I had accidentally set `{ "timestamp": "America/Denver" }` and I would get back MySQL strings instead of JavaScript Dates. I would have expected - an exception - bad values should throw errors - or the default to be used - bad values could also be ignored, and the default used What I got was - inserted values would be transposed - as if the UTC hours value was used, but set as if it were local - selected values would return as strings - rather than returning as date objects The solution was to use `{ "timestamp": "local" }`. As far as I can tell `{ "timestamp": "UTC" }` and `{ "timestamp": "-06:00" }` had no effect.