First, welcome to our visitors from Europe, who had their “fall back” change this weekend. Did you enjoy that extra hour of sleep?
Sorry you’ll have to go home from work in the dark on Monday, but, you know… The FARMERS!
(Of course, the farmers in Europe, like the farmers here in the U.S., had nothing to do with making us switch to Daylight Saving Time or “Summertime” as you call it.)
And now we are in the weird part of the year where Europe and the U.S. are separated by an hour less than usual, something I talked about in March when I happened to be in Berlin for work.
About this site:
I’ve added a new link to the navigation bar, and it goes to a page that answers the question I get most often from people: How can I help?
They always say that for every one person who writes in to ask, there are 100 others that think the question, but don’t write in, so I wanted to make it easy.
If you are one of the 99, check out that page. The life you save may be your own!
And if you do nothing else, I hope that you’ll either sign up for my very friendly and not-very-frequent newsletter, or follow me on Twitter. That way you’ll be the first to know what’s going on.
Yes, you still have to change
I try to monitor the coverage about Daylight Saving Time. Usually the stories all look largely the same, but this year there’s a new category of stories thanks to the progress that’s been made in state legislatures around the country.
You see, many states have passed bills saying that they want to #LockTheClock and stop changing for Daylight Saving Time. But all of them have some caveat. They either are waiting for nearby states to also pass bills, or they are waiting for enabling legislation from the federal government. Or there is some other exception.
In any event, readers and viewers who missed the fine print and just read a headline from months ago that said, ”Daylight Saving Time Bill Signed By Governor” are just now realizing that they still have to change the clocks this year.
And they aren’t happy.
Hence the stories from all over the U.S. with a headline that is something like: “Yes, You Still Need To ‘Fall Back’ On Nov. 3.”
No fun for you, no fun for the reporters. Just no fun at all.
But change IS coming. The fact that those stories are needing to be written at all is a testament to the fact that bills are passing, even though the bills didn’t bring immediate relief. Before even that didn’t happen.
Change is coming, and even though this is an all-volunteer effort, this site is the place that will continue to keep you up to date and give you the best chance to be a part of the change that is coming because after five years of work on this, I’ve learned a lot about what actually moves things forward.
Thanks for reading, and thanks for caring about this issue!