by Peggy Robin
Here's your friendly reminder to set your clocks forward one hour (that is, if you still own any that need to be manually reset!) before you go to bed tonight.
But wait! Maybe you were thinking, "Hey, didn't Congress (in the previous term) vote to eliminate the clock change? Once we spring ahead, is that it? We stay on DST forever?"
Well, no. You may be forgiven for not following all the ins-and-outs of the bill, called "The Sunshine Protection Act." In fact, I was pretty confused about it myself -- even though this is one of those issues I've been following for quite a few years -- and it's also something I've been advocating, almost my whole adult life. Still, I wasn't sure about what had happened to the bill -- which I thought had passed -- until I read the story in the Washington Post this morning.
The short answer is: The bill passed the Senate and then at the last minute, was killed in the House. But the story is much more complicated than that, and the bill is not dead yet....but as we're on the brink of losing an hour, I find I don't have the time to give you the full account; let me just refer you to the Post article and you can read all about it in your own good time:
Online as "Permanent daylight saving time: The clock is ticking in Congress" https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2023/03/09/daylight-saving-time-bill/
In the Saturday print edition on page one with the more intriguing headline "The days may be numbered for our vexing clock ritual."
If you want to know why I'm among the 57 percent of Americans who want to ditch the twice-yearly clock change (44 percent preferring to go on permanent DST; 13 percent choosing permanent standard time), you can go back to my Still Life with Robin polemic in the subject, from March 2014, "Down with DST!"
Or you can go even further back to November 2011 to read Bill's novel proposal for DC to opt out:
"DC to World: We're No Longer Turning Our Clocks Back"
Do you find all this drama a tempest in a clockwork? Then you might want to amuse yourself and your friends with some fun facts about DST, as brought to you in this short video by NBC4Washignton:
And here's a nice little ditty to close out this column:
"Does anybody really know what time it is?" (Chicago)
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Still Life with Robin is published on the Cleveland Park Listserv and on All Life Is Local on Saturdays.
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