Powerless

Be on alert, they tell us, in case we have to shut down power to portions of the city.
Not a riot. Not an earthquake. Pacific Gas and Electric is cutting off electricity to avoid having high tension wires clanging together, throwing off sparks and starting wildfires. Like they did a year ago. Last year, hundreds of thousands of acres burned because of these kind of incidents. This year, not to be caught doing nothing, California's major provider of gas and electric is going to avoid that kind of mess (read: lawsuit). If there's no electricity, you can't blame electricity for the fires, now can you?
Meanwhile, the average consumer is sitting in their comfortable home, watching all this unfold on their big screen TV, with a load of laundry going in the basement, contemplating a trip to the refrigerator to see if there is any leftover birthday cake. What will, what can, they do?
As it turns out, not a lot. They can wait anxiously for an announcement that all is well and the current will not be disrupted. Or they could go out to the local mall and buy up a raft of flashlights, batteries, and coolers full of ice. Charge their cellular devices so that they will have contact with the powers that be if there is a break in the grid. The laundry might have to get hung out on the line. Reading books by candlelight? Sounds romantic.
And if you work at a school? Prepare for "Blackout Procedures." At this point it is important for me to explain the use of quotation marks is that last sentence. Those were the words the school district sent out, but after twenty-three years I can say that I have never been made privy to what precisely is meant by those words. We can keep the kids safe, and happily there will be daylight to watch them. We won't have phones or bells or computers or projectors to make even a shadow puppet. And yet, we have been told that we need to keep our students at school until dismissal. Unless you happen to be the high school up the hill which has cancelled its classes because they don't even want to deal with it. Those are the "Blackout Procedures" as I understand them.
Meanwhile, we all say a prayer for that last bit of ice cream that has been waiting patiently in the freezer for whatever occasion to be finished off. Which may be my own personal Blackout Procedure.