A Little Thing Close In
The power went out this Saturday morning, not an uncommon occurrence in our town during winter storms, but uncommon enough on a sunny fall morning.
Loss of electricity for any length of time can be traumatic in a small town where fresh water comes from private wells. No electricity, no water. No drinking. No showers. Each toilet is good for precisely two flushes once the clock on the microwave oven begins flashing.
Right behind the water crisis, of course, is the FIOS and cable crisis, the wireless and web crisis, and the TV and microwave crisis. Followed, of course, by the can’t-see-at-night crisis.
I’m reminding you of things you already know because, as I went for my run that morning, I discovered two utility trucks and a policeman directing traffic around a snapped utility pole. Someone, somehow, on a sunny, dry morning--on a road marked at 35 miles per hour--managed to smack into the pole and turn the attached electronics and cables into a mid-air rat’s nest.
Utility poles are a 19th-century technology, designed originally to carry telegraph lines. The average pole is made of Yellow Southern Pine and stands about 34 feet above the ground. Whack them with one of our modern vehicles and they break like a toothpick.
Said more poetically, when the 20th century runs into the 19th century, the 21st century suffers.
A Little Thing Far Out
Last week NASA reported that the Hubble Space telescope was sending back stunning images of exploding stars, stellar nurseries and colliding galaxies, thanks to its repair and refurbishment by astronauts in a series of tense spacewalks earlier this year. One image, of Planetary Nebula NGC 6302, shows what our universe will look like four billion years from now.
You may remember that work on the Hubble was almost scuttled when astronauts had a protracted struggle with a stuck bolt. It was the kind of thing that you or I might work on for an hour on a Saturday, give up, and go watch a football game.
In this case, one little bolt stood in the way of activating the Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3, which has now shown us what we might look like in 4 billion years.
In and Far
As I was running by the utility trucks and the police car, trying to think how this could possibly have happened, I pictured the guy passing me on the highway earlier this week, going about 95 miles per hour—texting.
And the woman who didn’t see the green light (and got a chorus of honks) because she was applying her make-up in the rear view mirror.
And then there was the person watching a movie on a laptop as she rolled through the tolls on the Maine Turnpike.
In a world of endless incoming and frantic multitasking, it's good to remember the upright telephone poles and freed bolts that keep our fragile world from falling apart.
