of course it has no practical value. The sad thing is that this is all they could come up with to conserve energy. May save electricity (highly debatable) but uses more gas.
One of the topics of discussion at last Saturday's L&O Subcommittee
Meeting was DST, as freuently happens at this time of year. With all the grumbling and moaning, I need to remind everyone that it' only twice a year, and that is applies to just about everyone except those who have the misfortune of living in the Brewer State, Arizona. Back when I was a kid it wasn't all that simple at all. In 1954, my brother, a friend of ours and I set forth upon a journey on some 3 day weekend during DST from the urbane bounds of the city of Chicago to the wilds of southern Wisconsin, to what was then a privately owned park called "Blue Mound." Blue Mound was some sort of glacial leftover that formed a hill by western standards, but was a huge mountain by midwestern standards. I think it must have been ove 100' tall! At that time, Illinois (or at least Northeast Illinois, where Chicago is, was on DST and Wisconsin was not. So we piled into the car and drove up there, deciding that we'd buy our groceries after we arrived and set up camp. While setting up camp, it occurred to us that the local groceries might already be closed if we didn't hurry, since CST was an hour later than DST. So we scrambled back into the car and made it into town just in time to realize that it was actually an hour earlier, and not an hour later than we thought. Since we had only a primitive ice box for cooling, we purchased as much as possible that didn't require refrigeration. In those days margarine, which we referred to as "oleo," wasn't the sophisticated tasting stuff like "I Can't Believe It's Not Butter," or some other stuff that contained a bit of actual butter to improve the taste. It was just some oily stuff that vaguely tasted a little like butter
So there we were, getting out the pots and pans, and unpacking the grocery bags when, Jack, our friend, explodes, and tosses the container of margarine across the campsite, with fire boiling out of his eyes. It seems that in those primitive days, not only did Wisconsin not obey DST, but being the ultimate dairy state, they did everything they possibly could to discourage the use of margarine and to encourage the use of butter instead. Among their little persuasive manouvers was a law that prohibited margarine from being artificially colored. The stuff was stark white, like lard! Fortunately the brand we purchased was a bit advanced over their competitors. Most brands of margarine came equipped with a little packet of coloring matter. The margarine was to be placed in a bown and the coloring added, then the whole mass was to be stirred with one utensil or another until the coloring mixed into the grease. Our brand had a dot of color on one side of it and the entire thing was enclosed in a plastic wrap that needed to be cut with aknife or scissors to be opened. After it was for a while in its wrapper, it softened soewhat, the the user, i.e., we, were required to squeeze the package and twist and turn it until the little dot of color expanded and spread around and mixed into the rest of the oleo until it took up a color that resembled butter. I don't remember it tasting partiularly good, but it didn't taste bad either, and the next morning it seemed to work rather well for greasing up pancakes.
Actually, there IS something related to astronomy in this tale of misery and woe. That first night out at Blue Mound Park was the first time in my life that I actually saw something I had been told about in school by my teachers. It was a band of light that ran across the sky, called "The Milky Way." Sorta made up for uncolored margarine and for the iniquities of changing back and forth fro CDT to CST to CDT all in the same weekend.
Thanx, *Ray
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