A Loss of Electricity

Two years ago my boiler stopped working just as the outside temperature plummeted to the single digits, leaving my family scrambling for a solution as our thermostat displayed 55 degrees and falling.  Luckily a knowledgeable neighbor provided a quick fix until I could get my HVAC guy in, and all ended well, but the episode left me aware of just how unprepared I am to withstand even the shortest power outage, especially in the winter months. 

Although numerous communities in the U.S. have suffered severe outages as a result of natural disasters, as a nation – with the exception of the short-lived Northeast blackout of 2003 that affected over 55 million people – the U.S. has managed to avoid the widespread calamity that Ted Koppel illustrates in his new book, Light’s Out: A Cyberattack, A Nation Unprepared, Surviving the Aftermath.

Poke around on-line about the electric grid and you’ll soon find commentary from the most extreme elements of our society (i.e., complete wack jobs).  Fortunately, veteran journalist Ted Koppel’s voice lends a degree of sanity to the polarizing issue.  Will his voice make any difference?  Time will tell, though I think he’s done a great service to highlight to the general public just how vulnerable our electrical grid is to terrorism – most likely of the cyber variety.  We’re talking potentially a hundred million people without power for weeks or months, a crippling of the U.S. economy and the U.S. military, and people’s worst instincts taking hold through looting and violence.  (You know, the kind of scenarios we pay millions to see as long as they’re on the big screen and not happening in our own backyards.)

Koppel provides expert testimony from both in and out of the electric industry and the government agencies who are supposedly equipped to either handle a major crisis (FEMA) or prevent a crisis in the first place (DHS).  (A word of caution: neither has a plan in place to respond to a major cyberattack.)  When Koppel asks General Lloyd Austin of U.S. Central Command if there is a danger of a cyberattack taking out a major section of the U.S. electric grid, he answers, “It’s not a question of if, it’s a question of when someone will try that.”

The words of a paranoid?  We would do well to recall the domestic terrorist attack on a California substation in April of 2013 that knocked out ten transformers.  Many think that this event was a dry run to something bigger, but with a cyberattack one doesn’t need AK-47s to inflict damage to the electrical grid – it can all be down remotely.  As Koppel reports, there are nation states to be concerned about like China and Russia, but they have a limited desire to inflict damage on a country that could inflict as much damage in return.  Of more concern is a country like North Korea who’s already demonstrated a desire to inflict damage to the U.S., who’s already hacked Sony, and who has absolutely nothing to lose.  Of course, a cyberattack wouldn't need to be state-sponsored; terrorist organizations also pose a significant threat.

Light’s Out isn’t all doom and gloom (though it is, mostly).  Koppel interviews a number of “preppers” – people who prepare for the worst through a variety of measures, including the storing of food, water, medicine, fuel and the like – who would likely be able to withstand an electrical outage for months.  Yes, some of them are wack jobs, but many are just regular people who want to have a plan in place in case of a long-term loss of power.  Even better prepared are the Mormons who – in addition to instructing personal actions – have a structural system in place that would help provide safety for its members in the event of a national disaster.

Where does that leave the rest of us?  Koppel doesn’t delve into details, which is rather a shame, but there are countless resources on-line and in print that can help the average Joe become a little more prepared than he is currently.  We're not talking silly duck and cover drills in the event of a nuclear explosion; we're talking sensible steps involving freeze-dried food, water storage and the like.  If enough Americans do this, then some of the panic that might ensue after a significant loss of power can be avoided while responders attend to those who are most in need. 

I’m going to devote a little time and a little money in 2016 to be a little more personally prepared, and I hope you consider doing so.  Getting our politicians to prepare will be a whole other endeavor.

Getting Lost

One of my favorite books is James Hilton’s Lost Horizon, a tale whose premise seems almost quaint these days: a group of people are kidnapped and taken to the mysterious and hidden city of Shangra-La deep in the Himalayan Mountains. That such a land could be unknown to the world must have seemed like a very real possibility when the book was first published in 1933, but in 2015 it seems absurd. Today, surely even a hidden city would be viewable on Google Maps with Yelp offering a list of hotspots.

I thought about this recently as I viewed a map of the world that showed city lights illuminated at night across the globe. Sure, there are still some dark spots in remote areas, but places that were once unexplored or unknown to much of the world are now lit up like Christmas trees, and I imagine that a person filled with wanderlust in the 21st Century might conclude that he was born a couple of centuries too late.

