@qadzek
Thank you very much for /etc/localtime !
Worked charms on Kindle Scribe. “date” command picks it up happily
I copied sane /usr/share/zoneinfo from Ubuntu MATE distro.
I also made copies localtime_XX, localtime_YY in /etc/, so I can quickly switch by renaming them.
What didn’t work for me (and I would discourage anyone to do so because messing with upstart can be deadly),
adding this to /etc/upstart/env
export TZ=‘America/New_York’
Funnily enough, if I did this via ssh terminal, then it would apply and “date” command picks it up. But now when it is in the upstart (I checked all other exports that env does, they went in).