Sunday, Nov. 11 is Veterans Day, the day that marks the end of World War I – the war to end all wars. It’s also the 100th anniversary of the armistice between the Allies and Germany that ended World War I on the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month of 1918.
Up until 1954, the day was called Armistice Day, and the war that it ended was called the World War up until World War II.
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I’m sure there is an explanation for this, and I’m hoping Scott Yost can help me, but when I got up on Sunday morning, all the mechanical clocks in my house were off an exactly an hour. My phone, laptop and all of that stuff had the correct time, but the other clocks were off by an hour.
At first I thought maybe the electricity went off for an hour, but how would that affect a battery powered or windup clock? I’m thinking that it had something to do with the lack of treats we gave out on Halloween, but I can’t figure out how they did it.
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Back when I was growing up, dogs roamed around the neighborhood with the kids. We knew them all and they knew us.
We didn’t worry much about where they pooped as long as it wasn’t in the middle of the field where we played baseball and football. In yards, if dog poop was in an inopportune spot, someone got a shovel and threw it into the ivy or bushes or some place it wouldn’t get stepped in.
Today dogs don’t roam. They are either behind fences or on leashes, and owners are expected to pick up their puppy’s poop. So, back in the day when we weren’t environmentally correct, dog poop was allowed to become part of the soil. And today we are so environmentally conscious that we pick up the dog poop with a plastic bag, then take that plastic bag of dog poop and put it in a bigger plastic bag with other garbage, then that plastic bag is taken to a landfill, which is another plastic bag buried under dirt.
Maybe I’m missing something, but putting dog poop in three plastic bags for eternity seems to be a bit of an overkill. I can’t help but think there is a better solution than taking all of that time and energy to preserve dog poop for generations, but maybe I’m just old fashioned.
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This is one of the two worst weeks of the year regardless of how you wanted the election to come out, because all of our internal clocks are off. Our body tells us that it is 9 a.m. but our phones, which are always right, tell us that it is 10 a.m. It’s not as bad as the spring when we all lose an hour’s sleep, but it is still disruptive.
Why in 2018 are we still pretending that by turning the clocks forward in the spring and back in the fall we somehow create more daylight? It is ridiculous. The government should pick a time and stick to it. I don’t care whether they decide that Eastern Standard Time or Eastern Daylight Time is correct, but I want them to stop telling me that turning my clock one way or the other does anything other than confuse my internal clock.
It was a dumb idea when the government came up with it and it is still a dumb idea. Just pick a time, any time. We could all be on Greenwich Mean Time for all I care, but be consistent.
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I am a registered Republican, but because I’m on a lot of election email lists I received four or five emails Tuesday from the Democratic Party informing me that my polling place was Page High School. The Democrats actually would have preferred that I stay away from the polls on Election Day, but they nagged me all day to go vote.
