Jack Van Horn, the designated liturgist at church Sunday, reminded all of us parishioners to \u00e2\u20ac\u0153meet and greet the person in your pew,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d then added, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153if there is someone there to greet.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
Clearly he was referring to the paucity of congregants, the bulk of whom blame the time change. Some of us lost an hour of sleep Sunday when we converted to Daylight Saving Time; some went ahead and re-found that hour and wondered where everybody had gone when they arrived at church, or some other function.<\/p>\n
Naturally, people blame their lateness on the time change, but do those people who show up an hour late for work ever appear an hour early at the other end of the calendar?<\/p>\n
Daylight Saving (note: there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s no \u00e2\u20ac\u0153s\u00e2\u20ac\u009d at the end of \u00e2\u20ac\u0153saving\u00e2\u20ac\u009d \u00e2\u20ac\u201d it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not like a savings bank) Time is a great innovation for as long as it lasts. I like it, as it gives us a chance to ride bikes, fire up our barbecue pits and generally socialize more. I wish retail stores would adjust to the time change as well, perhaps opening an hour later and staying open a while longer.<\/p>\n
The biggest complainers of the time change used to be managers of drive-in theaters and fast-food places, particularly in towns with a curfew. They\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d argue that they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d literally lose an hour of business unless the city dads changed the terms of curfew.<\/p>\n
In the Trujillo household, DST and the return to standard time become periods in which my wife Bonnie keeps asking, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153What time is it?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll respond that it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s, say, 8 a.m. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153No, but what time is it really?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Well, that \u00e2\u20ac\u0153really\u00e2\u20ac\u009d really is ambiguous. Does she mean the time she\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s gotten used to for the last six months, or the new time? And rather than make any changes, she leaves the car radio as is, mentally adding or subtracting an hour as needed. She rationalizes, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s gonna change back in six months anyway.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
Although there were many starts to DST, it officially began in 1945, under President Franklin D. Roosevelt, as a help to farmers who needed an extra hour of daylight to work their fields. The extra hour is not a gift, however, merely delayed compensation for rising an hour earlier.<\/p>\n
But yet, some see the practice as a Communist plot. Watch for fear-mongers warning that the extra hour of daylight will contribute to global warming. Or even dry out the crops.<\/p>\n
It was pure coincidence that as we Las Vegans began advancing our clocks at 2 a.m.<\/p>\n
Sunday, Mother Nature was whipping up a snowstorm, the likes of which many will remember. At the highest point on our porch, we had a 14-inch measurement, and Monday morning, we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve heard several explosions wrought by snow sliding from the Pro-Paneled roofs.<\/p>\n
Monday\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s paper calls this latest assault the 18th snowfall of the season. Though I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m not keeping score, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m reminded of the two-feet-in-two-weeks Dr. Zhivago-type snowfall we had beginning on March 27, 1973. So deep was the snow that even some National Guard heavy-duty military equipment, considered the ultimate in retaining traction, got buried in the snow.<\/p>\n
For the jillionth time this season, snow has caused school delays and closings. Strange, but I simply don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t recall canceling school during my youth. That just didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t happen. Of course, on occasion, following a two-foot snowfall, Liz Saykally, a student helper for our principal Sister Mary Schweren Bestrafung, would enter our room to announce \u00e2\u20ac\u0153double-session,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d which meant we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d skip lunch and go home at 1.<\/p>\n
Of course, any mention of the way things were gets lost on my own offspring. By the time I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve uttered the opening five words of my reminiscences, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153When I was your age,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d one of the three sons invariably cuts in with, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Yes, Dad, we know: you walked five miles to school, in deep snow, uphill both ways.<\/p>\n
My grandchildren can guess my tune in as few as three words. If I say, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153When I was,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d they complete my thought.<\/p>\n
So what will these doubters be telling their own school-age children and grandchildren years hence? Will they specifically remember this year, 2010, when a huge snowfall arrived on the day DST kicked in? Will they tell their descendants of the many missed school days and two-hour delays?<\/p>\n
Ah, yes, they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll get theirs. The stories my sons and grandchildren will pass on probably will be met with the same derision they bestowed on us oldsters. But there might also be a few variations, to accommodate for technology and progress.<\/p>\n
So instead of walking in deep snow, today\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s children will tell of riding all the way to school in snow just as deep. They’ll revel my great- and great-great-grandkids with tales of how they once were in such a rush that they forgot their cell phone, putting them into a black hole the entire school day.<\/p>\n
Given the frequency of calling off school nowadays, today\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s youth will tell tomorrow\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s offspring of having to walk all 20 feet to the bus, and do the same on the return trip.<\/p>\n
And some grandchild might even dig out a pair of galoshes Bonnie or I wore way back in the 1900s. They could have a blast \u00e2\u20ac\u201d by having their friends guess the function of those strange-looking shoe-like thingees they found in our closet.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Jack Van Horn, the designated liturgist at church Sunday, reminded all of us parishioners to \u00e2\u20ac\u0153meet and greet the person in your pew,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d then added, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153if there is someone there to greet.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Clearly he was referring to the paucity of congregants, the bulk of whom blame the time change. Some of us lost an hour […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/559"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=559"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/559\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":563,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/559\/revisions\/563"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=559"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=559"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=559"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}