Daylight Savings Time Is Relative

The glamorous Yuyi Morales just announced on her Facebook page that she woke up this morning not knowing it was Daylight Savings Time. DST is one of my pet peeves (actually, the fact that it is not DST all year round is my actual peeve), but that is a post for another kind of blog. For this blog, let me tell a good story:

Klaus Flugge of Andersen Press once hosted a dinner party in Bologna to honor the late Max Velthuijs, a whimsical and very wonderful Dutch author/artist. Held in the magnificent Sala Farnese at the Palazzo d'Accursio in the center of town, the party was as classy and stylish as Klaus himself. It was springtime in Bologna, the light was beautiful and spirits were high.

At first the guests were so charmed by the rooms and by each other that they didn't notice the guest of honor had not arrived. The cocktail hour did seem to go on a wee bit long, though, and just as we were all wondering whether dinner would indeed be served, Klaus stood up and made his first announcement. Max was still in The Hague, he said, but he would arrive very soon, and could we all have another drink and wait for him? Of course we could, and did.

The announcements came periodically throughout the evening. During the pasta course, Max was in the air. When the secondi piatti were taken away, Max was landing. For the dolci, Max was in Bologna at the airport! By the grappa, Max was in a taxi!! Max was almost here!!!

When the great man finally arrived, to a fairly soused standing ovation, he offered his explanation:

Daylight Savings had started one week before the party, and the news of it did not reach Max, in his tiny house in his tiny village in The Netherlands. He therefore missed his plane to Bologna, not because he wasn't at the airport, but because he was "enjoying a sausage" while he waited to board, oblivious of the real time.

No one who attended that dinner party in Bologna will forget it, or Max Velthuijs, or Daylight Savings, or the sausage. Which just goes to show that artists are all the more memorable for late arrivals, and steering clear of real time.