It Was a Dark and Stormy Night--Really

I know what you're thinking: it is often both dark and stormy at night, and you are quite correct. In fact, this is especially true in the winter, but last night I got an extra dose of dark: by the time the sun set, I'd been without power for several hours, and in my neighborhood, dark is dark.

We have no streetlights, and when there's a blanket of clouds over everything and the power goes out, it's the kind of blackness in which you really cannot see your hand in front of your face.

I write this on my backup PDA using a portable keyboard. I am conserving all of my laptop power as well as the power on my primary PDA (which is also my cell phone) for fear this loss of power will last a few days.

It's now almost nine o'clock, so the outage is nearing hour eighteen.

Other than it being cold in the house--it's dropped to 52 degrees--the outage has been an adventure.

I have plenty of candles, a gas stove, and a gas water heater, so I can have hot food and beverages, and later today, I can even take a hot shower. (Watch the hair, though, no blow dryer!)

I spent several hours last night reading and writing by candle light, and unless this outage continues through the weekend and a significant snowstorm, I'll count this as an enjoyable respite from modern life.

During those thrilling days of yesteryear, when I was an undergraduate, I began to marvel at the means by which people who lived in the periods before me had "managed." Because I was an English major, much of my wonder came from the hours I spent reading novels and writing papers about them: the time it took to do those things often took me into the wee hours of the morning, and things like electricity and technology got me though.

I often thought about the writers whose works I held in my hands: writers who didn't have the luxury of electric typewriters and heaters and light switches.

It made me really appreciate the effort it took to put words on pages: working by hand and by candlelight without the luxury of the things I took for granted.

I have students who have never used a typewriter, so they have no concept of just how "easy" they have it with computers and the internet at their fingertips.

I was fortunate enough to move from hand-written essays to typed essays to word-processed essays, so not only did I learn how to draft and rewrite and edit, but also I appreciate the technology I have today in a manner most younger people probably do not.

I am extraordinarily thankful for the Internet, and the technology that makes my writing life easier, but I wouldn't trade having grown up in a time during which the following things were the "technological" standards:

• It took physical effort to change a television's channels.
• There were days of the week and times of the day gas and groceries and money from one's bank account could not be acquired.
• Learning something required talking to another human being or going to a library.
• Libraries cataloged their holdings on little cards arranged alphabetically and stored in drawers.
• It took ingenuity to communicate: in our family, that meant "give us two rings when you get home." (The long distance charge was circumvented, but the message was received loudly and clearly.)
• Typing was a rhythmic adventure that included tapping, dinging, and sliding sounds.

Of course, for the time being, I am enjoying the old-world feel of my day, and I am looking lovingly at several of my bookshelves really appreciating what writers before me managed to accomplish.