Sleep In For Safety

Is Change Coming to European Summertime in 2021?

March 27, 2021

Of all the oddities of Daylight Saving Time, one of the oddest is that the United States shifts the clocks the second Sunday of March, and much of Europe does it on the last Sunday of March.

Maybe even more weird is Israel and some nearby countries, however, which switch on the last Friday of the month for the Spring Forward change, but then on a Sunday for the Fall Back change. Go figure.

And then there’s Iran, which changes on the spring and fall equinox, no matter what day of the week it comes on.

But let’s just focus on Europe, which for the first Spring Forward change in a long time doesn’t include Great Britain, home of Greenwich, and the home of Greenwich Mean Time, otherwise known as Universal Coordinated Time, or Zulu Time… because why have one name when you can have three!

Photos taken by me when I drug my family to the Royal Greenwich Observatory on vacation because I am that big of a time nerd.

Brexit has not yet hit the clocks, and those in England will change this weekend along with the rest of Europe.

I’ve written before about how I thought the European solution was the best possible solution, and then I wrote about how it is now failing, in Europe.

In short, the idea was, I thought, that the European Union decided there would be no more clock changing, and each member country had a year or so to figure out what time zone it wanted to land in permanently. It turns out that I had it a bit wrong, that they would only #LockTheClock after all the member countries decided which time zone to land in.

So where they landed is that no country has wanted to decide. They talk about it, but nobody has taken action.

It is a hard decision, and perhaps nowhere is it harder than in Spain, which has a particularly, well, Spanish approach to time.

Back in WWII, Franco wanted to align Spain with Germany, and adopted German time. If you go there (and I recommend it highly) you will see that the sun sets in Madrid at 9:49 p.m. on the longest day of the year. That’s late!

The crazy part (to me, anyway) is that the Spaniards are just getting going at that time. If you go to dinner at 9 p.m. even a popular resteraunt will be empty because the real Spaniards don’t eat until 10 p.m. or later. After all, that’s just when it’s getting dark.

So, should Spain get more aligned with the sun? Right now “solar noon” in Madrid comes at 2:16 p.m. on June 21st, so you could make the case that Spain could make a two-hour shift and still have some sunlight to spare.

But longtime readers of this blog know that I don’t think I should be dictating the “proper” solution to anyone in any U.S. state, and certainly not to any European country. If having the sun stay up that late is the quintessence of Spain, who am I to judge? If Spaniards want instead to have the clock aligned to the sun in ways that are more similar to their neighbors, that’s great, too.

All I know is that just as with everywhere else in the world that forces the barbarism of clock changing on the populace, this coming Monday will be deadly, with increases in heart attacks, strokes, traffic accidents, etc. The list is long and scary, and the Spaniards should do something about that along with all other civilized countries.

Will it be the European Union that leads the way to clock sanity? It was the Europeans who started the whole mess back in WWI, maybe they will be the ones to end it?

If I had to bet, I’d actually say it’s the U.S. that will lead the world on this topic. Our country is bitterly divided right now on so many topics, but on this one there is unsurpassed unity.

More proof that #LockTheClock is the ultimate in a bipartisan topic:
Make Daylight Saving Time permanent: Sens. Patty Murray and Marco Rubio https://t.co/dyjtleQYim via @usatoday

— Scott Yates, #LockTheClock (@lock_the_clock) March 27, 2021

The one exception

I think it’s a bad idea to change the clock twice a year. (Well, only once a year is it deadly when we take away an hour of sleep, but…)

There is one country, however, that I actually encourage it. For now.

I was fortunate enough to visit Ukraine a couple of years ago. It’s an amazing country that has suffered enormously under Russian AND Trumpian manipulation and occupation, and yet manages to be optimistic and friendly.

The people there want to break away from Russia in every way possible, and one of those ways is by keeping time with Europe, and not Russia. Europe changes the clocks, Russia doesn’t. (Perhaps the one move Putin has made that I agree with.)

So for the people of Ukraine, changing the clocks is another way that they can signal to themselves and to the world that they are European and democratic.

My only hope is that everyone in Kyiv, and the rest of Ukraine, takes it easy on Monday morning when the alarm clocks will go off an hour earlier than expected, leading to all those negative health impacts.

And with a little luck, perhaps the U.S. will lead the way to bring freedom from the tyranny of clock-changing to the whole world.

Photo by me taken in Independence Square in Kyiv in 2018.

Daylight Saving Time/Standard Time Legislative Update 2021

February 27, 2021

Last year at this time I had just finished testifying in Atlanta, and I had high hopes that we’d get to 20 states that had passed some kind of bill to #LockTheClock in 2020.

Well, as we know, 2020 through us all for a loop. A few states that move really fast, like Wyoming and Louisiana, got a bill done before everything went to crap, but we ended up with only 15 states that have taken action.

This year is poised to blast through the progress from last year. The bills I’ve seen, testified on, and talked to sponsors about are absolutely blazing through.

My last trip before Covid was to Atlanta in support of Wes Cantrell

One big thing that’s different this year is that I’m able to be many more places at the same time, through the magic of zoom. One of the realities of this new world is that people are much more accustomed to meeting in virtual rooms. That means less time on an airplane, and much more time getting the word out, so that’s a net positive.

And the vibe I’m picking up everywhere is that it’s time to get this done. With all that’s going wrong in the world, let’s at least make the clocks work. That’s the general feeling I’m picking up all over the place.

What’s going on in your state?

Well, for the very latest, check out the Daylight Saving Time legislation page, which has a map and a list updated continuously. But for some of the story behind the story working roughly west to east, here are some updates:

Nevada

Around the country, there have been only a small handful of states that haven’t done anything to #LockTheClock, Nevada among them. That changed with the introduction of a bill this week.

The bill follows a lot of the best practices I laid out in this post.

It calls on the Feds to fix the U.S. laws.
It cooperatively works with California.

There’s a saying around state capitols that it takes five years to pass a good bill. Given the speed this is moving around the rest of the country, Nevada may be the first state to introduce a bill and pass it in the first year.

And if it does, California will be surrounded by states that want clock sanity, so maybe the legislators in California will finally get with the other states, and with the 70 percent of voters who said loud and clear they want something done. (It’s going to be a bit harder since the two biggest advocates for change in California’s legislature are both now out of state office, but it could still happen.)

If California does follow Nevada, it will be clear that what happens in Vegas stays in, well, at least it stays in the Pacific Time Zone.

Montana

Going just a bit west and north is the Big Sky state, which has the distinction of being the only state that touches two other time zones besides the one that it is in.

If the new law passes there, much of the credit will go to a citizen, George Moncure, who just likes to play tennis outside, and likes the sun later in the day to be able to do that with friends.

I’ve told him that if I had 50 guys like him, this thing would have been fixed years ago. He’s marshaled resources, found people to testify, worked with a sponsor… he’s done it all and made it easy for me.

If you think you’d like to make a difference in your state, but don’t think one person can make a difference, I hold up George as proof that one person can make a huge difference.

Montana’s legislative session is short, so it may not squeak out in time, but it may.

Interestingly, there’s another bill going through the legislature that George is not in favor of, a bill that would put Montana in Standard Time year round. Longtime fans of the #LockTheClock movement know that this blog doesn’t have a position on which time zone is best to lock into.

So, this state may be an interesting glimpse into which of those two choices a state legislature will opt for. More on that idea when we get to Texas.

New Mexico

One of the earliest legislators I ever wrote about on this blog was Sen. Cliff Pirtle, who has been advocating for clock sanity for years.

His bill for this year passed 6–2 out of its first committee, which I was honored to testify in front of by zoom. I was just glad to speak because I got elbowed out of a chance to speak when I drove down there to testify a couple of years ago.

I understand that this year Pirtle has more bipartisan support for the bill, which should help it sail through a bit more quickly.

