One month to the winter solstice
The winter solstice is in one month. During the summer if I need to charge, I can go to the roof any time from around 8am to 8pm, weather permitting. This time of year, the sun only rises high enough to charge from about 9am to maybe 3pm. It’s cold. It’s windier so I can’t leave the panels alone because if the wind catches them, they blow like a sail.
As usual, what I’m writing about here is love, not solar panels, the environment, the earth, or global warming, except that helping them comes as a side effect. I’m not climbing to the roof and standing in the cold for my health, for some abstract “environment,” or to “save the planet.” I may be solving the problems environmentalists talk about more than they are, to the extend they aren’t exacerbating them, but I’m not an environmentalist. I’m working on restoring liberty, freedom, equality, and democracy, as my upcoming book will explain.
I find that clarification increasingly necessary. I cringe when someone says about what I do, “Good for you” or “I’m glad you found something that works for you.” Lincoln didn’t do what he did for himself. He did it to restore liberty, freedom, equality, and democracy, or at least the best he could. I don’t value the golden rule more than anyone else. I haven’t met anyone who values the environment less than I do.
Back to the solstice, it’s cold, dark, and windy. Plus this fall has been a lot cloudier than last fall, which I think was a drought. I’m learning more about astronomy than I did in graduate school, at least practical astronomy as it affects my life.
Still the next month is the hardest of the year. As the days have shortened, I’ve waited to write this post since I have to think about daylight, the path of the sun behind the buildings that block it, clouds, and the weather. It will be two months until the days are back to this long again, so maybe the month following the solstice will be harder, since it will be colder. I wonder if we’ll have enough sunny days for me to cook. I’ve been eating raw for the past few weeks since I can’t charge enough to power the pressure cooker.
I’m not complaining, just sharing what life is like when your building and city don’t allow installing a solar panel but you don’t just give up. There were a bunch of articles about Europeans using so-called balcony solar. Welcome to the club. I’ve been doing it for years, only I think it’s more challenging here.
I should also clarify I’m not promoting what I do as a long-term solution. I don’t like doing it this way either. I’m blazing a trail, like Christopher Columbus (except everyone else is causing suffering and I’m preventing it), Lewis and Clark, or the Wright brothers. Confusing my way of doing things with a long-term solution is like confusing the Wright brothers’ plane with a 747. Their plane just showed it was possible. Once people know it’s possible, they can innovate and iterate.
Or like Dick Fosbury or Roger Bannister.
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