Power and the Loss of It

We have had a series of days that feel unseasonably warm, but in fact, warmth is always in season down here in South Florida.  I realize that much of the rest of the nation would pay me good money if I could ship them some of this warmth, and I'd be delighted for a smidge of snow.  But that kind of trade is not within my power.

I woke up thinking about the power situation in Texas, where much of the state has no electricity, and some Texans are also without water.  I've been seeing lots of outrage on social media, and part of me thinks, how nice that we're not feeling outrage about the executive branch these days.

I'm not as outraged about power outages--Texas doesn't get this kind of weather except once in a generation, so why would a power company prepare for it?

Of course, the larger question comes as we get more and more weather that we can't anticipate--how do we prepare for that?

Yesterday brought news of the loss of a different kind of power:  Rush Limbaugh died.  In some ways, it wasn't a shock; for over a year now, we've known that the man has terminal lung cancer.  And yet it seemed like the end of an era.

In so many ways, it's the end of an era that's been dead for years, if not decades now.  Talk radio?  Do people even have old-fashioned radios anymore?  Talk radio paved the way for much of our influencer culture today:  social media and podcasts and more streaming services than one can keep track of.

An speaking of loss of power:  yesterday, I found out that one of our EMS instructors has tested positive for COVID-19.  In a way, that's not strange, as most of them have.  But this instructor has had both shots of the vaccine.

But let me end with a piece of good news:  a poem publication!  I saw a call for submissions and thought of poems that would fit--and "Flights of the Family" was published a few days ago.  Go here to this site to read it.