Earlier this year Tim Wu of The New Yorker wrote about how technology has pushed us closer to Never Lost Land, where even an exploration of wilderness is coupled with our ability to know our exact coordinates at all times via GPS – not a very interesting scenario for a would-be explorer. But the author also rightly points out that our dependency on technology could lead to much more severe consequences than a couple of decades ago:

It is, after all, much more dangerous to be lost in the wilds with a dead G.P.S. than with a map and compass. We’ll be never lost until we lose our tools, and then we’ll be much more lost than ever before.

I suspect many of us have fallen victim to this when we’ve been unable to make a phone call, find our way in a city or even look up a vocabulary word due to a power outage or a drained battery. @@Going off-line for even a few hours at home might seem more isolating than being stuck on a dessert island with unrestricted Wi-Fi.@@ Ask a child to look up a word using a real dictionary, and she’ll need extra time to figure out how to navigate this relic of days gone by. Hell, I used to know every phone number of most of my friends and family members. Today, I think I can accurately recite three or four phone numbers.

If one ever pines for the days of driving somewhere and having no clue where the journey will end, take note that you might be in luck, for some of us can still get lost even with a working phone. A few summers ago my wife typed a downtown Chicago address on her phone and started driving, only to find herself thirty minutes later on a rundown street in an unknown part of the city. She called me in a panic and asked, “Where the hell are the big buildings?” I asked her if during her drive she happened to look up. After all, the Willis Tower is viewable even from our hometown of Elmhurst eighteen miles away.  She hadn’t, apparently.

Which just goes to show you two things: 1) reading a map is still a valuable skill even with GPS; and 2) getting lost will always be possible for the directionally challenged.

Blueprint for Charitable Giving

Over the years I’ve devoted two blogs to the topic of charitable giving and how much of our time and money should be spent helping those in need, a concept I often wrestle with.  (One could argue that if I spent as much time giving as I do wrestling with the question of how much I should give, I’d be a much better person!)   In my writings I referred to the Jewish concept of tithing, the “upper limit” concept of the Babylonian Talmud and the New Testament reading of the Good Samaritan, but I’ve never walked away from these investigations with a clear-cut sense of what I should be doing to help others – only that I should be doing more.

Well, leave it to a pastor to help clarify things.  As I’ve discussed in previous posts, I get a double dose of religion as I occasionally attend Friday night services at synagogue and regularly attend Sunday morning services at a Presbyterian church where I play piano.  Once again, I’ve concluded that the applicable teachings of Sundays often trump the intellectual teachings of Fridays.  At Elmhurst Presbyterian last Sunday, Pastor Lyda offered a concept of giving so obvious that I had a hard time not uttering the words “well, duh!” out loud.  Ready?  Here it is:

Give to others as much as you spend on entertainment for yourself.

How simple is that?  

On the surface, it’s straightforward.  If you spend $30 on a movie, allocate $30 to a charity or other cause that’s in need of money.  

Ah, but what do we consider entertainment?  If you think about it, much of what we spend could fall into this category: electronics, cable, Netflix, internet, sports events, concerts, amusement parts, going out to eat, hobbies, junk food, parties, presents, timeshares or second homes, alcohol, coffee, cigarettes.  Last year, my family did what it had never done before: spent a great deal of money (for us) on an all-inclusive vacation to Mexico.  Clearly, this falls under the category of entertainment, but a vacation of this magnitude would have to be looked at twice if the cost suddenly doubled to include an equal amount for charity.

Still, I think it makes sense.

The hard-core rationalist might find a way to avoid matching the cost of most of the aforementioned categories.  A cycling hobby could be placed under a health category instead of entertainment, or an internet bill could be listed as a necessity. But look at what you spend your money on, and I think you’ll conclude that much of it is inessential.

As we head toward the holiday season, spend some time taking a close look at what you spend on yourself and your family, and consider matching it for those in need.  It might do two things: raise your awareness for just how blessed you are, and offer some assistance to make the world a better place. 

When Aspirations Fall Short

I’ve never met author Hannah Goodman, but I’m fortunate for having made a long-distance connection with her back in 2011 that led to the publication of two of my short stories.  Earlier this year, Ms. Goodman announced that the young adult periodical she founded, Sucker Literary Magazine, was on hiatus, which was a bummer, but more of a concern was the reason for the hiatus, which Hannah has bravely blogged about at www.writerwomyn.com.  For the past year or so she’s shared her journey with depression, anxiety and overcoming feelings of low self-worth in the midst of trying to find a publishing deal for her YA fiction.

