This day each fall is a mixed blessing. Since it is always a Sunday, there is an extra hour to be spent on the morning paper or at the farmers' market or in the kitchen over a pot of soup. Even sleeping in does not set the day's schedule back by much.
But waiting at the end of this day is the sudden darkness at 4:30 or so, and it is a nasty shock. My friend Patty, who hates the short days of winter so much, starts complaining about this right after the summer solstice.
She is right. The days do begin to shorten in June. But turning back the clock in the fall is like flipping a light switch, and the long dark night of winter begins in earnest.
Like you, I thought daylight saving time was imposed on us in order to extend the summer day and help the farmers. Or to conserve coal during World War I. Or to keep schoolchildren from waiting for the bus in the dark.
Turns out, none of that is particularly true.
Ben Franklin suggested a kind of daylight saving time while ambassador to France, calculating that it would save much money spent on candles.
But the idea didn't take hold until an Englishman named William Willett conceived of the idea of extending summer days by an hour in 1905 because dusk put an early end to his golf game.
Downing writes in his book that the United States got on board not for farmers but for Wall Street bankers, who wanted to remain in sync with British trading hours. Wall Street bankers again. What don't those guys mess with?
That extra hour of sleep you got this weekend (or did not get, if you are the parent of a baby or a toddler who obeys his own body clock) comes with a price, however.
Congress added an extra month to DST - a week in the fall to accommodate Halloween - and three weeks in the spring. On the second Sunday in March, you will have to give that hour back.
And, according to those same Swedish scientists, there will be more heart attacks as a result.
