Gloria Ferris

This weekend was the annual Shearer Family Christmas get- together and as usual, Tim and I ventured to the country to attend. On our way home after a day of reminiscing, catching up on the year’s events, and partaking of the usual scrumptious treats, Tim asked me if there was anything I missed about home. I thought about it for a few minutes and realized that we were not leaving my home but driving towards it. Cleveland is my home and Shreve is where I came from, where I started, but my roots are now in Cleveland.

But there is something I miss about the country—the stars. I miss looking up at a summer’s sky and identifying the Milky Way. I don’t think that I have ever seen the Milky Way in Cleveland. And, on a crisp winter’s night when you look up and see millions of stars, it is easy to dream. I remember my father standing on a hillside and showing me how to locate the North Star and how he said as long as I knew where to find the North Star, I would never be lost.

At about this point in the conversation, we entered the portion of I-71 around Strongsville where all you can see for miles is row upon row of lights that illuminate the night sky as if it were day. The conversation quickly shifted from being a kid in the country dreaming to the here and now and questioning who pays for these lights, are the rates paid the same that an average consumer pays, are all these lights necessary in a world where spiraling out-of-control energy costs are consuming ever more precious dollars, and do the benefits outweigh the costs of these lights? Where do I find the answers to these questions? Do our state dollars pay for these lights, or is it our local dollars, because ultimately it is the consumer who pays for these lights? Should we question the way our government spends the dollars we pay them?

I remember in the 1970s there was a real push for conservation of natural resources, but with the excess of lighting fixtures along interstates these days, it does not appear to the naked eye that those conservation rules stuck. Shouldn’t we be looking at ways to cut down our dependency on the utility companies and look for alternative ways to illuminate our cities, or should we be discussing the need for illuminating the interstate road system? And my last question is simply this: If government receives a discounted rate for electricity, does this mean that the everyday consumer picks up the tab in the rates

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 20th, 2005 at 3:35 pm and is filed under growing an economy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.