For the sun to light up this window, sunrise is in full swing and the hour is around 7 AM.
That means I can roll back over and return to nestle in my warm bed for another two hours or so.
At least, that's what my body and my eyes know to be true.
However, the time displayed on my clock was most alarming.
"You're late!", it proclaimed.
"You need to get up soon!"
This "springing forward" and falling back" man-made phenomenon lies to my head.
Daylight saving time?
What a fantastical idea, this artificial shifting of time!
And how did it come to exist?
It was proposed in the late 19th century by a 28-year-old Brit, George Hudson, who spent most of his life as a postal clerk in New Zealand.
His hobby was entomology and he reasoned that he would have more time for bug-collecting if there were more daylight hours available after he got off from his job.
No, seriously.
He wrote a philosophical paper about it, then a second one a few years later, and somehow the notion caught fire.
Yes, seriously.
No one implemented the concept, though, until 1916, when Germany made it a rule.
That was two years before Hudson retired and well before New Zealand took it on, making it a bit of a moot point for the insect aficionado.
After all, as a retiree, all of his daylight hours became bug hunting time.
(smile)
The first fifteen years of my life were exempt from DST.
That's because the USA didn't get on the time-manipulation bandwagon until fall of 1973.
Oil prices had become jacked up, due to a perceived shortage of that commodity.
I remember Mama leaving early for work, so she would have time to wait in the long lines to fuel the car at the gas station.
Somehow, the time-shift was continued here thereafter, so every fall I get one hour for a do-over and every spring I have an hour that disappears as if never there.
What great silliness that is.
The universe keeps right on spinning along though, no matter what foolishness we mere mortals devise.
i thank You, God.
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