She’s on the phone, railing to a fellow church member about the first days of Daylight Saving Time. “Oooh! I just hate it!” she tells her friend, Betty Quick, who agrees.

But really now, what can we say about the extra hour of daylight except that we’re glad it’s finally here? Each year — it seems since we married in 1966 — I’ve used the parable of the man whose blanket failed to cover his feet, leaving him shivering in bed. So he cut a foot off the top of the blanket and sewed it to the bottom. Problem solved. But maybe not. Now his head is cold. That’s how DST works.

Bonnie says she dislikes having daylight saving time clashing with standard time, but I wonder if it’s the chore of adjusting clocks twice a year that really factors into her annoyance.

Our third-born, Ben, arrived around the time a doughnut shop opened on Hot Springs Boulevard, north of Mills. Our son welcomed the new business, which for years he regarded as connected to the U.S. Energy Policy on Time.

Ben naturally associated the name of the donut shop, Daylight Donuts, with daylight saving time, and he often broached the subject that way to hint that his taste buds needed exercise in the form of a donut or a cinnamon roll.

A New Mexico legislator, Cliff Pirtle, has campaigned for weeks for the elimination of springing forward and, falling back. In our case, we have a few too many clocks. I’ve counted perhaps 40 of them, if we include watches, computers and car clocks. I take a personal interest in resetting them twice a year, advancing them an hour this go-round, and turning them back an hour as the days grow shorter.

But regrettably, some of the clocks reset themselves. Daylight Saving Time began, according to one source, in 1908 in Thunder Bay, Canada, as a way of conserving daylight, allowing farmers and others to put in an extra hour of work, as the day grew dark. Of course, we pay back the time the following morning. It’s as simple as that.

However, Sen. Pirtle has been rallying about putting this great state on DST permanently; he’s attributed a host of ailments to the time change: more heart attacks, more auto accidents. I stopped reading his reasons for fear that Pirtle might add things like tooth decay, severe acne and vertigo to the list.

I believe people like Pirtle enjoy ascribing a host of ills to the conversion of time and really just don’t like the hassle of rearranging the hands on clocks. Pirtle claims, “No one likes changing clocks twice a year, so let’s stop doing it.”

Likely we’ll be seeing clips on TV showing school kids boarding school buses in darkness, embellishing the effects of making people rise an hour earlier each day. But really, how long does that last?

Rather than simply criticizing those who consider the biennial clock changing a nuisance, let me provide some advantages: DST allows us to enjoy a picnic in Gallinas Canyon without having to head home around 7 p.m. It allows us to take an evening stroll in Plaza Park, without stumbling our way through the benches, and it means our grandkids can climb the fence near our house and spend hours tossing a football or playing softball.

As long as we have that extra hour of daylight, why doesn’t the rest of the community join in? Why can’t businesses, for example, open an hour later in the morning and close later as well? Schools could do the same thing.

These things I view as plusses, and of course, you’re free to disagree.

• • •

Highlands University’s Bell Tower, filled with plaques and with flags of many nations, has served as a convenient way of keeping punctual. When it rings on the hour, that means students ought to be ensconced in their classrooms, ready for the professor to impart wisdom.

But notice now that the hourly bell rings a full 15 minutes after the hour. Does that provide license for students to show up late for class, with the excuse, “Well, I was just going by the chimes of the clock”?

• • •

Tito Chavez, a fellow retired English teacher, in reading my column on our flight to Iceland, asked, “When you ‘landed on a loaded plane,’ did it hurt? Did you use the cushion under your seat (the one that you were born with) to soften the landing? Did you make a dent in the airplane?”

I find it’s easier to answer, “yes” to some of Tito Chavez’ questions. As to “landing on a loaded plane,” it’s safe to characterize many of the passengers as loaded. But the plane was packed as well.

When Tito asked whether I softened the landing by using the cushion under my seat (the one I was born with), I can only say that part of my anatomy was above the seat — during the entire flight.

• • •

Michael Garcia, who once was a starter for the Wagon Mound Trojans basketball team, provided some insights on the just-completed state tournament in Albuquerque. Garcia noted that the Springer Red Devils and the Maxwell Bears, two pin-dot communities a mere 14 miles apart, met at least six times this season.

They clashed twice during the regular season, also in the annual Cowbell Tournament, and a couple of times in the state tournament. Garcia remarked on the amount of strength among other teams in northeastern New Mexico.

That includes the Pecos Panthers, who won the 3A championship by beating the Santa Rosa Lions. In class A, Maxwell beat Springer.

Other teams, such as the Robertson High Girls and the Roy/Mosquero composite team, performed and made their fans proud, but didn’t make it to the final rounds.