Today’s post comes from Captain Billy of the Muskellunge.
Ahoy!
Me an me boys is mighty pleased t’ see that them scientists at NASA is finally startin’ t’ look at th’ planet Earth through pirate eyes! They has just released brand new detailed pictures of our world after dark, wi’ the sparlklin’ lights of th’ cities glowin’ fer all t’ see!
There’s lots of bright spots, an that gives us hope!
Dividin’ th’ light from th’ dark is th’ same method me an’ me boys uses t’ tell the th’ planet’s booty-rich zones from them what don’t have much booty at all. When we’s sailin’ down th’ coast, deliberatin’ about where t’ go scavengin’ next, we always heads t’ th’ light. Just like yer sposed to do in them dreams about dyin’.
An when we arrives at th’ next happy, well-lit place wi’ our daggers drawn, th’ people is always surprised on account of they didn’t notice us comin’ – they was blinded by their own glare. That there’s somethin’ t’ keep in mind on a planet-wide level.
Our Earth is mighty special-lookin’ from afar – quite attractive t’ interstellar swashbucklers.
I ain’t sayin’ there’s space pirates. But I ain’t sayin’ there ain’t. Th’ sort of person what goes into space used t’ be th’ unselfish, disciplined kind. But the standards has been lowered by quite a bit.
That’s all I wanted t’ say. The twinklin’ lights is pretty at night. But if you wants t’ keep th’ peace, best to draw yer blinds an’ sleep wi’ one eye open!
Yer seafarin’ pal,
Capt. Billy
I suppose the Captain has a point – hiding your light under a bushel is sometimes the most prudent thing to do.
Are you an electricity waster?
Trail Baboon 
Good morning. Waste electricity? I try to a void it. I just got up and turned off a light I wasn’t using after reading this blog. I feel guilty about putting up Christmas lights on the front of my house. I should at least get some LED Christmas lights that use less electricity. Maybe next year. I do have energy saving light bulbs in many parts of the house.
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I could tell that my dad was really himself and doing well last week when we brought him home from the nursing home and he immediately started pouncing on us for our wasteful ways with the electricity. “Why do you leave those lights on down there in the basement? You don’t need to put that bathroom fan on for so long. You’ll wear it out and then I’ll have to replace it” His attitude is sort of confusing, though, since he will get after us for wastfulness in one breath, and then chastise my husband in the next for not having enough lights on to read the paper.
He has always been a pretty frugal guy, and that hasn’t changed. He and my mom had a heated debate about the ears of field corn hestores in the garage. The others in the condo association fear that it will attract mice, and mom wants him to get rid of it so he won’t be tempted to drive out to the ponds south of town to feed the geese. Dad was furious that we wanted him to get rid of the corn. My mom suggested he get rid of it and then in the Spring, if he is feeling stronger, he couild buy some more.”I’m not paying 8 dollars a bushel for corn!” he stormed at us. A few hours later he decided to give the corn to the neighbor across the street.
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Good that your dad is feeling goog enough to be grousing a bit…
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It seems that the other baboons are conserving energy and not posting!
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That must be what they are doing, Renee. I think some of them will not be able to stick to this plan as the day goes on.
My father is another one who was very thrifty. He saved money by buying an older house and fixing it up. Then he designed and built a new home for our family doing almost all of the work himself with help from my brother and i. My brother and I spend part of one summer digging the foundation for the house by hand with a pick and shovels. He also showed us how to mix cement by hand that was used in the foundation. He did use a power saw, but it was one he was able to borrow from someone he knew.
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My Dad worked for Minnesota Power & Light for 35 years. He grilled ‘turn off the lights’ into us pretty good.
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Electricity is penny cheap from n s p to you
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Morning,
I’m the guy following you around turning off lights behind you.
Drives me crazy all the lights on around the college campus. Empty rooms full of light.
At home I’m 90% CFL and 5% LED.
Those weird orange LED bulbs from Phillips are really good. They give a nice ‘traditional’ light and they dim without flickering or buzzing. No, they’re not cheap, but they are good. Prices will come down.
And put on a sweater if you’re cold!
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All right, Ben! I will put on my sweater.
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Absolutely, put on some warm clothes and turn that thermostat down.
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I am a low thermostat person as well. Except when my mom is here.
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When I visit my 91 old friend, Eleanor, I dress the layered look, not to be fashionable but in order to be able to take as much clothing off as possible. Her thermostat must be set to 80º F.
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Same at my mom’s. I keep a t-shirt in her closet in case I’m not “layered” on any given day.
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Morning all. I’m sure I could do better, but I try not to waste. Teenager and I have a running battle about the basement lights. I want her to turn them off every single time she comes up the basement stairs. She says “I’m just going back down in a half an hour”. Maybe I should start charging her to help cover the bill!