Texas

There are a bunch of bills in Texas this year, seven at last count.

The ones that are the most interesting to me are the two companion bills that would ask the voters if they prefer locking the clock in permanent Standard Time, or permanent Daylight Saving Time. These come from Rep. Lyle Larson, and Sen. Jose Menendez. (Note that these two sponsors come from different parties. It would be wonderful to see a bipartisan bill emerge from Texas on this clearly bipartisan issue.)

I’ve seen a zillion polls regarding DST, and in general it seems that about 70 percent of people want to #LockTheClock. If and when people are then asked what time they want the time locked into, again about 70 percent say they want Permanent DST, the time we have in the summer.

But the polling is often muddied. The options are jumbled together, or the language isn’t clear.

This proposal would make it crystal clear for voters: Permanent ST or DST? Pick one.

Now, what goes for Texas may not go for every state, but it will be interesting to watch the results. The state is huge, but in general is toward the western side of the Central Time zone, so it would be easy to make the case that it should be in Standard Time year round. People in Texas, from what I hear, also like football and barbecue, both of which are better with more sunshine.

A really interesting vote to watch will be in the little chunk of Texas surrounding El Paso, which is in the Mountain Time zone. Their vote likely won’t be enough to sway the state, but it will be interesting to see if people there opt to remain different than the rest of the state and like their neighbors in New Mexico and Mexico, or if they would want to join with Dallas and Houston.

Just for the trove of new data we would get, I’m hoping that bill passes and the voters get to have a say this November.

For one thing, it will take a lot of the arguments that are currently in the shadows, and force them into the light. Do pharmaceutical sleep aids do better with more clock changing? I don’t know, but if there’s a campaign on both sides, and the pharmaceutical companies donate to one side, we’ll finally have a clear answer.

Oklahoma

The bills there would #LockTheClock for Oklahoma into Standard Time.

This will also be a fascinating one to watch. No state has opted to lock into Standard Time since Arizona did it in 1968, two years after the Uniform Time Act of 1966 made that the only legal choice for a state.

Every other state that’s passed a law or resolution in the last four years has passed something saying that it wants to lock into permanent Daylight Time, so Oklahoma would be going the other direction.

Given that it is on the western edge of the Central Time zone, that makes some sense for people there. The sun wouldn’t come up until awfully late in the winter. How will golfers react to the idea of sunsets around 7:30 instead of 8:30 p.m. in the summer? I haven’t seen any organized opposition yet, and one bill already passed out of its first committee with a unanimous vote, so this bill might go all the way, which would mean that Oklahoma could be the first state in nearly 50 years to #LockTheClock.

Dad joke alert…

Will the Sooner state #LockTheClock sooner than the rest of the country?

North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska and Kansas

These four states, like a stack of delicious pancakes in the heartland of the country, have some strong time zone similarities:

They all have a weird line vaguely around the 100th Meridian that splits the time zones from the eastern population centers from western farm and ranch lands.
They all have bills/resolutions calling to move to permanent DST.
All those bills are sailing through. One bill that I thought was doomed in North Dakota is now doing very well. I’m glad I didn’t kill it!

Illinois

The land of Lincoln has had a few bills each year for the last few years, but this may be the year something happens. The bill that I think may have the best shot is the one that has bipartisan sponsors. This is the ultimate in bipartisan issues, so it makes sense to have sponsors from both parties.

The only part of this bill that I disagree with is the fact that it just kind of announces that Illinois will be moving to DST permanently. That’s not actually allowed under the current federal law. I’ll try to work with the sponsors here and see if we can get the bill amended to something that has a better chance of making a difference, which may in turn help it to get voted on, approved, and signed by the governor.

The Illinois legislature meets essentially year-round, so it may be a while before we get news here.

Indiana

I’m not going to write about the states not doing anything, except I do want to mention Indiana, which has a particularly weird history with DST.

If I was in Indiana, I’d be reading the tea leaves of what’s going on around the country, especially in DC, and I’d realize that there’s a pretty good chance that Permanent DST is coming for everyone.

Perhaps more than the residents of any other state, Hoosiers may not be happy about this. The sun would come up awfully late in the winter. It’s just nuts that Indiana is in the same time zone as, say, Vermont.

Their chance to fix this before it gets done to them is now. Why is there no action? I just don’t get it.

Georgia

Wes Cantrell is another hero of the #LockTheClock movement. He’s been pushing bills for a couple of years now, and actually getting them passed.

This year Georgia has a couple of bills that seem contradictory on the surface, but as Rep. Cantrell has explained to me, they actually are not.

Right now the federal government doesn’t allow states to go to Permanent DST, only Permanent ST. One of the bills in Georgia would have that state do what’s legal now, and move to Standard Time year round. The other bill would have the state move to DST year round at the point that it becomes legal.

Sort of like with Texas, this will be a fascinating dynamic to watch play out.

If the feds move quickly, the Standard Time discussion will be moot. If not, however, Georgia could remain in Eastern Standard Time all year. Georgians may not hate that. The state is on the western edge of their time zone, but the effects aren’t as pronounced because the time zone isn’t as wide near the bottom as it is at the top. (I always thought the Eastern Time Zone looked a bit like a funnel.) Also, because the state is so far south the swing in daylight time isn’t as dramatic as it is up north.

But tourism is a big industry in Georgia. Also, the state is probably a bit more socially and economically wrapped up with Florida, so it may want to stay in the same time zone with that state.

Will that state move to Standard Time, like it, and want to stay, or will it try it for a year, and realize that it wants Permanent Daylight Time? I don’t know the answer to that, and really the people there probably don’t either, but it could be an interesting test case that we can all learn from.

New York

In some ways, this is the ballgame right here.

For one thing, a lot of states are super tightly integrated into New York City. I was testifying in Connecticut where a bill seemed likely to pass (until the TV industry killed it, but that’s another story.) Part of the reason it was going to pass is a compromise I had a small part in brokering.

A representative from the part of Connecticut that has a ton of people who live there but work in “The city” (as they call New York City) said that he just couldn’t support something that might see people have to change time zones every morning on the way to work and again on the way home.

Fair enough.

So the compromise was that instead of Connecticut being dependent on Massachusetts before it adopts Atlantic Standard Time — which is the trick that they would use to help deal with current law about only being able to go into Permanent ST — it would be dependent on Massachusetts and New York doing the same.

The same kind of thing is at play with New Jersey. It would be a bit odd for the countless people that drive through the Lincoln tunnel or over the George Washington Bridge or take the PATH train if they had to change time zones each time.

And with New Jersey, you need to bring in Pennsylvania and probably Delaware, etc.

So. Yeah. New York is kind of the key.

Also New York is pretty much the center of the broadcasting world. As far as I can tell, it’s broadcasters who are the most rattled by the idea of more daylight for everyone later in the days. They don’t want to come out and say it, but they want it to be dark outside so people will come inside and sit on the couch and watch TV.

How hard will they push when actual bills start getting hearings? Or will they push so hard behind the scenes that the bills won’t get hearings at all?

New York’s legislature meets all year, so we won’t get any quick answers, but you can be sure that I’ll be paying close attention to the four bills, so far, that have been introduced there.

Vermont, New Hampshire, Connecticut

Another hero of the #LockTheClock movement is Tom Emswiler of Massachusetts. They are now considering a bill that would take the recommendation of the study committee that said moving to Permanent Atlantic Time would be best for the Bay State (report downloadable from this link). Tom gets a ton of the credit there.

It started when he wrote a column for his local paper. That turned into a law that ordered a comprehensive study. That study was conducted by consulting tons of experts, debating for hours, and the end result was that the best thing the state could do is move to Permanent Atlantic Standard Time, as long as a couple of neighboring New England states came along.

Well, now those states are slowly coming along.

