Electrical
Jun. 3rd, 2004 01:11 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
malsperanzaStuck at home today with a houseful of electricians and plumbers. We are having a Festival of Plaster Dust.
God, what a mess. But I am reminded of how much I love working at home. Curses upon the Republican Party (foul Dwimmerlaik) for killing all hope of a national-health program in my lifetime. If not for the lack of affordable health insurance for the self-employed in this benighted country, I would still be a freelance today. *shakes fist*
A damp, rainy spring day... nice to be home in my scruffy clothes, with a cup of coffee and the computer and the cats. Getting a fair amount of work done, too, except they keep turning off the electricity in order to rewire things. It is very exciting to think that in just a few days I will be able to plug in the vacuum cleaner without switching off all the lamps. My neighbors will be able to stop inquiring gently whether I expect to fry the building next time I use that electric fork.
As for the plumber, well, suffice to say that I hope to have more hot water in 2004 than in 2003.
And speaking of hot water, usually I love Fleet Week; the whole West Side is crawling with adorable young sailors in their dress whites. This year they look younger than ever, and I could not help thinking, as I watched them wander the streets with their cameras and their fresh faces and tidewater accents, Are they going to send you to the Persian Gulf? Will you be OK? Will someone, soon, teach you new ways to compromise your integrity, and mine? And if it happens, will you know what to do? They look so young.
Two boys from the USS Anzio (9600 tons, crew of 400) on the subway: drunk as lords, their piney-woods lilt thick with the joy of being on liberty in the big city and full of beer: Yes maam and No'm, and Sure would like to come back, New York is great. They reeled off the train at 50th St to rejoin their guided-missile cruiser, arm in arm, one black, one white. Yes, the Navy has changed in 20 years. The Jamaican nurse next to me said, "I hope they get home OK." She meant: Not rolled for their pocket change between Broadway and 12th Ave., but I thought: I hope so. I hope we all do.
At the cafe at the 79th St boat basin: a clutch of kids in white, boys and girls mostly Mexican, Jesus, Monica, Francisco, from the USS Iwo Jima, a 40,000 ton carrier that has, I was told, a crew of 1,100 plus nearly 2000 Marines (the ones in blue trousers and beige shirts, I think), and more than 70 assault aircraft. My friends from the last war were no older than this. One of them wrote once, concerning torture and interrogation: "That's just like they used to do with the Viet Cong: Tie a length of det-cord around one of their necks and turn their head into a fine red mist... see if the others start talking." "Did it work?" I asked. "Yes," he said. "They talked. But we still didn't learn much."
No, we didn't.
Sir Thomas Browne (the mad genius) coined the word "electricity" in 1646, from the Greek elektron, meaning amber (because amber, when rubbed, generates static electricity which attracts particles, and this was the phenomenon Browne was studying). Yet because his was a mind half in love with empirical observation and scientific analysis, and half-drunk on symbols and metaphors, Browne understood electricity to be more than a curious and interesting source of energy. For him it was a magical force, the invisible presence of the Ineffable made manifest.
A hundred years later, Ben Franklin (the mad genius), paused between publishing arcane weather predictions, fomenting revolution, and inventing the glass harmonica ("this is glass on air," the poet sings) to indulge his curiosity as to the nature of lightning. A man whose own inquisitive nature moved with the force of electrical shock; his response to power was to seize it: he invented one lightning rod, and signed another.
And a hundred years after that, give or take, Edison, one more curious genius, inquired into the physics of the electrical charge with a view to practical uses. Whence we have power and we have light.
We have power and we have light. Our lightning burns the night with its brilliance: The Earth itself, not the firmament, is fretted with our golden fire, is lit with our vaulting energy. From these lightning rods, sparks fly out.
How much petroleum, I wonder, does it take to fuel the engines of a 40,000-ton aircraft carrier? How much power and light?
Yes, it's time, and past time, to get this house rewired.
