Whining a waste of time

Thank goodness we have sprung forward. The editorial in The New Mexican is the biggest pile of hyperbolic moaning and groaning foolishness of the year (“No, let’s not spring forward,” Our View, March 9).

Its suggestion that one hour less sleep in the spring will cause every horror from heart trouble to offending the Lord when those few who forget to turn their clocks ahead will be an hour late for church one day a year, to death on our highways, is beyond silly.

By the logic of The New Mexican, any and all ills caused in the spring will be cured in the fall by the one hour additional sleep we get then; heart troubles will be instantly ended, the Lord will be thrilled that the forgetful few will appear in church a full hour before the service begins, and our highways will be safe once again. What nonsense. The New Mexican actually refers to being an hour late for church once a year as causing “damage.”

I grew up in Louisville, Ky., then on the eastern tip of the Central Time Zone — just as we are on the eastern tip of the Mountain Time Zone. In the winter, by the time I got home from school, it was already getting dark — just as, in the winter here, it begins to get dark at 4 p.m. After many years, Louisville came to its senses and switched to Eastern Time — just as we should switch to Central Time. Such a change would be sane and sensible.

So, Sunday, March 11, was my favorite day of the year, and it would be a boon to sanity and good sense if The New Mexican would not treat daylight saving time as if it were nuclear summer, the end of life as we know it, the worst horror since before sliced bread and, perhaps, even responsible for the Lindbergh kidnapping.

Richard Block lives in Santa Fe.