They are getting some resistance. It was ESPN, based in Connecticut, that has previously killed proposals there, but overwhelming bipartisan support may finally push back against that.

New Hampshire has a creative lawmaker, Josh Yokela, pushing for practical solutions there, and his bill may get signed this year.

I disagree with national broadcasters when they want to see it darker, earlier, so people will watch more TV. I do think they have a small nugget of a valid point in not wanting to see the continental United States move to five time zones from the current four. I don’t think that will happen because of the Connecticut-New York issue. But if that was solved, and we had states in the Atlantic Time Zone, it could be a bit confusing for a while.

But the reality is that solar noon is way off clock time for the New England States. If politics were out of the equation, those states probably would be in the Atlantic Time Zone, in Standard Time, all year long.

After all the dust settles with the efforts to #LockTheClock, will we have five time zones in the lower 48? Probably not, but it’s a fun thought experiment of where you might draw the line that works for solar time as well as for the natural associations of populations.

Summary

I hope you’ve enjoyed this walk around the country.

The one thing that seems to tie all of these conversations together is the fact that this topic is no longer a sideshow. For years it was discussed in a few states with a few lighthearted legislators who didn’t mind a bit of snickering going on when their bills were brought up, and then killed.

There’s still plenty of levity with this topic. In a recent hearing I was participating in the committee chair couldn’t find the sponsor, and he joked that she must be operating in a different time zone.

But once the jokes are done, and people realize that approximately 28 people are going to needlessly die this year because of the “spring forward” time change, and that countless more will have heart attacks, strokes, workplace accidents and more, the joking fades away and the voting starts. And this year more than any other year, legislators are voting yes.

Will state legislatures be able to fix this? Not on their own, and in an upcoming post I’ll take a look at what’s going on in DC, but there’s no question that state legislatures passing resolutions and laws is a hugely important effort that is absolutely getting noticed in Washington.

And if the U.S. can get this fixed, then maybe Europe will get out of its current rut, and it will be able to fix this, too.

Then instead of dreading the clock change every spring and every fall, we’ll just be able to live our lives and someday our grandchildren will wonder what the heck we were doing changing the clock twice a year.

Thanks again for reading, and keep in touch!

Protecting Students During the Dark Days of Covid… And the Dark Days

January 30, 2021

Here’s another guest post by Jonathan Helton. His first post for this blog about childhood obesity was great, and now he’s back with a post that is very timely for me as my son returns to in-person learning for the first time since last March in the coming days. -Scott

This is not the usual time for “back to school” but there’s not much about this year that is “usual.”

With the return to school for many students, however, the topic comes back up about what the right time is to start school, especially relative to Daylight Saving Time.

It can be more than a little disconcerting sending your kids to a bus stop in the morning dark. This fear has reflexively pushed some people to favor permanent Standard Time if they had to pick one time zone to stick in to avoid the madness of changing time zones twice per year.

As the argument goes, an hour of sunlight shifted towards the morning will keep kids safe on their way to school. It’s certainly a noble sentiment.

Noble, but misinformed. In reality, these clock changes endanger kids and by permanently ending these shifts we would be doing more to actually protect them.

Here’s why:

After the failed experiment of changing into DST in January, 1974, (who thought it would be a good idea to change the clocks in January?!?!?) the Department of Transportation decided to study what actually worked, and what did not work.

That study debunked the idea that school kids faced additional risk from year-round Daylight Saving Time. A review of the DOT study by the National Bureau of Standards concluded that there was no increased accident risk for students in the morning (pg. 4-5).

Actually, the opposite is likely true. Year-long DST would probably better protect students overall. A 2008 Wake Forest Law Review piece backed this claim. It looked again at the 1974 changes. While perhaps 10 additional children were killed during the morning hours, there were “sixty fewer afternoon school children fatalities during the same period,” the authors reported (pg. 87).

That’s not all. In 1995, researchers studied car accidents and lighting levels. Pedestrians—a group which certainly includes students walking home—faced a 300 percent increased likelihood of being in a fatal crash once light was shifted from the afternoon to the morning. That’s exactly what Standard Time, the time we’re on now, between November and March, does.

Other studies indicate similar things. Lighting changes and sleep loss throw off normal driving habits and increase the risk of being in a wreck.

But permanent DST protects children in other ways. Criminals, who are more likely to be active at night, are deterred during DST. Robberies go down during DST, as compared to Standard Time. Homicides, too, decrease in DST.

No matter what side of the issue you’re on, then—permanent DST, permanent ST, or the convoluted system we have now—it’s fairly clear that Standard Time does not protect students from crime or traffic accidents. It’s an argument lacking empirical merit.

Of course, apart from protecting students, there are numerous other reasons to #LockTheClock. More sleep, less stress, fewer heart attacks, etc. Either permanent ST or DST would be better than what we have now, regardless of the school situation.

But the question of school start times relative to the clock is a legitimate one. In the past school advocates have said that changing what time schools start is just too hard. Well, if we’ve learned anything this last year, it’s that schools can indeed be flexible in scheduling to protect students and do what is best for them academically. Changing start times for school will be a modest change indeed compared to all the other changes made recently.

More than a dozen states have already passed bills in favor of permanent DST. That is clearly the trend, especially for states on the eastern edge of their time zones. That is also the trend in all the federal legislation proposed. Given that, if you are involved with schools in any way, it might be time to start having the conversation about finding the right start times for school if what now seems almost inevitable happens: the country decides to #LockTheClock.

Jonathan Helton is an independent researcher and aspiring graduate student He covers policy topics from transportation to foreign aid and has published with The Strategy Bride, The Borgen Project, and elsewhere.

Daylight Saving Time and Dysregulating our Children with Autism

October 26, 2020

When I first started fighting to #LockTheClock six years ago, I knew that clock changing was annoying. I have come to learn that it’s also deadly, and we have lots of stats about that on the research page. Then came the day I went to testify in Nebraska, and the young man who testified before me made a statement that was so clear and powerful about how clock changing is hugely exacerbating for his seizure disorder.

If a person dies or ends up in the ER, that’s bad. Also bad, but harder to quantify, is the disruption for families like the Fausett family from Nebraska, or the family that you’ll read about below.

The writer of this post came to my attention because she contacted her state legislator, and the staff for that legislator then contacted me. When I heard this story, I thought it would be much better to get the story on this blog first-hand, and boy I was right about that. (The photos are from the mom, art creations from her kids.)

I hope you find it as moving and touching as I do, and I will keep this family — and all other families that deal with special issues like this — in mind as I fight to finally, once and for ever, put an end to the barbarism of clock changing.

— Scott

Hi there. My name is Amy. My children both have the diagnosis of Autism Spectrum Disorder, in addition to many other special needs. Life is challenging, and we spend hours every week in therapy and with specialists trying to support my children with their disability. My children require routines and schedules to navigate the world. The routines help them to stay regulated and in control of their emotions and bodies.

Daylight Saving Time (both when it starts in the spring and ends in the fall) is an incredibly challenging time for my family. The impact of arbitrarily changing the time twice a year is disruptive, dysregulating, and presents real safety concerns for my family. While others might find the practice of DST merely annoying or unimportant, to my family it is dangerous.

Let me ask you to think back to the Monday after Daylight Saving Time began in March. How were you feeling that morning? Maybe a little tired because it felt like you lost an hour of sleep? Maybe you wondered why it still felt so dark when it was time for your morning commute? Maybe when you ran out for your coffee you were surprised by how different the quality of the light was? Maybe you were surprised that you didn’t feel as sleepy as you usually do when it was time to turn in?

