Fall Back and Spring Forward

For years, my state of Indiana in the Eastern Time Zone stayed on the same time all year round.  Here in South Bend, during the summer, we were in the same zone as our Central Time Zone neighbors in Chicago, and in the winter, we were in the same zone as our Michigan Eastern time zone neighbors.  In 2006, we adopted daylight savings time, and it is still a subject of controversy.  So, Sunday, setting back my clock, I thought of it as a futile attempt to have more daylight when there is only so much daylight to have.  Whether you like to have the extra daylight in morning or evening seems more a matter of preference than anything else. Personally, I liked it when we didn’t change, but I was surprised that, when we switched to Daylight Savings Time, I also like summer nights where daylight lasted until 9:30 PM.

Allison Schrager has a different kind of proposal to what seems these days like sacred dogma:

This year, Americans on Eastern Standard Time should set their clocks back one hour (like normal), Americans on Central and Rocky Mountain time do nothing, and Americans on Pacific time should set their clocks forward one hour. After that we won’t change our clocks again—no more daylight saving. This will result in just two time zones for the continental United States. The east and west coasts will only be one hour apart. Anyone who lives on one coast and does business with the other can imagine the uncountable benefits of living in a two-time-zone nation (excluding Alaska and Hawaii).

I think I could like it.

(Another blog idea from the Dish.  The history of time in Indiana here.)