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Waste of Daylight

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I mailed my ballot to King County Washington yesterday.  Seattle was my last place of residence in the US before settling permanently in Lithuania.  It is kind of hard to sort through all the referendums on the ballot since they don't directly affect me, but I took the time to research them and make what I thought to be an informed vote.  Mostly, I wanted to cast my ballot for Democratic candidates in Congressional and state races.

It is similarly hard to figure out what is going in the polls.  I've seen the 538 Senate Forecast go from a 70-30 chance the Democrats would retain the Senate to a 45-55 chance that the Republicans will regain it in little over a month.  Michael Moore and other liberal pundits are dismissing this startling turnaround in voter sentiment, saying that it is all part of a narrative the mainstream media is pitching that economy trumps social issues in the midterms.  You hear almost nothing these days about the infamous Supreme Court decision to repeal the Roe decision.  He still predicts a Blue Tsunami based on unusually high early voting that tends to favor Democrats.  I remain cautiously optimistic.  

Mostly, I try not to think about it too much.  If I did it would keep me up at night.  As it is I will probably get up early to see the results roll in.  I do anyway as the cat and dog haven't figured out that we switched back to standard time, getting me up at five o'clock in the morning.  I will try not to shout in victory or in grief as to wake up Daina.

I'm surprised the change in clocks hasn't been a campaign issue this close to the election.  The Senate voted unanimously last March to make Daylight Savings Time permanent, even though it would permanently set us forward one hour from normal rotational time.  The House was supposed to take up the bill during summer but there were far more pressing concerns and the measure has since stalled indefinitely.  

Republicans are big for this permanent measure as they feel a majority of Americans like having an extra hour of daylight in the afternoon, but then I imagine there are many morning persons like myself who hate getting up on dark mornings.  I don't have much of a choice here as the sun doesn't rise until 7:30 and by December will be closer to nine.  Still it is better than 8:30 or 10.  The price you pay for living above 50 degrees latitude North, which only Alaskans would understand.

This is clearly an issue that splits latitudes.  William Willetts formally broached the idea of "summer time" in his pamphlet Waste of Daylight.  He was out walking his dog one summer morning and saw that many London homes still had their blinds drawn despite the sun being up.  He figured this daylight would be better used in the afternoons.  That may be true for London but here in Lithuania it doesn't really matter as the days grow very long in summer and you have plenty of light in the morning and afternoon.  What we want is more light in the morning during winter.  Maybe it would have been better to reset the starting time of the day but there was no way the Brits were going to cede the Greenwich meridian?

Lithuania actually did try to make standard time permanent some years back but that threw it out of kilter with the rest of the EU.  There was a lot of discussion on this issue, including whether it really did promote energy savings which the European Commission claimed.  Lithuania's EU delegation pushed for a ban on Daylight Savings time across the continent but to no avail and so went back to the ritual of setting clocks forward one hour in Spring.  

You see how it easy it is to forget about the election.  I just have to keep it up for three more days!

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