The Time Has Come

Early this morning, those of us who remembered to set our clocks forward for daylight savings time woke up an hour earlier than the day before.

The theory is reminiscent of the fellow whose feet stuck out from his blanket. To remedy the situation, he cut a foot off the top of the blanket and sewed it to the bottom.

There should be a better way.

Why, for example, can't we just have daylight savings time year round?

Some say it's because the cows get confused about their milking time. I never saw a cow that could read a clock.

Then there are those who say it confuses the roosters.

Maybe we should recall how we got time zones in the first place. It wasn't for the cows or the roosters. It was for the railroads.

Before the railroads, every large European or American town had its own time. Time was told by the sun dial. Noon was when the sun crossed the meridian. (That's why morning time is denominated "ante meridian" and afternoon is "post meridian.")

Even sailing ships told time by the sun. Navigators used their best estimate of the ship's longitude, compared that to the Greenwich (or other) hour angle of the sun and calculated when the sun would be overhead. With the sextant, the navigator observed the sun's elevation. When it ceased increasing, he would declare that local apparent noon had arrived and (with the captain's permission) strike eight bells. The hour glass was turned and that became the beginning point for the next twenty four hours. So each ship carried a little bubble of time with it across the ocean.

So it was with every town. Each town had its own little time zone, based on its longitude. Church bells called the faithful to morning and evening prayers, sent the peasants into the fields and the workers to their tasks. It didn't matter if the next town was on a slightly different time.

Then came the railroad. It began to matter a great deal that one town's clock was five or ten or fifteen minutes different from the next town's clock. Printed train schedules became confusing.

To fix this problem, national railroads developed railroad time. When railroads began spanning continents as in America and Russia, railroad time became divided into zones.

In this day of computers, I see no reason we couldn't return to the prior arrangement of truly local time. Computers would have no trouble keeping track.

We already have a way that keeps track of time for events spanning many time zones. It is called Greenwich Mean Time. Since the dawn of radio communications, the US Navy has used GMT to keep track of messages, assigning a "date time group" to each message, based on the originator and the dtg of the message. It avoids confusion.

Ship and aircraft tracks use GMT. You can do the same with your GPS.

So why not a system based on GMT (using the 24-hour clock) coupled with real local sun time? To avoid confusing travelers, telephone cell systems could broadcast both GMT and LST. The change might even create a new market for time pieces designed to display GMT and LST.

And it wouldn't confuse cows or roosters.

Remember our Women Veterans

Tomorrow morning, March 13, 2010 at 11:00 friends of Florence Elizabeth "Betty" Brandon will gather at Bryant Funeral Home in Alliance to say good bye to a wonderful woman, one of a dwindling number of veterans of World War II.

I can't improve on the obituary of Betty that Melinda Penkava posted on Town Dock. I would like, however, to put her service in the United States Marine Corps in a larger perspective.

Women served as doctors in the Civil War and as nurses in many of our wars. But it wasn't until the United States entered World War I in 1917 that women were accepted into the uniformed services in significant numbers. 11,000 women volunteered for service during that war, almost all of them in the Navy and Marine Corps.

This was brought about by President Wilson's Secretary of the Navy, North Carolina newspaper editor and publisher Josephus Daniels.

Secretary Daniels sought authority to enlist women to serve in shore billets so the men could be sent to sea. Eventually, he decided he already had the authority and just did it. The newly-recruited women were categorized as "Yeoman (F)" and most were assigned to clerical duties. He did the same thing for the other service under his authority, the US Marine Corps. The women were colloquially called "Yeomanettes."

One of the early recruits, Frieda Mae Hardin, a 22- year old department store clerk in Portsmouth, Ohio, later described her experience: "I heard about the Navy taking women on a Saturday night, and I signed up first thing Monday morning," Mrs. Hardin said in 1997. "I wanted to do something more, something bigger and better."

Another woman who served in the navy in World War I was Mrs. Lena S. Higbee, Superintendent of the U.S. Navy Nurse Corps. She was awarded the Navy Cross for her work. I once served on a WWII vintage Gearing Class destroyer named in her honor.

When the war ended, the women were released and went back to civilian life.

After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, it seemed natural to reestablish the enlistment of women for the war effort, though not everyone agreed. Women were needed in defense industry as well.

Despite the opposition, the United States Marine Corps Women's Reserve was established in February, 1943. About 20,000 women joined the Marine Corps during WWII. They made a substantial contribution. By the end of the war, for example, 85% of enlisted personnel assigned to Headquarters, U.S. Marine Corps were women.

In the field, women served in some 200 different enlisted specialties, from aerial gunnery instructor to quartermaster, including radio operator, parachute rigger, control tower operator, cryptographer, auto mechanic and telegraph operator.

Our Betty was a quartermaster.

Let's join together to honor her service and that of those who followed in her footsteps.

