Tomorrow morning, in the tiniest hours, daylight saving time ends. We regain the hour we lost in the spring, “one final consolation, handed out like a party favor popped into a child’s loot bag to soften the blow of going home, now that the party’s over,” as Joan Gould wrote in The Times in 1981.
I attempt every year to reorient myself toward the darker days, to welcome the clocks’ changing as another harbinger of cozy season. Last week, I asked how you adjust to the return of standard time, and I received scads of good advice. (I also received quite a few invitations to relocate from readers in Arizona, Hawaii and Mexico. Thank you, please make up the extra bedroom.)
My favorite coping mechanism came from Kristin Easter in Bellevue, Wash., who doesn’t change her clocks on Sunday until she happens upon an hour she’d like back, “most of the time waiting until 11 a.m. then deciding that an hour of coffee, muffins and the paper would be great to repeat.” If you have that kind of flexibility in your Sunday schedule, this seems like a sound plan.
Several readers wrote of easing into it by changing their clocks on Saturday or even earlier in the week. “That way, I get accustomed to the extra hour gain or loss during the day, and when Sunday rolls around, it doesn’t feel like such a shock to the system,” said Michael Dunlap of Spokane, Wash.
Hope Newhouse in Paris — speaking from very recent experience, as standard time began in most of Europe last weekend — doesn’t really try to adjust. “I use the end of daylight savings in the fall to start waking up earlier and going to bed earlier (something I fail at spectacularly in the summer),” she wrote.
Those who see this time of year as peak hygge have it down: “Have your book ready, a beverage of choice, read for an hour, stretch, turn the clocks back and read for another. Heaven!” wrote Marcy Albin from Santa Fe, N.M.
“Dig out the stew and bread recipes,” wrote Alice Brown of Shelburne, Vt. “Get a good star chart and relearn all those major constellations,” she added. “Follow the phases of the moon; you’ll be seeing it a LOT over the next six months.”
Donna Meehan of Melbourne, Fla., keeps a bottle of Coppertone suntan oil in her bag and takes a big sniff every time she needs a dose of summer. Aromatherapy!
The end of daylight saving time isn’t the most pressing problem, of course. It’s a tradition to grouse about it if you hate it, gloat about it if you love it, an annual event that, like many things, soon shall pass. As Scott Prunty of Clyde, Ohio, wrote, with perhaps the most sensible bit of advice, “Accept that it’s out of your control and move along.”
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The U.S. added 261,000 jobs last month, a sign of the job market’s strength despite officials’ efforts to constrain it to fight inflation.
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The “worst time” for home buyers: The housing market is even worse than you might think.
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Suburban women are a key swing voting constituency. Recent polls show independent female voters leaning toward Republicans in the midterms.
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Donald Trump is expected to announce a 2024 presidential run as soon as this month.
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Russians have begun a grass-roots effort to find missing loved ones who fought in Ukraine, saying that the government system for tracking them down is dysfunctional.
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Broad layoffs at Twitter were handled haphazardly and affected departments like engineering and content moderation.
CULTURE CALENDAR
🍿 “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever” (Friday): Given the cultural and box-office dominance of Marvel movies, every one is an event. But this is as big as it gets — the sequel to one of the best films in the series, absent the beloved star Chadwick Boseman, who died in 2020. The antagonist this time around is Namor, the Sub-Mariner, which I assume you were already aware of.
📺 “The Crown” (Wednesday): The British royal family has been very present recently, in the pageantry surrounding the death of Queen Elizabeth II, the drama surrounding the delay of Prince Harry’s potentially explosive memoir and now the fifth season of one of Netflix’s most popular original series. There are new actors all around: Imelda Staunton as the Queen, Jonathan Pryce as Prince Philip, Dominic West as the future king, Prince Charles, and Elizabeth Debicki as Princess Diana.
RECIPE OF THE WEEK
Cornbread
Fall isn’t just the beginning of soup season. It’s cornbread season, too, because, in my mind, nothing goes better with a steaming bowl of soup than a crumbly, fragrant hunk of it. Yewande Komolafe’s recipe is moist, nubby and just sweet enough, cooked in a skillet to give it a crunchy crust. If you’re a fan of purely savory cornbread, feel free to leave out the sugar. You can even substitute bacon grease or olive oil for some (or all) of the butter. Bake a batch this weekend and then serve slices warm from the oven slathered with butter. And don’t forget: Cornbread is just as good without the soup!
REAL ESTATE
Clean teeth: Should you brush before breakfast or after?
Planning to fly?: Starting next May, you’ll need this ID.
Co-living: “Dorms for adults” are on an upswing.
Nashville to Tupelo: Drive the Natchez Trace Parkway.
Holiday gift guide: It’s not too early to start shopping.
ADVICE FROM WIRECUTTER
Rise and shine
The end of daylight saving time means brighter mornings and easier wake-ups — at least for now. We’re wired to awaken as the sun rises, and as the winter solstice nears and sunrise gets later again, you may benefit from some artificial help in the form of a sunrise alarm clock. Also called wake-up lights, they’re designed to simulate the effect of the sunrise, starting with a dim light that gently brightens to the brilliance of a sunny day. Our pick emits a rosy glow that imitates dawn and may be less irritating than white light. — Courtney Schley
GAME OF THE WEEKEND
Tennessee vs. Georgia, college football: Have you heard of Hendon Hooker? The Tennessee quarterback is a front-runner for the Heisman Trophy, leading the nation’s best offense — No. 1 in both yards and points per game. Tennessee is undefeated and beat powerhouse Alabama for the first time in more than a decade. But the dream season might not survive the weekend. Georgia, last year’s champion, is elite on both offense and defense. It’s not often that the top teams in the A.P. rankings — Georgia is No. 1 and Tennessee is tied for No. 2, with Ohio State — meet in the regular season; expect a big, raucous crowd, and lots of scoring. 3:30 p.m. Eastern today on CBS.
Source : Nytimes
