November 2, 2025

By Arthur H. Gunther III

thecolumnrule.com

Supposedly time is relative, though isn’t everything? This morning almost nothing was relative. Confusion was on the breakfast menu.

As an early riser, Sunday has me up at 4:30-5:30, then a 7-mile drive from home in Upper Nyack, N.Y., to get really great coffee from the Montvale (N.J.) Market where a friendly lady whose name I still do not know after several years makes my day with a smile. When I arrived, the place was dark, and the immediate worry was that she and/or her two year old were ill.

I drove away, hitting a bagel place, Zimi’s, in Pearl River, N.Y., another morning spot where the greetings reaffirm optimism for the human race, surely illusive these days. The clock in the store said 5:30 when I expected 6:30.

Totally confused, I looked at my watch and confirmed it was the latter. Were gremlins playing with time? Had I left this world and was now stuck in time limbo?

Back in the car, my dash clock suddenly changed to 5:35. Oy, what was happening? It wasn’t until I got home that my brain cells sparked, and bonk-bonk, I realized that Daylight Saving Time had ended at 2 a.m. today. Quick scramble to change all the time pieces and thermostats in the house reassured me that I wasn’t losing it.

Usually there is a flood of warnings to set your clocks back first Sunday in November, but the few newspapers in my area made no mention this year. An online story from a national paper stated in its lead paragraph that DST ended last Thursday, an obvious mistake not caught in the morphed self-editing world of media. Gotta cut the work force, somewhere, I guess.

Yet I blame myself. I should have realized time is relative, especially on the first Sunday in November. Relative as to saying goodbye to Daylight Saving Time and hello to Standard Time. I will have another chance at sanity March 8, 2026, when DST returns. I have now fallen back and will then spring forward.

The writer is a retired newspaperman.

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