I spent most of yesterday waiting for the phone to ring and the email inbox to signal that friends in the Twin Cities area were checking in to say they were safe after Wednesday’s bridge collapse.
Making that phone call to friends in Blacksburg in April was bad enough. We’d kind of lost touch with the Minnesota friends. It’s the same old story: you get busy with work, people have kids, you grow apart, and pretty soon you’re down to just exchanging cards at Christmas. But they’re still in your address book, so you can’t let something like Wednesday’s bad news go by without checking in. It’s pretty sad when you remember to get in touch only because you think someone might be dead.
Memo to self: Write more letters, make more phone calls.
After the long day I got home, turned the computer on, and logged into MLB.TV. The Mets had a day game against the Brewers; it was the bottom of the 9th and we had a 12-3 lead. Then I heard an explosion off in the distance, computer went dead, the fan stopped, and the digital clock’s face went blank. My first thought was “We’d better not lose this game.” My second thought was “I wonder if the air conditioner blew up?”
I went out back to check the A/C. It was fine. A neighbor was on a cell phone calling the power company. The people across the street had power; no one on our side of the street did. Talk about living on the wrong side of the tracks.
I went back into the house. I wanted a glass of iced water, but didn’t want to compromise the freezer in case the power outage lasted a while. Frozen food will last for several hours if you keep the freezer door shut. So I toughed it out and had a glass of tap water. I grabbed some notes and went into the backyard to write; it was cooler there than in the house. The only sound was that of chirping birds. It felt like Eden. No cars motoring down the street, no kids screaming, just birds.
It wasn’t long before the roar of A/C units insulted my backyard bliss. OK, so it wasn’t really a roar — more like a loud hum. But after an hour of nature sans electricity it sounded almost as bad as a 747 taking off.
It was nice to have cool air in the house again, and to be able to fetch a glass of iced water. The computer was turned back on, so we could connect with the outside world and get the report that the Mets won the game, 12-4.
How spoiled we are. The power goes off for an hour and the temperature in the house reaches 85F and we feel like we are suffering. We can’t get connected to the Internet for an hour or turn on the tv to watch the evening news and we feel lost.
It was refreshing to sit out in the yard with the birds and the quiet. Why don’t we do that more often?
I like the concept of the Sabbath. That day-of-rest thing is a good idea. I don’t think I can bring myself to give my use of electricity a rest for one day a week, but it wouldn’t be a bad idea to go Luddite for a little while every day and go without the computer, the tv, the radio, the telephone. It’s often very practical to be connected, but it’s not a bad thing to sit quietly with your thoughts, either. Or to be with real people, and not electronic representations of them. Plus it makes you appreciate technology and not take it for granted.
But the computer and MLB.TV definitely stay on when the Mets are playing.
