...in which the author's poor coping skills manage to transform a brief power outage into a family crisis.
Toward (but not quite at) the end of my workday today here at Work-From-Home Central, i.e. our home which also serves, during daylight hours, as the office for my wife and me, a loud pop!, or boom!, or a similar sort of alarming sound, was heard through our open windows from the general direction of the next street over. All the power in our house instantly went out - it was a blackout.
I was in the middle of a work telephone call with a person a rank or two more senior than me, and the conversation had reached the precise point where one would least wish the power to be cut. At work these days, desk phones, and even cell phones, are considered hopelessly passe; we were talking over the Internet, using our laptops as phones, with ear buds shoved into our ear sockets. My laptop has a battery which, if it worked as it is supposed to, would give me some time to continue to work even if it isn't plugged into a power socket - but our router or switch or whatever it is that connects us to the cable company which is our home Internet provider apparently has no battery, so it died instantly. Poof went the Internet, and all the functions upon which I was depending upon home internet connectivity in pursuit of my livelihood - phone calls, chats, emails, etc. - went poof along with it.
A younger and more technologically adept person than me would switch to their cell phone and continue to be somewhat productive. But alas, in our hyper-security-conscious age, making my cell phone jump through all the passswords and firewalls and VPNs and such is slightly (or considerably) beyond my poor powers of technical attainment. I was becalmed.
Such things happen in this new era of work-from-home, and employers even have a(n extremely limited) tolerance for such things, as long as they are very (very) occasional. But what I wish to dwell upon is not the catastrophe-in-a-teacup of losing the Internet umbilical cord to the office, but rather, what we do at home when we have no electric power.
In my case, what we do is, Not much. I spent a few minutes of precious cell phone battery to alert the power company that we had lost power. Then I cast about for something productive or, failing that, entertaining to do. As the afternoon was waning, and the sky was darkening in a foreboding matter (we ended up having a doozy of a severe thunderstorm, complete with tornado warning, which quite possibly would have knocked out the power, if the mischief-gods hadn't already seen fit to do so); and as, according to the incipient work-from-home rules, I hadn't actually bothered to shower for the day even though it was late afternoon, I tried to use whatever natural sunlight remained to shave and shower. It was, if one may use the expression, a close shave, with our bathroom (which has no window) nearly dark by the time I stepped out of the shower. Not knowing whether the power would come back on in five minutes or five days, I pressed myself near a window and squinted through the gathering gloom at my Breviary to get my Evening Prayer in before it was too dark to read. Then I folded a little laundry, by which time the bedroom was too dark to do anything but sleep.
So I stumbled and tripped my way through the unlit house into our family room, where the rest of the family, similarly becalmed, had gathered. With the hellacious storm brewing, cooking dinner outside on the grill wasn't an option, and the rest of our cooking appliances require electricity. So I announced I'd treat the family to a (cheap) dinner out. My wife, in a fit of pique, or perhaps it was practicality (cf hellacious storm brewing) announced she wasn't hungry and didn't want to leave yet. So then I...well, I didn't do anything. Because my shallow, first-world-problematic life is such that there isn't a darned thing I can do without electricity. The television with its connections to the myriad of video services was useless. Anything that required Internet connectivity had to be done via cell phone or not at all. The natural light for reading had taken its leave until the morning. I realized my options were to converse with my family, or sit quietly and contemplate. It would be pleasant to report that both choices were so appealing that I found it difficult to make a selection, but in fact, I felt some combination of frustration, anxiety and the first stirrings of panic. I don't do well when I have nothing to do.
I rather crabbily told everyone I wanted to get to the restaurant before the storm arrived. We were literally stepping out the door when the electricity came back on. So I cooked dinner and we entertained ourselves by watching the storm for the next hour. I sent a note of apology to the senior executive for ending our call so abruptly. And things are back to normal.
Somehow, the human race got by without electric power until Ben Franklin or one of those fellows came along. These days, it's hard to figure how that ever worked.
