In the night between March 30 and 31, it is Europe’s turn to “spring forward,” that is, to twist clocks an hour forward into the so-called daylight saving time, which does not save time but distorts it.
From now until October 27, Europe pretends that it’s 12 noon, the middle of the day, when the Sun is an hour short of reaching the meridian, the mid-line of the sky. We have to call 12 “11,” and the same with other clock hours. America is already in its even longer stretch of false time: March 10 to November 3.
Once during my journey through Afghanistan, I heard music from within a grove of reeds, and discovered that it was coming from a group sitting around a camp fire. They were laborers in an engineering project to tame the fierce water of the Helmand river. One was singing, to the accompaniment of a ruhbâb, a stringed instrument.
“Nowai musamm, nowai buhar de”
“It is a new time, a new spring.”
I hope that anyone cognizant of Pashto, the language of the Pathan or Pakhtun people of eastern Afghanistan, will correct me.
A cheerful melody for the theme of venture into the new embodied in a novel I’ve just written.
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Since retiring from work over a year ago, I have reached a personal accommodation with Daylight “Saving” Time. I usually get up when dawn starts to brighten my bedroom windows, regardless of what the clock says. I set my digital clocks to Daylight “Saving” Time and keep my analog watch and clocks on Standard Time, remembering that noon and midnight, when Mickey’s hands are straight overhead, are now called one o’clock DST. Every morning I sit down with my Tidelog and remind myself when the Sun and Moon will rise, set, and culminate today. Here in San Francisco today, the Sun rose at 6:57 am, noon was at 1:13 pm, and the Sun will set at 8:29 pm, all Pacific Daylight Time.
I would love to have a clock where you could turn the face of the clock backward, so that at noon daylight time the clock’s hands would point straight up to one o’clock.
I should, if time allows, work this wise suggestion into my remarks on clock-shifting.
Only one more week until the end of daylight saving here. I can’t wait. Good riddance.