It was a bright and sunny day out while I was walking near a creek in town. It’s been cold here for longer than we expected in this part of the country, and once the worst of the coldness dissipated we were left with clouds and rain. But today was different and for at least a few good minutes I made use of it. I didn’t stop to smell the flowers or anything like that, but I did notice how green the grass was, how many squirrels were out as well as the bushes and vines growing on their trellises.
This evoked a fond childhood memory of the blackberry bush in the front yard. I love blackberries, if not for the amazing sweet yet tart taste that works so well in jams, pies, yogurt and by themselves, then for the nostalgia of it. It did not evoke any memories of falling into that stupid bush when I was reaching too far in to pick that last handful, or the black widow I discovered living in the thing when I crawled under it and sent me screaming to my mother. No, this warm sunny day only brought back berries and basking.
Then the cynical switch flipped in my bipolar brain and I wondered what would happen if the city planted blackberry bushes next to the sidewalk, there by the creek. Invariably one thing. Someone with a berry allergy would eat it and have to go to the hospital, or someone would choke on a berry, or eat a rotten one and get food poisoning, or stab their hand with a thorn, or any number of mishaps would take place and they would sue. And they would win.
The fault would fall on the city for not maintaining a healthy berry bush, for not spraying for bugs, for not washing the spray off, and for not putting a nice wax coating on each of the berries to make them look nice. And because of this neglect, the city would be responsible for anything bad that happened to people eating the berries.
You’ll notice, though, that nobody goes around suing the city when their kids eat scrub oak leaves and puke them up, or get hay fever from the lawn, or even if people choose to eat the weird, unidentifiable red berries that nobody has any clue what kind of plant they’re actually growing out of; is that a sapling? A hedge? Vine? Wax berry bush?? And if someone did eat those berries, there’s no way they could sue the city because the judge would call them stupid. They’re responsible for not eating crap that’s not growing in a garden or sitting in a supermarket. In other words, they knew better than to trust some shady-looking berry standing at a street corner offering some unidentifiable chemical for consumption.
But the blackberry, on the other hand, that’s not the person’s fault. It was only a blackberry. You see those in the grocery store and you can eat them, for free if nobody’s looking. So we can just trust the blackberries because they live next door, without ever finding anything out about them or making sure they’re clean, right?
It’s so much easier to pass responsibility to someone else, someone that we can get money from. But I tell you what, one trip underneath the blackberry bush seeing what’s really going on in there taught me a lesson at nine years old that I’ve never forgotten: you can eat as many blackberries off the bush as you want, but if you eat the ones Mom saved for making a pie, your butt’s gonna look like a bowl of raspberries for a week.
Tuesday, March 15, 2011
Sunday, March 13, 2011
(DST) Disrespect of Sleep Time
We woke up on time this morning, as far as I'm concerned and as far as more than half the world is concerned. Church services are normally at 9am for us and around 8:30 we were having a leisurely breakfast. It wasn't until I looked at my computer (dialed in to the nation's schedule) that I realized it was actually 9:30. It had struck again.
Duped is a word I would not hesitate to use here. Betrayed, deceived, or even (hold your breath) beguiled. I would say I like duped the best, except that I was tired enough getting out of bed as it was that I didn't much "like" anything at that hour.
I still cannot fathom why we go through this process. It's not really related to farming, work shifts, health, safety or anything else. At least not conclusively. Sure, some folks have stated that it started for reason X or Y, but why in 2011 are we still doing this? Just when my body is getting its sync after the last invasive change to my sleeping schedule--which is hard enough for me to do as a student--it's time to adjust to a new one.
For a week, companies send out emails to their employees reminding them about DST. As a kid I remember DST often coinciding with a special weekend-long church conference, so we got warning on Saturday night of the impending doom when we would wake up. This weekend there was no salvation, and no more Mom & Dad to knock on the door and bear the bad news.
We officially made it to church on time, for Standard Time. We hoped the parking lot would only be half full and that there would be two factions vying for church power: the old garde who had been there since the time-honored traditional 9am, and the reformists who believe scheduling should be based on principles of "truth", such as forgetting to adjust our clocks the night before. As scholars, we naturally fell into the more logical second sect. And the parking lot was already full.
I just don't like the idea of changing times twice a year. I have three main reasons, in this order.
1) It's stupid.
2) Just when it's getting nice and light in the morning well before I have to start working or schooling, just when it's getting pretty out when I'm trying to exercise but there's still not a soul on the road trying to run me over yet, it goes back to dark. Just because this is worded like a grievance doesn't mean it doesn't count as a reason.
