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It was a December afternoon, in Maine.
The times are brief in all places at the moment of 12 months, however Mainers are sure that we bear a heavier burden than these of you who stay within the “Decrease 47.” The solar — which rises earlier than 5 in June — doesn’t present up now till after 7 a.m. It hangs there, low within the sky, for a couple of hours — after which begins to vanish.
The explanation for all of that is, partially, how far north we’re. The punishing, darkish winter adopted by the fantastic, all-too-short summer time is a truth of life should you’ve made your life in Maine.
However there’s another excuse for our darkish afternoons: Japanese Customary Time.
As a result of it’s vital to be on the identical time as Boston, New York and Washington, we’re within the Japanese time zone. However there are days — like now — after we ponder whether it actually is smart for us to be in the identical time zone as, say, Indianapolis.
Each few years, certainly one of our legislators proposes that Maine transfer to Atlantic time, the identical time zone utilized by Nova Scotia and Qaanaaq, Greenland. The latest initiative, proposed in 2019, would have basically given us daylight saving time year-round.
The measure failed. These measures all the time fail. The one earlier than that, in 2017, handed the state Home however died within the Senate. That one was somewhat extra tenuous; it held that Maine would be a part of Atlantic time provided that Massachusetts and New Hampshire did so, too; it additionally required a statewide referendum. None of that occurred.
Darkness isn’t simply a difficulty for Mainers. This 12 months the U.S. Senate unanimously handed a bill to make daylight saving time everlasting. The laws stalled within the Home.
Jonah Ryan, the vp in HBO’s “Veep” — who had made opposition to sunlight saving a centerpiece of his presidential marketing campaign — launched a triumphant real-world statement after the Senate’s motion. “Our lengthy nationwide nightmare and daymare is over,” he mentioned. “Now not will harmless Individuals present up hours late or hours early to their jobs, their J-dates or their court-ordered counseling appointments for weeks on finish simply due to the whims of ‘Massive Clock.’”
However in Maine, the resistance to Atlantic time shouldn’t be a joke. Neither is it a refusal to do not forget that Individuals hated everlasting daylight saving time when we tried it in 1974. The explanation we are able to’t secede from Japanese time is that Mainers, basically, don’t need to consider themselves as having extra in frequent with Nova Scotia than Florida.
And but. With all the things that has occurred to American politics since 2016, Nova Scotia has began to look fairly good to me.
Wouldn’t it be so fallacious, I generally marvel, if, as an alternative of being one of many northernmost states within the Union, we had been one of many southernmost provinces of Canada?
In that new world, Maine may turn into Canada’s Florida, the “Sunshine Province.” Maybe the antics of a “Maine man” may present moments of on-line hilarity for Canadians.
Sure, I do know this can be a fantasy. Maine is about as prone to be a part of Canada as Jonah Ryan was to turn into president.
However these brief days are usually not with out their charms. When the snow flies, I wish to construct an enormous fireplace and lie on the sofa, studying a e book. My spouse makes issues within the slow-cooker: chocolate chili, pulled pork, Irish stew with parsnips and Guinness and Maine maple syrup.
At night time the world is completely silent, aside from the occasional scrape of the plow man’s truck as he works his manner down our dust highway.
These are the times after I’m reminded that, even at 64, I’m not with out resilience. “Within the midst of winter,” Albert Camus as soon as wrote, “I discovered there was, inside me, an invincible summer time. Regardless of how laborious the world pushes towards me, inside me, there’s one thing stronger — one thing higher, pushing proper again.”
My daughter gave up the three-quarter measurement tuba greater than a dozen years in the past. She and her brother are of their late 20s now. One among them lives exterior Boston, the opposite in Ann Arbor, Mich. It breaks my coronary heart, how occasionally I get to see them, now that they’re grown.
However on this, the shortest day of the 12 months, they’re coming residence. There’s a tree in my lounge lined with lights. There’s a star on the prime.
Our shadows are lengthy. So is the story of our lives collectively.
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