It will go down in family history as the “Night of the Flaming Toothbrush.”
We were into the second night of the power outage on our block (truly just our block and those on either side of us — up the street, everybody had electricity). We had distributed candles throughout the house, so that we wouldn’t have to dig up a flashlight anytime we left the warm circle of the living room woodstove. Grandma was getting ready for a night in my 8-year-old’s bed, as her knees don’t allow her to get on and off our mattress and box spring on the floor, and she certainly can’t make it up the ladder to my 12-year-old’s loft bed. I was ready to sleep on the fold out in the living room so I could stoke the fire in the night. The kids were camped on the floor, to help me wake up and do my job.
I was talking to Grandpa, who was settling down in the recliner, as nerve issues make sleeping flat in a bed difficult. Suddenly, a bright light in the bathroom caught my eye. Something was flaring in there. I ran in just in time to see the votive candle forming a column of flame, involved in a chemical reaction with the plastic toothbrush hanging well above it.
Having heard me whooping and hollering that “the toothbrush is on fire!” my daughter wryly greeted me back in the living room afterwards with, “Gee, Mom, you scared me! I thought a toothbrush was on fire or something.” I needed that laugh. Then I declared that bathroom off limits for the night, on the grounds that who-knows-what toxins lurk in melting toothbrush fumes.
It was the first, and the worst, of several little candle incidents over the next few days, as we struggled to make sure splattered wax and wayward flames didn’t get the upper hand in our quest for safe light. We weren’t alone in discovering that there’s more to keeping multiple candles going safely for hours at a time than there is to burning a couple for mood lighting. I mentioned our “learning curve” on this to a friend who was also without power, and she replied, “Yes, my son caught his hair on fire leaning over a candle!”
The flaming toothbrush haunts me because of the questions it raises about learning curves. I think of myself as a pretty careful person, but I was the one who had put the votive there, believing it had plenty of clearance. Of course, the incident pales in comparison to those tragic instances in which people died from the fumes of generators or hibachis that they brought indoors. But it got me thinking about just what it might take to prepare the majority of the populace for large scale power loss.
Folks who have grown up in or consciously chosen to live in rugged areas where winter power outages are common would have had a good laugh at my family’s sometimes pathetic antics this week. But I suspect that, in our level of readiness for being knocked back into the pre-electric era, our household is representative of many.
We were probably better off than most, really. We had an ample supply of candles, a battery powered LED lantern, and two kerosene lamps. Our stove and water heater are gas-powered, so we were able to cook and shower. We have plenty of well-seasoned wood, and our fuel efficient woodstove was a marvel to Grandma, who kept remarking that “you could put a stick of wood in there when the fire had almost burned out, and the log would flame right up.”
Even with six of us trying to get along confined mostly to two small rooms, we enjoyed a level of luxury that would be the envy of those in less developed parts of the world.
These amenities — and the fact that just down the street, generous friends with power invited us into their homes for a hot meal and good conversation — kept us from getting an in-depth initiation into what things could be like if climate change and energy instability bring about widespread power shortages.
Strikingly, even with our advantages, we found ourselves exhausted at the end of the five days. We’ve built so many aspects of our lives around the assumption that with the flip of a switch or turn of the handle, the light comes on, the heat comes on, the water comes on. Our habit patterns are strong, and how we react to having them disrupted can make a big difference in how well we are able to cope and adapt.
I observed this among the various members of the family. Some were able to view it as an interesting adventure. Others, who had physical challenges or temperamental tendencies toward needing greater control over their environment, experienced much more difficulty. Their level of emotional suffering only increased as the days went by. I’d wager that this spectrum is common to the American population, with perhaps more of us than not falling at the emotional suffering end when deprived of our routines.
My question is, how will we all fare if large numbers of us are in a similar predicament simultaneously? And, since it looks like we need to change our ways drastically to reduce the potential impact of global warming, how do we use this recent storm experience to promote cultural shifts toward even a moderate level of community readiness for what Richard Heinberg calls “powerdown,” and others in the energy conversation call “energy descent”?
