Goddamn, last night reminded me why I love this country! All the lights are out in a wide swath of country: New York, Detroit and Cleveland are dark but does the rioting start? The looting? Nah, people calmly left their places of work, camped out throughout the city and generally looked for ways to adapt to the situation and beat the heat the best they could with what they had. I saw pictures today of folks having a pizza dinner at a sidewalk cafe illuminated by a car’s headlights. I saw other people hitching a ride on a delivery truck to get out of Manhattan. Folks delivering groceries around neighborhoods to use up the product before it spoils. People helping people. No government involvement – the states and cities turned down federal help – just ordinary folks making do the best they can. Unlike the French.
The whole blackout thing is a reminder of how vulnerable our existence on this wildly spinning globe really is. Not 100 years ago a dark night in lower Manhattan would have been relatively typical. Now, we lose power and don’t know what to do. But still life goes on, NYC may be generally closed for business today but nobody’s panicking, nothing untoward is happening and we’ll be all set by Monday morning.
Fecking cool.
On another note, did anyone get out to see Mars last night? Big red moon and a bright little red dot off to one side. Spooky. Does anyone else find it coincidental that, given our current international situation Mars is in its closest orbit in thousands of years? Makes one think.