning paper that we hadn’t retrieved when returning to our driveways in the dark.

In fact, we think some of the negative change has already happened.  Have you noticed more people over the past several weeks asking if that week’s Saturday was the one when we turn our clocks back?  Were people starting to grumble about the shorter days before the big hour-long shortening?  In our neck of the woods (which is really our neck of the suburbs) the last day of Daylight Saving Time saw sunset at 6:15pm.  That’s quitting time, not sunset time!

We appreciate the extra end of day daylight that DST gives us.  There are probably just as many who appreciate the extra start of day daylight that Standard Time provides.  Or not.  And then again, they could be wrong.  Sorry about that.

Now, that’s what we think.  Really.  How ‘bout you?

Springing Forward

Michael Leave a comment

We’re going away this weekend.  We’d love to be going to a South Pacific island, inhabited or not, but we’re only going about 200 miles from where we are and that’s covered in snow right now.

We’ve been looking forward to this weekend since early December.  Maybe earlier.  Before you get ahead of us, we’ve not been planning our little weekend gateway some 200 miles from here since early December.  But we have been looking forward to this weekend since then.  Why?  Daylight Saving Time begins.  This Sunday at 2:00 am, as if by magic, it will become 3:00am.  That means where it will be dark at 6:30 this evening will be light at 6:30 Sunday evening.  No longer will we have to go to work and come home in the dark.  Maybe
one or the other but not both. So what if it only lasts until November 3.  We can’t wait.

People respond positively to light.  We live better with light, we live longer with light, we’re happier with light.  There are studies to prove all that.  The most convincing study is us.  We’re sick of it turning dark before we’ve even pulled dinner out of the oven.  Heck, there are some days that we’re sick of it turning dark before we’ve even pulled the car out of the garage at work.  We need light.  We crave light.  We love light.

Maybe that’s a little melodramatic but you get the idea.  We like light.  Apparently so did Benjamin Franklin who first proposed the idea although it was some hundred and twenty years later before it was accepted and began to take hold across the world.  It was never accepted without some controversy.  Controversial or not, we do better with more light in the evening than in the morning.  Eventually the morning will catch up anyway.

If people don’t universally accept Daylight Saving Time, we understand.  It was well into the 1890’s before there was even any sort of standard time in the United Sates and that was invoked by the railroads that insisted on keeping to a schedule.  Before that, whatever time was on the church steeple or the front of the bank or on some other prominent clock around town was whatever time it was around town.  Eventually people got used to the idea of there being some sort of time standard.  Eventually they’ll come around to our way of thinking that more light in the evening is a good thing.

But there is just one problem.  We’re going away this weekend.  Because we’ll be setting our clocks ahead an hour on Sunday morning we’re going to lose an hour of our mini-vacation.  We’ve had some pretty rough weeks at work lately and can really use the time off.  Do you think we can convince the hotel to push check out time forward an hour as well?  We can use all the hours off that we can get.

Now, that’s what we think. Really. How ‘bout you?