When this particular Sunday morning started coming down, you might have noticed you were off an hour, or at least your clocks were. And sooner or later, somebody’s got to pay the piper for what’s affectionately known as Daylight Saving Time by falling back. Mickey’s big hand gets to go back one full circle, and you just got a one hour bonus for this all-day extravaganza!
In case you haven’t noticed, we live in a fairly dependable natural order thanks to that lucky old sun that rolls around heaven all day. But this solar system just didn’t happen overnight; it took days – if not eons – to perfect. So what’s an hour or two among friends, you might be asking. You’ve got all day to enjoy your extra hour or get over it. And then next spring you will lose it again. Like clockwork!
In spite of all our brilliance, I somehow feel that Mother Nature in not overly impressed with our temporal ingenuity as if we might somehow cheat her out of some time. She’s already having a hissy fit when it comes to climate change and our lack of stewardship. This is no way to take care of the only spaceship we have to make it to nowhere in particular while we roll around heaven all day. Just another way of our messing up the system.
Many moons ago, I went to college to become an astronomer in order to help us win the space race during the Cold War. Time was a very important commodity in our calculations back before computers, satellites and atomic clocks. In the observatory we depended on the official time to be signaled via the Naval Observatory from Washington via shortwave radio.
For our final exam we had to compute the position of a particular star to be at a certain place at a certain time based on our latitude and longitude. We used a book called an ephemeris to give the trajectory of an astronomical object and slide rules to work out the calculations. For less than noble reasons, I chose a star that would be directly overhead at 9:04:36 CST.
The dome was closed, and the telescope’s right ascension and declination were set on the prescribed position for the star in question. The short wave beeped the time signals from the Naval Observatory, and when the precise moment arrived the gears that drive the scope to follow a star were engaged. The dome was opened. If my star was in the telescope, I got an A; if not, I got an F.
The astronomy professor was rather short and stout to the extent he couldn’t bend over low enough to look into the eyepiece to see my beautifully centered overhead star. He had to take my word for it as if I were in charge of the stars that were directly overhead that Mississippi evening. That’s when I discovered that Jimmy Cricket was right about wishing upon a star!
Since then, I’ve resisted messing with the solar system except in those semiannual moments when I have to reset the clocks.