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We try not to waste, period. Not just electricity, but water, gas, and other resources that are finite as well. We recycle or Freecycle anything that someone else might be able to use, anything to keep our excesses out of landfills. Talking about landfills, I saw this on Facebook this morning. Truly inspirational.
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That is amazing.
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Also, I’ve learned that you can play djembe rhythms on a water cooler jug, and make a taiko drum from a small tire and three layers of plastic tape. I’m sure that knowledge will be useful to someone, someday.
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Oh, what a wonderful example of true recycling!
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I’m surprised at how good the instruments sound and that fhey’re fairly well in tune with other instruments as well. Reminds me of “Stomp” and all the wonderful percussive rhythms using such a wide variety of interesting, but ordinary items. Absolutely remarkable!
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I can just remember the 70s conservation movement: “No jackrabbit starts!”, “Drive 55”, President Carter’s cardigans, solar panels on the White House roof. I would annoy my dad by turning off lights and turning down the heat; his attitude was that he shouldn’t have to wear a sweater inside his own house. Now I look at the electricity bill and wince (not only am I thinking about nuclear waste like when I was a kid, but now I have to pay the blasted thing myself!) and curse the friend who so kindly gave us her old digital box converter, enabling us to watch entirely too much TV. My roommate suffers from a touch of SAD and likes to have more light than I find strictly necessary. On the other hand, I switch out dead incandescent lightbulbs for compact flourescents and LEDs, have not replaced the dead microwave (did you know people used to reheat stuff in the oven and on the stovetop? Crazy, I know) and still turn lights off, so we’re not horribly profligate, I don’t think.
On a tangent, I’m a devoted reader of “The Archdruid Report”, a fantastic blog by John Michael Greer, Archdruid of North America and writer on peak oil and related issues. Quite a while back he posted a link (which I coincidentally rediscovered just yesterday) to a PDF scan of Master Conserver program handouts he’d collected in the late 70s-early 80s. They’re probably a bit dated, but some of the information has got to still be useful. Pass it on!:
Click to access masterconserver.pdf
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That’s a lot of information, CG. I will have to r4member to some of those things when we move to Minneapolis where I hope to make some improvements that will conserve energy.
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I would be the person who drives Ben crazy by leaving lights on if I’m going back in a bit. I also am guilty of leaving all lights on in the living room, dining room and kitchen (they’re all connected – it’s a small house), even if I’m only in one room. I hate sitting in a puddle of light and having it dark all around me. Think it’s my negative reaction to too much time in the dark backstages of theaters. I am pretty good about not having lights on upstairs when I am downstairs (with the exception of leaving the bathroom light on), but I am having a hard time switching to CFLs – I hate the color – they wash everything out and feel cold. Might have to try the orange-shifted LEDs that Ben speaks of, maybe then I will give up my nice cozy incandescents. Maybe.
Off today to appreciate institutional electricity at the Art Institute and then at Daughter’s school: field trip with the kiddies to see art and then I get to see them in the afternoon to learn ’em about Duke Ellington (well, Tchaikovsky, too I guess) – the musical selection is the Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy and includes the Duke Ellington Sugar Rum Cherry variation. As the Duke said, “If it sounds good, it is good.”
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Cool!
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What a fun day!
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I try not to waste electricity, but modern society makes it darn hard to succeed. All the electronic gizmos that take the place of good ol’ elbow grease (I give you our electric corkscew as an example). Also, the appliances with the “quick on” features:TVs, stereos, computers, phones, you name it.
But I’m proud that in my town, we have been consistently in the lowest 10% of energy users (gas + electric) in a measure of similar sized houses. So I walk the walk more or less.
Chris in Owatonna
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I’m a real mix – I’m like Anna, and like some light in that “dark at the top of the stairs”, so I use a string of white twinkle lights on the stairway, and in the bathroom (then you never really have to turn on the overhead) after dark. Less wattage, but it is on till bedtime whether we’re there or not.I’m not so good at Christmas – for the most part I don’t like the look of the LED Christmas lights.
I turn the computer WAY off at bedtime, so I don’t have those lights glowing all night. Wish I could find a way to easily turn them all off – I think of them as night lights … all over the house.
Husband and I just had an interesting “discussion” this week about a restaurant we landed at with our house guests – pretty upscale, spacious, marvelous food – that he considered very wasteful of energy. So much of what we do in this culture could be deemed wasteful when compared to other, poorer cultures.
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Living by myself has meant only one small load of laundry every 2-3 weeks, running the dishwasher once a month, and having but two lights on after dark. In this respect, I use very little electricity. My one indulgence is a small electric space heater which I keep only inches away from my body most waking hours since the thermostat is set at 60 degrees throughout the cold months. Given that this cottage is over one hundred years old, I’m sure it’s extremely leaky and, since I only use the upstairs for sleep, I can’t justify keeping the entire place comfortably warm.
