What Happened When Hurricane Florence Knocked Out My Electricity

Dear Jenny,

Thanks for your concern.

It is always "enlightening" to have the electricity go down.

Early yesterday, Hillsborough's largest circumference tree, a red oak, fell -- mostly from internal rot, but also pushed by Florence -- and that crash created a chain reaction that leveled 8 power poles, leaving the Historic District (where I live) without electricity for 8 hours. (In the following Wikipedia article about Hillsborough, "my" band played under the pictured courthouse portico last November 19th, a "breakout" performance. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hillsborough,_North_Carolina)

If nothing else, the sudden cessation of electricity is startling reminder how dependent we've become on electronic technology.

Do you remember that night at UT when "the power" went out all over the northeastern United States and the eastern provinces of Canada? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northeast_blackout_of_1965

Except for stereo and television (which none of had in our dorm rooms), we simply lit candles and, suddenly, our lives were more-or-less functional again. 

"Charmed" even.

Now, almost all our "work" (and even our sources of relaxation) reside in cyberspace.

And since cyber-overproductivity has made most of us workaholics, severance of electricity leaves us at loose ends.

In Toronto, 1930, G.K. Chesterton issued one of his most memorable observations (prophecies?). 

"The coming peril is the intellectual, educational, psychological and artistic overproduction, which, equally with economic overproduction, threatens the wellbeing of contemporary civilisation. People are inundated, blinded, deafened, and mentally paralysed by a flood of vulgar and tasteless externals, leaving them no time for leisure, thought, or creation from within themselves." G. K. Chesterton, Toronto, 1930 
http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2014/10/pax-on-both-houses-gk-chesterton-posts.html

While electricity was "down" yesterday, I caught up on "back issues" of The New Yorker, such a delightful pastime that within an hour I found myself wondering what sort of devil's bargain I'd made with lusted-after constancy of a "pluggable" Electron Stream. 

Even so, I was thrilled when "the light" went back on.

I wonder...

The "place" which our ancestors considered home -- and the particular kind of peace that was the only peace our ancestors knew -- now feels like an alien land to which we can never return, never "go home." 

This may not be a bad thing, but the nagging question remains: How much of our electronic busyness has - as its primary (or overarching) function - distraction.

Literally, "taking us away."

From what?

Peace?

And more specifically: What if the primary function of electonic busyness is to ensure that we don't "go home?"

That we get to the point where we can't go home.

Can't even imagine what "home" was. 

"Perdition," a word once used interchangeably with "damnation," means "lostness" - lostness accompanied by inability to find the home from which we came, the home which Old Norse references in its word for "death" - "heimgang"... "homegoing."

At the speed of (electric) light, we became permanently alienated from the only circumstances our parents and grandparents, all the way back to Lucy Australopithecus, knew as peace.

Until very recently, the word peace -- except in reference to the cessation-or-absence of war -- was routinely used in the symbisemantic phrase "peace and quiet."

Quiet?

We can only get "quiet" now by throwing the main breaker on our electrical panel - simultaneously powering off "the cell," an electronic chamber less distinguishable from imprisonment than we pretend.

And try driving (as I often do... and you may too) without flicking on "the box."

"Peace and quiet" require effort. 

The distraction of noise -- noise in The System -- is so much easier.

We're all "up against the wall of convenience" now.

Well...

Back to work.

The Cyber-Sirens are calling.

Love

Alan

Workers Aim To Restore Power After Florence KOs Majestic Red Oak In Hillsborough

http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2018/09/workers-aim-to-restore-power-after.html

On Sat, Sep 15, 2018 at 9:45 PM JB wrote:

Dear Alan:

Glad to hear that Florence has not been problematic for you.

Love,

J

On Friday, September 14, 2018, 9:52:52 PM EDT, alanarchibaldo@gmail.com wrote:

Dear Squeeze and Boo. As you probably recall, I have always viewed spiders as “pets I don’t need to take care of...” and regularly kept company with one (or more) in my basement office.

The last couple of weeks, while visiting upstate New York, Mexican friends from Ixtapa did a remarkably thorough job deep-cleaning my house (and washing annex windows) for me! Qué sorpresa más maravillosa! However, this evening, when I opened my seldom-used utility drawer, I found the following arachnid, over three inches across and as impressive as any tropical tarantula. Since it is neither a Brown Recluse nor a Black Widow (both of which cause nasty, painful, necrotizing wounds sometimes resulting in death) I’ve decided to befriend it. I do hope it “ knows enough” to stay out of sight during Monday night Spanish class when I think unexpected appearances would prove unsettling. A handsome critter. No creen? Les quiero muchísimo! Papi man 

PS Although we are supposed to get a lot of rain tonight, tomorrow and into Sunday, the local NPR affiliate is starting to talk about Florence as if it’s basically a done deal. 

Sent from my iPhone