Electrical addiction requires treatment
by Mary Barrera, SE News Editor

   As darkness fell on the island of Manhattan, something sparkled in the night sky that had not been seen for decades ... stars.
   The event that caused the stars to appear was not a cosmic incident; it was an ethereal one. The Niagara Mohawk Power Grid overloaded, leaving an entire region without power.
   Thousands of commuters were stranded by the blackout that spanned hundreds of miles in the Northeastern United States. Media coverage showed huge crowds in Times Square, and Grand Central Station saw an assemblage of people that made the famous landmark worthy of its name.
   Society was briefly plunged from an age of instant gratification and a throw-away society to a pre-electric America, 200 years gone by.
   Many people do not carry cash. Instead, they use credit and debit cards. Without the option of withdrawing money instantaneously from their checking accounts, how were they supposed to eat?
   Huge numbers of people walked several hours to get to their homes, yet many were forced to stay on the island overnight.
   Businessmen in their $3,000 suits slept on the streets. Women who usually would not be caught in the city after dark were forced to share park benches with the riffraff whom they always tried to avoid.
   How did they ever get through the night without their silk sheets and Waterpiks?
   It was not that long ago when people worked where they lived. Merchants lived upstairs from their shops. Teachers lived down the street from their schools. Firemen lived within hearing distance of the firehouse.
   It was not that long ago that electricity did not run to homes. Iceboxes were cooled by a block of ice. If a family wanted to eat meat, someone had to kill a chicken, and vegetables were grown in the yard. The only appliance was a wood-burning stove that also served as a heater in the winter.
   The problem in the Northeast was not so much that the power went out, as it seemed to be on the surface. The problem was that we, as a spoiled society, were inconvenienced by the blackout. We have grown too dependent on things that make our lives easy.
  I'm not saying we should stop using electricity. But, we should certainly know how to function without it. We are, after all, an industrious country.
   Technological advances will ensure these power outages don't happen too often in the future.
   It's just electricity.
   Human beings accomplished great things before Benjamin Franklin, in a storm, decided to fly a kite.