It can be more complicated than time travel.
Daylight saving time is the controversy that just won’t go away.
Love it? Sunday is a reason to celebrate, even though you’re being shorted an hour.
Hate it? Well, you can move to Arizona or Hawaii, the two states that stay out of the time-changing game.
The spring ritual comes as legislators in states including Alaska, Idaho, Texas, Utah and Washington talk about giving daylight saving time the boot or keeping it year-round. In a 2014 Herald opinion page poll asking if daylight saving time should be abolished, readers voted 1,135 in favor to 410 votes against.
In other words: quit messing with the clock.
For now, at the stroke of 2 a.m. Sunday, time springs forward an hour in 48 states, waving goodbye to standard time and hello to more daylight. But does it really add more rays? Nope. Daylight saving time doesn’t actually save daylight, it just bumps it an hour later. (Oh, and it’s daylight “saving” time not “savings” time, even though “savings” sounds better.)
The federal government doesn’t require states to observe it, but those that do must adhere to the official start and end dates in the fall and spring.
Those dates change, too. In 2005, the Energy Policy Act moved daylight saving time up two weeks to the second Sunday in March, and moved it back a week in the fall to the first Sunday in November. So spring forward fell back, while fall back sprung forward.
Confused yet?
Idea man Ben Franklin is credited with the original concept of daylight saving time to make better use of light by shifting the clocks forward in the spring and back in the fall. He couldn’t have known the destructive force he’d unleashed.
Shortly after daylight saving time was re-introduced during World War II, two towns in Skagit County couldn’t agree on whether to observe it or not. According to Elaine Walker of the Anacortes Museum, Anacortes and Mount Vernon, just 16 miles apart, were 60 minutes apart in time.
People had a difficult time remembering what time it was in the other city, Walker said.
It’s hard enough to get your own timepieces in sync. Most cell phones, computers and other electronics will do the change for you, but you’ll still need to update your watch and other clocks.
Think you got it rough?
Fred Kiesel has to keep time on the mother of all clocks.
He is Everett’s timekeeper, in charge of maintaining the four-sided clock in the tower at the Snohomish County Courthouse.
The clock, which counts on the hour and strikes once on the half, is more than 100 years old, he said.
Kiesel said it takes about an hour to spring the time forward. “I release the clutch and I spin one hand around, advance it one hour. The problem is in the fall when I go backwards, it’s a bear.”
His guide: “I look at my atomic watch and set the time to that.”
To ensure the time stays accurate within a minute, he checks the tower clock time against his atomic watch almost every day on his way home from work at his Country Clock Shop, 4714 Evergreen Way.
The week after a time change is busy at the shop.
“I have older people who have newer watches who don’t know how to set them,” he said. “They will bring in clocks and watches to be adjusted and call how to set their grandfather clocks.”
In a perfect world, clocks wouldn’t be subjected to artificial time changes.
“It’s stupid. Arizona and Hawaii get along fine without it. I think we can, too,” Kiesel said.
It’s not just for the sake of clocks. The time change means it will be dark in the morning when he walks his dogs.
One good thing has sprung out of the time change. Fire officials say when you change your clocks, change the batteries in your smoke detectors.
Standard or Daylight?
So let’s assume all of these time changes could be abolished: Which one would you prefer? Do you like more light in the morning (Standard) or more light at night (Daylight)?
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