tinkering with clocks

[cellio]

It seems ironic that we are back on "standard" time -- ironic because we spend more of the year now on the other sort, and it will get worse next year. What'll it be then, close to eight months of daylight savings time and four of standard time?

I understand the motivation to re-align the window of daylight to fit one's preferences, but that's doomed because we don't all have the same preferences (so the strongest lobby wins) and it's not as if clock-tinkering can actually extend the amount of light in the day. It might be wiser to just admit that noon comes at noon and sometimes that means dark mornings or dark evenings, and suck it up. Do we really need sunsets at close to 10PM in June? Does that get you anything that you can't get enough of with a 9PM sunset? And what's the harm of a 5:30 sunset in late October instead of a 6:30 one? If you work normal hours that extra hour of light probably doesn't let you do anything enjoyable (you're on your way home or eating dinner, most likely), and kids have been out of school for a couple hours by then so they've had plenty of running-around-outside time.

On Thursday I drove to morning services in pitch dark, and I had to consciously dawdle in leading the service so that the sun would rise before the first prayer that must be said in "the morning" hit. I don't know what this group will do next year, when DST continues through November. The minyan is when it is so people can get to work on time.

Comments

[cellio]

The latest end-of-Shabbat time here is 9:45PM (I was misremembering that). It's possible to drive six hours west and still be in this time zone; I don't remember what the difference was when I was in Cincinnati this summer. Pretty darn late, though.

As for sunrise and the service, there are complicated gradations for what can be said when

After establishing that no one present knew exactly what the rules were (I'm surprised by that), I opted for "get to Sh'ma at sunrise". I don't know if that was right, but it seems reasonable. The talmud, in the discussion of when to say the Sh'ma, even praises someone (I forget who) for timing his t'filah to do exactly that every day. Of course, the t'filah then might not have been what we do now, exactly.