Today’s Behind Closed Doors had a note about Daylight Saving Time. I had three “almost dead” references rattling around in my head:
#Lazarus
#Monty Python’s The Holy Grail
The Dead Collector: Bring out yer dead.
[a man puts a body on the cart]
Large Man with Dead Body: Here’s one.
The Dead Collector: That’ll be ninepence.
The Dead Body That Claims It Isn’t: I’m not dead.
The Dead Collector: What?
Large Man with Dead Body: Nothing. There’s your ninepence.
The Dead Body That Claims It Isn’t: I’m not dead.
The Dead Collector: ‘Ere, he says he’s not dead.
Large Man with Dead Body: Yes he is.
The Dead Body That Claims It Isn’t: I’m not.
The Dead Collector: He isn’t.
Large Man with Dead Body: Well, he will be soon, he’s very ill.
The Dead Body That Claims It Isn’t: I’m getting better.
Large Man with Dead Body: No you’re not, you’ll be stone dead in a moment.
The Dead Collector: Well, I can’t take him like that. It’s against regulations.
The Dead Body That Claims It Isn’t: I don’t want to go on the cart.
Large Man with Dead Body: Oh, don’t be such a baby.
The Dead Collector: I can’t take him.
The Dead Body That Claims It Isn’t: I feel fine.
Large Man with Dead Body: Oh, do me a favor.
The Dead Collector: I can’t.
Large Man with Dead Body: Well, can you hang around for a couple of minutes? He won’t be long.
The Dead Collector: I promised I’d be at the Robinsons’. They’ve lost nine today.
Large Man with Dead Body: Well, when’s your next round?
The Dead Collector: Thursday.
The Dead Body That Claims It Isn’t: I think I’ll go for a walk.
Large Man with Dead Body: You’re not fooling anyone, you know. Isn’t there anything you could do?
The Dead Body That Claims It Isn’t: I feel happy. I feel happy.
[the Dead Collector glances up and down the street furtively, then silences the Body with his a whack of his club]
Large Man with Dead Body: Ah, thank you very much.
The Dead Collector: Not at all. See you on Thursday.
Large Man with Dead Body: Right.
#The Princess Bride
Miracle Max: He probably owes you money huh? I’ll ask him.
Inigo Montoya: He’s dead. He can’t talk.
Miracle Max: Whoo-hoo-hoo, look who knows so much. It just so happens that your friend here is only MOSTLY dead. There’s a big difference between mostly dead and all dead. Mostly dead is slightly alive. With all dead, well, with all dead there’s usually only one thing you can do.
Inigo Montoya: What’s that?
Miracle Max: Go through his clothes and look for loose change.
Anyway, the Behind Closed Doors Note:
Eastern vs. Central
Just about the last thing many legislators feel like revisiting is the debate over what time it is in Indiana. The 2005 fight that narrowly shifted Indiana to daylight saving time still has lawmakers exhausted.
But some residents think the state should reopen the debate — not to repeal daylight saving time, but to move Indiana from the Eastern to the Central time zone.
The Hoosiers for Central Time Coalition is contacting legislators and school superintendents around the state, urging them to support a switch to Central time for the safety of students.
And don’t take my discussion of “mostly dead” as being dismissive of the possibility that the time issue may result in further changes. I thought the daylight saving time issue was dead most of my life — but the pro-DST faction kept bringing it up over and over again until they finally got legislation passed by dint of the thinnest of margins and the reneged vote of Troy “I’ll Never Vote For It” Woodruff. (I went with the Frankenstein allusion on that one.) It’s not like there has ever been anything like a mandate on the time subject in this state. We’ve seen before that a motivated group can get legislation passed even where the issue seems settled and the rest of the state has learned to live with the situation.
Central would at least make a lot more sense, and help fix my screwed up internal clock. But no matter what happens, it won’t bring back the lovely clock collection I sold/gave away after we went on DST, and for that I’ll always be bitter at Mitch.
