Time to check all systems

It’s been a strange twenty-four hours. Yesterday, as the downpour was ending, the power went out. Xcel had it restored about 4 p.m. Our phone and internet connection disappeared approximately the same time as the power. That didn’t get restored until eighteen or twenty hours after it went down. Midday today, while walking the dogs, we noticed what looked suspiciously like a dead whitetail at the end of a neighbor’s drive. Then, after we had come back into the house, begun to settle down, and finally got to turn to online activities, we noticed that the Better Half’s email application persisted in incorrectly autocorrecting the spelling of my last name. We think that’s finally been corrected by laying hands on the application's settings. In that process, we discovered the need for a universal, standardized, location for a save button on all computer applications.

more storm clouds ahead

Photo by J. Harrington

As we begin to adapt to climate breakdown and eliminate greenhouse gas emissions, I’ve spent some of the past day thinking about the reliability of the systems on which we’ve come to depend. The loss of power yesterday might have been mitigated if we had a generator, but only if we could still pump gas to keep a generator running during an extended power outage such as Superstorm Sandy’s. Much of the emphasis of responding to climate breakdown has been on the need to keep fossil fuels in the ground. Not enough, in our opinion, has been stressed about increasing the reliability of our electrical system, nor about shifting to a more decentralized generation pattern and microgrids. If indeed we commit to no more burning of fossil fuels and become solely reliant on electricity, we’ll need to be much better at 100%+ uptime of the electrical system, particularly for hospitals and comparable institutions. Given last winter’s Texas breakdown, neither the public nor the private sectors seem capable of safely meeting our  needs.

Meanwhile, we have a political system, including SCOTUS, that does serve the short term needs of (s)elected officials and their corporate sugar-daddies much more so than the needs of present and future citizens of the country or the planet. About the only positive thing I can share regarding the Democratic party is that it’s not the Republicans. I look forward, with little expectation, to being able to post something more positive in the near future.

I’m coming to believe that the cumulative effects of user-unfriendly design of many of our systems, plus their growing lack of reliability, is contributing substantially to a society that, more and more, seems prepared to “go postal.” We certainly shouldn’t want to return to the kind of normal that brought us to this point. Nor do we think it acceptable to pay more for slower postal deliveries. Sigh!

The Promise We Live By

By Simon J. Ortiz

On the West Coast, days of rainstorm wrestle

the Coast Range, their wet fury driven landward.

We never quite known what the sky promises,

and there is certain assurance in that fate.

It is for that we wait. We’ve already weathered

more than promises. They’ve passed us by.

So I’m not sure this morning when I step outside,

and suddenly it’s not winter anymore but some

warm mask that molds the contours of my face

with unbidden warmth. It’s almost unnatural

but I hope not, having already found reliable

the promise of loss. My expectation is unfulfilled.

Somewhere within the universe of the prairie hills

is a climate that is yet unnoticed, and from it

is welling a warm rupture of another sure season.

Believe it is not unusual, I urge myself

whose myths are always changing in the light.

So it’s this we arrive into daily, always

another season, warm or frigid, and it’s we

who wage weather within our furious spirits.

Tomorrow’s dawn is a promise that will fulfill.

Never mind if the sky does not quite agree.

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