Images streaming from mid-Atlantic states are pretty familiar to people in my “neck of the woods.” Drop a little snow, drop the degrees by about 70, and the images are virtually the same. Similar are the collective amounts of outages because we have yet to commit to innovating our systems. We were out of power for ten days here in October of 2011, and the community lit up with incredible communitarian efforts. I’m hearing stories of the neighbors coming together and the same sort of arguments about energy. At one point, virtually all of CT was out of power and Vermont turned into a land of mud. I sympathize and send my hopes for improvements and fixes.

Perhaps this and the coming storms will get us putting our heads together rather than banging them against brick walls.