Summer on Daylight Savings Time

Goodnight

Art Print

Elsley, Arthur...


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Bed in Summer

In winter I get up at night
And dress by yellow candle-light.
In summer, quite the other way,
I have to go to bed by day.


I have to go to bed and see
The birds still hopping on the tree,
Or hear the grown-up people’s feet
Still going past me in the street.


And does it not seem hard to you,
When all the sky is clear and blue
And I should like so much to play,
To have to go to bed by day?

-Robert Louis Stevenson


I have long disliked Daylight Savings Time. I could never make sense of it. I don't know what Benjamin Franklin was thinking... you can't make a day any longer than it was going to be anyway (hasn't been done since Joshua's day). And if it does save daylight for whatever reason, why in the world don't we do it in the Wintertime instead? The days are long enough in the Summer-- I don't think we need any help there.

If people want to get off of work, have dinner, and enjoy the rest of the day (one of the reasons to have DST, we are told), why not shift the hours of work to end at 4 or 4:30? Even then, a lot of businesses don't follow a set model anymore-- hours of operation have been extended in stores and other businesses so that the shifts are not always 9-5.

There are those two dreadful times of the year: getting on to DST and getting off of DST. It takes a long time to shift routines and schedules. And, which I find very interesting, the time shift happens on a Saturday night, which always makes it difficult for people that go to church on Sunday Morning. In the Autumn (when the hour "falls back") you are safe, but that Sunday in Spring (when the hour "springs forward") church attendance is lower.

My children have discovered another reason not to like Daylight Savings Time: bedtime. It isn't that we put them in bed extra early in the Summer, it's just that by the time the hour is late, they realize that it could be an hour earlier. If the sun sets at 9 PM, they see the benefit in the clock being put back to normal time of 8 PM. Then, they conclude, they can stay out into the dark playing until the "real" 9 o'clock. They have taken to reminding me what the hour is in "real time."

Some people don't care what time it is, "just make it one way or another." They would be happy if we just shifted to DST through the whole year, or stayed on regular time the whole year. I advocate just letting it be... stay on the "old" time all year. I would enjoy experiencing it for once in my life.

More Tea Cups for the Tea Table

Remember the tea cup and saucer I bought for my birthday at an antiques store? I won't tell you how much I paid for it (enough to be a birthday present!) but just look at what mom found at Goodwill to go with it!

The matching plate.

Now I have a "Trio."

This little golden-edged unmarked cup is quite elegant...

...and looks good with another one of my mother's saucer finds.

Here is something different: a Royal Albert cup entitled "Men of Harlech" from an English Song series. We're still experimenting with saucers for this one.

Beatrix Potter's Birthday

Beatrix Potter's Bench
Art Print
Landry, Paul
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I see that it is Beatrix Potter's Birthday today. Here is a fun website!
http://www.peterrabbit.com/
If you click on "games" and you have a fast connection, the pages turn like a pop-up book!
More here for the little ones.
My favorite picture in the Beatrix Potter books is in the "Tale of Tom Kitten." Tom Kitten tearing up the hill, the buttons bursting on his little jacket because he had grown too fat, looks eager and exhausted and concerned and a bit mischievous all at once.


Beatrix Potter
Poster
21 in. x 62 in.
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Yet Another Tea Cup!

Unwrapping my birthday gift from my mother, I found this sweet tea-cup and saucer:

This is called a "crinoline lady." Below is the back:The saucer is not the same china company or pattern, but a close enough match to make a set. However, my mother and I decided to rummage through her stack of lonely saucers that she has collected over the years from Goodwill and see what else we could match the tea cup with.
I like this pink one a lot! I think a light blue one in the same pattern may be a pretty match.

Voila! We found one from the same company!

My mother told me that she got up to the cash register at Goodwill and the cup and saucer came to $2.98. "Shouldn't this be 99 cents?" she complained. A lady behind her whispered to her, "Oh, but it's a collector's item, and that is why it is higher. May I see the bottom?" And I thought my $5.00 teacup was a bargain.