Let me make the controversial statement right up front. I know this might inflame those of you who love daylight savings time (DST). Our horses just do not buy it. They still show up to the barn to be fed at 5:30 PM even if the government tells them it is really 6:30 PM.

I happen to agree with my equine friends. . I ahbhor daylight savings time. It interferes with my natural circadian rhythms and throws my body into overdrive on the tilt-a-whirl. The government may dictate what the clock should say but my brain never gets the message. I am gleefully counting the hours until next Sunday when we return to standard time or “ real time.’

I know, I know, there are many of you who just love that “extra hour of sunlight in the evening”. You do understand, do you not, that the amount of sunlight during the day will not actually change, just the time shown on your watch?

This past March the United States Senate, a body that cannot even reach agreement on ordering a pizza, passed a bill with a unanimous vote (unbelievable) called the Sunshine Protection Act. If approved by the House of Representatives and the President this nonsense of fake time could become a law beginning in 2023.

If we go to permanent DST what happens to children who will need to wait for school buses in the dark?

What about drivers who do not become fully awake until it is daylight but will be driving to work still in stages of partial slumber?

If our elected leaders want to protect sunshine they need to protect that which appears in the morning when we need it to wake up and become fully cognizant.

You may have guessed by now that I am not a morning person. My first husband was one of those creatures. A friend once observed that my husband jumped out of bed every morning at 6:00 AM and cheerily said ‘Good morning, God.” I rolled out at 8:30 and said “Good God, morning.” I guess divorce was inevitable.

I do not stand alone in my opposition to mucking up the gears of time. Many health professionals oppose the changes as well.

Per a March 28,2022 article in “CU Boulder Today,” CU sleep Professor Ken Wright, who has studied the impact of light on sleep for over thirty years, states that scientific studies suggest we need to stick with standard time, not DST. There are also studies from cardiologists that the time change increases heart attacks as well as other studies that find an increase in automobile accidents.

Ah, but what about the farmers? For years we have been told that DST is good for agriculture. Not. I live in the heart of the Virginia horse country on a small horse farm. Either our horses have lost their watches or they never learned to tell time.

Supposedly DST was originally a German concept that was developed during WW1 to save energy. I have no idea where Germans get their energy but mine is zapped with less morning daylight.

We need to write our members of Congress to keep this bill to make DST from passing, Tell them to get back to deliberating about the pepperoni and cheese so we can all get more rest.