John Atkinson Grimshaw, a November afternoon, 1886 in Leeds
Dear friends and readers,
It’s tough these weeks going to the dance fusion workshop because it starts at 8:15 and for me the NVJCC is a 45 minute to half-hour car drive away. I have to get up at 6:15 am at latest to make it — come out of groggy state, feed cats and myself, dress, do a few chores. But at 6:24 am where I live the sky is black.
I know it need not be black. Or to be put this another more accurate way: it need not be 6:24 am. It could be 5:24 am when the sky is still that black. I remember when this “daylight starving” time ended by the third week of September. When we were subjected to “daylight starving” for 4-5 months at most.
This past Saturday I was with a group of friends at a place called Teaism and where we have group discussions and the topic was “The changes the autumn brings.” Well, I unexpectedly discovered most of them agreed with me and hated these dark mornings. (Hitherto when I’ve announced this feeling of mine as many people defend the dark morning because forsooth they are driving home (in traffic jams?) in the light. I’ve read the US congress was lobbied to extend daylight starving because mall owners said they made more money; more people went to malls to shop. They talked of how for one during the energy crisis “Daylight Savings” time was extended across the year (1970s). How bad it was in December.
I told of how in the UK one year “summertime” was all year long; in Leeds it was dark until 10:00 am. What did parliament care? The people there need not get up early, probably don’t bother think about Parliament until 11:00. I proposed a constitutional amendment that “No congress or any other legislative body shall be permitted to fuck up people’s clock time nor their circadian rhythms with impositions of darkness in the morning to suit themselves or their lobbyists,” and was applauded.
I hate these black mornings.
Sylvia
Under the Sign of Sylvia II 
Michelle: “I would beg my congressman to vote for it, especially if it was phrased the way you said it. Hear, hear!”
Aneilka: Leeds was where I learnt to question the wisdom of “British Summertime,” Here in Western Australia we have voted against mucking about with the clock. It’s dark when it’s dark: light when it’s light. There is a school of thought that suggests summertime clock adjustments were Benjamin Franklin’s greatest joke. (And I live in a country where one state is two-and-a-half hours out of synch….Now who would use a half-hour like that….????
But “The sky is black where I live. It’s 6:24 am. I know it need not be black” Thinking about it logically, the correct statement is “I know it need not be 6.24 am” When it’s black, it’s black. that’s the bit we can’t change.
Good point, Anielka! right. The sky will be black at this point in the cycle of light and darkness form my point on the earth but it need not be 6:24 am; it could and used to be 5:24 am.
Kathleen: “Saskatchewan, where I live, never messes with the time.
Consequently, the sun is rising now at 6:27 am, but as winter solstice approaches my daughters will need flashlights to see their way down our lane to catch the school bus. When I teach 8:30 classes in winter term, dawn arrives just as we’re finishing around 9:30. As we’re at 52 degrees North latitude–very like Leeds–the sun begins to set around 4:00 pm in the winter.
I’m back now. I wish we could get up a grass roots movement — but another problem here is the sun affects different parts of the earth differently. I would compound simply for ending this “daylight savings” (daylight subtracting?) a month earlier on each side. The darkness adds tension and stress in the mornings. I want to go somewhere before 9. By the time I’m on the road, the sky is lightening and even pretty but it’s that groggy getting up and dizzying. I realize that huge numbers of people across the earth have it much worse than me in the mornings. But if we all had a little more light …. and we could, that’s what gets me, we could …
Joan: Just leave the clocks alone. I agree.
Not so long ago it was light when I left home for swimming at the YMCA. Now it’s still dark when I finish. But I still feel happy for having swum.
In Hawaii it’s pretty sunup 6AM, sundown 6 PM, year round. No call for “summer” time. It is disorienting to have it feel like summer, but having the sun go down before your body expects.
Pretty _much_ sunup 6 AM…
I must take a sleeping pill or I do not sleep. So I’m not sure I should go to dance fusion as I’m still not quite myself under the just dawning sky. At the meeting I was at people talked of real seasonal responses to light and dark in the human body.
I’ve made both classes I’m teaching to occur in early afternoon — so I won’t have this problem. I wouldn’t mind living up north in England again even if there is much less literal light in the autumn-winter-early spring parts of the year.
I hate the changes to the time. We face the Fall Back nonsense at the end of the month. It was originally brought in to help Scots farmers, 500 miles north of where I live. This was during WW II Yes, it is light in the morning at 7, but the afternoons increasingly get dark earlier.