hello, i’m still here (or, the threads that connect us)

17 ‘Ilm 166 B.E. (Baha’i Calendar)
Soundtrack in my head:  Tigger Outlaw, “Songs for Aging Children”

The first of November always feels different than the 31st of October.  I walk outside and I feel the difference.  It’s actually warmer than yesterday, but the trees are more bare—a product of the ferocious winds that came through yesterday and the day before. 

I’ve been bad about blogging recently.  For the first two weeks it was due to writer’s block, but in the last week or so we’ve had a problem with our Internet connection at our house.  It was completely down for one week—a lot of it was due to an area-wide outage.  My Internet connection is still spotty—it only works on my laptop every other time and my desktop computer seems to have a problem that i can’t explain.

The outage really got me thinking about how dependent we are on things.  Not just the Internet.  The food we get is dependent on trucks making it to our city—even the CSA was subscribe to is two hours away.  When I lived in Hoffman Estates, IL,  I was fully dependent on my car working well enough to drive the five miles to the commuter rail station.  Our comfort right now in our co-op house is dependent on our basement furnace working. My ability to type this blog entry is dependent not only on the Internet, but on the electricity that feeds the battery of my laptop and lights up the room I’m in. 

I don’t think people realize the extent to which all of these things could potentially be interrupted.  A really bad winter storm could make the roads to our city unnavigable for days. A sudden dip in oil supplies could make food and supply deliveries extremely costly.  There are people who believe that the phenomenon of peak oil might make such things possible.  There have been widespread, extended blackouts in the past.  I don’t mean to be gloom and doom about these things, but it’s worth thinking about…