3) It's a waste of time to try to keep changing schedules and making everything adapt to them, twice a year. By schedules I mean both commercial and physiological. By "wasted" I mean I would've made it to church on time, or not tired, or both if they'd just left it alone.
4) (Hey, I'm in the Humanities, not the sciences. I never had to go past Pre-Algebra to get into literature) I have never never never understood "Spring forward, Fall back". Even when I think I've got it, 6 months go by and I go from being anything but a morning person to an early-riser without even knowing it until I get to work/school.
I'm sure there are plenty of advantages to having DST....just absolutely sure of it. But honestly, I bet that if the nation/northwestern quarter of the planet got used to not changing the clock that people would find as many reasons to back up sticking with the tradition they've followed for the last century.
Back to reason #4. Laugh all you want but to me "forward" can refer to the concept of moving ahead, which to me means "later", or it could mean advancing in a backwards way, like the saying was meant to be taken. I'm not actually sure which one made more sense to me in the beginning, but trying to re-solve the mystery twice a year for most of 30 years still hasn't produced any other result than frustration. Except that I did come up with my own saying "Spring sucks, Fall rocks". You know, like falling rocks? Get it? Get it?? Well at least the first part of it has some intellectual value to it. But that still doesn't make me remember when it's happening in the first place.
Back to reason #1. Yes, it's a reason. In rhetoric it's called litotes. If you don't buy that, try aschematiston. Or maybe just insomnia.
Duped is a word I would not hesitate to use here. Betrayed, deceived, or even (hold your breath) beguiled. I would say I like duped the best, except that I was tired enough getting out of bed as it was that I didn't much "like" anything at that hour.
I still cannot fathom why we go through this process. It's not really related to farming, work shifts, health, safety or anything else. At least not conclusively. Sure, some folks have stated that it started for reason X or Y, but why in 2011 are we still doing this? Just when my body is getting its sync after the last invasive change to my sleeping schedule--which is hard enough for me to do as a student--it's time to adjust to a new one.
For a week, companies send out emails to their employees reminding them about DST. As a kid I remember DST often coinciding with a special weekend-long church conference, so we got warning on Saturday night of the impending doom when we would wake up. This weekend there was no salvation, and no more Mom & Dad to knock on the door and bear the bad news.
We officially made it to church on time, for Standard Time. We hoped the parking lot would only be half full and that there would be two factions vying for church power: the old garde who had been there since the time-honored traditional 9am, and the reformists who believe scheduling should be based on principles of "truth", such as forgetting to adjust our clocks the night before. As scholars, we naturally fell into the more logical second sect. And the parking lot was already full.
I just don't like the idea of changing times twice a year. I have three main reasons, in this order.
1) It's stupid.
2) Just when it's getting nice and light in the morning well before I have to start working or schooling, just when it's getting pretty out when I'm trying to exercise but there's still not a soul on the road trying to run me over yet, it goes back to dark. Just because this is worded like a grievance doesn't mean it doesn't count as a reason.
3) It's a waste of time to try to keep changing schedules and making everything adapt to them, twice a year. By schedules I mean both commercial and physiological. By "wasted" I mean I would've made it to church on time, or not tired, or both if they'd just left it alone.
4) (Hey, I'm in the Humanities, not the sciences. I never had to go past Pre-Algebra to get into literature) I have never never never understood "Spring forward, Fall back". Even when I think I've got it, 6 months go by and I go from being anything but a morning person to an early-riser without even knowing it until I get to work/school.
I'm sure there are plenty of advantages to having DST....just absolutely sure of it. But honestly, I bet that if the nation/northwestern quarter of the planet got used to not changing the clock that people would find as many reasons to back up sticking with the tradition they've followed for the last century.
Back to reason #4. Laugh all you want but to me "forward" can refer to the concept of moving ahead, which to me means "later", or it could mean advancing in a backwards way, like the saying was meant to be taken. I'm not actually sure which one made more sense to me in the beginning, but trying to re-solve the mystery twice a year for most of 30 years still hasn't produced any other result than frustration. Except that I did come up with my own saying "Spring sucks, Fall rocks". You know, like falling rocks? Get it? Get it?? Well at least the first part of it has some intellectual value to it. But that still doesn't make me remember when it's happening in the first place.
Back to reason #1. Yes, it's a reason. In rhetoric it's called litotes. If you don't buy that, try aschematiston. Or maybe just insomnia.
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