Daylight Spending Time

The clocks changed Saturday night and somewhere around 10:00PM Sunday night, I figured that out. I suppose this would qualify as a reason why going to church might be worth while.

I have always wondered why they call it “Daylight Saving Time” when in fact it is really “Daylight Spending Time”. We don’t go through the pain in the ass of changing our clocks twice a year so that we can save our daylight hours. Last time I checked, my bank wasn’t paying interest on daylight. Otherwise, I’d be saving a whole lot more of it. We change the clocks so that we can spend our daylight hours doing more productive things, like gardening.

What really blows my mind about the whole Daylight Saving/Spending thing is that it was an idea that came from the overly fruitful and humorous head of Ben Franklin. While Ben Franklin was well know for his wisdom and innovation and Ben Franklin was know for his humor, his idea for Daylight Saving was not one of the former but rather one of the later.

In a satirical piece about the daily lives of the party-hard Parisians, Ben proposed that a whole lot of candles could be saved in Paris, if the clocks were rearranged to accommodate by the hour, rather than by the setting of the sun, the day and night hours of the residents of Paris.

While Ben was poking a little fun at the French, some others found the idea to be sound. And from there, the idea spread and today, a great many people take part in this literal practical joke.

While Daylight Saving Time is nothing but a joke, I can say that I do enjoy the benefits of the the changes. I get to have a little more time to enjoy my garden during my waking hours. At least I will when the temperature warms up a bit.