We all just experienced a light-mare, switching from standard time to daylight-saving time. Daylight savings doesn't save light; it takes it from the morning and throws it to the night. Light should be treated with greater respect. Without light, we would all be dead. Or I would assume so, since no one could see to know for sure. Tripping over a lot of extinct species would be a good clue.

The sun is the light and life giver. Without it, there go the plants, there go the animals, there go us. Light is so important that the time that scientists think the planet has been without it, there has been wholesale wipeout of even the mightiest of creatures, the earth-ruling ground-stomping dinosaurs. In fact, light is such a wonderful thing, I get nervous just reading that the sun will eventually exhaust its hydrogen fuel and burn out. I don't care if the scientists say it will be in millions and billions of years, for certain not in our life time, but still I don't even like the thought of it. So you can imagine how I dislike losing a morning hour of light every March.

The light thievery messes with our minds. Our bodies have a natural circadian rhythm — hormones, metabolism, energy cycle. This ebb and flow of our chemistry is 25 hours, longer than a rotation of the earth. Therefore, to set the internal clock right, the body depends upon a daylight external clock. The light each morning resets the internal clock to synchronize with the rest of the planet. That is where daylight savings condemns us. Our bodies say it is morning, and with the hour of light stolen, we awake to go to work in the dark. Our eyes tell us to get back into bed, and our bosses tell us not to be late.

This act of Congress is really an act against nature. We are just emerging from our winter caves with some hope for spring. The dawn is breaking, and it is early morn. The cold is still felt; there is still snow on the ground, but it is getting lighter. Then we are told to spring forward. There is nothing springy about it. We literally fall back into winter's clutches of darkness for another 60 minutes. It becomes as if we are in December again, with its longest nights of the year, this time without Christmas.