A Day in the Life of Chaos

In a way this posting is a form of “mea culpa.”  It is an act of contrition for a time of my life that when I look back, I feel sorry and ignorant.  I was a product of the society around me and in that I became what it wanted me to become.  As a man who tries his best to think logically and independently I am ashamed that I surrendered myself in the manner I did. I was the product of Alaska in the late 1960s and 1970s.  It was almost a frontier but not quite.  Alaskan’s proudly called it the “Last Frontier.”  Roads were still often dirty and dusty.  Nothing was manicured and most was created out of necessity as opposed to methodically planned.  Those that lived in the state were divided between a small subset of long term hardy Alaskans that arrived during World War II or an even smaller set that came before.  They were truly the hardy mountain man types.  The ones that had lines of seasons written in their faces like the rings of a tree.  My family was of a new class.  It was a group

Day Light Savings Time is horrible on so many levels.   Most of the world doesn’t copy us in our bi-annual American tradition.   Every year the news stories tell us our politicians are trying to end it yet it never comes to pass.   It is a relic of trying to save energy during a World War.   The spring forward, fall back torture continues year after year forcing us to change clocks and deal with interrupted circadian rhythms.   It means I drive home in the dark.   In Alaska growing up it was worse.   In the dark of winter you only had 6 hours of daylight and changing the clocks meant decreasing the daylight window on both ends.   As a child I lived in dark.   I went to school in the dark.   I came home in the dark.   I might catch a glimpse of the sun through a school window if I was lucky.   Summers were the only respite when we lived on the excess light.   These past few years have revealed what is likely the most diabolically evil reality of daylight savings that has proved to be