It’s Saturday, called in French Samedi.
Mad as a March Hare
In North America (most parts of it) clocks must be turned back an hour – at 2 AM on Sunday morning! So do it before bedtime this evening
Sunday will be 25 hours long. Though the extra hour is inserted, officially and by machines, at 2 AM, you can have it wherever you like, such as on waking up and opting for another hour of slumber. Or, the next evening, “I’ll stay up late, the way I used to…” We could think of many scenarios for saying “That was a good hour, I’ll live it over again!”
Until next March 9 – only a third of the year – American clock time will correspond with natural solar time. Clocks will be saying “12” when it’s really the middle of daytime and the Sun is highest, instead of an hour earlier.
For the history of this interference with time, its variations, and my opinion of it, see our page on clock shifting times.
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This weblog maintains its right to be about astronomy or anything under the sun.
I too keep standard time year round and have since I retired over twenty years ago. At last count there were almost thirty clocks in the house on various instruments and appliances and the idea of changing them all twice a year just to conform to a senseless government mandate and to remain in synch with a society that I am increasingly less and less interested in being a part of, was an easy chore to ignore and discard. The only official proposals I am aware of regarding this nonsense isn’t its abandonment but instead making it permanent. I can only take this as a further indication of human societies hubristic disdain for reality.
I live with handicapped adults and find that it disturbs them far less to change the clocks at noon on Sunday. As my personal protest, I leave my personal clocks on Standard time all the time and adjust in my head 8 months of the year… But I’m weird.
It’s not you that’s weird.
On weekdays my neighbor gets up at 5:30 am, turns on her bright kitchen light, and grinds coffee. I could almost set my watch by it. For the past few weeks 5:30 am daylight saving time has been over half an hour before astronomical dawn! So my precious early morning skywatching time has been abbreviated by the light. On Monday 5:30 am standard time will be 20 minutes after astronomical dawn. I’ll have another hour to enjoy Jupiter, Mars, the Orion nebula, and the stars without any lights shining into my little postage stamp of a back yard.
That’s me, except it’s at 4:30; for over 50 years. Living in a dark enough place that sometimes I catch the first illumination ripping across the upper atmosphere – from pitch dark. Does this have a name I wonder? It’s distinct of course from any of the twilights related to angular distance of Sun from horizon. The first visible streak of illumination must have to do with atmospheric altitude and its ephemeral optical properties.