I hear you, our house is all electric (lots of houses here like that, because we live in the town of "power and progress", the headquarters of Nebraska Public Power District). It is indeed a major inconvenience when the power goes down. I do have lots of candles, including a beeswax one , blessed on Candlemas day. A year and a half or so ago, when the whole state of Texas froze down without power, we had some scheduled rolling blackouts here. Minor inconvenience compared to TX, but a little worrisome because it was quite cold here as well.
ReplyDeleteWe used to be more resilient not that long ago, in the mid 1960s we lost power for two weeks due to a blizzard. We more or less got along, with kerosene lamps and a gas cookstove and furnace which had pilot lights and were not dependent on electronic ignition. Water was another story, the house had an electric pump. We hauled a lot of water from one of the farm wells where there was a windmill.
If it is any comfort, power can also go down and shut down your day when you are working in a plant or office building. We had a total outage where I work when a squirrel somehow shorted out a transformer. Did not end welll for the squirrel. But we were shut down for half a day.
Every once in a while we get reminded that maybe our world is too interconnected.
Dad was on O2 at the end of his life and had a 12-hour tank he could switch to if his compressor failed.
ReplyDeleteWe have a dilapidated screen porch, so we can use the camp stove to make coffee out there, even if it rains, and I saved the camp lantern with giant battery so we can read. We take advantage of "dark sky" conditions to look at the stars if it's a clear night.
If a power failure is a huge trial, go to Home Depot and get a generator. I thought all 'burb dwellers had them.
Actually, I don’t know anyone here in the suburbs who has a generator. But I do know people in the more rural areas who have them. The longest we ever lost power was 3 days. There was almost 3’ of snow and no hope for a plow for a few days, so we couldn’t run to buy a generator. We have a gas cooktop, so we could cook. We have 3 kerosene lamps, and a lot of candles. So we sat by the fireplace in the candle lit family room and there was enough light to read. We also had hot water so with a candle in the bathroom, showering was not totally in the dark. It was really a rather peaceful interlude.
DeleteBut a friend was dying that week. He was home, with end stage cancer. His two college age sons were home, and a high school daughter, and his wife. They are a musically gifted family. His wife told us that the power loss had actually been a gift. Everyone home, gathered in the living room, with a fire. Gas cooking, so they could eat. People had dropped off casseroles etc before the storm hit. I brought soup, knowing the forecast and that I probably wouldn’t be able to visit until after the storm had passed. I was amazed by his good spirits, knowing I would never see him again, knowing that his time was down to days. He never lost his sense of humor. She said they all talked, prayed, and made beautiful music on the piano and violin by firelight and candlelight. No TV. No video games. No computers. No ringing telephone. She said it was a much more peaceful time for the whole family, and a much more peaceful death for her husband, than she had imagined before. He died in his sleep early in the morning that the snowplows had reached their street.
No, you can't get a generator once the failure has occurred, but many people have them as a precaution.
DeleteMaybe more numerous up here where people need to keep the heat on in a snow storm.
I’m sure that a lot more people get generators where you live! Michigan and the mid- Atlantic have very different winter weather - usually. We don’t get a lot of snow most years, and when it snows it’s usually only inches, not feet. But we do get thunderstorms, and the power sometimes goes out then. Seldom for more than a few hours though. I remember one summer when it was so hot and humid that none of us could sleep. The power had gone out, so no AC. My husband was away. I decided to take the boys to a movie - a midnight show in an air conditioned theater. By the time we got home they were tired enough to sleep even in the heat.,
DeleteWe live in a rural area where power is less likely to be restored quickly. The south end of the village is on a different part of the grid than those of us on the north end. If we have no power, the grocery store and gas station usually do. The Sikhs who run the gas station give out free coffee when power is out on the north end. They have A little spot with tables where you can watch cricket on the TV.
DeleteWhen the power goes out, we want things to go back to normal. But no electric power IS normal. The Carrington Event of 1858 wreaked havoc on the electrical systems of the day, the telegraph. It was a coronal mass ejection from the sun that collapsed the earth's magnetic field and generated excessive currents in the wires strung out for hundreds of miles. The same thing today could knock out our grid for two years until the burnt out transformers could be replaced. Luckily, we have satellites observing the sun which could give us advance warning so we could turn off the grid until it passes. Hopefully we have a procedure for such a contingency.
