A few weeks ago, on a Sunday evening, a strong storm front rolled through our area. It was not expected and it seemed to materialize very suddenly. It brought a brief, but intense rain shower, lots of rumbling thunder, and some close lightning strikes. As a result, the electricity went out.
It was around dusk when this happened and nightfall was coming on. I grabbed a ready flashlight by the back door and headed out to a small “Dutch barn” that serves as our pantry. The “pantry” was originally set up as a small music studio where I used to teach guitar lessons and record music. Now, it’s filled with shelves and containers full of food and some emergency supplies. It felt good to be able to find a flashlight that worked. When my children were younger, it was hard to keep a working flashlight around because they loved to play with them.
Out in the shed, I gathered a couple of kerosine lanterns we keep on hand for “post-hurricane” use and brought them into the house. While I did that, my wife and son made their way around the house and opened up the windows, since the air conditioner went off along with the other electrical devices in the house. After getting some light in strategic areas in the house with the lanterns, I went to our 72-hour kit and pulled out the battery operated radio. I scrolled through the dial and was pleasantly surprised to find that the evening sky permitted me to pick up a radio station at a considerable distance from our home. The station was playing hits from the 1970s, which is something I enjoyed immensely. We had a couple of book lights that we could clip onto a good book and we enjoyed reading together. It was a very pleasant evening!
The lights didn’t come on by the time bedtime rolled around and there was still no electricity. This was not a problem, even though we have a well and electricity is required to pump the water out of the ground. I went to the linen closet in the bathroom and extracted a two-liter bottle of water, one of about 60 of them, that are stored in various shelves, cabinets, and cubby-holes around our house. We have some “survival” water stowed in these spaces that might normally go unused. We were able to wash up, brush our teeth, and comfortably go to bed. A few hours later, the lights came back on and woke us up. We turned everything off that needed to be off and went back to sleep.
While the rest of the country is wanting to get increasingly exercised about the “9/11 mosque” in the public forums around the Internet, I would like to take a moment to point out that this is a distraction. The political partisans and their corporate handlers love it when you are preoccupied with impassioned, emotional arguments about religion, because such arguments rarely lead to anything constructive. Right now, you should be focused on something extremely constructive–namely saving your family from starvation.
Good point West. Politics and the Media are good at making people take their eye off “The Mark”.