Oral Tradition

 This is not about the news. This is about something truly and inherantly human. This is a blues song cloaked in a blog post, getting right to the heart of the things that people really care about.


You may have heard it said that oral traditions are changing and evolving with the advent of digital media. That the wide dissemination of voice and video recordings are not corrupting the art, but saving it. Well, I don't know about all that, but just this morning I got to initiate my daughter into one of the universal rites in our people's oral history.


You see, my child asked me why it was so dark at 7:45 in the morning, and would it just keep getting darker and darker until the longest day?


And I took a day breath and answered her as our people have done for what seems like ages.


No, I said, the darkness all around you at 7:45 in the lunatic consequence of something called daylight savings time, where we all change our clocks to say it is one hour later for half the year, for reasons that no one can remember, if there ever were any to begin with.


The child, so wise for her years, questioned the madness of the model, and complained that the end of these dark days should not come sooner, that she enjoy the sweet light the lord gave while getting ready for school in the morning.


And so she joined the ranks of all of us that yearn to see the immediate and eternal end of daylight savings time. She will pass these lessons to her children, and the chain goes on.


I suspect that the inventors of daylight savings time were devils. It often gets credited to Franklin, who was at least half devil, but he proposed it in the midst of a satire. So unless that was a particularly subtle screwtape job, I think he cannot get more than half the blame. Some say the true inventor was from New Zealand; I think that there is enough to tell you all you need to know about the matter.


But the real evidence of its infernal nature is of course that it does not neatly align to the cadence of the seasons and the church year. If daylight savings time was set by divine intervention, it would obviously begin with Advent, and end with Easter. The people sitting in darkness wait for their creator in profound and dagummable late dawn awaiting the Christ-child. Then we would get our light back for Christmastide, and lose it again in prelent, only for it to be restored on Easter Eve.


You see, the devil done flipped the light around, so that he turns on the lights during the preparatory seasons and shuts 'em off right around easter. He is a clever old devil.


And do not even get me started on how he laughs up his gucci sleeves while it is light until 10PM while honest God fearing christian fathers are trying to get their children to bed. How he sows dissent in their otherwise blissful marital union by making their wives say mad things like "I love that it is light so late" and "I don't care what time the sun rises, I'll still be asleep, wrapped in the blankets I stole from your back in the night" and suchlike.


Alas, my brothers and sisters, we soldier on weak and weary under these burdens, but at least we have our oral tradition of moaning about daylight savings time, and the mutual consolation of moaning about it with one another.


The clock steals back my morning light

Leaves me waking up in night

Don't comes up til half past Eight

We're getting to catechism late


Got those daylight savings blues

Lost an hour I didn't choose

Spring forward, fall behind

Messing with my weary mind.


Outro blues guitar solo or some such.

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