Today women serve in 93 percent of all Marine Corps occupational specialties and serve in more than 60 percent of all billets. Women count for more than six percent of the Marine Corps and are an integral part of the force.

On War

There has never been a protracted war from which a country has benefited.

Sun Tzu: The Art of War

Audit Update

On March 1 the North Carolina Local Government Commission sent a letter to the mayor with its analysis of the most recent audit, pointing out areas where corrective action is needed.

Of the 23 control deficiencies and material weaknesses listed by our auditor, the Local Government Commission focused on a dozen: four control deficiencies and eight material weaknesses requiring corrective action.

Of the eight material weaknesses, one appears to be partially incorrect. The town was maintaining a fixed equipment ledger. The town manager admits he didn't completely understand what the auditors were looking for. Afterward, when the ledger was found, it proved to be incomplete. That is being corrected. Another material weakness cited - the lack of a contract authorizing the town to act on behalf of Bay River - was recognized by the town board last year. An agreement has been under negotiation since last August. Substantive issues remain.

The remaining six material weaknesses reflect policies and procedures put in place years ago. When the audit was presented to the public, arguments were presented from the floor to the effect that: "we're too small," "it's too much paperwork," "that's a really bad idea," and so forth. The Local Government Commission plainly didn't agree.

Similar arguments were made about the four "significant deficiencies." Again, the LGC didn't agree.

In closing, the letter observed: "Each of the items noted by the auditor was identified to assist the Board in improving the Town's overall accounting system. We urge the Board to develop a corrective action plan immediately and begin eliminating these serious internal control weaknesses."

The Census is Upon Us

I received notice today that the 2010 census form will arrive in the mail in about a week.

The task: "please fill it out and mail it in promptly."

Semper Fi

Yesterday morning Oriental lost one of its WWII veterans: Florence Elizabeth ("Betty") Brandon.

Betty was twenty-three years old when she left her small town in Pennsylvania and joined the United States Marine Corps. She served in San Francisco.

After completing her wartime service, she joined the multitude of veterans who took advantage of the GI Bill to get an education. She was able to walk through doors that would otherwise have remained closed.

She loved the outdoors and shared many adventures with her husband, Ken. She loved to read and was always working her way through a newly published work of history or biography.

She was a wise and witty woman. Her friends relish having known her and greatly miss her.

Support and Defend

This morning I took office as a newly appointed member of Pamlico County's Board of Elections. Sue Whitford, Pamlico County's Register of Deeds, did me the honor of administering the oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States of America and the Constitution of the State of North Carolina.

This is the ninth time I have taken such an oath, modeled on the one prescribed in the United States Constitution for the President.

I take the obligation to support and defend the Constitution very seriously. One way or another, I have devoted my adult life to that endeavor.

As oaths of allegiance go, the United States oath broke new ground. In European monarchies, the usual procedure when the monarch died was for all military officers and high government officials to swear allegiance to the new king (or tsar or kaiser). But our constitution provided for replacing the president every four years or perhaps more often in case of death. In addition, the president was not a sovereign. The people were sovereign.

So to whom should federal military officers and other public officials swear allegiance? Should they swear a new oath every time a new president was elected?

The solution was an oath to "support and defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic." It also worked nicely as a presidential oath, avoiding the religious issues inherent in the British coronation oath.

The Board of Elections is a major player in defending the Constitution. If the people are sovereign, the way they exercise that sovereignty is at the ballot box.

I think we can be proud of the way elections are run in Pamlico County. I will work hard to make sure we continue that fine tradition.

Use it or Lose it II: Our Freedoms

Today's Pamlico News has a front page article reporting a case of alleged "cyber stalking" at Pamlico High School.

It's hard to tell from the report, but it seems as though some students at the High School created an entry on a social networking site pretending to be the targeted school official, and advocated obviously absurd actions on the part of students. It's hard to say what the content of the site was which so offended officials, since the site has been removed.

The great mystery is why school officials chose to make this a criminal matter. It seems as though the students in question intended the site to be a parody or satire.

It might have been used as a "teachable moment." It is now a wasted opportunity. Lawyers are involved. Too late.

A classroom discussion might have examined and discussed the literary history of satire, beginning with Jonathan Swift's "Modest Proposal." It might have examined acceptable boundaries of satire and parody. It might have examined issues related to the internet.

Classes studying History, Government and Civics might have examined the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States. This is one of the fundamental sources of our freedoms, that seems no longer as valued as it once was. In a 2005 study, high school students seemed to favor more government censorship. The First Amendment Center conducts an annual study, that unfortunately reveals widespread ignorance about and lack of commitment to this most basic freedom. The James L. Knight Foundation conducts detailed studies about the future of the First Amendment. The results aren't reassuring.

It doesn't help when people in authority get carried away.

About forty years ago, many young Americans wore T-Shirts emblazoned with the slogan: "Question Authority."

In a democracy, that's an essential practice.