"Farmer, farmer, put away the DDT now," sang Joni Mitchell in "Big Yellow Taxi" (1970). Substitute DST for the toxic pesticide, and you have today's topic: daylight savings time.
Tober, the Thorntown (Indiana) Public Library Cat, and Morgan the Library Bunny (at Morgan County [Indiana] Public Library) have each tackled DST on their blogs (Tober) and Facebook (Morgan). They are must reads, so get cracking:
- Morgan's DST Survey on Facebook (separate link to Morgan's blog)
From what I gathered reading Morgan's FB responses, folks around these parts were overwhelmingly displeased with DST. Maybe it stays light later, but at this time of year it stays dark longer in the mornings. So it seems as if the darkness is just getting shifted around, but the length of daylight and darklight (wait, that's not quite right) are the same, no matter what arbitrary time codes one assigns to a 24-hour period.
I realize that the basic objective is to shift time forward so there is more daylight in the summer evenings, during which people are supposed to leave their homes and spend more money out there in commercialism-land, but it hasn't trickled down to the folks I hang with at my Library. Some of them lived in Montana (some were born there, but they don't remember, to misquote "Never Been to Spain," written by Hoyt Axton and recorded by Three Dog Night on the LP Harmony [1971]), and it stayed light there until after 10 p.m. on summer nights, and they didn't spend any more money because of it. "You can't spend what you ain't got," sang the Lady With the Red Hair in a honky-tonk during her high plains drifter days.
Tober had the right idea about DST: Get a jar, let the sunshine in, screw on the top, and there you have it: saved daylight. (Wasn't "Let the Sunshine In" a song from the musical Hair [debuted in October, 1967] and covered by the Fifth Dimension in 1969?)
All I know for sure about DST is that I lost an hour's sleep when we "sprang forward" a short while ago (Days? Weeks? Where does the time go?), and I won't regain it until we "fall back" in November (or thereabouts). Seems like a lot of trouble just to adjust my sleeping times.
DST Tires Me Out, So It's Naptime For Sure,
Cauli Le Chat
MPL Roving Reporter
Timing is Everything Joke News Beat
P.S. Lots of time-related music to honor in today's postscript, so let's get right to it.
The Byrds (Live at the Fillmore, 1969) sang Chris Hillman's magnificent "Time Between," which appeared on the group's Younger Than Yesterday album (1967). For an instrumental version, here's a twofer video below (the instrumental is the second offering, so you'll first have to listen to the original 45 r.p.m. mono single of "Eight Miles High" (1966), which isn't bad, all things considered, and is, of course, a fabulous song). "Eight Miles High" is not a drug song; it's a chronicle of the band's first tour of England in late 1965. The title refers to the plane's cruising altitude. Actually, it was originally entitled "Six Miles High," which was the true height at which the plane was cruising across the Atlantic, but Gene Clark suggested changing it to eight because it sounded better and also was similar to a then-recently released Beatles tune, "Eight Days a Week." Ironically, Gene left the band before the British trip because he had a pathological fear of flying; he boarded the plane and then disembarked, effectively exiting the Byrds as well (although he continued to jam with them in the recording studio). David Crosby even sang a lyric about the experience in his song, "Psychodrama City" (1966).
Speaking of time, there's "Time Has Come Today" by The Chambers Brothers (1968). This is one of my all-time favorite songs from those bygone days.
Hey, everybody, you have to log-into Facebook to read Morgan's posts. Just an FYI, JIC.
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