Letter: Time to get rid of daylight saving time

To the Editor:

Daylight saving time is foolish. The ritual of setting all the clocks and watches in the house and your vehicles forward in the spring and back in the fall and thinking you’re making daylight hours longer or shorter is a laborious insanity.

The earth’s daily rotation and its orbit around the sun haven't changed, nor do they change. If you compare daylight hours during standard time to daylight hours during daylight saving time, you will find they are exactly the same. Even animals and plants adapt to the seasonal change of daylight and nighttime hours without the aid of a human manufactured clock. A human doesn’t need to change the time on every clock on the face of the planet twice per year, just adjust their wake and sleep patterns. They only need to adjust the alarm setting on one clock: the one on the bedside stand.

I’m reminded of a story I was told about what an American Indian purportedly said. I’ll have to paraphrase it as I do not have the exact verbiage quoted, but it goes like this: White people are stupid. They think if they cut the top part of a quilt off and then sew it to the bottom of the quilt, they’re making the quilt longer.” I found the story hilarious and an incredibly accurate analogy of what we’re doing with daylight saving time.

The solution is simple: stay with standard time and simply adjust the alarm on the clock on your bedside stand. It’s less labor intensive than changing the time on all the clocks on the planet.

Dwight Stadler

Mitchell