It is remarkable how much the modern house is dependent on electricity. Heat. Hot water. LIghts. We could cook, after a fashion, by lighting our gas stove with a match, but that required opening the refrigerator which was rapidly losing its cool. We couldn’t open our garage door, so we couldn’t use our cars, even though by midday the roads were perfectly clear. And, of course, none of the electronic gadgets functioned–our two computers, our one TV, our numerous radios and CD players. My eleven year old son could not quite comprehend why we couldn’t access the Internet. We did get a little heat from the gas “woodstove” in our kitchen.
Before the advent of electricity homes must have been cold dank places in the winter. And when its dark, its dark. Sure you can read by candlelight or oil lamp, but if those are things you need everyday they become precious resources, not to be expended without thought.
Lacking the Internet, my son piled up his Bionicles and played with them by the fire. We read. We talked. I knitted until the light disappeared. In the evening we all played a card game by candlelight. Once the game was over, we went to bed and huddled under the down covers. It was dank and chilly. It was also a lot quieter and a lot simpler. We experienced winter without as many barriers between us and the dark and the cold.
Given that winter can be quite long in these parts, though, it was reassuring to hear the hum of all our creature comforts clicking back into action. Given my apocolyptic turn of mind, though, the experience brought home how depend we are on this unseen force–electricity–and how easy it would be to bring its comforts and its distractions to a crashing halt.
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This entry was posted on January 20, 2012 at 4:09 am and is filed under cultural commentary. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
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off the grid
It is remarkable how much the modern house is dependent on electricity. Heat. Hot water. LIghts. We could cook, after a fashion, by lighting our gas stove with a match, but that required opening the refrigerator which was rapidly losing its cool. We couldn’t open our garage door, so we couldn’t use our cars, even though by midday the roads were perfectly clear. And, of course, none of the electronic gadgets functioned–our two computers, our one TV, our numerous radios and CD players. My eleven year old son could not quite comprehend why we couldn’t access the Internet. We did get a little heat from the gas “woodstove” in our kitchen.
Before the advent of electricity homes must have been cold dank places in the winter. And when its dark, its dark. Sure you can read by candlelight or oil lamp, but if those are things you need everyday they become precious resources, not to be expended without thought.
Lacking the Internet, my son piled up his Bionicles and played with them by the fire. We read. We talked. I knitted until the light disappeared. In the evening we all played a card game by candlelight. Once the game was over, we went to bed and huddled under the down covers. It was dank and chilly. It was also a lot quieter and a lot simpler. We experienced winter without as many barriers between us and the dark and the cold.
Given that winter can be quite long in these parts, though, it was reassuring to hear the hum of all our creature comforts clicking back into action. Given my apocolyptic turn of mind, though, the experience brought home how depend we are on this unseen force–electricity–and how easy it would be to bring its comforts and its distractions to a crashing halt.
Like this:
This entry was posted on January 20, 2012 at 4:09 am and is filed under cultural commentary. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.