Done with daylight savings time

Ten days into daylight saving time and our household is almost starting to feel like normal again.

By almost I mean that we try to get the children to bed on time even though it feels like we should be outside riding bikes. We haven’t actually been late for school yet, though mornings are still an epic struggle getting everyone out of bed. Worse for some parents evidenced by the increase in traffic after the bell has rang. I dread when they become teens if we are forced into dealing with the draconian practice of changing time.

Daylight saving was dreamed up in 1895 and first implemented around 1916. This was a time when eugenics was gaining steam and politics and business was focused on how to create a subservient class of workers in the general populace. They disguised it with ignorant claims about helping farmers and saving candles or electricity, despite everyone knowing farmers work to the sun schedule not the clocks. The estimated electricity savings in the 1970s was 1 percent by a Department of Transportation study. In the modern era, it likely leads to increased energy use due to increase air conditioning, television and other modern amenities.

It is disruptive to our children and our entire economy. Our neighbors to the south in Wyoming recently passed a bill to stay on daylight saving time permanently, provided at least three neighboring states do the same. Perhaps it is time for Montana to join the movement?

Grant Hughes, Whitefish