My children were extremely dysregulated that morning. There were tears, there was screaming, there was aggression, both physical and verbal towards me. I think we can all agree that resetting the body’s sleep pattern is not as easy as resetting a clock. At my house, we try valiantly twice a year to ease the transition, but bodies have their own internal clock. My son could not articulate why he felt so sleepy and off that Monday. This caused my son real physical and emotional stress–the fallout of which is termed a meltdown. For the rest of the day, he was stressed out and felt as if the world was not quite right. For all of us there are little reminders throughout the days after DST begins or ends that we switched the clock—we forget to reset a digital clock on the oven, we aren’t as hungry for our meals, the shadows are a little shorter. For most of us this is no big deal. We know why everything is a little different, and we adjust to the differences pretty quickly. For my children, this is incredibly upsetting and stressful. Nothing feels right to them. They don’t understand why they had to wake up early. They don’t understand why it feels as if their therapists are an hour late in arriving, and they don’t understand the explanations of DST.

For my children, adjusting to the new time takes three weeks to one month. Imagine missed naps, refusal to sleep at bedtime, and groggy mornings for a month! And that’s just their disrupted sleep pattern.

But my children don’t process the world the same way most of us do. The sensory input is far more overwhelming to them and can very easily dysregulate them—leading them to at times shut down and withdraw or at other times to meltdown and tantrum. We’ve all experienced days where little irritations can accumulate and build up until one last straw sets us off. This happens often with my children; however, they have more limited language and more limited social tools to understand how to deal with their emotion. So they meltdown. Aggression towards themselves, their peers, or an adult like me is often part of that meltdown. This is what I mean when I say that DST poses real safety risks to my family. It creates for weeks these situations where my children feel as if things are off, in addition to messing with their sleep, and rather than being able to talk and process this, it builds until there is a meltdown. My children have a hard enough time coping with everyday life, but because we want time to “spring forward” or “fall back” we have to make everything harder for them. Adjusting is hard when you have Autism. The meltdowns that my children experience are not choices. My kids are not naughty, spoiled, or bratty children who are tantruming to get their way. They are special kids, who see and experience the world differently and deserve our help.

So let’s go back to that Monday in March. My son had a meltdown, but for the rest of the day his fight or flight instincts were activated. His stress level, already elevated, continued to build until a sensory stimulus (a car passing by too fast as we were out for a walk, a food that is the wrong shape or color, a smell that is too strong) pushed him over the edge. Then another meltdown happened.

Unfortunately, meltdowns can grow in their duration and severity.

Have you ever had to physically restrain a child for their safety or your own? I have during my son’s meltdowns. Have you needed to be trained and certified in how to physically restrain a child in crisis? I have. And while aggression towards self or others is not always a hallmark of a meltdown (although it is certainly a hallmark of my son’s), it is very common. Also common is property destruction, elopement, verbal aggression, and vocal disruption.

These are sobering experiences, and they motivate me and other parents like me to look for patterns and anticipate situations that could lead to meltdowns. Arbitrarily changing my children’s routines and throwing them off twice every year for DST leads to a whole lot of meltdowns which results in increased incidents of aggression. Daylight Saving Time isn’t worth it, y’all. But helping my children out and other children like them is worth it. I love my children. They are wonderful, intelligent, creative people who see the world in cool and unique ways. They are working hard to learn how to use language and calming strategies to stay regulated and stay in control of their emotions and bodies. We can help them and by locking the clocks and ending the practice of Daylight Saving Time.

My job as a parent of disabled kiddos is to advocate for their special needs. Before you dismiss the movement to #locktheclock as unimportant, consider how the practice is not only really challenging but dangerous for my family and other special needs families.

Daylight Saving Time, COVID-19, and hope for the future?

March 28, 2020

Just a quick post to say that this topic is on the back burner, just for a bit. Like the rest of the world, I hope that soon we have adequate testing and that we can get back to life that will be a new normal.

For years I’ve gotten emails, tweets and general complaints that this issue just is not all that important. Legislators get that all the time on this, and really on just about any issue: Why are you working on this when you could be working on [insert pet issue here]?

But now even I say that Daylight Saving Time is an issue that can wait. Once we no longer all need to shelter in place, we can pick things back up.

Also there’s just not as much to report about. Like everything else, state legislatures have suspended meeting. And the federal efforts are stuck because nothing non-Covid-19 related is happening.

I was hoping that this year we’d get to 20 states that have passed something. We had three states pass something before the crisis hit: South Carolina, Ohio and Utah, (which passed a bill this year after passing a resolution last year.)

Then just as the legislatures started adjourning, Wyoming passed its bill, and from a socially distant desk, the governor of Wyoming signed the bill into law with little fanfare this week. The sponsor of the bill contacted me when it was signed, and we celebrated electronically. I was personally bummed because Wyoming is close enough that I could have easily made it for a bill-signing ceremony, but there was no ceremony. There are far bigger tragedies associated with COVID, but still…

So, I will continue to monitor the news, but not a lot else. With luck by the time the Fall Back change comes in November, as a society we will have enough capacity to handle recovery AND fixing the clocks.

Change in turbulent times

One small historical note:

Two years ago I wrote about the 100th anniversary of Daylight Saving Time in the U.S. In that post, I started off with a reference to the flu that was so deadly in that year.

I was hoping then that the 100th anniversary would be the hook that would get us to pay attention and kill DST clock-changing. That didn’t happen.

But…

DST started during a pandemic. Maybe it will end during one?

If something happens, you will know about it first right here, so do keep in touch.

-Scott

First Time Request, Long Time Anti-Clock-Changing Advocate

March 8, 2020

This is the sixth year I have been blogging about this, and in all that time I have never really asked you, the reader, for anything.

I have never, not one time, asked anyone for money for this cause.
I’ve never sold any “merch” as the kids like to call it.
There are no pop-ups begging you to join my email list. (I only added an email list last year, and have only sent, I think, three emails. If you would like to, you can sign up here.)

Just yesterday, however, I decided to do something that I have openly mocked in the past, and that is to start a petition.

I have seen dozens of these things, and they have all done the same amount of good: Zilch.

But people like signing them because it feels like you are doing something.

Well, I decided to merge that desire that people have to do something with a petition that might actually make a dent.

You see, right now there is one person who is blocking progress on #LockTheClock.

That is Sen. Roger Wicker from the great state of Mississippi. He is also the chairman of the Commerce Committee in the U.S. Senate.

For reasons that only historians can love, all of the clock management happens through the Department of Transportation, and that department fall under the purview of the Commerce Committee.

Right now there is a bill in front of that committee called the Sunshine Protection Act. It has not yet gotten a hearing.

Now when I was a kid and I learned how a bill became a law, I never imagined that a bill could get introduced and then NOT get a hearing. I mean, if a senator cares enough to officially submit a bill, it seems like a committee should have to at least look at it. If it loses a vote, fine, but it should be able to get a vote, right?

Well, that is not how it works. It turns out that a bill only gets a hearing when the chair of the committee says it gets a hearing.

That’s where the act is sitting right now, waiting for a hearing.

Now, I don’t think that Sen. Wicker is actually against this idea. I mean, consider:

He is a Republican, but the bill is sponsored by another Republican, Sen. Marco Rubio.
He is from Mississippi, but a co-sponsor of the bill is the other senator from Mississippi, Sen. Hyde-Smith.
He can’t be thinking that people hate it because so many states are now specifically asking for it, and polls are always really clear that people hate the clock-changing.
He served in the Mississippi legislature, which now has nine different bills basically all in line with the Sunshine Protection Act.

I think he just doesn’t know about it.

So, I want to help him learn about it. Hence the petition. I will personally deliver all these signature to him, his staff and anyone else that might help him to decide to give this bill a hearing.

That is why for the first time I am genuinely asking you to do one thing that will not take much time, and add your name to this petition:

Get The Sunshine Protection Act a Hearing

One small note: That petition is hosted on change.org. A thing I didn’t know when I put the petition there is that change.org asks for money after you sign. You do NOT need to give money. That all goes to change.org, which is actually a for-profit company. You can if you want, but don’t think the money comes to me. As always, I am not asking for donations.

