Daylight saving. Hooray, I say, along with, well, everyone, more light in the evening.
In an attempt to make something of it, a lot of pundits, politicians and reporters will pick up the age-old debate of time change—to do or not to do. It’s a boring old debate. I’m with those that say it’s fine the way it is. Well, except for the problem of changing the clocks, although no one really complains about that anymore, because most clocks today are ruled by some invisible hand that automatically updates them.
Not that I have anything to complain about. I have only two clocks to change, my clock radio and the stove. Everything else is wonderfully current. The stove is simple to change. (The microwave does have a digital clock, but I never did set it—how many clocks does one smallish kitchen need?) It is the clock radio that gives me pause. Mostly I worry about its age. It is about 27, a white Sony Dream Machine with AM/FM radio, buzzer alarm, battery backup, snooze bar and two alarm settings.
I’ve tried to buy a new one, only to be directed to a Wikipedia page, “discontinued in the 2010s”; eBay, which offers it as preowned and vintage; and Amazon, which wants me to “consider these alternatives.” I don’t want an alternative, and I don’t want a pre-owned clock radio which has been Dream Machining in someone else’s bedroom. I want my Dream Machine, only newer.
This one is stunningly reliable: Every day at 6 a.m. for decades, it clicked on to my current favorite radio station and set me off to work. It woke me up at 3:45 a.m. to get to the airport for East Coast flights. It told me important things and trivial things—on September 11, it clicked on to NPR in my loft in the Pearl and made me a witness to history. 6 a.m.—three minutes before a plane crashed into the south tower of the world trade center which would be reported live. Oh, and about news, I didn’t have a TV in all of those years so the Dream Machine delivered the news, morning and evening. In these retirement years, the radio still comes on at 6 a.m.
Yes, I know people today wake up to their phones and that there are all sorts of alternative devices that play music—but I hold that there is great joy in a clock radio. For years in the 70s, I woke up to 101.9 KINK radio. I first heard Suzanne by Leonard Cohen on a clock radio early on a quiet morning—but I could go on and on about clock radios over the decades and my beloved Dream Machine.
