back to the good old days

I write this by candlelight, not a flicker of electric glow in sight as the village of Kealakekua has been unexplainably plunged into darkness. It’s been a long time since a blackout that wasn’t caused by torrential rains or a devastating earthquake.

Could this be a harbinger of a new normality to come, as we run out of fossil fuels? Days ending with sunset; TV culture dead before the idiots of The Hills realize they’re no longer being taped; people forced to depend on each other, to commune in ways not seen since the pre-modern era? To spend the evenings (provided one’s store of homemade candles is plentiful enough) whittling tree stumps into crude toys for a child’s birthday, or ruining one’s eyes darning Bounty towels for re-use? Ooh, or crafting peanut and walnut shells into little dolls? I used to love doing that!

Thank god my computer battery is charged.

Gall durn. I just tried to download a plaintive-yet-uplifting Irish ballad to accompany my piety, but realized our wireless router is asleep in the blackout.

There sure are a lot of cars driving around. I bet people (young people) went out for drives because they couldn’t bear the lack of stimuli, and at least could listen to the radio or charge their i-pods in the car.

Whoa! I’ve been on for 15 minutes and my battery is already down by half. This does not bode well for my future as a Hawaii Outpost of the Pioneer Days blogger.

Now, let us pray that I someday am able to retrieve this, as I must turn off the computer to preserve precious battery life.

On to a week’s backlog of candlelit crosswords. Pray the stubs of wedding candles that I so presciently hoarded are not the cause of my early (but how romantic!) demise.