Time and Time Again

This is the post I meant to write last Sunday, soon after returning from two weeks away, mostly in Spain, and the day of switching from Daylight Savings Time to Eastern Standard Time; but time got away from me. What I was concerned with then was how odd it was to have two seasonal changes of time within just one week. We were in Spain when Europe switched from Summer Time to Winter Time, on Sunday, October 30. Our hotel in Barcelona had thoughtfully put a notice in the elevator, and we had an extra hour to enjoy a Barcelona Sunday morning before we found our way to the Cathedral to watch the weekly national (Catalunyan) dance of the sardanas.

Then this past Sunday, after returning on Tuesday across only five, instead of the usual six, hours of time difference, we were in Cincinnati. We had not adjusted to the time difference yet and were still in the mode of waking at 1:30 or 2:30 AM, and struggling to stay awake until 8:30 at night. And then we had to deal with another changing of the clocks on Saturday night, just a week after we had already done it. We didn't have an efficient hotel staff to put a note in the elevator this time, but fortunately the mechanism inside the iPad adjusts itself automatically, so when I wok up in the middle of the night--2:30 AM--I didn't even have to remember that we had changed times. In fact, I didn't remember it until later, after I had slept a few more hours, and I went downstairs and turned on the CBS Sunday Morning program and realized  that it was only 8:05 instead of the 9:05 that it said on my digital devices. I had to look at the analog clocks to remember that we had changed, and then I occupied myself with running around the house and setting them back. There are more than I would have guessed.

 What I don't understand is why Europe and the Americas cannot agree on a common time to make this seasonal switch. For one week of the year, rail, bus, and airline timetables have to be adjusted to accommodate the first change, and then a week later, they have to be adjusted again when the second change comes. Broadcast schedules also have to be adjusted during that week--we had trouble getting the Danish morning news program that we often listen to in bed before 7:00 AM because we didn't know when it would be available. That's an inconvenience, but I worry more about the potential for miscommunication in serious international interconnections.Whatever automatic time settings are on the hotline between those with their fingers on the nuclear trigger--I hope someone has taken time change into consideration so warnings are adjusted and nothing goes off unintentionally!

But I didn't write about this last week, since time got away from me. By now I have adjusted to the five (or six) hour time difference between Europe and the Eastern U.S.--a late night on Tuesday this week helped that; or rather, it was the night after only two and a half hours of sleep on Tuesday night when I was finally able to sleep until a reasonable time on Thursday morning. And now I have other thoughts of "time and time again," for it is not the first time in my life that I have awoken on the morning after an election feeling worried and disappointed. I don't seem to have made much progress in my life in aligning my country's leadership with my own ethical and political values. But they don't seem to have made much headway in getting me to change mine, either.