Here Comes The Sun

 Taking a break from the continued assertive mess that erupts daily in Washington, I turn to the events at my school. 

Where I work. 

Last spring it was announced that we would be getting solar panels installed on our playground. A contingent of men in orange vests descended up on our yard to measure things and spray paint a rainbow array of dots at various points where we could only assume things would be built, buried or blocked. Then, shortly after our school year ended, a chain link fence was installed, marking the territory that would be given up for the construction. 

Summer school opened, and for another month, the fence and the spray painted dots were the only sign of progress on our project. 

When I say "our project," I am assuming some tacit connection to the work that would be done on behalf of the place I have called home for three decades. 

When the first day of school rolled around, so did the tractor trailer trucks. They carried heavy equipment and materials needed to create a large free-standing solar array on one end of the playground. The far end. This meant that with some frequency, kids who were outside playing tag or soccer or just wandering around during recess were asked to make a path for the big men and their big trucks. With no real consideration for the bell schedule and the daily goings-on at our school. 

I reminded myself of the pain visited by having contractors swarming around one's home or business. They were on their timeline. Not ours. Anything we could do to expedite the process was in our best interest. 

"Our best interest" is an interesting stretch of a term. I mean the school which is getting solar panels. I mean the school district who paid for the project to be done. I mean the contractors who were dispatched to see that it all came together in such a way as to maximize the need for all those spray painted dots. And as a taxpayer, who was engaged at some distant level for the financing of all this action.

Then the action stopped. One of my colleagues spoke with one of the iron workers who let slip that the wrong size of supports had been delivered, and they had to be taken down. Two weeks passed without any action or disruption from behind the fence. Then suddenly this past week, the forklifts and drills and hammers were back. Rising like the Martian machines from HG Wells' novel, a great silver construction appeared. In a day, the structure that would eventually hold all that potential solar energy was a reality. 

Students marveled. Some of them even bothered to ask what was going on. "We're getting solar panels," I told them.

"Cool," replied one. 

Cool indeed.