Get together with the bar owners. They HATE DST, saying it crushes Summer business.
My guess is that a certain faction of Indianapolis folks want the issue to be dead, because they got what they wanted. Thus, the issue is dead.
Forget the Eastern v. Central debate. Forget getting DST repealled in Indiana. The most logical thing is to repel DST nationwide. It is a ridiculous thing that provides no real good. A study showed there to be no energy savings gained when Indiana started following DST.
Jason266,
How about we move Indiana to Central time (since every square foot of Indiana resides in the global Central US time zone), AND repeal DST nationwide?
If people want to get up later in the day, lobby schools and businesses to change their hours. Just don’t fool yourself that by saying it is noon at 2:00 pm.
Honestly, Jason, I’m okay with Eastern or Central. So sure, move to Central and repeal DST nationwide. Bring it on.
I’ve said this before, but I really don’t think it’s as simple as moving the entire state on CDT. The counties by Louisville and Cincinnati would have to stay on Eastern. Additionally, each COUNTY has the right individually (as was done a couple of years ago when the entire state went on DST) to petition the feds to change time zone. I strongly suspect that the adjacent counties to the counties that would go to EDT (for example Scott, Washington and Jefferson Counties) would petition the feds to go to EDT as they are in the Lousiville/CIncinnati media markets and many people that live in those counties commute into counties on EDT. Additionally Ft. Wayne and NE Indiana could make a strong case to go to EDT with it’s proximity to Ohio and Michigan and much of the Ft. Wayne media market is in Ohio. So at the end of the day the state could very potentially be more fragmented than it is now.
Feel free to disagree with me, but I think the way it is now (80 counties on EDT and 12 counties on CDT) is as close to having as much of the state on one time zone as it it’s going to be. You will never satisfy everybody on this issue.
wl3048,
Louisville and Cincinnati are the ones in the wrong time zone though. The businesses in those areas can change their hours, so can the schools. It is just wrong to have a state that is a few hundred miles INSIDE the CST zone be on EST just because two cities that are also a few hundred miles inside CST want to operate on EST.
Let those cities change to the correct zone. Perhaps if Indiana observed the correct time, they might choose to as well. Multiple time zones are Ohio’s and Kentucky’s issue, not Indiana’s.
Not that Richmond counts for much, but our media market is in Ohio, and I don’t know too many people who want to be on EDT. Although we can get Indianapolis TV, and there is talk of moving us into the Indianapolis market, most people here watch Dayton and Cincinnati television. Our National Weather Service office is also in Ohio. We were fine with figuring out what time it was when Ohio was one hour ahead of us for part of the year. Most people I know had no problems with Ohio being on EDT when we were on EST.
The southeastern counties were illegally on EDT for many years anyway. So they would probably just do whatever they wanted, no matter what happens with the rest of the state. As for Fort Wayne, I’m not sure how much they consider themselves connected to Ohio. They do have their own TV stations, I believe.
Jason,
I don’t necessarily disagree with you arguement (Actually many moons ago Louisville was on central time – – GE used its pull to get it changed from Centeral to Eastern) but how realistic is it to see Cincinnati go to Central time given that the rest of the state is on Eastern?? Slim to none and I suspect it’s the same for Louisivlle. So again, I go back to my arguement that given that, it’s unrealistic to expect the entire state to go to Central time…….
The old (pre-2005) setup made perfect sense. I understood it completely, and at any given time for any given part of the state I could tell you whether or not it would be on the same time, or if not what the difference would be, as any other part of the state.
By “fixing” it, they’ve made it impossible to keep track of what’s what now.
Governments can’t even tell us what time it is; how could anyone think it can heal the sick?
Those superintendents will hopefully have some common sense and go for this proposal. central time is the way to go.
There are people in Louisville that would like to observe Central time as well. Fort Wayne’s argument does not hold much water as people in counties along the IN\IL border Benton and Warren Counties would like to be on Chicago time, same with St. Joseph County.