So now the power companies are in the cross-hairs of the
discontented. Well, that’s what they
deserve for taking on the job. Trying to
keep us folks supplied continuously with power for our TV’s, 360’s, phone
chargers, not to mention computers, is a full-time job, and they took it on.
Oh, don’t get me wrong.
There are many, many dissatisfactions that even I have with power
companies. First of all, there’s erratic
pricing: you never know what the price
is going to jump to, and if you lock into a contract (whee!), you know costs
will go down until just before you need to renew said contract. There’s supposed to be competition, but it’s
hard to see. Then it seems when the weather
gets hottest or coldest, alarms go out to expect possible outages as if it has
never been really hot or really cold before.
But here’s one dissatisfaction I can’t see as reasonable: expecting immediate return of power after a
brutal storm such as Irene. Expecting
linemen to work 24-hour-a-day shifts, 7 days a week, to straighten up power
poles or install new ones across a terrain where the geography has literally
been rearranged. Where rivers have been
moved, where houses have been removed, where roads and bridges are somewhere
downstream from their original sites.
Sure, I understand the fear of losing all the food in the freezer, of
not having light at night in a landscape that has turned unfamiliar and
scary. But can I just suggest that
frozen food can be cooked on the grill or turned over to emergency shelter
locations that might have a generator, and candles and flashlights can persuade
children that camping out at home is fun.
I expect a lot of neighborhoods have managed to put their resources
together and ‘make do’ with what they have, that wonderful pioneer expression. At least, unlike the pioneers, we know that
eventually, perhaps soon, electricity is coming, and we’ll lose our family’s
attention back to their electronics.
And it will be time to put the board games and cards and checkers away
in the dark.
No comments:
Post a Comment