ReplyDeleteYah, just like our cracker jack contingency for the pandemic ...
DeleteYes, Jean. That's a worry. Politicians seem to be wrapped up in their little power trips inside the bubble of civilization and don't realize how very fragile it all is. It might not hurt to have a few scientists become politicians, corrupting as that is.
DeleteMy cousin who recently retired from NOAA had some type of petition going around during the Trump years that was agitating for all new congressional reps to be briefed on some basic scientific info (ex difference between connection and causation). What's the point of having govt agencies to study stuff if politics mitigates against anyone using it to make policies?
DeleteStanley - “Luckily, we have satellites observing the sun which could give us advance warning so we could turn off the grid until it passes. Hopefully we have a procedure for such a contingency.”
DeleteSomehow I doubt it.
A science briefing to Marjorie Taylor Greene. I'd buy a ticket to that. The best protection against a catastrophic CME would be having off-the-grid solar and wind power. It's the connection to those long land lines that zap the electrical gear. Enough local electricity generation public and private could buffer through the crisis.
DeleteI have to admit I'm similarly pessimistic that our government is well-prepared for a Carrington Event (about which I hadn't previously heard - thanks, Stanley).
ReplyDeleteBut look - it doesn't have to be this way. There was a time, and it might even be within my living memory, when government was competent and oriented toward serving the common good. Or that was the belief, anyway. That faith in government was the whole premise of the Clintons' national health plan, although by the 1990s, I think faith in government had already ebbed too far for faith-in-government to work. But what I'm referring to in this comment isn't our faith, or lack thereof, in government; it's government's ability to actually do stuff on our behalf.
Somehow, government seems to have transmogrified into an employment agency, pension plan and funds-transfer service. Can't we hold it to a higher standard than that?
To give our federal government its due props, it did a fairly decent job captaining the effort to get COVID vaccines developed and into arms. And that was with Trump at the helm! So we can see that it can rise to the occasion. Let's see more of that.
DeleteThank you for making me feel like sh*t yet again for my monyhly Social Security benefit. Making that stretch a whole month is quite a lot harder than trying to read your prayers and shave in the dark, I'll clue ya. Always hard to square your resentments about welfare recipients with your diaconal call to work with the poor.
DeleteInteresting piece in the New Yorker about private philanthropy and whether government or the private sector is best positioned to respond to citizen needs that might speak to your topic.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/05/30/would-the-world-be-better-off-without-philanthropists-paul-vallely-emma-saunders-hastings
I'm not reading Jim's comment as meaning that he thinks government shouldn't do things like social security, but that there's things it needs to do in "addition to" being a sort of quartermaster. I didn't see anything about welfare recipients.
DeleteSorry. Here's my close reading:
Delete"Somehow, government seems to have transmogrified into an employment agency, pension plan and funds-transfer service. Can't we hold it to a higher standard than that? ... So we can see that it can rise to the occasion. Let's see more of that."
Govt has "transmogrified," i.e., changed into something other than its original state
The new state is as an employment agency, pension fund, funds-transfer service--all services that involve bureaucracy and handouts. And, btw, the bureaucracy is bloated because the GOP wants to ensure the undeserving b aren't getting their $$.
"higher standard" implies that these new functions constitute a devolved state of government
"rise to the occasion" implies there are other great things that we should be doing besides giving away money, things like vaccines
I see nothing that implies we should be adding to any govt functions, but that we should be doing things instead of doling out checks to the old, the sick, and the underemployed.
Part of my job was giving away money to small businesses via the Small Business Independent Research (SBIR) program. I must have overseen $20M (government peanuts) in handouts. Sometimes the research bore great fruit, other times nothing. If I can give a small business $1M, I have no problem with subsidies for my fellow Americans (not social security which is ROI). It's military spending at an insane level that's burying us. We have to get out of the saviour-of-the-world business. That job's taken.
DeleteStanley, I agree. As one who worked as a freelance contractor for years, often for defense industry related companies, I am appalled by the money spent on the DoD budget. The US spends more in the defense budget than the total spent by the next ten largest countries on defense, including China and Russia. Of course, citizens don’t actually know the true figures in the US because of black programs in the defense and intelligence sectors. Nor are the true budgets of other countries really known, as they also hide defense and intelligence program spending. But the public numbers do provide a benchmark.
