While I picture John Pod pacing the floors of your apartment on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, saying goo-goo to a toddler who refuses to sleep, he may picture me, trying to get my own brood to settle down now that they’re all in sleeping bags in front of the fireplace, then carrying a candle to my desk to type a note to the Korner before the battery on my laptop finally gives out. You’ve heard about the storms in Northern California this past weekend? They wiped out the power in our neighborhood. As of this evening, however, the power had been restored to every house on the street…except ours. “Seventeen hundred homes in your area lost power, Sir,” the rep for Pacific Gas and Electric told me over the telephone. “We’ve restored power to all but 25.” As if I was supposed to cheer.
The kids are shivering. My wife has gone to bed with a flashlight under the covers so she’ll be able to find her way to the playroom when the baby wakes up in the middle of the night, a certainty. And I’m only able to post this because my neighbor’s wireless signal–that would be one of the neighbors whose power came back on many hours ago– is strong enough to permit me my laptop to piggyback.
Woe is us, John Pod, woe is us.