For the second time since we have lived in our West Mesa neighborhood, someone has destroyed our block’s transformer box and knocked the electricity off the grid for hours. Last time this happened was during the dog days of summer, which meant no lights, no refrigeration, no television, and no air conditioner. This time we are on the brink of winter, with temperatures in the 20s tonight, and again with no lights, no refrigeration, no television, and no heater. And no internet. And no automatic garage door opener. But I digress.
Basically, my family and I are once again without the conveniences of electricity. And this comes, strangely enough, during a time, mostly in the last week or so, where I have been obsessing over electricity. Reading Friedman and Suzuki started my obsession, and then it was furthered by my FLC (the 101 Freshman Learning Community I teach) schooling me on these bombs that, when detonated, somehow completely disable anything electric within a certain amount of miles of the detonation site. If I had the internet I could google what these bombs are called and the basics on how they work, but, alas, I am powerless…powerless without Google.
Anyways, my electricity fascination deepened in San Angelo over Thanskgiving break while I drank a few Keystones with my father on the back porch of his house. He is a small business owner whose business is, to make a long and complicated story short, to broker electricity deals for West Texas residents and businesses. Texas has what is called the “power to choose” electric providers; so, unlike here where PNM is the end all be all of electric company choices, Texas has many different providers, some legitimate and awesome and others not so much, vying for customers. My father associates himself with a few legitimate and awesome companies and helps them build customer bases. At first I thought of it as something similar to a pyramid scheme, but it turns out it is a brilliant niche in the “Power to Choose” initiative.
So, as we sipped and/or chugged our Keystones, I was telling my father about my Environmental Rhetoric class and he was giving me his opinion on the one area of our work that really caught his attention, electricity, and more specifically, blackouts, brownouts, third world countries, and coal versus wind power. It dawned on me as he spoke that he was the small business owner that is mentioned in the opening blurb of Hot, Flat, and Crowded. He is the “Average Joe” of middle-class America with the potential to make some seriously important moves regarding sustainable sources of power.
But, as it typically goes with beer-fueled conversations with my father, he was on the conservative offense and I was on the liberal defense. So, I left him my (one and only) copy of Hot, Flat, and Crowded with a very clear warning that I was not trying to convert him to the dark side of liberalism, but only trying to give him some access to some other conversations on topics that he was already well versed in.
So, as I lay here tonight, typing by the light of my battery powered laptop, I feel my electricity-obsession coming together in some sort of cosmic joke/inconvenient warning. My food is spoiling, my children are going stir crazy without Black Ops and Netflix, and I am mulling over life without electricity. My thoughts thus far? I prefer central heat and air to bundling up in blankets. I prefer lamplight to candlelight. And I think that the windmills of West Texas are an amazingly beautiful sight with some extraordinary potential, which I think is one thing my father and I can definitely agree on. Also, I am scared to death of that electricity-depleting bomb. That is some scary stuff right there. And one last thought, I really hope my father is reading Hot, Flat, and Crowded and letting Friedman’s ideas percolate, clash with, and meld with his ideas and expertise in electricity.
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