Larry, will you take Laurel to be your lifelong partner? Will you love and respect her, be honest with her and stand by her, through whatever life may hold so you can genuinely share your life together?
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...although the time shifts of DST have been regular occurrences my entire life, only since 2012 have they become somewhat important to me.
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Though Michigan is thought of as an industrial state due to its automative industry, dating back to the beginning of the 20th century, it has a long agricultural history as well, with dairy farms in the middle of the state, and lots of cherry orchards around the Grand Traverse peninsula on Lake Michigan, more than 2/3rds of the way up the coast towards the Upper Peninsula. We ate tons of delicious cherries (in many variations from cups of the fruit to slices of pie to crumbles to anything else the chefs could think of; the fruit was plentiful) at camp (about a half hour inland and south of the the bay), all summer long. Michigan State University is a land-grant school, started to study agriculture. We teasingly referred to it as “Moo U”.

Somehow, going on Daylight Saving Time messed up the cows milking schedule (to say nothing of our own circadian rhythm, as noted by doctors and scientists as a compelling reason against the permanent change), so during the 18 years I spent as a resident of the state, there would be occasional referenda voting down the “spring ahead, fall behind” schedule change and we would be one of the few states not on DST, which was very confusing.

It also meant, for those of us at away in the northern wilds of camp at Interlochen (this happened once or twice during my six summers, from 1964-1969), that it got light earlier in the morning, but also, earlier in the evening. Those of us in the High School division sort of loved this if we were on a date. We were quite far north and on DST, it wouldn’t be totally dark until around 10pm (after we were called to our cabins), which made it a bit difficult to go to “Date Gate” (where you’d go at the end of a date to make out with your partner, under the watchful eye of the counselors). You WANTED it to be dark, so you’d have more privacy for whatever intimacy was being initiated (not much for those teenagers, but still…).

Years later, I was on the National Alumni Board and during the summer, if Dan was not available to babysit (several years, he rode his bike that same weekend in the Pan Mass Challenge, a huge fundraising ride for the Dana-Farber Cancer Center, and was gone all weekend), so I took my kids to camp with me. They came to the Operetta and hung out with my beloved Intermediate Director, Emily Boyd, who was now the head of the Minnie Building (a hospitality site) while I was in meetings.

The rest of the time, we explored the camp together. They loved being in the glorious pine forest, at the Wishing Well, the Melody Freeze (where one could get ice cream treats, food or go inside to the store). But at night, out in the woods there was no light pollution, as we truly were in a forest. They begged to be allowed to stay up late and see what it was like to gaze at the inky black sky. I took them to a field at the end of the row of cabins where we stayed. Art students put plaster casts for their projects out in the field. This was 1994. My kids were 9 and 5. They found it creepy and fascinating. They asked me to take a few photos on my Instamatic (long before iPhones). The featured photo shows David that night, eyes wide open in the dark, beaming his delight. Perhaps not as a function of the time change, but still in the dark, in the woods that I so loved my entire life too.

In our cabin at bedtime, 1994