Sunrise, sunset

The temperature did its mid-winter in mid-America thing today, climbing high enough to send this weekend's snow and yet another measure of topsoil flowing down the street and into the lake. It's a muddy mess, but it's not tundra, and that's a grand improvement. Come July, our complaints will be as bitter as a real winter wind if the mercury dips anywhere near fifty, but today, even at dusk, it feels warm enough to slide open the kitchen door and enjoy a preview of Spring. The lingering daylight and the relative warmth are enough to make me shrug at the safflower seed that's scattered all over the deck now that my daughter's icy bird feeders have melted. Lulled by the sun, I idly wonder if the cardinals and jays have moved on to more generous digs, but I don't gripe about the mess. A cold nugget of dread hardens in my chest, though, when I consider what this break from winter means, when I consider what's coming next. What's coming, thanks to the United States Congress, weeks earlier than it should.


Years into this unnatural routine, I'm more or less numb to the horror of getting out of bed before five a.m, but I'll never grow accustomed to traveling the pitch-black highways with long-haul truckers and state troopers only to end up, a little disoriented, a little sleepy, and perhaps a little miraculously safe, at work instead of at some cross-country destination. This time of year, when the sun has actually risen by the time I open the garage door, it's a much more tolerable drive, and probably less dangerous, too. As soon as we spring--or are dragged unwillingly--forward, I'll be plunged back into the darkness. Perhaps, then, it's understandable that so I'm less than thrilled that Daylight Saving Time is now mandated to start on March 11, weeks earlier than ever. Yes, the evening light is lovely, but it will be May before it seems like a fair trade, and in the meantime, it's oh, so, dark when my day begins. They've now caved to interstate pressure, but is it possible that Indiana once had something right, and that time should just be left to march on alone?

How totally typical that the only supposed energy conservation measure our representatives have managed to pass is this meaningless shift of the clocks. I'm not one to illuminate every light in the house, but I surely don't get dressed in the dark, and I don't own appliances that draw less juice depending on the position of the sun. Yet, for what thus seems like no reason at all, I get to lose an hour of sleep and make that surreal psuedo-midnight drive for three extra weeks of the year. Call me a cranky constituent. If we could harness the hubris it takes to act as if the U. S. Congress can slow the actual rotation of the earth--and if you notice how many times the phrase "add an hour of daylight" appears in the action's justifications, it's as if someone believes that's true--there'd be no energy crisis at all, and, better yet, no driving to work each morning in the dark of night.