Daylight Savings

Pipestone Star 11-08-12

Hopefully, everyone remembered to set their clocks back one hour on Saturday night.  I’ve always noticed that there are always a few people late for church the following morning and that just brings back memories of the times I’ve forgotten, which is really only a problem when you have a plane to catch the next morning.  No laughing, please.

Daylight savings time annoys me, I’ll admit that right now.  I don’t like having to remember it and my children always seem to take a few days to reorient themselves, which makes bedtimes painful.  I used to love the gained hour, now I just want to free myself of the hassle of the change in the first place.  Not that this is likely to happen anytime soon, mind you.  I caught myself wondering about the reasons behind the change, so I thought I’d share them with you, now that the trauma is over.

I always thought it was just the United States that participated in changing the clocks, but it’s not.  Most of Europe and parts of Australia, South America, the Middle East, and Africa also set their clocks backward and forward, though not necessarily at exactly the same time as we do.  Daylight Savings was first proposed in 1895, but it wasn’t implemented until World War One.  The reasoning behind DST is that people are more active in the evening, so it is better to put some daylight hours there, rather to waste the daylight in the early morning, when people tend to be sleeping.

Honestly, I had no idea of the effects this switch could have.  I thought of the sleep pattern disruption, but I never thought about the effect that some dairy farmers say it has on a cow’s milking schedule (remember, I’m originally a city girl).  There are contradicting reports as to whether it reduces or increases energy costs: it can cut down on the lighting needed to do outdoor activities, but can increase the power needed for cooling in the summer time.  DST is great for retailers, especially those in the sports equipment business, since people tend to participate in afternoon sports because of the increased daylight, but prime-time television suffers, as do theaters since people would rather be outside while the sun is up.   Not surprising, then, that many shows take a hiatus in the summer, with the new season starting in late September as summer activities wear to a close.  I never related that to the time change, but it makes sense!

The time itself does not actually change until 2:00 AM, both in the spring and the autumn, though I change my clocks before we go to bed on Saturday night.  That means, if you have a flight scheduled to take off at 1:45 AM (crazy, but it happens), you may land earlier than when you took off, depending on how long the flight is and where you’re headed.  In the spring, the clock changes from 1:59:59 straight to 3:00:00, and in the autumn, from 1:59:59 to 1:00:00.  In Great Britain, they change at 1:00 AM instead of 2:00, and other countries also have different times at which they change.  Start and end dates also differ, with some parts of Europe observing daylight savings AFTER the United States has switched over, and Europe switches back before the US does.  In the southern hemisphere, their DST occurs from October to March (not the other way around) to coincide with their summer season.   I have never been less jealous of airline schedulers as I am right now.  Imagine the nightmare of trying to coordinate all those time zones and changes!

Have a great week, everyone!  Look at it this way, the election is over (when I write this, I have no idea what the outcome will be) and the political adds are over.  Thanksgiving is on its way, and books are coming out for Christmas.  Stay tuned for the next article when we’ll look at some of the blockbusters that you could put under your tree!

PAFL Update:  Pipestone Area Friends of the Library is looking for members – anyone who is a friend to Meinders Library is welcome to join!  The Friends group works hard to promote the library, raise money for projects, and organize their yearly book sale, in addition to the HUGE amount of support they provide throughout the year.  For more information, please contact the library!  PAFL will be having a fundraiser on November 5^th at Pizza Ranch.  Come have some great pizza and support your local library!!

Book Club Reminder:  Book Club will be meeting November 15^th at 7:00 PM in the Meinders Library Conference room.  The book is The Tiger’s Wife by Tea Obreht.  Please contact the library for a copy of the next book and feel free to join up with our readers!  Everyone is welcome!

If you have questions or have a book you’d like to reserve or renew, please don’t hesitate to give us a call at (507) 825-6714.  The hours for Meinders Library are Monday through Thursday from 10 AM – 8 PM, and Friday and Saturday from 10 AM – 5 PM.  Meinders Community Library is located at 1401 7^th Street SW, on the south side of the high school.

Zombie Obsession

Pipestone County Star 10-25-12

A few years ago, I purchased a copy of Max Brooks A Zombie Survival Guide: Complete Protection from the Living Dead as a lark – it’s got to be a funny read, right?  Oh my word, it was hysterical.  And it came out right at the beginning of a brand new phase of American Zombie Obsession.   I’m sure you won’t be surprised when I say I went along with the flow.  I even have a garden zombie sculpture in my back yard and green vinyl zombies on the back of my van.  I know I’m weird, I’ve already been told.

Despite that, there is some brilliant zombie fiction out there, both on the big screen and on the pages of a book.

I kissed a Zombie and I Liked It is a young adult novel by Adam Selzer with a vastly different romantic hero than most love stories.  When a high school music critic meets up with a singer, she finds him kind of cute, if very quiet, and begins to fall in love.  She overlooks the flaws that others see, such as his lack of clothing changes, the odd angle of his head, and his lack of speech, and it takes someone else to point out his zombie nature.  She breaks up with him, but the spark is already there.  What’s a girl to do?

Patient Zero tells the story of a detective that has to stop terrorists from turning the world population into zombies with the release of a new bio-weapon.  Written by Jonathan Maberry, this is the first of a series of books centering around Detective Joe Ledger and they promise to be doozies.  The thought of a biologically weaponized zombie plague gives me the heebie-jeebies.

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies is for all our classic literature lovers out there.  Seth Grahame-Smith and Roberto Parada didn’t change all that much of Jane Austin’s original work.  In fact, Miss Austen is still listed as one of the authors, since the characters are entirely hers.  Nouns and verbs were changed within the story to make it a tale of destroying the undead and some interesting illustrations were added to make it more captivating, but you’d be surprised how much of the story remains intact.  I recommend it, especially for those of you who need a little zest to make Austen palatable.

The Walking Dead, which is in its third season on AMC, is possibly one of the best (and possibly only) television series centered around zombies.  I watch it with my shirt pulled partway over my face and always have to watch something funny afterwards in order to go to sleep, and yet I keep watching.  Why?  Because the acting and the character development is astounding.  The television show is based on a series of excellent graphic novels which are worth the read for anyone who is a fan of the genre.

World War Z, also by Max Brooks, is currently being made into a movie starring Brad Pitt in the leading role of a man traveling the world to record survivor memories of the zombie apocalypse during which at least ¾ of the planet was completely wiped out.  The book is fantastic and I have high hopes for the movie.  If you like zombies, this book is a must read.

There are also several tongue in cheek guides to fighting the undead available on the internet.  Remember, if the zombies come, I don’t have to run all that fast.  I just have to run faster than you.  Happy Halloween, everybody.

PAFL Update:  Pipestone Area Friends of the Library is looking for members – anyone who is a friend to Meinders Library is welcome to join!  The Friends group works hard to promote the library, raise money for projects, and organize their yearly book sale, in addition to the HUGE amount of support they provide throughout the year.  For more information, please contact the library!  PAFL will be having a fundraiser on November 5^th at Pizza Ranch.  Come have some great pizza and support your local library!!

Book Club Reminder:  Book Club will be meeting November 29^th at 7:00 PM in the Meinders Library Conference room.  Please contact the library for a copy of the next book and feel free to join up with our readers!  Everyone is welcome!

If you have questions or have a book you’d like to reserve or renew, please don’t hesitate to give us a call at (507) 825-6714.  The hours for Meinders Library are Monday through Thursday from 10 AM – 8 PM, and Friday and Saturday from 10 AM – 5 PM.  Meinders Community Library is located at 1401 7^th Street SW, on the south side of the high school.