30 April 2011 Blessed 60 cycle hum!
Shabbat Shalom. Last night the candles were particularly beautiful. For part of the evening, they were the only light in the house. The small flames amplified by the color of the room shone with the warmth that defines a home. They always shine in that manner but we were more aware of the light last night.
I woke up at 0630 hearing 60-cycle hum quite clearly. This was, of course, impossible as the generator was still off for the overnight watch and there were no magically powered appliances humming away. Just to be sure that I hadn’t made a mistake in powering down last night or that the power elves had not been by while we slept, I went out to reset the main breakers on the service box. No numbers leaped out at me, thus no power from the grid. At 0730, I fired up the generator and read the paper by the sunlight coming through our front windows.
We had to go to Greeneville to pick up meds, a battery for the riding mower/generator duo. We left home about 1045, ran our errands, had lunch out, and returned about 1330. The power meter announced a visit by the electron elves. We spent an hour powering back up, setting clocks, redoing answering machine messages, and trying to reconnect the landline, cordless landline handsets, and the fax into the single phone jack in the house. Currently the hard-wired landline works, as it has all throughout this event. The cordless sets are re-charging their internal batteries and remain useless.
We’ll be able to cook indoors tonight.
At ca.1615 the cable TV hook-up, and with it, the internet was restored by another set of hard-working elves. We seem to be intact, and back mostly where we began.
I’ve made some repairs to the generator, installed the new tractor/mower battery, topped off gas tanks, taken down the tarp protecting the generator from rain and stored it.
For us, most of the disaster is over. Other than a few hasty meals, two nights without AC to screen pollen and aid sleeping, and the consumption of a lot of over-priced gasoline, we were hardly inconvenienced at all. Our neighborhood suffered a death; a nearby community lost 6 members. Many people in our counties are homeless, possession less, and have no idea what to do tomorrow or even tonight.
The response by public safety officials and workers was tremendous. So was and is the on going clean up and repair process that continues all around us. The work crews have been at it around the clock and they deserve high praise.
Fortunately, I’ve not heard of any looting taking place here as is reported in Alabama. I want to try to find local news archival files to see what has been taking place around us and what actually took place on 27 and 28 April in my corner of the world.
Dinner is planned. We’ll spend a comfortable night at home and reflect upon our good fortune. The appliances that we count upon for comfort, food, water, etc., are all behaving as designed, filling the air with the quiet background 60-cycle hum.
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