Thanks for reading, and thanks especially for signing that, and then sharing it with everyone you know. With this one thing, maybe we can get this bill a hearing, and the voice of the sleep deprived around the country will finally be heard.

Killer Clocks – The Hotlanta message about Daylight Saving Time

February 26, 2020

Because this effort to fix Daylight Saving Time is basically just me writing blog posts, emailing legislators and talking to people, I never really step back and do any kind of planning or organizing.

I certainly never have marketing meetings to talk about the message.

But yesterday that happened for me in the Georgia state capitol.

And boy did it pay off.

OK, first the message, and then the back story:

Great, eh?

Only took me six years to come up with that. Jeesh.

OK, here’s the backstory:

For a while now I’ve been communicating with Rep. Wes Cantrell in Georgia. Like other legislators around the country, I immediately liked the guy. There are definitely both Democrats and Republicans who care about this, and the thing they always have in common is a tendency toward Good Government and being responsive to their constituents.

He told me the bill was coming up for a crucial hearing, and I have a bunch of frequent flier miles and hotel points, so I told him I’d be happy to fly down to testify. I’m so glad I went, because I got something really valuable in return: A clean, coherent message.

When I go to states to testify, I typically spend some time with the sponsor, and then sometimes there’s some impromptu lobbying, and quite often some talking to reporters. As a former reporter, I’m always happy to do that.

But I never really listen to what I’m saying, I just blurt out as many facts as I can.

Yesterday, however, after the hearing, I got to sit down with Rep. Cantrell and a couple of other people who had been in the hearing room, including his wife. One of those in the room said that when I said one thing, the whole issue really crystalized for him.

The government is in charge of clocks. The clocks are killing people. It’s time to Lock The Clock.

And then one of the reporters who was there featured that snippet in his excellent report from the hearing. (Also, loved the Girl Scouts!) (Also, the local Fox station also did a fantastic story.)

So now I have it.

I got the hashtag #LockTheClock when I testified in Michigan, and now I have, essentially, a vision statement for the movement.

The first line is a given: The government, properly, has an interest in a unified and coherent system for time.

The second line is the gut punch. It may not have been clear when the Uniform Time Act of 1966 passed, but it is crystal clear now that the time change kills people every year.

And the last line is the call to action.

Feel free to share that however you like to share these things.

Thanks to Rep. Cantrell, and all the people I talked to in Georgia, who were as lovely and helpful as could be. Thanks to Noor Younis for the background photo.

And thanks to you for reading this, and helping to get that message out.

This just may be the year!

I’m out of order? You’re out of order! This whole thing is out of order!

February 20, 2020

I testified Monday in Wyoming on a very sensible Daylight Saving Time bill, and it sailed out of committee on an 8-1 vote.

(That one no vote was sort of smiling as he voted no. I think he was fine with it passing. He was distinguished — my way of saying he was really old — and I think he was voting to represent the constituency of people who remember when Standard Time was more common before the Uniform Time Act of 1966.)

My testimony was impromptu, mostly just answering questions. It was a respectful and legitimate conversation on the merits. I was very happy to hear the Farm Bureau testify that it supported the bill. The lobbyist from the bureau alluded to the tortured history that farmers have with Daylight Saving Time, and in a sense he saw this bill as a chance to put all that, finally, to rest.

Yesterday I testified in my home state of Colorado. The last time I testified in Colorado the proceedings were not so respectful as I was personally attacked by members of the House, and I was even told that my comments were out of order. I wanted to stand up, like Al Pacino, and yell: “I’m out of order??? You’re out of order! This whole place is out of order!!!!”

But I didn’t. I just apologized meekly and moved on. That was two years ago.

My plan going into this year was to speak truth to power, and if I got ruled out of order, well, maybe those interested can just read this or watch this video and see what I would have said before I get cut off.

In the end, I didn’t deliver these remarks below exactly. You can read an excellent writeup of what happened from Alex Burness in the Denver Post, but the comments below were the heart of what I wanted to say. What I learned after my testimony made me grow even more cynical about the process. See below for that.

Dear members of the kill committee,

My name is Scott Yates, and I’m the leader of the LockTheClock movement to end the insanity of changing the clocks twice per year.

I’ve testified all over the country on this topic, and the interchange with the lawmakers is always respectful, and very much on the actual topic of the significant health and safety concerns related to the government mandating that the entire population change all the clocks by an hour twice per year. Except in Colorado.

When I testified here in Colorado, I pointed out that the main reason that the ski industry said they were against fixing what is broken with time is that they needed morning sunshine to examine the ski lifts. I suggested that we all pitch in and buy them some flashlights.

That’s when I was ruled out of order.

So I won’t do that today. No way.

After that, I started doing some research, and came to a startling conclusion. In short, the whole “morning light” thing was not the real reason. I don’t know for sure what the real reason is, but I suspect money is involved. Once a ski resort has sold you a lift ticket, it doesn’t make any more money on you the more you ski. It only makes more money if you stop skiing and get into a resteraunt. The only way to get you off the mountain is to make it dark.

But as I sit here today, I don’t actually think the ski industry even cares that much about this issues. Indeed, I think that if you kill this bill today, what is happening is simply a raw expression of power.

I have been working on this issue for six years now, and I pay close attention to what’s happening around the country. Two states—Arizona and Hawaii—have locked the clock in Standard Time. Another 11 states have passed some kind of bill or resolution to stay in Daylight Time year round. Nearly all the rest have some kind of bill working to #LockTheClock. Only six states aren’t doing anything right now.

Also I’m working closely with the office of Sen. Marco Rubio and Rep. Rob Bishop, both of whom have federal bills that would Lock the Clock, or allow states to do so more easily. Both have lots of bipartisan support, and in this post-impeachment world where legislators are anxious to say that they indeed did get something done and the only way to do so is with a bipartisan bill, both offices are optimistic that they will pass something this year.

But I’d like to draw your attention to five of the states that have passed legislation to fix Daylight Saving Time:

Washington,
Oregon,
California,
Utah, and
Maine.

From Mount Hood and Olympic Valley in the west to Sugarloaf in the east, or Jackson or Park City here in the Mountain Time Zone, there are a lot of ski resorts in those five states.

On Monday one of the 8 Yes votes in Wyoming was the representative whose district includes Jackson. No pushback at all. In the other states with a significant ski industry, absolutely no opposition. Nothing.

Does the sun interact with mountains differently in Colorado than it does in California? Do clocks work differently for skiers in Maine or Oregon?

Which leads me to think that maybe I was wrong, that the ski industry doesn’t really care about getting more people off the mountain and into restaurants? What if they don’t care about this issue that much at all?

Then what are we left with? What possible reason could the ski industry have in wanting to kill this bill year after year?

The only possible explanation I’m left with is that the ski lobbyists are killing this just because they can.

Larry Bird, one of the greats of the game of basketball, would sometimes deliver a hip check or make some unsportsmanlike comment, and not get called for it. Why would he do that? Precisely to show that he was the master in that building.

Similarly, I think the ski lobbyists use this topic simply as a way to flex.

Think about it from this perspective: Let’s say that you are doing a town hall in, say, Aurora, and a constituent stands up and says, “I understand that federal law may change, and we could have had a chance to vote on which time zone we like best, and you voted against giving us, the people who elected you, a voice. Why is that?” And then you respond with your voice trailing off: “The ski industry doesn’t have enough flashlights.”

It is beyond absurd—it is the stuff that turns people off to politics, and especially in this era, that is a shame.

This is good government 101. The government regulates time. The way that it does so right now kills and injures people. There is no partisan angle, just historically bad management of clocks. Previous generations of politicians didn’t fully realize the high cost in life and money that clock-switching caused, but now we do know and yet we do nothing. Why?

