As a kid
growing up in the suburbs of Los Angeles, I always loved summertime. In
addition to no school, there was a lot to love about it: Hot weather, baseball,
swimming pools, fresh fruit, and long nights when it seemed as if you could
play forever.
I still
recall one particular game of Over-the-Line played at Balboa Elementary School,
just down the street from where we lived in Glendale. Our three-player team had racked up a big
lead, and the other team was coming up for its final at-bats just as the sun
had set.
In the
gloaming, every fly ball — every pop fly, even — turned into a potentially
lethal missile, nearly impossible to see or catch. We got two outs early, but our
invincible lead was melting as an ice cube would have on that same playground two
hours earlier. Finally, with the lead down to one run, I snaffled a ground ball
for the third out and we won the game.
It was
8:30. We walked home in the dark, laughing.
Plenty to Do After Dinner
I don’t go
out and play with friends after dinner anymore, and maybe kids today don’t do
it either. That’s the only explanation I can come up with for the inexplicable
pending ballot initiative to end Daylight Savings Time in California.
But even
so, you’d think people would like long summer nights for other reasons. They
give you time, when you get home from work, to run some errands, go for a walk,
watch the sunset, or do some gardening after dinner. The earlier the sun sets,
the less likely you are to do those things.
Look, I get
that people don’t like changing time and setting the clock back or forward an
hour. It’s a pain and it messes up your sleep patterns for two or three days.
But isn’t that small price to pay for those summer nights? If the extra hour at
night lets you catch one good sunset you otherwise might have missed, the
change was worth it.
An Earlier Wakeup?
The summer
solstice is on June 20 this year; sunrise in Santa Cruz that day will be at
5:49 a.m. and sunset at 8:31 p.m. The lingering light will mean you can still
see without artificial light until 9 o’clock. That’s with Daylight Savings
Time.
On Standard
Time, we’d be having sunrise at 4:49 a.m. and sunset at 7:31 p.m. The predawn
light means you’d be able to see outside by around 4:20 a.m. I’m sure there are
people who would get more done with an extra hour of light in the wee, small
hours of the morning, but a whole lot more of us are going to find the light a
whole lot more useful in the evening, when we’re awake.
We are now
at the beginning of what I call the Hundred Days of Light, the longest hundred
days of the year. Standard Time and Daylight Savings Time are both man-made
concepts, neither one inherently right or wrong. The critical question is which
gives us the best use of those long days. That’s a no-brainer. It’s Daylight Savings
Time.
