They Changed My Clock

And Winter Came Sneaking Back (and Obscure facts no one but me cares about)...


Spring forward...Fall back.

Today is possibly my least favorite day in every year because I'm forced to give up an hour of late afternoon daylight in return for early morning daylight...something those that know me also know is of little value to me personally most of the time.

Thinking about it, isn't it amazing that we allow the GOVERNMENT to control something as simple as our Clocks and the time displayed thereon?

I know that it sounds like a good idea in some ways, but seriously...

Today even the counting and progression of time has slowly been politicized over the past 140 or so years since Sir Sandford Flemming, a Canadian Railway Planner and Engineer came up with the ideal of dividing the planet into 24 "Meridian" time zones running North/South around the globe.

This National Geographic article gives even more information which I previously didn't know but had seen the results of previously...that being that the individual STATE governments have more control over the time on your VCR (you know, that thing in your living or bedroom continuously flashing 12:00 all the time) than the federal government actually has.

The Feds only control the the actual time zones, not the recognition of daylight savings time.

As I understand it, through the years the boundaries of time zones and recognition of "Daylight Savings Time" have been manipulated for personal and political reasons...generally in the name of money and/or "commerce."

For instance, there are two good examples I personally know about here in the south--one involving a large textile company and the second a Paper Mill which has gone out of business and been torn down.

If you look at this map:



you'd think that the division between the central and eastern time zone runs exactly down the border between Alabama and Georgia---picking up the Chattahoochee River around West Point Georgia and continuing across the Florida Panhandle on the river basin to the Gulf of Mexico.

If that were the case, you'd be WRONG.

I can't find a detailed map but I know from driving up and down I-85 about a million times since the late 1970's that the now defunct company West Point Pepperell Mills was able to get the eastern time zone extended down US 29 (and now Interstate 85) in Eastern Alabama in order to have all of their plants between West Point, Georgia and Lanette, Alabama on the same clock each day.

Makes sense I guess that all of the employees working on both sides of the river were working on the same clock time, but it took an act of congress to pass a law saying what time was on individual citizens clocks on the nightstands and wrist watches.

Then down in Gulf County, Florida things are even more convoluted...based on the whims of the Old Saint Joe Paper Company...now called simply "St. Joe" and existing solely as a real estate development and timber company. Today they are either the first or second largest land owner in the entire state of Florida depending on whose statistics you're quoting.

Here's the map showing how the Eastern Time Zone again marches off to the west off the basin of what has become at this point the Apalachicola River (the merger of the Chattahoochee and Flint Rivers into lake Seminole.


(From 12 Mile Circle)

The neat thing was that when I spent a year living in nearby Mexico Beach, Florida on New Years we were able to go east a couple of miles to Beacon Hill, celebrate at midnight, then come back across the time zone line and do it all again an hour later.

Simple things for simple minds I guess, but I take my entertainment where I can find it these days.

Time to go work on a proposal now...y'all try to get your internal clocks adjusted and get some sleep.