In her most recent entry, she describes how the nurturing environment she experienced while obtaining her MFA took a sharp turn upon graduation, when she began to encounter "a serious problem with envy and comparing." Social media played a significant role in her struggles as she immersed herself in Facebook and Twitter to help bolster her career, and over time, as she sunk into a hole of constantly comparing herself to others' achievements, her self-esteem took a big hit.

Hannah had gone “all-in.”  She’d made huge sacrifices to obtaining her dream, but a few years after graduation she was in a therapist’s office, concluding that she was “a complete and utter failure and sham of a writer.”  Her perceived failures as a writer were projected on her roles in life, most notably those of wife and mother.  Fortunately, she is in much better place today. 

Hannah certainly isn't the only one to be adversely affected by social media. Several studies have shown a link between Facebook use and depressive symptoms, and as rough as social media can be for any of us, I think it can be especially cruel to the aspiring artist who’s sacrificed so much to follow a dream.   

Of course, following one’s dream doesn’t mean that you’ll earn a living at it, but society sometimes pushes us into thinking that we will.  I wrote about this last year after watching the marvelous film Twenty Feet from Stardom, in which the amazing Mary Clayton laments her failed attempts to achieve her own stardom.  In this blog I asked the question, “Are we entitled to earn a living doing what we love?”  I argued no.  It reminds me of a story a friend of mine told me about his son who decided to pursue jazz guitar performance a number of years ago.  During his first jazz ensemble rehearsal the instructor said, “All of you who are here to make a living playing music need to leave right now.  Those of you who can’t fathom living without playing jazz can stay.”

This is tough advice, but it’s good advice.  I don’t know if Ms. Goodman received a similar message while pursuing her MFA, and I don’t know if she would have stayed if she had, but she is now taking a break from pursuing a book deal (but not a break from writing) and is studying to become a licensed therapist.

We do what we love because we love to do it.  If we can make a living at it, even better, but we should never stop doing what we love.  Hannah certainly hasn’t.  She’s continues to write, and goodness, if there’s ever any doubt about whether she’s capable, read her marvelous entry, “We Need to Talk.”  It's amazing.

Um...now I’m making an envious comparison.  I better get off-line and start writing!

Taking the Plunge

It turns out that good things can happen as soon as you commit to them happening.

After dilly dallying for the past several months, on Sunday I began to work in earnest on my next album, a forthcoming effort to be entitled The Palisades. For me I always have to overcome a bit of reluctance to start one of these things, as I know that saying yes to recording an album means saying no to a host of other things that interest me, and I know it’ll take the better part of the next nine months or so to complete the project.

There’s also the fact that of the eleven proposed tracks for the album, only four have been written in their entirety.  Most require another verse or two or a bridge or a better chorus, so the songs I’ve committed to recording might ultimately fall by the wayside in a few months. But for now I’ve chosen eleven out of approximately twenty-five (largely uncompleted) compositions that will provide an overarching theme: mainly that of relationships, something I’ve largely avoided in most of my past efforts.

What’s cool is that once you truly delve into completing something, good things happen.  On Day One of my pursuit, I noodled around on the keyboard downstairs on a track called “Why Can’t You Be More Like They Are” – a song I started well over a decade ago – and determined that it needed an interesting intro.  After about a half an hour I came up with a solid chord progression that will serve quite nicely, and lo and behold, after playing it several times I decided it would also do well as a bridge to the song.  Sure enough, about ten minutes later I had a brand new bridge for a song that heretofore had none.  I’ll have to let it percolate for a few weeks before I determine if the new material makes the cut, but if asked today I’d put money on it staying.

Which only goes to show that @@once you set your mind to DO something, you do in fact begin to DO it.@@

There’s a pile of paper on my ping-pong table that includes countless ideas for a novel I’d like to begin writing, but lately the prospect of actually sifting through the material and beginning to write has been such daunting one that I’ve pursued almost anything else I can think of: vacuuming, dusting, walking the dog, cleaning out the litter box – you name it.  All are preferable to delving into the creative work that needs to be done.

Which explains why I’m recording a new CD.  It’s basically a way to avoid writing the book!  But hey, at least I’ll end up with something more fulfilling than a temporarily clean house.  Once the CD is complete, I will – I WILL – tackle the novel.  And I’ve no doubt that once I commit to doing so, it’ll all fall into place in a more effortless way than I might now imagine.

After I complete the book, I might even commit to painting the family room. Even writing a book seems preferable to that.