I Want My DST
Indiana–most of Indiana–does not use Daylight Savings Time. Oh, there are a few counties up in the northwest corner of the state (near Chicago) that are on Central Daylight Time, and some other counties in the southeast corner of the state (near Louisville) that are on Eastern Daylight Time. The rest of the state stays on Eastern Standard Time year ’round. That means that Indianapolis is on the same time as New York in the winter and the same time as Chicago in the summer.
Confused yet? This situation has given birth to the term “slow time,” which is classic regional vernacular. It’s how people in earlier time zones refer to the time in the rest of the state during the time that they–the southeastern counties–are on Eastern Daylight time.
The practical (if such a word can even be said to apply in this case) upshot of the situation is that part of the morning commute takes place under nighttime driving conditions. Schoolkids have to wait for their buses in the dark. You may ask why our legislature hasn’t gotten its act together and put the entire state in the same time zone. The answer is that the farmer’s lobby apparently shoots down the proposition every time it’s brought up. I have no idea what advantage farmers get out of the situation, but it’s bloody inconvenient for the rest of us.
Still confused? How about this–sunrise was at 7:39 AM today–Indianapolis time. If my old high school is still on the same schedule, that means that the kids had been in class for nine minutes already by the time the sun came up. I”ll have been at work for about half an hour by the time it starts to get light. Traffic will have been backing up at the usual bottlenecks long enough for hundreds, if not thousands, of frustrated commuters to ignore the entire sunrise. And if the farmers absolutely, positively must get up and milk the cows before dawn, we could set the clocks back an hour and it would still be dark out at 5:00 AM or whatever ungodly early hour they get up.
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November 24th, 2003 at 10:40 am
The trouble is that DST is a help in the summer, when it makes sunrise a semi-tolerable 5:30 instead of 4:30 (when your kid’s internal alarm is set for sunrise, that matters), and gives you more daylight at a later hour of evening.
In the winter, everyone is on Standard Time. We and the kids end up starting the day in the dark because Indiana is at the east edge of the Central Standard Time Zone.
My attitude on the whole thing got reset when I lived in Seattle. Sunrise today is at 7:26 a.m. there, which would have been the middle of my first period class. It was already dimming when we got out of school at 3:30 p.m. and sunset had arrived by 4:30. Of course, all of this was exacerbated by the perennial rain of a Seattle winter. On the other hand, I have never understood the farmer’s lobby on DST. It’s not like cows can read clocks.
November 25th, 2003 at 3:03 am
It’s not just the farmers. The teachers insist that if we went on Daylight Savings Time, the kids would be waiting for the bus in the dark more days of the year, completely ignoring the fact that if we went on Central time with DST, the kids would be waiting for the bus in the dark fewer days of the year. And just in case you never noticed it, Indiana is not just on the western edge of the Eastern time zone, it should logically have been in the Central time zone all along, but when time zones were started, New York was much more developed than Chicago and Indiana chose to go into the Eastern zone instead of the Central zone where we belong, because all the business contacts were in New York.
But of course, the cows don’t understand all that.
November 25th, 2003 at 7:37 am
Not to mention the fact that because the clocks go forward in the spring, sunrise wouldn’t be at 4:30 AM anyway.