What's Lost with a Power Outage?

Memorial Day 2023

Last Monday was Memorial Day, and I woke early that holiday morning, a bit after 5 am, and rose with a spring in my step to start the coffee and put away the dried clean dishes. Part of my daily ritual is to give a quick review to whatever blog entry posted at its scheduled time overnight; I regularly catch typos or mistakes on that fresh read once it's officially published. It can be a bit disconcerting to me, though, finding myself thrown off by its description of what was going on several days before, especially when the real-time present moment feels quite different. By the time this entry posts, for instance, it will be five days after the events it describes, in the wee early hours of the first Friday of June...such is the trade-off when I work up a backlog of blog entries.

Winston-Salem had been captive all weekend to an odd weather pattern, where we seemed stuck in the middle of a stream of unending precipitation swirling in a narrow band, counterclockwise across the region, from southeast to northwest.

Most of it was a misty Seattle-style drear, mixed with soaking showers; I have previously noted that my Tempest Weather Station is lousy at recording light rain but it still tallied over one-and-a-third inches of rain that Sunday. Social media showed me other areas of the state enjoying sunny skies. Here, it kept us sequestered and low-key.

But my hopes for maintaining daily exercise ran up against the dread of undertaking a standard but soaking downtown walk last Sunday evening, and I channeled my frustration at the weather into a brisk repetitive route throughout the spacious downstairs, blasting upbeat music on the coordinated Sonos units, jogging for much of it...and after 38 minutes I had tallied 3.1 miles according to my Apple Watch—which also congratulated me for completing my “first 5K!” Now that’s just hilarious.

When pressed, I’ll dig deep enough to mumble a restrained appreciation for the rain, while more fully disclosing that I do not take any pleasure in it: not a fan, hate having to go out into it, and definitely must battle its deleterious impact on my mind and mood.

The weather and being stuck inside might have also aggravated the normally even-keeled Sumner. Back during Christmas, dear friend Amy gave him a stuffed reindeer that he has absolutely loved.

We called it his “baby,” and his dash up the stairs to the 3rd floor each morning was persistently energized by getting back to it to nuzzle and lightly gnaw on, but surprisingly gently! That it held up for almost 6 months seems a miracle.

Its Sunday demise, at long last, has been attributed to canine cabin fever.

The Power Outage

Beginning right around 2:30 pm, we were hit with a power outage, and Memorial Day’s plans were scuttled by its 11-hour duration. Some major equipment damage was involved, traced all the way down to the Washington Park substation, and it left a narrow slice of the city (much of the Holly Avenue and Old Salem Neighborhoods) in the dark, including street lights. My plans for dinner were understandably scrapped and chips and peanuts and bananas stood in for sustenance.

Stuck in that holding pattern, not knowing what else to do when captive to those uncertainties, I started out on my downtown daily walk while the house was basically on hold that day, but I clocked barely a mile before the misty drear resumed its merciless blanketing of the city. Once I was back at the house, I changed into shorts and, with AirPods to rev me and the round-course route of the roomy downstairs to follow, I did another 5K (or so my watch reports!) for a 3.17-mile total and with plenty of sweat dripping down my forehead and back.

When power was restored at 1:22 am, I had to get up, of course, and make sure what needed to be turned off or on was addressed. And to restart the dryer, which had barely begun its chore earlier in the day. And to see what the reading was on the kitchen refrigerator: 20°F in the freezer, but 56°F in the main compartment. Tuesday was clean-out and throwing away all the compromised chilled foodstuffs, and an unhappy and expensive trek to the market and, on Wednesday, to Costco.

While it is inconvenient and costly, let’s not lose perspective. It was a rainy grey day and the house remained comfortable. There is no vital medical equipment requiring a constant supply of electricity. It is my start-of-summer work break so there was no place I had to be. In past years, this outage would have crushed a major much-loved event: Thanksgiving on the Half-Year...but those larger gatherings have not yet made a post-pandemic return yet.

And even more so, it is significant that this was simple equipment failure and not a human tragedy. It got me thinking about a previous power outage, back on 16 September 2020, when the sudden stillness of a house that's just lost power brought on an early awakening. In those moments, it is so easy to be annoyed or frustrated: what about my coffee? will the stuff in the fridge survive? there's no internet!

But this outage was a result of a terrible tragedy: a southbound motorist on Broad Street behind the house experienced a "sudden medical emergency," busted through a telephone pole, and slammed into a parked car. The vehicle burst into flames; he did not survive.

We were without power for a few hours, so very tiny when placed beside one family's immeasurable loss.