“How long a minute is depends on which side of the bathroom door you’re on.” Zall’s Second Law (whatever that really is)

Lately I have noticed that there appears to be another serious push to change the time zone that we Mainers live in and I have to wonder why. Of course we are  in the Eastern Standard Time zone with changes that are affected by Daylight Savings Time, which kicks in on the 12th of March. What some want is for Maine to change to the Atlantic Standard Time zone with DST as well. Atlantic Standard Time is one hour ahead of what Maine is at the current time and with DST added on would add an additional hour.

My best guess is that those who are pushing this idea of Maine changing time zones like the idea that daylight begins later in the morning and lasts later into the evening. I guess I have become an old fart because when I go to bed I like it to be dark outside. The last thing that I want is a bunch of incoherent fools partying and creating loud noises near my house. Heck, there is already too much noise including barking dogs, and what we don’t need is a bunch of hooting and hollering, drunk tourists making even louder noise. I certainly hope I made that point correctly.

I suppose that in the end we are all creatures of our environment, including time. Maine already has enough problems being at the eastern end of the United States and connected to only one state, New Hampshire, which somehow seems to be exceedingly more prosperous than we are as a state. I have had enough problems with figuring out who’s on what time where, especially when I was in the military and had friends and relatives living in multiple time zones. At this point in time, unless the majority of states in New England change I feel it probably would add another serious disadvantage to having a business in Maine.

One of the arguments that I hear the most for changing time zones is that a later sunrise and a later sunset would be good for the tourists coming to Maine. Well, I’ll keep it simple and say the tourists can live with what Maine has or they can stay home or go somewhere else. Mainers have adjusted well to the time zone we live in so I see no reason why we should change it now. We have only so many hours of daylight no matter what time the night ends and then when the next night begins. I already hear the early school buses stopping by my house when it is dark in the winter. A change to Atlantic Standard Time would more than ensure that even more children will be picked up by school buses in the dark, and that’s totally unsafe as far as I am concerned. Of course we could change the time that schools start in the morning, but would employers want to change the start time for their employees who have children?

Maybe we should look at who really wants this time change in the first place. I believe it was around 2005 when the Maine Legislature looked at this idea. After doing some research it appeared to me that those members of  the Legislature living Down East and closer to the border of Canada wanted such a change. Why wouldn’t they if it did, in fact, help the local businesses that depended on the support of their northern neighbor? But what do the citizens of Maine think of changing our time zone? I have never seen a survey, although truthfully the majority of surveys always comes out in the favor of those doing the survey.

What I find amazing is the fact that many of the articles favoring a change in time zones will harp on the fact that there will be an extra hour of daylight. That’s an absolute myth. The length of daylight doesn’t change although many think it does.

Lane Hiltunen of Windham gave up worrying about the clock but he knows that time marches on.