For the Children

Oh, you thought ProfessorRoush had forgotten about it, my semi-annual rant against STATOMIC, the Seasonal Tyrannical Attempt To Obliterate My Internal Clock?  Well, in vain you hoped, and I tried, I really did, to ignore my feelings and not bore you with my oft-repeated rants and grumblings.   And then came yesterday morning.

It was a beautiful brightly sunny Monday morning yesterday, when, under governmentally-mandated biannual fiat, I awoke once again at an ungodly hour, forcing myself to fitfully wait until the un-Daylight-Savings-time moment came to actually get out of bed and go downstairs and exercise.   Sleep-deprived, of course, even though I fell asleep Sunday night at 9 p.m., the usual diurnal bedtime of my internal clock if not now that of my bedside clock.  Properly limbered up after biking (or, as it is now called "spinning"), shaved, showered, dressed and fed, I went forward into the blinding sunlight to face anew the increased risks of heart attack, stroke, and vehicular accident that kills extra hundreds of Americans in the week after each first Sunday of November.

It's the Children that I worry for most on these time change weeks, the collective, capitalized and cherished Children, who, walking to school, must risk a brush with eternity and my Jeep each day as, stricken by the morning sun, I drive oh-so-carefully to work.   You see, my drive to work in the mornings is directly to the east, near the walking paths to school, and in the evening directly to the west, so I'm treated by the time change to not two such periods yearly, but four, doubling up with a sun who just last week wasn't quite awake when I went to work but now blares again into my face for a few more weeks.  I'll do it all over again in reverse next Spring.    And each time the time changes, the Children are at risk.

Red Hawthorn (Crataegus crusgalli)

And I also worry for the decrepit but hardy crew of morning joggers who poorly choose my gravel road as their path these days.   Just around the bend, I come over a hill and then stare straight into the sun for a few moments.   One day, someday, it's inevitable that I'll bounce a runner off into the grass alongside the road, no matter how carefully I drive, a dull thud and an "oomphf" heard from an unseen obstacle who shouldn't even be there.   I shouldn't be there either but for the arbitrary and senseless control exerted by our witless governments on our every waking moment.

Is there no courageous leader, no champion of legislative processes, who will take on the challenge of ending this insanity?   Who will protect the innocent Children and marathoners from doom by vehicular homicide?  Who will leave my biorhythms and cardiac rhythms untouched and unlegislated so that I don't die on a Monday morning right after the change from Daylight Savings?   I despair, despondent that my tombstone will read "he died on Monday after Sunday" and no one will understand, someday, some future day, in a more sane time when hopefully this madness ends.   Please end it, for the Children if not for me.

(These pictures, of course, have nothing to do with the Time Change, they're just more garden pornography that I wanted to share from my trip to the Amarillo Botanical Gardens.)  

Cranes are good luck!

I love a banana in flower!

Keeps on Ticking...

'Champlain'

"It takes a licking and keeps on ticking" used to be the advertising slogan for Timex watches during my youth. Maybe it still is for all I know, but I'm not sure Timex even still exists in this world of FitBit's, AppleWatch, and Garmin's.   The Timex watch of the rose world, however, has to be Canadian rose 'Champlain'.  Mine is still out there "running", blooming despite the recent frosts long after most of the garden has gone to rest.

What a red, right?  How much brighter, how much more glorious could a gardener ask for, especially now when the leaves are falling from the trees and winter keeps poking into fall.  I can see this clump from my bedroom window, 50 yards away from it, calling me into the garden on a Sunday morning.  It says "Cmon man, forget about the stupid time change this morning and write about me."   "Write about the fact that I have one of the most frequent bloom cycles of almost any rose, that I'm impervious to summer sun and winter alike."   "Write about one of the toughest and most floriferous roses of the garden."    

And I can't, I can't be mad this morning about the time change.  So much disruption of our diurnal rhythms and so much anger over political power wielded autocratically and irrationally just isn't worth the fight today when I'm staring at the happy face of 'Champlain'.  Oh don't get me wrong, I woke up at 4:00 a.m. instead of 5:00 a.m. because my soul didn't get the memo about changing rhythms, and I waited the same amount of time for the sun to rise after waking.  I just know now that I'll be driving in again with the rising sun in my eyes, endangering every walking or biking schoolchild for another month, and that I'll now be driving home in darkness every evening instead of having another hour of light to enjoy. 

'Polareis'

But I won't be mad about the time change.  I can't waste the energy for Champlain's sake and also for the sake of this last bloom of beautiful 'Polareis', delicate and refined, pink tones betraying its dislike of cold mornings, embarrassment by the otherwise pure white petals.   Yes, I know, if you look closely there is a little damage on the petal ends, but she's still putting up a good brave fight to the end.  Another tough rose in my garden, hanging on to the last breath of summer.

Okay, yes, I'm mad as usual about the time change.  I'm mad that my chances for a heart attack are greatly increased this week and that automobile accidents will increase due to bureaucratic political whimsy.   As I've said before, a pox on the houses of every politician, Democrat or Republican, who doesn't repeal this nonsense and leave us on daylight savings time all year long.  As I vowed last spring, I'm staying on Daylight Savings.   If you want ProfessorRoush, you'll find him with his watch and computers set to EST, my new solution to the biennial B.S. imposed on us by our elected nonrepresentatives.  Stores and schedules will now just have to confirm to my time, ProfessorRoush Standard Time.