I have some firmly rooted opinions about Daylight Savings Time and have had them since I was a teenager.

As a pragmatist, I believe in practical, real-time solutions. That play on words may give you an indication where I am going with all of this, but in my opinion, real time doesn’t suffer the human notion of more daylight by Congressional act.

As an oft quoted, but unidentified Native American once said, “Only a government (paleface, white man) would cut off an inch (2-inches, foot) from a blanket and sew it to the top.” The many versions of the quote are unclear on the source or the content of the quote, only indicating that it references DST.

I believe that the wise man who made the point is correct.

Benjamin Franklin is often noted as a source for the idea of DST. The Journal de Paris published a satire letter he wrote in 1784 advocating taxing window shutters, candle rationing and ringing church bells to wake the public at sunrise. But that was at a time when agrarian society was rising with the sun as they had always done. I think Franklin was urging the privileged urbanites of his time to get up off their rear ends and do something productive early in the day, as he was in the habit of doing.

I couldn’t find an actual plan devised by Franklin to establish something like DST.

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Seasonal changes and wartime lighting restrictions were the impetus for the discussions that began in earnest in the late 1800s and into the 20^th Century regarding DST. The Uniform Time Act of 1966 was enacted to “promote the adoption and observance of uniform time” within the U.S.

DST didn’t become the norm until after 1974 and there are some outliers who do not observe DST like Hawaii, Arizona and some Native American nations.

A misnomer is that farmers were big advocates of DST. The only thing farmers rely on their wristwatch for is lunchtime and maybe an irrigation schedule, but even those are relative to what is going on - weather, harvest crunch – in the field.

For me, DST is akin to jet lag. It messes up my circadian rhythm twice a year. It always takes a week or so for my body to adjust to the new time change.

I’m usually up before the sun rises, but the adjustment to the schedule of the time change is difficult for my aging mind.

More difficult for me than the time adjustment is the practical notion that actual time is relative. For me, if the sun is straight up, it’s noon on Earth. If we say it’s not, it’s the same thing as saying everything else is relative – fast/slow, old/new, hot/cold, dark/light.

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So, as discussions about doing away with DST come from the new administration, that’s where I stand.