OTUS THE HEAD CAT

Mere hours remain for daylight saving time

The fang-toothed daylight saving time boogie man has been terrifying kids since 1966. Parents should calm their children’s fears.
The fang-toothed daylight saving time boogie man has been terrifying kids since 1966. Parents should calm their children’s fears.

— Brace yourselves, fellow Arkansans, the country returns to standard time at 2 a.m. Sunday. If you haven’t saved enough daylight by now, it’s too late.

As usual, I’ve received several dozen e-mails from confused citizens asking what it all means. As has been my custom for the past 32 years, I present today my annual explanation of daylight saving time and why we are expected to dash about the house and change all timepieces to 1 a.m.

As difficult as it may be to believe in this age of conformist bovidian propitiation, there are still intrepid pockets of resistance to the biannual tampering with God’s time.

Daylight saving time for the United States and its territories is heroically ignored in Hawaii, American Samoa, Guam, Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands and by the stalwartly independent citizens of Arizona (excluding the Navajo Indian Reservation).

Standard time was implemented in 1883 (to allow trains to run on time). The concept of DST has been around since Benjamin Franklin and was attempted during World War I to “conserve resources for the war effort.”

It was a resounding failure and repealed in1919 over President Woodrow Wilson’s veto.

The measure was again undertaken during World War II, when the country went to year-round DST. Following the cessation of hostilities, the nation was plunged into saving-time chaos until the federal Committee for Time Uniformity cobbled together a compromise that resulted in The Uniform Time Act of 1966.

On April 13, 1966, President Lyndon Johnson signed the bill that created daylight saving time.

The DST apologists claim the extra hour of evening daylight saves energy. It’s an additional hour when we don’t have to turn on the lights.

The government contends that 70 percent of all Americans don’t rise before 7 a.m. during the work week anyway. Since the sun is up well before that hour in the summer, that’s a wasted hour of daylight we can switch to the evenings.

In the winter, they rationalize we need the light in the mornings. Thus we “fall back” the first Sunday in November (since 2007).

All of which is so much bureaucratic mumbo-jumbo and overlooks the turmoil caused by the sudden and violent disruption of our primary diurnal routines.

Here are the facts: According to the Astronomical Applications Department of the U.S. Naval Observatory in Washington, sunrise at Little Rock today was at 7:32 a.m. On Sunday, after we “fall back” at 2 a.m., sunrise will be at 6:33.

That’s not a problem for most Arkansans.

Sunset today will be at 6:13 p.m. It has been slowly receding since June 30, when it reached the saving-time apogee of 8:27 p.m., which gave us 14 hours, 27 minutes of daylight.

Sunset on Sunday will be at a startlingly early 5:12 p.m. when we will suddenly be plunged into the Stygian nigrescence of sombrous gloom with its vast wings spread across the canceled skies - there in the sudden blackness, the black pall of nothing ... nothing at all.

Cocks shall crow thrice.Pets shall cower under beds among the dust bunnies. Small children shall cling to their mothers and weep bitter and acrid tears of lamination.

Fortunately, the Governor’s Office of the Centers for Chronometric Control has gone to Condition Red in light of the pending darkness emergency.

Gov. Mike Beebe spokesman Matt DeCample is serving as interim ad hoc chief of the GOCCC. Either that or as interim president of UCA. I forget which.

DeCample reports the governor and his wife, Ginger, spent Thursday and Friday traveling to schools around the state to ease the concerns of children, for whom the cessation of daylight saving time can be a serious psychological and emotional trauma.

“He told them to fear not,” DeCample said. “And they were comforted. He told them there were no fanged-toothed daylight saving time boogie men in top hats with spider eyes and snakes for hair hiding in the dark beneath their beds waiting to jump out and gobble them up at 2 a.m. We’d all be wise to follow his lead and reassure our own children.”

Until next time, Kalaka reminds you that it’s better to light one little candle than curse the daylight saving time boogie man.

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Fayetteville-born Otus the Head Cat’s award-winning column of humorous fabrication appears every Saturday. E-mail:

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HomeStyle, Pages 36 on 11/03/2012

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