Now the downside: my monthly budget bill for electricity is $119. The budget bill for natural gas is only $77, so the only conclusion I can draw from the large electric bill is that my little space heater is the culprit! In other words, saving money on gas is likely costing me double on electric.
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Yes, you’re probably right CB. Anything that heats takes a lot of electricity… most of those little heaters are 1500 watts.
Our house is all electric heat. We use ‘Dual Fuel’ from the electric coop meaning our water heater and heat are on a separate meter and we get that at a lower rate than the other electrical usage.
But when I was milking cows and running silage motors and the feed bunk, bulk tank, engine heaters, PLUS house heat, monthly electric bill could exceed $400 in winter months. Ew. I mean EWWW!
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I usually have all the lights in my living room on, but that’s because I’m usually working on something where I need to see. If I had an overhead light, I would only need the one, but since I don’t have one, I need 3 lights. I try to turn lights off when I leave a room, and my heat is kept at the minimum it can be and still be on. In this apartment, that’s about 64 degrees, which is too warm for me sometimes. My TV is on pretty much from when I get home to when I go to bed though. I live alone (except for my dog) and I don’t usually want silence. Too creepy. My radio/boom box/iPod base was stolen with everything else, so I don’t even have that anymore. I do play music on my computer when I’m doing dishes (or anything in the kitchen), but the sound is terrible. Oh well. Most of my lights are the expensive bulbs (I think CFL) so I’m not using much that way I guess. 🙂
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I’m at home alone a lot myself, Alanna. I also like to have music or the radio or the TV on for company. That’s bad luck having those things stollen. I hope you didn’t loose too many other things.
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Greetings! I do my best to turn off lights after everyone else who seems to forget, conserve water, recycle everything and not heat or cool the house excessively. My parents were raised in the Depression, and my father in particular, was very frugal and kept our house at 68 degrees or lower. The house I grew up in was not well-designed and the upstairs never really got the heat from the furnace. Six girls slept in 2 large bedrooms upstairs and it was COLD!! On the coldest days in winter it could get down to 55 or 60 upstairs and those hardwood floors were freezing. So you learned to be a bit sloppy so you could have clothes to step on when you got up. My parents and one (spoiled) brother had bedrooms downstairs where the temperature was reasonable. I still prefer a cool bedroom with lots of blankets and down comforters.
Unfortunately, Jim is just the opposite. The first time we slept over at his parents’ house in winter, it was actually 70 or 72 degrees inside! It was shocking to me. I felt stifled and overheated all night. Jim is always cold and now with diabetes it’s even worse. He hates being cold, but he also refuses to dress warmly in the house, which irritates me no end. Our biggest fights are over the thermostat! My husband and sons feel it’s their manly right to strut around the house in their boxers. But I usually try to keep the temp around 68 degrees, and turn it even lower when no one’s home. I’ve noticed almost all my siblings keep their houses rather cool as well.
I’ve always had a warm body temperature, so I don’t even need sweaters or suit coats at offices (which I find overheated usually). I only own a couple sweaters and I rarely wear them. The only time that changed was when I turned 50 and went through something resembling “menopause”. I had experienced some warm/hot flashes for a while before, but that winter I was always chilled and felt cold to the bone. Where before I could warm the bed easily for both of us, I had lost my “mojo” for warmth. It was bizarre and Jim’s sweet revenge, I guess. I’ve normalized now, but I have a little more tolerance for Jim’s constant feeling of coldness.
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I have several lights on timers, so that I don’t have to come home to a dark house, or go upstairs to a dark bedroom, or come downstairs in the morning to a dark first floor. I hate fumbling for light switches, so I buy energy efficient bulbs for the lamps on timers.
In the wintertime I also have an electric blanket on the bed, controlled by a timer, that heats up for an hour or so around the time I usually turn in.
Some of my energy usage would probably be considered wasteful by others, but I haven’t acquired a lot of electronic gear or anything, don’t watch TV much, and mostly my choices are considered carefully.. A manual corkscrew works just fine for me.
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Excellent.
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I am an energy abuser. I have the best intentions but I could cut my carbon footprint in half and still be disgusting . My buddy did a short lived comic strip about the USA GNP gross national pig and
How America at its most conserving effort still uses 100 times more than almost all other people on the planet. I have a business where I keep the heat at a level where the pipes don’t freeze with an electric heater to keep the people areas tolerable when occupied but at home I have a house of windows with a million light bulbs in the ceiling that would cost over 1000 dollars to fix and I have always suspicioned that if I got to install all the efficient stuff it would pay for itself over an x period of time and wondered why there is not a federal or state program to put everyone in the most energy efficient house possible with the agreement that you would pay for the cost of becoming efficient with the savings from doing it. I am thinking don Shelby and al gore should be my spokespeople.
I am accepting applications for positions in the news energy transforming partner. Kiss it
keep it simple says inconvenient truth.
Send applicants my wayand we will get to saving the world at our next gathering.
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