We’re still looking for a rental with more solar gain and a better woodstove. I’m feeling lucky, too.
I like heating with wood, athough it won’t do for the studio my wife needs for her glossy-black baby grand piano. In the long run, I think we’ll have to buy some land and build a couple of straw-bale “huts” for living and studio space, but for that I’ll wait until we know what our money’s going to be worth after, um… after… well, who knows? But there’s no sense buying something we’ll have to give up later just because we have to eat.
Meanwhile, here’s something that’s absolutely horrible: the cost of heating oil! No, we don’t use that in New Mexico. But back at our old home in Maryland, filling the big black heating oil tank in the moldy basement will cost someone over $700 in the fall at projected prices… That’s for one month, chilluns, and I used to scream when the bill was just one-fifth of that.
Show me how this is anything less than catastrophic for millions of families in the Northeast. I simply can’t imagine how people will cope. That this country hasn’t been on a national crusade to develop renewable energy for all over the last 10 years is worse than cruel and stupid. A lot of people in the news today deserve to be in jail.
Comment by Gregory LeFever
1 June 30, 2008, 4:04 pm o'clock |
Don’t even get me started. Something should have been done in the last 10 years, you say? Try the last THIRTY-FIVE years. That’s when the gas lines first started and the price of fuel oil first shot through the ceiling.
Getting that glimmer of what an oil shortage could do got a lot of people talking and talking and more talking until the talking finally died down eight years later during the Reign of Reagan. Since then we’ve been blessed with Detroit’s humongous gas-guzzlers and an unprecedented thirst for oil in the form of thousands of petroleum based projects, including agri-business’s massive consumption.
Of course now it seems we’ll get another last-minute transfusion as the select few American and British oil companies rush in to stabilize the Iraqi oil fields and get the black juice flowing again. Now they can again reap the astonishing profits they’ve been deprived of since Saddam assumed power. Good reason for a war, huh?
Given all of this, we should be able to successfully delay renewable energy for perhaps another decade while the rich get richer and the rest of us … well …
Yes, John, somebody should be in jail, big time.
Comment by Rebecca
2 July 1, 2008, 9:40 am o'clock |
From the east coast- perhaps I can make your hair stand on end when I tell you that I am the sole caretaker of 3 furnaces, (home, studio, rental space) not to mention roofs etc., here on this lovely old New England farmstead I have had the privilege to own for the last 7-8 years.
I, quite frankly, have not added up what it cost to heat these buildings last season because I don’t want to absorb the figure. What I know is I want to be out from under and will sell the property and move in the fall. What once nurtured and supported my family and I, now feels like a steel trap.
Where to? my friends and family keep asking. I am unwilling to take on another house at this point and intend to travel, to spend more than a week or two but months in as many places as I can to see how other people are doing it.
Eventually I will settle on the edge of the ocean for as long as she’ll have me. Am I making a statement on the state of the union? No. Will this solve the energy crisis? Nope, I am not sure it is solvable. I am not sure we are here to solve but merely to learn. In the words of the late, great George Carlin; Mother Earth could shake us off like fleas on a dog’s back anytime she likes, and she will still keep turning.
War never solves anything otherwise we’d be done with war. Yet we continue to send our young people with their not yet fully formed brains, to die and kill for a “cause” that merely shifts over time so that there is always something to fight about.
There has to be a bigger picture. A large part of our purpose as humans seems as a witness. Otherwise we’d be superhuman or subhuman but we are human and we struggle. I believe the purpose is in the struggle. When she’s done with us and our folly, poof we’re gone and something new will replace us and the universe goes on.
How does this apply to every day life as we know it? Do what you can, don’t turn away from anything. Witness, learn, pass it on. We can only influence in our ability to do what WE CAN. Not what we think we can when we get around to it.
As long as there are humans there will be have’s and have not’s. And we continue to struggle with this, it’s what we do, it’s what we’re here for.
The price of oil is merely another kick in the ass to keep us on the path of humanity. How long or well we survive as a species must depend on what we do with what we witness.
John - as always, keep writing…it’s a beautiful thing.
Comment by K.J. Webb
3 July 1, 2008, 12:39 pm o'clock |
I find lots to nod in agreement over in both Greg’s and Rebecca’s musings. I’ve always kind of hated, loathed and despised rich folks, so taking away the money of oil execs and putting them behind bars would warm my frosty heart excessively. But would it magically cause the pure-hearted among us to rise up and create sufficient alternative energy to make this nasty old world go round? I highly doubt it, and highly doubt that the State would do a very good job of filling the void left by all those decamping corporations. You’ve got to have a love of paradox to get a kick out of contemplating any of this. Jonathan Swift had it - he saw that the prosperity of all of England was founded on the follies and caprices of a few greedy men and a few pampered women. “Private vice makes public virtue.” It’s hard to hold these two antagonistic thoughts in one’s head at the same time - but the world wasn’t designed by a logician. More likely God, if he exists, is a demented ironist.
Rebecca’s definitely on to something in de-emphasizing the incomprehensible macro-stuff in favour of the knowable minutiae of actual experience. There are lots of ways to live honourably. Some involve thinking big thoughts, but we’re frankly more likely to do the right thing in the life we’ve been given to live our thoughts are close to the bone . It’s especially useless to to be always thinking about the moral failures of other folks (those aforesaid oil execs, for example). That just rots the soul. I speak as one susceptible to such thoughts.
Comment by John H. Farr
4 July 3, 2008, 10:51 am o'clock |
There has to be a bigger picture. A large part of our purpose as humans seems as a witness.
Yes, I think so.
Comment by Carmel
5 July 3, 2008, 10:04 pm o'clock |
Yesterday I visited a Sidney Nolan Retrospective exhibition (Nolan is one of my favourite Australian artists).
http://www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/ed/resources/ed_kits/sidney_nolan
Nolan had this to say: “We live on a thin crust over a bubbly mass of molten lava and the fuel of hell. What’s marvellous is that, in spite of everything, we’re alive. Do you understand? To make up for the suffering of living there’s the joy of life.”
Comment by Mike Gravel
6 July 4, 2008, 10:55 am o'clock |
I had never heard of Sidney Nolan until now. In part, because of the quote of his that you left, I just checked this link and I think he’s one of my new faves too. (I’ll have to investigate further). Thanks Carmel. (Was the retro in Australia?)
Comment by Number 6
7 July 6, 2008, 9:45 am o'clock |
“There has to be a bigger picture. A large part of our purpose as humans seems as a witness.”
i’ve always felt that “we” *are* the Universe, experiencing the infinite diversity of itself from the inside. and if only humanity could collectively pull it’s selfish little head out of its own ass, we’d realize that (but of course i’m not holding my breath…)