A Plea for Late Sunsets
There’s been a lot of piling on about daylight saving time. So much so that it’s become a twice yearly ritual to point out that it’s an outdated, unnecessary, and even dangerous practice. Washington, Oregon, and Alaska have all had state lawmakers introduce bills to abolish daylight saving time in their respective states. There will probably be more as it’s an easy and painless issue for our craven politicians to get behind. Fine. I have no problem with that. With one caveat…
Many years ago, back when I was working as a bartender in New York City, I used to get out of work sometime after 4 in the morning. Around the summer solstice, there would already be a hint of blue in the sky at last call. And this was during daylight saving time. Without daylight saving, the lightening would have started well before closing time, with the actual sunrise occurring around 4:30. Ugh. If we’re going to abolish shifting our clocks around, how about we stick with having them an hour ahead, and leave it at that? That way, during the winter, the sun will set at 5pm instead of 4pm in New York, and there will still be a lovely glow in the sky at 9pm in the summer.