God, what a mess. But I am reminded of how much I love working at home. Curses upon the Republican Party (foul Dwimmerlaik) for killing all hope of a national-health program in my lifetime. If not for the lack of affordable health insurance for the self-employed in this benighted country, I would still be a freelance today. *shakes fist*
A damp, rainy spring day... nice to be home in my scruffy clothes, with a cup of coffee and the computer and the cats. Getting a fair amount of work done, too, except they keep turning off the electricity in order to rewire things. It is very exciting to think that in just a few days I will be able to plug in the vacuum cleaner without switching off all the lamps. My neighbors will be able to stop inquiring gently whether I expect to fry the building next time I use that electric fork.
As for the plumber, well, suffice to say that I hope to have more hot water in 2004 than in 2003.
And speaking of hot water, usually I love Fleet Week; the whole West Side is crawling with adorable young sailors in their dress whites. This year they look younger than ever, and I could not help thinking, as I watched them wander the streets with their cameras and their fresh faces and tidewater accents, Are they going to send you to the Persian Gulf? Will you be OK? Will someone, soon, teach you new ways to compromise your integrity, and mine? And if it happens, will you know what to do? They look so young.
Two boys from the USS Anzio (9600 tons, crew of 400) on the subway: drunk as lords, their piney-woods lilt thick with the joy of being on liberty in the big city and full of beer: Yes maam and No'm, and Sure would like to come back, New York is great. They reeled off the train at 50th St to rejoin their guided-missile cruiser, arm in arm, one black, one white. Yes, the Navy has changed in 20 years. The Jamaican nurse next to me said, "I hope they get home OK." She meant: Not rolled for their pocket change between Broadway and 12th Ave., but I thought: I hope so. I hope we all do.
At the cafe at the 79th St boat basin: a clutch of kids in white, boys and girls mostly Mexican, Jesus, Monica, Francisco, from the USS Iwo Jima, a 40,000 ton carrier that has, I was told, a crew of 1,100 plus nearly 2000 Marines (the ones in blue trousers and beige shirts, I think), and more than 70 assault aircraft. My friends from the last war were no older than this. One of them wrote once, concerning torture and interrogation: "That's just like they used to do with the Viet Cong: Tie a length of det-cord around one of their necks and turn their head into a fine red mist... see if the others start talking." "Did it work?" I asked. "Yes," he said. "They talked. But we still didn't learn much."
No, we didn't.
Sir Thomas Browne (the mad genius) coined the word "electricity" in 1646, from the Greek elektron, meaning amber (because amber, when rubbed, generates static electricity which attracts particles, and this was the phenomenon Browne was studying). Yet because his was a mind half in love with empirical observation and scientific analysis, and half-drunk on symbols and metaphors, Browne understood electricity to be more than a curious and interesting source of energy. For him it was a magical force, the invisible presence of the Ineffable made manifest.
A hundred years later, Ben Franklin (the mad genius), paused between publishing arcane weather predictions, fomenting revolution, and inventing the glass harmonica ("this is glass on air," the poet sings) to indulge his curiosity as to the nature of lightning. A man whose own inquisitive nature moved with the force of electrical shock; his response to power was to seize it: he invented one lightning rod, and signed another.
And a hundred years after that, give or take, Edison, one more curious genius, inquired into the physics of the electrical charge with a view to practical uses. Whence we have power and we have light.
We have power and we have light. Our lightning burns the night with its brilliance: The Earth itself, not the firmament, is fretted with our golden fire, is lit with our vaulting energy. From these lightning rods, sparks fly out.
How much petroleum, I wonder, does it take to fuel the engines of a 40,000-ton aircraft carrier? How much power and light?
Yes, it's time, and past time, to get this house rewired.
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no subject
Date: 2004-06-03 12:01 pm (UTC)It's like a metaphor for all that went before. How much of anything and everything, really, do we need to operate? At any level?
"Though, burnished bright, these metals still delight, whether from fires external or in alight." I don't remember which sentimental poet is responsible for that quotation but it felt somehow appropriate.
Browne, Frankling and Edison...three interesting personalities, from the records, and not necessarily three men who would have been interested in spending time with one another socially.
As always, your posts are enlightening, pun intended of course, and a very pleasurable distraction from work.