Because of some lobbyists? Because of the raw exercise of power under the gold dome?

Imagine yourself again at that town hall, and when that constituent asks, imagine how great it would be for you to say: “You know what, I voted for you. I voted to give you that choice. It cost me politically, but I did it anyway because my job is to govern, and if we can’t even govern the clocks, then what does that say? So I voted to bring some sanity to the clocks, and to give you a chance to be heard.”

So I ask you today: Hold your head up high and vote yes.

Thank you very much.

Postscript: How Democracy Dies, Just a Little

So, that was the testimony that I didn’t give, but my comments included a lot of that, but not the part calling out the lobbyists so directly.

Also, the reason that I had used Aurora as my hypothetical is that I thought the person most likely to buck the party leadership and vote would be Rhonda Fields of Aurora. If you click on that link you’ll see that she’s on the “Kill Committee” also known as “State Affairs.”

And she may have been willing to go her own way on that day. But she wasn’t on that committee on the day that bill was heard.

Colorado is a pretty clean state. We have these great rules that, for example, make it so that every bill gets a hearing. Most states aren’t like that, and bills often just die with no hearing at all.

But there are still ways to kill bills, and one is to assign them to the “state affairs” committee, a group whose mandate is so nebulous and membership so small that it can kill just about anything.

So the ski industry lobbyists worked with the leadership of the State Senate to assign this bill to the kill committee, and then just to make sure it would die, the leadership changed the membership of the committee just for one day.

Yes, just on February 19th, 2020, Sen. Fields was not on that committee, and she was replaced by Sen. Kerry Donovan.

Why Donovan?

Well, for one she’s from Vail. Not just from Vail, her family practically founded the town. She talked about how her brother worked as one of the guys who inspects ski lifts, so she was insulted at my “flashlight” comments.

In short, she was about as reliable of a vote as you could find who would be willing to carry water for the ski industry lobbyists.

I was sunk before I walked into the room.

But the fact that the ski lobbyists had to go to such extreme measures to kill the bill, I think means the gig will soon be up.

And besides, the amendment that we offered was a good one. It didn’t commit Colorado to do anything, just to take a preference poll that will only take effect if the federal law changes. Really, if the ski industry was smart they would agree to it so that they can try to convince Coloradans to stay in Standard Time year round. If daylight time would really mean death and dismemberment of ski employees, they can try to make that case to the voters and see if the voters believe it more than I do. Maybe the voters will buy it, they’ve believed less credible claims than that.

If the ski industry does not make that case, it will be stuck with the federal law, which most likely will be putting us into permanent Daylight Time.

The Denver Post story by Alex Burness was so great, because it put right into print so everyone now knows what was formerly known only by people who hang around the capitol a lot: The ski industry is super powerful in Colorado, and is stopping the legislature from doing what it would otherwise want to do.

Now that the very concept of going against the ski industry is out in the open and being talked about, it’s kind of like the Emperor with No Clothes. It only takes one person saying it publicly, and the gig is up.

Times are changing, and the time is going to be changing.

Fall Back for Fun! (How many more times do we have to do this?)

October 12, 2019

OK, we’re getting back into the busy season for #LockTheClock.

I know this blog has been a bit quiet, but in part that’s because I’ve been so busy behind the scenes. Some of the stuff I can talk about, and some I can’t. Not yet. But when I can… Boy Howdy! It’s going to be tremendously fantastically big.

Until then…

If you are just visiting for the first time, here’s what you need to know:

This is the official site for trying to do away with switching the clock in and out of Daylight Saving Time.
It’s not a full-time thing, there’s no money behind it, but it is a legitimate movement now. I’ve been working on it for five years on nights and weekends, and I can tell you for sure that we ARE making progress.
If you are a citizen and want to know what you can do to help, read this post.
If you want to write to tell me you just had a brilliant idea, that we should move the clock 30 minutes and call it a compromise, well, let’s just say you aren’t the first to have that idea. If you want to work on that for five years, contact hundreds of legislators, do tons of press, write scores of blog posts, and convince people it’s a good idea — go for it! Just don’t write to me and tell me about it.

If you just survived the switch into Daylight Saving Time in Australia or New Zealand (weirdly even those two friendly countries don’t switch on the same weekend), welcome! For the first time this year I noticed a huge uptick in visitors from Down Under.

I haven’t yet had too many visitors from Iran, but I learned from a Lyft driver (and confirmed it on the internet) that Iran switches into DST on the first day of Spring and out on the first day of Fall. It doesn’t matter if the equinoxes fall on a Saturday night or not, they just switch, even if it’s mid-week.

The official mutt of #LockTheClock watches the sun come up.

While I’m interested in other countries, I’m most interested in what’s happened recently in the European Union.

Europe to Beat the US to #LockTheClock?

The news out of Europe is that all the member states of the EU will be ending the clock-changing insanity, starting in 2021.

It’s not final yet, but if I can read the tea leaves of this official statement, it seems like a done deal.

This is fantastic news for all the regular reasons, but especially because it mirrors what I think is the best solution for us in the U.S.

<Begin DST Nerd section, skip over if you are sleepy.>

There is a lot of debate about if we should switch to permanent Standard Time (what we have in the winter) or permanent Daylight Saving Time.

Officially, the position of this movement is to not take a position. The only thing we are asking is to #LockTheClock, no more changing the clock twice per year.

More specifically, in a country as big and diverse as the United States, there’s no one, clear answer. All of the opinion polls say that people want more daylight later in the day when they can use it more. Most businesses want more daylight later, it’s better for golf and other recreation industries, as well as retail sales.

Also, there are just a lot of weird little exceptions. Eastern Oregon. Northern Idaho. Western Nebraska.

Two of our biggest states by population, Texas and Florida, have relatively small bits hanging out in a less-populous time zone to the west.

Also Arizona, which people think doesn’t participate in DST, except that a huge swath of the state still does in the Navajo Nation. Indiana and Michigan have some odd spots, and Kentucky and Tennessee are cut right in half.

Weirdly, if the U.S. was to adopt the European system, it would be the most American thing we could do. A big part of our history is leaving a lot of the governing up to the states. Congress could pass a law saying that we are going to match the Europeans and stop changing clocks in 2021, and each state would have until then to decide which time zone they’ll be in.

Some states won’t have much say. California will be in the Pacific, New York in the East. But some states could decide that they want to unify, or even move. Michigan and Indiana should be in the Central Time zone if a person were trying to draw somewhat straight lines. I’m not sure why they aren’t, but I would guess it has something to do with big business, even if big business did blame the farmers, the same way they’ve always done.

That’s the best approach to federal legislation, something I am lobbying for. I haven’t gotten there yet, but the fact that the current bill going through Congress seems to be dead may help the sponsors cast about for a new approach. I’m actively working on that right now.

<End DST Nerd section>

The good news is that compared to when I started working on this, I can see the momentum changing in the press inquiries I’m getting, the legislative interest, the visitors to this site, and more.

So, I know you won’t like changing the clock again this fall, even though this is the one where you get an extra hour of sleep. But you can get that sleep with a bit of comfort that the world of clock changing is slowly drifting away.

Fixing Daylight Saving Time – It’s Getting Real

February 27, 2019

This is my fifth year advocating that we stop changing the clocks twice per year.

Photo by Majid Rangraz on Unsplash

In some ways, it is getting easier.

For instance, I once compiled a bunch of research, but then kept adding to it in various blog posts. Then I finally had the brilliant idea that should have come to me two years earlier: Just make a single page that has all the best research about DST.

That makes it easier when I discover yet another study showing that driving in the dark after work is more deadly than in the morning, I can just add it to the page.

