Looking ahead to next year

It’s probably the result of having been influenced by the Protestant work ethic for too many years, but it feels funny to be starting a New Year over the weekend. I know it happens every six or seven years, since there are only seven days in a week, but it seems improper to start a whole year on a non-work day. And next year, I mean 2023, will start on a Sunday. At least that’s the normal beginning of a week. Maybe it’s the fact that January 1, 2022, the start of a new year, occurs on the last day of the week, that I find jarring.

artisan sourdough bread baked in January

Photo by J. Harrington

January is usually a good month for baking. Keeping the oven going helps take any chill off the inside of the house. Our furnace thermostat is wall-mounted in an interior hallway. We probably couldn’t afford the heating bills if it was on an exterior wall or near a window. The house was build in the late 70’s, before energy efficiency and really good insulation became popular. When we last checked, the economics of heating supported paying for the natural gas rather than installing retrofitted insulation. Now that the cost of natural gas appears to be increasing significantly, it may be time to take another look.

2019 polar vortex thermostat & outside temp

Photo by J. Harrington

One thing that troubles me about the environmentalists and progressives espousing “keep it in the ground,” is that I’ve yet to see helpful analyses of how different approaches might affect the typical household or family. Installing an air source heat pump might, that’s might, let us get mostly away from natural gas for heating, but would definitely require better insulation and windows to be effective. And what if there were no natural gas for the furnace as a backup when we get visited by a polar vortex?

Too many politicians, pundits and corporations have played fast and loose with the truth for any sane person to blindly accept what’s cited as necessary or good. We need better analyses, policies and transparency to successfully move through the transitions required to maintain and restore a livable planet. Let’s hope those three elements, at a minimum, can be brought forth as part of the 2022 election campaigns. Otherwise, next Thanksgiving may have most of US trying to eat a pig in a poke with turkeys running (or running down) the country.

[UPDATE: Fresh Energy has a policy framework for heat pumps that fails to mention this from their blog posting on heat pumps: – Paired with weatherization programs and backup heat sources in existing buildings, air-source heat pumps are fantastic tools for accelerating the transition to clean electric energy that powers homes, hospitals, and businesses.]

Burning the Old Year

By Naomi Shihab Nye

Letters swallow themselves in seconds.   

Notes friends tied to the doorknob,   

transparent scarlet paper,

sizzle like moth wings,

marry the air.

So much of any year is flammable,   

lists of vegetables, partial poems.   

Orange swirling flame of days,   

so little is a stone.

Where there was something and suddenly isn’t,   

an absence shouts, celebrates, leaves a space.   

I begin again with the smallest numbers.

Quick dance, shuffle of losses and leaves,   

only the things I didn’t do   

crackle after the blazing dies.

********************************************
Thanks for visiting. Come again when you can.
Please be kind to each other while you can.