The British journalist George Monbiot lays out a number of scenarios for change in his book, Heat: How to Stop the Planet from Burning, addressing larger structural issues involved in altering our energy consumption patterns. What becomes clear from his thorough and painstaking analysis is that there is no single fix: across the board changes are necessary. They’re going to be difficult to initiate. Without clear and present danger forcing the changes, many people will be unwilling to make them. This reluctance to give up a known convenience in order to stave off a problem we perceive as still distant is, perhaps, embedded in human nature. Yet, if we wait for the crisis itself to convince us, the work will be so much harder.
This is what makes me feel both inspired and depressed by the work of practical visionaries who, even now, are creating the structures for community sustainability in small pockets around the country. Inspired, because they are forging ahead and have concrete results to show for their efforts. Depressed, because I fear their methods will find slow acceptance.
These far-sighted people may be Peak Oil discussion group members, eco-village and eco-hood residents, or politically or philosophically based collectives who are trying to hone their skills in simple living. For example, earlier this year, South End Press published the Tool Box for Sustainable City Living. Co-authors Scott Kellogg and Stacy Pettigrew came to Albany from their project in Texas, The Rhizome Collective, where they had been restoring a brownfield for community use.
When Scott gave a presentation at the Albany Social Justice Center a couple of years ago, I was impressed by the range of sustainable methods he had brought together in one place. He is at pains to distinguish his view of “radical sustainability” from “green consumerism.” His focus is on measures that empower everyday people from all income levels, rather than on simply redirecting purchases that ultimately best serve mainly corporate interests. I was eager to pick up a copy when the book came out.
Called a “Do-It-Ourselves Guide,” the book provides instructions for a wide range of practices and projects. I was already familiar with aquaculture, rainwater collection, plant based graywater filtration, and urban chicken and beekeeping. I had already tried, with less than stellar success, solar oven construction, home mushroom cultivation, backyard ducks, and worm composting. But the book goes even further, into new terrain for me, such as insect cultivation (how to make a “maggotry”!) for chicken and fish feed, and how to make your own composting toilets, methane digesters, windmills, parabolic solar cookers, and rocket stoves.
Reading it, I felt awed by the skill and guts these folks displayed in extending their quest for a small footprint into every conceivable area of their lives. Even for the possessor of tools and engineering/construction skills, the process of living this way requires grit, a tolerance for a degree of “untidiness,” that many modern Americans would wish to avoid. Just keeping my wood rack filled and the area around my woodstove swept is a chore many wouldn’t want to bother with.
I fear that many, many of us lack the basic manual labor skills to implement these measures, and more of us lack the motivation. Yet, if even a portion of these measures become necessary, as they currently are in many non-industrialized countries, it sure would help if there were a ready population of those with know-how. If not, things are not going to be pretty. We saw that in the aftermath of Katrina, when people with manual skills suddenly enjoyed a great elevation in prestige. They were the only ones who knew how to get anything done.
I was expressing these fears to a friend who had been intrigued by the news article on Kellogg and Pettigrew’s work. She suggested that people need to just try one piece at a time, to develop their capacities little by little. In the absence of any large scale movement, this is probably what will have to happen. There definitely are more and more resources — lectures, books, workshops, and websites — available for those who wish to learn more.
But I also know from experience that it is difficult to do this by yourself. Perhaps the dire economic news and the recent power outage will be the motivation people need to start getting together with friends and neighbors, to take on the learning curve together. Small, scattered groups already hold community skill shares, where members teach each other things like home repair, herbal lore, sewing, and canning. Some meet regularly for meal shares, others have home improvement “co-ops”, where they work on projects together in each other’s homes. Some compile lists of tools and equipment they are willing to share with others in their area.
These efforts take organization, and above all, time — something many of us don’t think we have. However, if we are to avoid the flaming toothbrushes of the future, we need to seek each other out and begin to build our toolboxes together.
About the author: Ruth Ann Smalley, Ph.D., is an educator and a certified Eden Energy medicine practitioner with a practice in Albany. She’s also an Honest Weight Food Co-op member worker, and writes a monthly column for the co-op’s newsletter.
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