So, once again, we have turned the clocks back and sent ourselves into premature darkness for the next four months. While I know that our days will continue to grow shorter until Winter Solstice, it’s still extremely depressing that we have such early sunsets now. To me, it’s like the dungeon door has been slammed shut on the first Sunday in November, where I am sentences to continual darkness until early March. With no chance to get outside and see the sun on most days (I work from home in an apartment that doesn’t get any direct sun from November through February), it’s depressing.
And the worst part of it is, it doesn’t have to be this way. It’s manmade that we here are trapped in such a dismal time, and it’s because we’re forced to be this because of our geography. We are in the easternmost part of the Lower 48 US states, and most people are really surprised how far east we are. A lot of people think that we are north of Florida, but Orlando is much further west than we are. We’re stuck here because the US doesn’t want to have too many time zones, and we are stuck with a lot of places that are much further west than we are.
My suggestion is that New England should be on Atlantic time, along with the Maritime provinces of New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Prince Edward Island, as well and Puerto Rico. I have some very sound reasons that are based in fact for this recommendation:
- The Eastern Time Zone is 1 1/2 Time Zones Wide: The Eastern Time Zone is massive, with sunrise in Eastport, Maine (on the eastern edge) being about 1 1/2 hours before Ontonagon, Michigan (on the western edge). It’s crazy that the time zone is much wide. The easternmost part (that’s us New England!) is crammed in so that it doesn’t get to be too late sunrises in the West.
What do we get for that? Crazy early shifts of time. In the darkest part of winter, the sun is gone by 4 pm (it’s 3:48 pm sunset in Eastern Maine in December) and in the middle of summer the sun is up at 5 am here in the Boston area. - Noon is Not Midday in Our Society: In agrarian times, people would get up with the sun and work, and then go to bed shortly after sunset, so the work day was in sync with the daylight. In our modern world, we are busy by our clocks, and that doesn’t align with the sun rises in this time zone.
If you think that the standard time that most people are up and active is 6 am to 8 pm, the middle of the day is 1 pm (I am being generous here, as I really don’t thing that our culture functions much before 7 am, but I know some people do). Therefore the middle of our day should be about 1 pm. Instead, here in New England, the middle of our day (when the sun is directly above us) tends to be somewhere between 11:15 and 11:50, and only gets after 12 noon after we go into Daylight Saving Time, and that’s still before the actual midday.
For example, today (Monday, November 4) sunrise in the Boston area was 6:23 am, and sunset was 4:35 pm, making 5 hours and 37 minutes of daylight before 12 noon, and 4 hours and 23 minutes of daylight after noon. It just not even. - Timezones are Set By Humans: If you look at a map of time zones around the world, it’s clear that they are not set by nature. The lines are very erratic, and where time zones are were set because someone wanted them that way. We’re in the time zone we are, because the USA government didn’t want so many time zone and wanted to keep sections of the country in as few times zones as possible. Newfoundland is 1.5 hours ahead of us, because that makes sense for them. China is all on one time zone because the government there wanted that conformity, regardless of how well it worked for people (I understand that Urumqi in Western China sometimes has sunrises at 10-11 am because of this. Talk about oppression.). Regardless of the reason, we are in the timezone we’re in because someone decided it. We can also decide.
Granted, I don’t know that things are ever going to change, but I always find the end of Daylight Saving Time to be the most depressing day of the year, as we are plunged back into darkness when we don’t need to be. If I were in charge, we’d be on Atlantic Standard Time in the Winter, and Atlantic Daylight Time in the summer. Then our days would be have a similar span to places like Ohio, where summer nights are actually long, and you’re not woken up in the middle of the night on summer mornings. You’d also be able to have a little light after work, and be able to feel like you’re not living in a cave.
One can only hope. Until then, try to get outside while you can! Fresh air and sunlight are what we need most.