Idaho on Line 3

It is also getting easier because instead of me calling legislators and trying to get them to take this issue seriously, I have legislators calling me, asking for advice, wanting research, model language, and just support. That is fun, and I wish I wasn’t so busy fixing fake news to be able to spend more time doing that.

But I can find some time, and was happy to get to testify in Connecticut recently.

It was great being there, and for those of you who (gasp!) don’t watch the whole thing, you should know that me being there may have helped broker a compromise that will help the bill pass, and help get the concept moving forward in Connecticut.

Indeed Connecticut is just one of more than two dozen states working hard on passing legislation. And they are getting further than ever before.

One small example: I’ve been working with a legislator in Wyoming for years, a very humble guy. He’s the opposite of the saying up there: “All hat, no cattle.”

In the past his bill died unceremoniously and quickly. This year his bill made it out of the House and came one vote away in the Senate. One vote! We’ll be back and get that one vote next year.

Getting the word out

The media has always been great about calling. Probably the highlight for me so far has been an interview with the New Yorker, but there could be a new highlight coming up soon. Stay tuned for that!

But I’m always happy to help local reporters around the country, and I always seem to be getting up extra extra early on the one day that I’d like to sleep in to do radio interviews.

That’s fine, though, happy to help. Just be in touch.

The hard part about #LockTheClock

The hard part of trying to fix Daylight Saving Time is that it hasn’t happened yet. It was totally clear five years ago that this needed to end, and yet nothing happened.

It was still clear four years ago, but that’s when a handful of states started taking this seriously.

Three years ago when a California legislator passed a resolution based on what I had written, that was awesome, but it did not create the tidal wave I was hoping.

Two years ago when politics seemed so broken after Brexit and Trump, I actually had some hope that fixing DST might be a way to move the conversation forward. It wasn’t.

Last year saw a huge number of bills going through state legislatures, and at the end of the year saw California voters overwhelmingly pass a measure to try to fix all this.

But this year, once again, the clocks will move forward. Once again the alarm clock on that Monday after will seem like an insult piled on a historical travesty.

And next year will probably be the same.

But still, I have hope. Things really are getting better, it’s just that I am only one person, and I don’t have a big business coalition behind me. That is fine, and maybe even better in the big picture because it is clear this is a genuine initiative, not something created in a soulless conference room somewhere.

It may not come this year, but it is coming. It is a rebellion, and those are built on hope, so I’m told.

Do not take New Hampshire’s plan to fix DST for granite!

January 20, 2019

OK, sorry. The headline is a small play on the fact that New Hampshire is the Granite State.

I am a huge fan of New Hampshire. My most famous relative lived there for decades, and donated her home and some acreage to the state, and it is now a lovely and quaint state park.

Our children will have more time after school to hike the Shieling Forest in Peterborough
if we have Daylight Time year-round. Photo from this FB Group.

My relative was Elizabeth Yates, the writer. She wrote dozens of books in her 95 years, the most famous of which was Amos Fortune, Free Man.

She wrote that book after being inspired by a headstone she discovered on a walk through Jaffrey, New Hampshire. It read:

Sacred
to the memory of
Amos Fortune
who was born free in
Africa a slave in America
he purchased liberty
professed Christianity
lived reputably and
died hopefully
Nov. 17, 1801
Aet. 91

With just that, she went to the state librarian in Concord and researched as much as she could about him, and then wrote a piece of historical fiction that was so lyrical, touching and powerful that it was awarded the top U.S. prize for youth fiction, the Newbery Medal for 1951.

A slave to the clock?

What does this have to do with Daylight Saving Time?

Perhaps just this: As the saying goes, “The arc of history is long, but it bends toward justice.”

I wouldn’t presume to say that fixing daylight saving time is the most important social justice issue of our time, or the most significant freedom and states-rights topic of the day… but it is a real issue.

It wasn’t, of course, in Amos Fortune’s day. Clocks back then were set to a town clock, and that was set by someone in the town figuring out when the sun was most straight overhead.

After the train came through, train conductors wanted synchronized time, so the Department of Transportation took over the regulation of time, and does so to this day.

When my great aunt Elizabeth Yates was a small girl, there was no DST, just Eastern Time. When we entered W.W. I, we started switching the clocks twice a year to stay in synch with the Brits, who themselves did it to stay in synch with the Germans. Why the Germans did it is a matter of some controversy.

As a country we Locked The Clock as soon as the war was over, and then we started switching twice a year again in W.W. II.

(Notice that “The Farmers” are not part of that history. They were not, and never have been and anyone who says they are is just repeating fake news.)

Why are we talking about DST?

Life in New Hampshire is just so much better than it was in the old days. People aren’t enslaved, and don’t have to purchase their own freedom. If you get influenza, you probably won’t die — that wasn’t the case 100 years ago.

So the things that we have to fix these days seem, perhaps, a bit prosaic, compared to the days when we did things like send a teacher into space, as we did with the great New Hampshire citizen Christa McAuliffe, God rest her soul.

But historians like Ken Burns of New Hampshire know that sometimes even small things can mean a lot.

So, what is this small thing we are fixing?

It’s the clock. Twice a year the government makes us change it. Why? It really isn’t the farmers. We change it, basically, because that is what we have done for as long as most people alive can remember.

And while it won’t save as many lives as George Whipple, (born in Grafton County, he’s the guy who figured out how to keep people from dying from anemia) fixing DST will save lives.

How? The research is very clear that the spring-forward change is deadly.

In a state as far north as New Hampshire, jolting an entire populace awake an hour before their bodies are ready for it causes traffic accidents, heart attacks, strokes, epileptic seizures, workplace accidents. Even judges are more harsh in their sentencing.

Worried about school kids going to school in the dark? Well, kids don’t die from that, and if the legislature wants to take up the idea of starting school a bit later, I’m sure you’ll have kids and families fully behind you.

The thing we actually need to be worried about these days is childhood obesity. The experts there tell us that another hour of daylight after school gives kids that much more time to play outside, not sitting inside looking at a device.

Regarding House Bill 567

Now, it is the case that it would be pretty disruptive for New Hampshire to be out of synch with Massachusetts and Maine. That’s why the bill being considered now smartly is following the trend of other bills around the country that say states should move as a group.

It’s very good planning to pass this measure right now. I hate to be the one to point this out, but Massachusetts may not be as neighborly, and could just pass a bill to #LockTheClock and not pay attention to if other nearby states are going to do it or not.

If New Hampshire passes this bill right now, you’ll know that you’ll be set if your noisy neighbor to the south takes action.

And there’s a good chance Massachusetts will act. They performed an excellent service for the whole country by really researching the topic in depth. The report they issued after interviews with the best experts is that staying on Daylight Time year-round is the best overall for everyone.

The panel also recommended that Massachusetts move to year-round DST in coordination with other New England states, but that could just end up being Connecticut and Rhode Island.

So this bill is the exact right solution at the exact right time.

Passing this bill will follow in the tradition of my great aunt, Amos Fortune, and so many other great residents of New Hampshire to lead on an important issue, and not just wait for the rest of the New England states to act first and then play catch-up.

New Hampshire has a proud tradition of going first in the nation with the primaries. Passing this bill will give New Hampshire a chance to also go first in bringing some sanity to the government’s mandate of us moving the clock around twice a year.

If you’d like to be a part of history, come to the hearing on Wednesday!

Huge Win for Clock Sanity in California – Prop 7 Wins Big!

November 7, 2018

I totally understand that this is not the biggest headline of the 2018 midterm elections, but we’ve got big, BIG news from the Golden State: Proposition 7 won by a huge margin.

Thanks to freaking clock-changing, I’m still getting up before 5 a.m. Denver time, so the first thing I did was check the California results and they look great. As of 4 a.m. in California, 91 percent of the vote is in and the Yes side has just a tick short of 60 percent of the vote.

Great day in the morning.

