Electric Days

Read a blurb about the reason for daylight savings time.  It said that the primary purpose was to save electricity.  Over the years the savings have hardly been noticed it stated.  So if it is not doing what it was set out to do, why do we still have savings time?  Is daylight time really saving any thing?

For me it’s like a lots of things, they sort of hang around pretty useless but no one picks it up and puts in the trash. 

Anybody have a spare bag I can go around and collect the spare saved time then go make a deposit at the time dump.

Electricity is one of things that is fairly modern.  Until Ben Franklin flew his kite electricity was a mystery and lightening was a fire bug.

Today how could we live without it.  Look at all the things we use that rely on electricity.  Look at manufacturing plants, all the electric motors they have.  At the turn of the 20th century electricity was a luxury.  Street lights quite often were still oil lamps.  Candle making was still a big business.  Anybody have a kerosene lantern?  I have a couple of RR lanterns and I have a kerosene lamp.  I still use it on occasion, burn a scented oil in it.

Yet was candles and lanterns that our grandparents used to light their way or do schoolwork by.

Living out on the prairies I see lots of high power transmission lines strung across the open spaces.  For some it is progress, others it is an eyesore.  It is a distracting sight on the open plains.  folks in the big city got to have their juice but don’t put the equipment in their back yard, put it in somebody else’s yard.

then I look at the problems in Japan,oh man do they have problems.  I hope they can deal with things for Mother Nature can be very humbling.  There was the earthquake, then the big wave and the buildings were crumbling or awash.  Electricity was lost, power plants shut down, nuclear fears and then explosions.  Hell is walking to and fro on the island of Japan.  Will the radiation leaks from the nuclear plants be a disfiguring as Chernobyl or will it be deadly like the bombs of WWII?

Thousands are without homes, family members lost, swallowed up.  Man becomes so insignificant when Mother Nature vents or has a cough.  I feel for the people over there and will give to a relief fund such as the red cross or through church.  Is there a lesson in this.  I’ve read that many fires were quelled because of switches that were built into gas meters to shut off the gas if the earth was jolted.  There were other standards on building codes the Japanese addressed to help in case of earthquakes.  It appears many lives were saved because of that.  Yet many people will look at the nuclear plants and howl at them and not consider the other things that were done.

When I turn on a switch I am thankful for that flicker of light that comes on, the appliances whir and the puter sputters.

The world has changed.  It was Mother Nature that effected the changes, no man that has that kind of power…. yet.

I will move on with life, read the stories, get mad, be sad, laugh some and turn the page.