The Alaskan Northern Lights. Photo by Siggy Nowak from Pixabay.
In the 2002 film, Insomnia, L.A. detective Will Dormer, played by Al Pacino, is brought to Alaska by an old pall to catch a serial killer, Walter Finch, played by the late Robin Williams. It’s a state the detective has never visited, and the different rhythm of days and nights throw him off.
What good does adding another hour of sunlight do in a state where the sun can shine for 24 hours straight, day after day?
In one scene, Dormer is lying on his bed and trying to get some needed shut-eye at night, even through the bright Alaska sun is beaming in on him. He tries everything to block it out, but to no avail. This goes on a few days and it winds up seriously clouding his judgement.
Long, long days
I was thinking about that film the other day in regards to the change to Daylight Saving Time, and I wondered why Alaskans think moving the clock ahead or back one hour twice a year means anything to them.
I mean we’re talking about a state where the sun can and does shine for 24 hours of day part of the year
and 24 hours of darkness for another part.I can’t imagine Will Dormer lying there on his bed, saying to himself, “Man I could sure go for another hour of daylight!”
Changing the clocks an hour seems to help no one out in the land of the midnight sun. The same is true for those who suffer depression over the months of darkness. Think any of them are hoping for another hour of darkness when DST switches back to standard time?
Turns out, many Alaskans do not see the need for switching to DST. Some legislators have been fighting daylight saving time but making little progress.
One is Anna MacKinnon, an Alaska state senator, who has proposed killing off daylight saving time twice — once in 2009 when she was in the House and named Anna Fairclough, and again in 2015 as Sen. MacKinnon. The House bill passed the House but not the Senate, and the Senate bill passed the Senate but not the House.
Opting out
Federal law mandates time zones and daylight saving time, but states can exempt themselves from DST. Hawaii and most of Arizona don’t observe it. Florida’s “Sunshine Protection Act” wants to impose daylight saving time on the state year-round, but only if Congress changes federal law to allow that. Sen. Marco Rubio has said he would try.
Some Americans refer to standard time as “God’s time,” while Alaska’s Sen. MacKinnon calls it “sun time.” That’s the time where noon actually is “high noon,” when the sun is directly overhead.
When is noon?
She says DST poses problems for Alaskans in the western part of the state, due to to its location at the edge of the Alaska time zone and the fact that sun time is disregarded. Hence, noon on a clock in western Alaska comes in the afternoon, and DST only exacerbates the problem by an hour.
Alaska is on my bucket list as one of only two states I’ve never visited (the other is Idaho). But I have been far enough north in the world to experience some of same the sun/moon issues that Alaskans do. One of those places was Riga, Latvia. I remember I was out taking a walk along the Daugava River one evening. It was 11 p.m., and it was still sunny..
Not sure Daylight Saving Time would make much difference there, either.
Jim WillisI am a writer, college professor, and author of several nonfiction books, including three on the decade of the 1960s. Several wonderful essays of gifted Retrospect authors appear in my book, "Daily Life in the 1960s."
Thanx Jim for the sunny education and the fun read, and for suggesting this timely prompt!
I’ve not seen the film Insomnia, will add to the list. Nor have I been to Alaska and that’s definitely on the list! Friends whose son moved there tell us when visiting him they not only saw a moose strolling down a city street, but noticed how different the air smelled.
It’s the smell of fresh air, their son told them – something they weren’t too familiar with back in New York.
Thanks, Dana. I’ve wanted to go to Alaska since I was a kid, and I suppose I’ll make it one day. A friend recently took a job in Fairbanks as a newspaper editor, and he’s gone all in: cabin in the woods, snowmobile, the whole 9 yards!
You make interesting points here, Jim. I, also am not a big fan of DST. When I think about going to the beach, even on the eastern edge of the Eastern time zone, as I apply sun screen, I think, “well it’s really 3pm, sun time, so I need to apply this much”. My husband scoffs at that notion, but I’m thinking of where the sun is in the sky, which is what counts when I don’t want to get a sun burn.
We arbitrarily force everyone to go into a new time zone twice a year. That takes us all some getting used to and messes with our circadian rhythm, which is never a good thing.
Thanks for sharing this interesting take on what its like to be very far north.
Thanks, Betsy! When I lived in Southern California, I noticed that all DST’s are not created equal. We always got about an hour’s less evening sun out there than here in Kentucky, DST or not.
Jim, I loved how you made me think of Alaska this morning, it really gave me a good laugh. Perhaps they should add a new time zone and really screw us up until we drop all of them and just follow our own inner clocks – lunchtime/sun overhead. Also, been years since I’ve seen Insomnia (love how you began this piece) two favorite actors, definitely will stream during the day. Thanks Jim.
Thanks, Patty. I always liked that movie and Hillary Swank’s role in it. A year or two before her Million Dollar Baby, which was a great film.
Time zones are an artificial construct that sort of work sometimes. China is all on the same time zone–but spans a wide area. Newfoundland adds an extra half hour, and the Navajo Nation does not match the rest of Arizona all year. British Columbia has promised to get rid of DST but hasn’t done it yet–maybe because it would clash with the neighboring states.
I remember Insomnia as being a good flick. Ironically, Hilary Swank now stars in a TV show called Alaska Daily. They don’t mention the light/dark issue, but it was OK entertainment on our dark evenings until we went on DST, which makes it harder to see our TV.
I had never once thought of how DST affects, or doesn’t, people in the high latitudes. An interesting question.
We do enjoy how long the sun lingers when we vacation in the UP of Michigan. And I remember Gina and I sitting in an outdoor cafe in Winnipeg one late June, figuring it was maybe 8:30, and being shocked to learn it was pushing 11:00 PM!