Tag Archives: electricity

local news

Power keeps me on edge

So … the power blinked off for a few minutes today in our North Texas community. The outage appeared to be widespread.

Then it came back on for a couple of seconds, then it went dark again.

It stayed dark for, oh, about 15 more minutes. It’s back on at this moment.

Truth is, though, I am getting the heebie-jeebies over the status of our electrical system. It’s not supposed to be this squirrely. I mean, we live in the energy capital of the universe. We’re supposed to be the highest of the high-tech regions anywhere on Earth.

Memories of the Winter of 2021 are too fresh in our minds. The power went out for several days during the killer freeze this past February.

I get that we cannot control every single aspect of our lives, given our reliance on technology that, after all, is developed by fellow fallible human beings.

Still, this brief power failure makes me nervous as all get-out.

Oh, I should add that the weather today is spectacularly gorgeous.

I am going to hope for the best.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

local news

A word of thanks is due

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

A lot of us have been griping lately about the status of the power we use to heat our homes, shed light onto the dark and even light the flame in our fireplaces.

I saw the attached picture on my Facebook news feed this morning and I want to echo the thoughts that came with it.

We owe the men and women who have been toiling in frigid temperatures, in the snow, and the wind for the work they have done trying to keep our electricity flowing.

I am going to reserve my ill will for the folks in the boardrooms who make decisions about managing the electrical flow. A lot of them have messed up and North Texans — such as my wife, Toby the Puppy and me — have paid the price. We slept through two chilly nights in our Princeton home, owing mostly to the decisions to shut down power capacity while we were battling the effects of what has been called a “historic winter storm event.”

The folks who answer the call, though, are not to blame for what we have endured, any more than those — for example — who went to war in Vietnam and then returned home to frigid indifference from the American public.

I’ll take this moment to offer them a word of thanks, high praise and gratitude for exposing themselves to the elements so that we don’t have to suffer from Mother Nature’s wrath.

I’m proud of y’all.