DeleteOnce again, the huge corporations like Boeing, Nortrup Grumman, etc buy Congress - both parties- to ensure that the projects are funded and that they land in their own congressional districts, providing employment and lots of money to the local economies.
The waste I’ve seen personally even on small contracts/ programs is built into the system. On one contract, the project director held a staff meeting to ask staff to come up with ideas for additional work - enhancements to the required work - the work for the contract was on track to finish early and was under- budget. He reminded the staff that if the project didn’t spend all the money by the end of the fiscal year, the budget for the next phase would probably be cut.
The money would be better used to help the working poor achieve more security, to fund education so that those in the bottom rungs of the income scales could gain qualifications tp get better jobs, to fund free early childhood education, etc, etc. The waste in the defense budget could be put to good use to build better human infrastructure programs.
Clarification - The US spends more in the defense budget than the total spent by the next ten largest countries on defense, including China and Russia - combined!
DeleteAnne, you have an interesting perspective different from mine although I was aware of the absurd money games we had to play sometimes. Unfortunately, the decision by Best-and-Brightest McNamara in the 1960's to export all science and engineering to the private sector has resulted in a workforce of managers of contracts without any "bench experience". Formerly, it was a combination of both. From what I hear, there is a lot of anomie in the DoD. Personal ambition but not much dedication.
DeleteI have some pride in two efforts in my career. I participated in developing the technology that protects soldiers' eyes from laser damage. We didn't have the big bucks that the Air Force had so we went with extending established technology. I estimate the R&D cost only $10M dollars.
The other was the Opticam program that developed CNC techniques for precision optics manufacturing. That prevented the domestic optics industry from disappearing. I considered it a "dual-use" effort that benefitted non-military as well as military uses. I was gratified to know the early Mars rovers' optics were made with our technology.
But, looking at the big picture, less is more. In the first presidential election I voted, I voted for McGovern.
Wow - that's maybe the closest reading I've ever had :-). Jean, sorry, no desire on my part to make you feel like anything other than a loved child of God. I'm in favor of Social Security. I've been paying into it my entire career, and in not that many years, I'll start drawing from it.
DeleteFWIW - if I've done the math right, and if my employer puts up with me long enough, and if my health holds out, I'll be eligible for my full Social Security benefit in 2029. And then, in 2034 or somewhere thereabouts, Social Security starts to run out of money, and presumably my benefit will get a haircut. I'd like to see something done about that, if for no other reason than naked self-interest, but it doesn't seem to be a hot topic right now.
The federal government (first under a Republican president, then a Democratic president, so it's a bipartisan sport) pumped trillions of dollars into the economy during the COVID recession. All that free money probably contributed to our current inflation spiral in some way. Maybe some of that largesse was money well-spent. But all of it? I'd need to be convinced.
At one time, and perhaps still today, both Social Security and Medicare could be put on a solvent basis if the government simply lifted the income cap on FICA taxes. As it stands today, anyone making more than $147K/year doesn't pay FICA taxes on annual amounts above $147K. Annual income of $147K puts a person in the 91% percentile in my state - meaning they're in the top 10% of earners. But there are about 160 million workers in the US, so there are about 15 million people who get a de facto tax break on FICA taxes - and those 15 million people are the top 10% of earners. It doesn't seem fair.
Our government won WWII, built the Interstate highway system, invented (more or less) the Internet, and funded vaccines and treatments for COVID. It can get things done. And tens of millions of Americans depend on the federal government for income and medical care - entitlements which are precariously funded right now. It's not a bad idea to step back once in a while, think about what we're doing and how much we're spending, and ask ourselves, Could we do better than we're doing right now?
And maybe some of the resources dedicated to the defense budget (I didn't realize it was larger than that of the total of the next ten largest countries!) would be better spent shoring up SS and Medicare so that they don't run out in 2034 or therebouts.
DeleteJim, I have never found your comments about low income individuals particularly empathetic. However, my comment above was overly personal, called your vocation into question, and presumed to know what is in your heart. That was out of line, and I apologize to you and everyone here.
Delete