It’s a new day for the fight to #LockTheClock. photo by Viviana Rishe

This does not mean that California will get to stop changing in and out of DST right away (there are still a few more steps including a change to federal law).

Here is how it does help:

That margin is HUGE.

While there have been totally unscientific polls about the popularity of DST clock changing, and the memes run dramatically against the clock-changing, we’ve never had any solid data showing how people really feel.

Now we do.

I know it would be easy to say that California is really different than the rest of the country on this issue, but that’s just not the case. Politics is a part of this conversation, of course, but what I’ve seen first-hand is that this is not a partisan issue. Most of the state bills around the country trying to fix this are carried by Republicans, but then after they are introduced they get wide bipartisan support.

There will be much more on this blog in the future, but for now I just want to say thank you to the voters of California. We are now one step closer to ending the clock-changing insanity forever!

Proposition 7 Daylight Saving Time in California — Pros and Cons

November 1, 2018

It’s been clear to readers of this blog that for years public sentiment has been on the side #LockTheClock — ending clock changing for Daylight Saving Time — but the evidence has been a bit scattered and anecdotal.

That’s about to change.

photo byRoberto Nickson (@g)

Californians get to vote on Proposition 7 — The Permanent Daylight Saving Time Measure — and we’ll finally have some clear data to show to the world about how the public feels about this issue.

Now, it can be a bit confusing figuring out exactly what this proposition is, and the proposition doesn’t actually do a whole lot. It basically sets some governmental wheels in motion that may lead to an end to the clock changing.

But what it can do for sure is let lawmakers in California and around the world know exactly how popular it is to have the government force all of us to get all goofed up twice a year.

So, what are some of the pros and cons of voting on Prop 7?

Pros – Reasons to vote Yes on Prop 7

Let politicians know that you are watching.
Send a message to farmers that you know that farmers have ALWAYS been against DST clock changing, and you support them and you like eating.
Let the world know that science and research should drive our decisions about how we set the clocks, not “That’s the way we’ve always done it”-ism.
Give yourself a little hope that government can get something right.
Put California in the spot of leading on this issue, something that Florida is trying to steal away. Of course, Arizona, Hawaii and Puerto Rico are already way ahead of everyone on this one.
Great way to vote for something that will not cause a big fight with your crazy uncle who lives in [insert Michigan, or wherever he lives here] on Facebook.
It’s lucky Number 7!

Cons – Reasons to vote No on Prop 7

You like suddenly having to go home from work in the dark on the Monday after the “Fall Back” time change.
You enjoy that groggy feeling on the Monday morning after the “Spring Forward” time change.
You are in favor of traffic accidents, workplace accidents, strokes, heart attacks, decreased productivity, etc.
You think it’s best to be on the losing side of history.
You think Kaiser Wilhelm got a bad wrap in WWI in Germany, and you want to see his legacy live on.
You enjoy figuring out how to reset the clock in the car, and on the microwave.
You want California to be known as the state that votes for crazy stuff, not stuff that people actually want.

So, there you have it.

If you live in California, tell all your friends and relatives to vote yes on this one, and if you don’t, this would be a great time to keep in touch with your California pals and tell them to vote yes to make the whole world a better place.

Time Change? Just Don’t Do It!

October 31, 2018

Editor’s note: Is something going on with DST? Suddenly my inbox is packed, lots of requests for interviews, etc.

Oh, yeah!

I’m on the road today, but will be back in Denver tonight and will try to get one of my own blog posts up soon, with highlights of all the action this year.

But for now, here’s another guest post, and a fun one at that. – Scott

by Ron Halvorson

Ron Halvorson

It seemed like summer hadn’t even started when June 21 rolled around and the days began to shorten. By September I got that all-too-familiar feeling in the pit of my stomach: eternal darkness is imminent. All hope is lost.

Oregon’s winter months are tough enough for those of us who suffer from Seasonal Affective Disorder. We don’t need any added aggravation, but that’s what the biannual time change is, an added aggravation – especially in the fall.

True, setting the clock back doesn’t decrease the actual amount of daylight in the day, but when your clock says 4:30 p.m. and it’s already dark, it certainly feels that way. Add to that the emotional and physiological effects just from disrupting your body’s routine; one has to wonder if changing the clock is worth it. I say it’s not.

A few weeks ago, as I pondered my impending fate, I had a brilliant thought: “What’s to keep me from not changing?” Just because everyone else does it doesn’t mean I have to. Imagine how great it would be to cruise through the time change like nothing happened, because for me, it didn’t.

Credit: Photo by Hao Zhang on Unsplash

How would this look? The most obvious challenge is that everyone else would be operating in one time zone while I would be in another. So what? As a retiree I don’t have that many scheduled activities throughout the day. I would just have to make sure
that when there was a meeting time, for example, I changed it to an hour later to fit my personal time zone. If for some reason I muffed it, at least I wouldn’t be late because I’d be an hour early.

Sundays would be great as instead of rising for our “too-early” church meeting at 9:30 a.m., we would go at 10:30. This would be much more reasonable, especially for my night-owl wife, who has agreed to try this tack with only a little reluctance. My challenge
will be to make sure she doesn’t “fall back” anyway, in spite of what the clocks say, just to stay up later!

For the first time in my life I’m excited about the upcoming time change because I will refuse to participate, and I’m eager to see how this is going to work out. I wonder if others are doing this as well.

Maybe this will start a movement. Who’s to keep the populace of an entire state or even nation from doing this if they choose to? Obviously this wouldn’t bring relief to someone with a regular day job who abhorred coming home in the dark. They’d still be at the mercy of their employer’s schedule.

At the very least I’ll get to nurture my rebellious side.

Why do we have Daylight Saving Time? Is it the farmers? FAKE NEWS!!!

March 10, 2018

Because I’ve been leading the charge against Daylight Saving Time clock-changing for years now, I sometimes lose track of the fact that misperceptions about the ridiculous practice still outweigh the truth.

I think if someone with a big budget took a poll, they’d find that a majority of people think we change the clocks twice per year because of “the farmers.”

If you stop and think about it, it’s ridiculous. Everything about agriculture has changed in the last 100 years, and somehow we still change clocks because of what farmers wanted in 1918?

Why do we think “The Farmers” wanted DST?

Simple. It was a PR job. One of the greatest PR con jobs in history.

You see, the guy who ran the biggest department store in Boston decided that people would shop more if they had more time in the daylight after work to shop.

He wasn’t wrong. A study done in this century is clear that more daylight does encourage people to get out of the home more and shop.

But in those days he couldn’t come out and say that he wanted to change the clocks to make more money for himself, so he came up with a plan: Say “the farmers” want it.

It was brilliant! Everyone had a nostalgic love of the farmers just at the start of the trend of people migrating off the farms and into the cities.

So, Lincoln Filene (who’s namesake store exists to this day as Filene’s Basement) had a bunch of what can only be described as Fake News created. His team wrote that fruit was healthier when harvested with the dew still on it.

The reality was that it sucked for farmers. In those days dairy farmers milked cows and delivered the fresh milk to stores and homes at the start of the day. This meant they had to get up even earlier relative to the sun.

The Filene team even ran the equivalent in those days of a social media campaign, creating post cards that constituents could send in to Congress.

While that PR effort did help, it wasn’t until WW1 that we actually started observing Daylight Saving Time, then called, “War Time” as a way of staying in synch with the British, who started doing it because the Germans did it.

So as John Oliver correctly points out: You lost an hour of sleep because of Kaiser Wilhelm.

The tide is turning, though. The news from Florida is excellent. There are at least 20 state legislatures grappling with the issue.

So this will get fixed, but not this year, unfortunately.

For Monday, however, be sure to recognize National Turn Off Your Alarm Clock Day.

Yes, it’s a thing. Go into work late on Monday. The life you save may be your own.