so regain a lovely thing (Friday's Sunday's Poem/ Hot AcTOR)

Daylight Savings Time
by Phyllis McGinley

In spring when maple buds are red,
We turn the clock an hour ahead;
Which means, each April that arrives,
We lose an hour out of our lives.

Who cares? When autumn birds in flocks
Fly southward, back we turn the clocks,
And so regain a lovely thing
That missing hour we lost in spring.


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About the poem: This morning, I mentioned to Sweetie that I had selected my topic for this week's POP!Best!, and Sweetie said "Is it Daylight Savings Time?"

It is not.

But that would have been a great topic, what with Daylight Savings Time ending this week, and I said so to Sweetie.

So when it came time to pick today's poem, I googled "poems daylight savings time" and found this one, which was not only a good poem, but also in the first sentence reminded me of a short story I wrote once called "Atomic Timekeeping" in which Albert, a science teacher, has a kind of existential crisis when he begins to feel that time is running out, and briefly he focuses on the fact that every year people "spring forward" and lose an hour of their lives, and they say they'll get that hour back in the fall, but then what do they do with it? Nothing.

In short, Albert concludes, we're losing an hour of our lives each year and the longer you live, the more time you've lost, and that bugs him and he begins to obsess over time.

(If that sounds like the kind of story you'd love to read, then you can certainly do so; the story is now in my collection of short stories: Just Exactly How Life Looks, and this didn't start out as an ad for that book but why miss an opportunity?)

Anyway, I chose the poem because of that, because what really do we do with that extra hour? Tomorrow night, everyone's going to turn their clocks back an hour and will anyone do anything special with your extra hour? Will you take someone out on a surprise 1 hour date? Will you opt to spend that hour, I don't know, giving yourself a break from your diet and eating that ice cream Sunday you've been craving? Will you watch a TV show you wouldn't otherwise or read a book you might have felt you didn't have time for?

I think every year, we should have Extra Hour Time and vow to do something really super-special with that hour. I don't know what I'll do yet but I'm going to do something.

About the Hot Actor: (A) I'm going to subcontract out this portion of the post every week to Sweetie, but I'll still take suggestions from you; if there's someone you think is hot, let me know and I'll post him/her/it here, because the point of the Hot person/thing is to get people to actually read poems and if posting a picture of someone hot is what it takes, then I'm willing to do that. (B) I'm removing all restrictions; it can be any age, any gender, any color, etc. (C) did you ever notice that when people are making a point about how non-racist, etc., they are, green is the go-to color for a color of person they wouldn't mind? Every nonjudgmental person in the world who wants to prove how nonjudgmental they are always says something like "I don't care what color you are, black, white, or green...". So how did we as a culture land on green as the default color for people who are not black or white? Why not purple? Why not mauve, which I'm kind of sure isn't even a color?

(D) I asked Sweetie to name the Hot Actor and she said "Um... um... I don't know. Josh Hartnett" and when I said "Why him?" she said "I don't know he's cute and I'm distracted by Mr Bunches" who I could in fact hear in the background.

But here's what I know: Josh Hartnett was in "Halloween H20" which we saw part of on TV last Saturday night and so that means that Josh Hartnett has stuck in Sweetie's mind for six whole days. That guy's got staying power, and now I feel threatened.

Appreciating The Big Things (Thinking The Lions)

Every night, I get to drive home past these two giant cranes. I love to look at them, especially silhouetted by the sunset. They make me feel impressed by what people can achieve. These cranes are so big that they have to be built onsite. Which means guys build by hand something that's necessary to build something even bigger.

What is it, America? Are you dumb, or just mean?

Because of the subject matter, this is a triple-post and is appearing simultaneously onNonsportsmanlike Conduct!, Thinking The Lions, and Publicus Proventus.

I'm only 78 items into my once-daily series "1001 Ways To Tune Up The World," but my impact is becoming clearer and clearer, even if it takes a while for people to realize how right I am.

Back in August, 2009, Way Number 15 was "Just Allow Colleges To Pay Athletes Already," which, I'll note, everytime I mentioned it most people were aghast -- but they're college students! - -they'd say, and I'd point out that many college students get paid for interning in a job.

Now, in November 2011, colleges have decided I was right all along; the NCAA recently proposed to let conferences decide to pay athletes up to $2,000 a year to cover "expenses," and, as a Grantland writer pointed out in commenting on the story, once you decide to pay someone $2,000, you can pay them $5,000 or $10,000 or $100,000; the "moral" objection to paying "student-athletes" being removed, the only question is how much can they get paid.

If he'd seen this coming, Cam Newton might have stayed in college. And also: I'm not a hypocrite for saying Newton shouldn't have the Heisman because not only did he plead guilty to a felony while in college, but also, he broke the rules at the time. Future Cam Newtons should have the right to demand a $175,000 signing bonus to go to a college. This Cam Newtondidn't.

(But, then, it doesn't matter because the Heisman Trophy is the most overrated sports award ever.)

That alone was enough for me to mention Grantland, which is actually one of the better sports sites around (not surprising, since Bill Simmons gets much of his material from me.)

But even better, that writer went on to note why it seemed fair to cut "student-athletes" in on the mountain of money generated by college sports.

And it is a mountain:

But the ancillary income — television revenues, the sale of jerseys and other gear, the use of a player's "likeness" in video games, and on and on — completely overwhelms the equation and makes the relationship inequitable. The Southeastern Conference made over a billion dollars last year. The Big 10 made $905 million. These people may have a moral right to their ticket sales based on the scholarships they provide, but they don't have a moral right to every last nickel they can squeeze out of their labor force. That's absurd. It's un-American. And it cannot last.

I'm just going to highlight the important part of that block quote:

The Southeastern Conference made over a billion dollars last year. The Big 10 made $905 million.

Last year was one of the years that took place in what news organizations blandly refer to as "the current economic crisis," wasn't it? I'm pretty sure 2010 was part of "the current economic crisis." I'm pretty sure that in 2010 we were bogged down in Racist Tea Party arguments that we didn't have enough money to pay for Medicare or pretty much anything else that wasn't Dennis Hastert's million-dollar-a-year-office. I'm 100% certain that Candy Man Paul Ryan began 2010 by saying that we couldn't pay for health care for seniors.

But we -- you-- could spent two billion dollars on college football games.

TWO.

BILLION.

DOLLARS.

That's just on two conferences. And one of those conferences is pretty awful, when you think about it. (I'll let you figure out which one.)(Hint: It rhymes with Mig Men.)

I keep wondering when it's "Game Over" for people like the Racist Tea Party and every Republican currently running for office and Scott "Patsy" Walker, and I keep being amazed that people are so damn dumb. And before you get mad at me for thinking people are stupidfor voting for Republicans and letting them claim we've got no money when we can spend two billion dollars watching %(*%^%&$ Purdue play Iowa State, remember that the only otheralternative is to think people aren't dumb but are just mean.

So what is it, America? Dumb, or mean? We've decided that we can take two billion dollars of our money to pay college athletes to play games, because Lord knows we need more football on the air. Having voluntarily done that, do you think you can maybe quit supporting people that want to kill the poor and start making this a country that lives up to its promise?