...When Nordstrom prompted my last entry, it was ninety degrees outside and, by comparison, walk-in freezer cold inside the store. Today in Lamps Plus, it was cool outside and cool inside.
“Are any of you cold?” I was not disingenuous in putting the question to the three people behind the counter. Being on approximately the same page as a friend who says seventy degrees is sweater weather, I was curious. I was also...wearing a T-shirt, a hoodie AND a flannel shirt...feeling a breeze.
Only one answered, “Not too bad. We move around a lot.”
...The breeze was coming from a couple dozen overhead fans, which were churning away meaninglessly in a quite empty store on a quite gray morning. People pretty much know how fans spin.
Here’s how we-read-that-I miss the forest for the trees. Because I was already focused on excess air conditioning...though at Lamps Plus, they said it was all fans, no A/C...I neglected until later to consider the HUNDREDS AND HUNDREDS of lights that were glowing festively and oh so wastefully.
Once I was struck by the obviousness of the opportunity for conservation, I stopped back in to take photos when I was passing the same store at the opposite end of the day. Lousy as the photos are, I think not one replicates another AND I didn’t get photos of all the merchandise. If only one of forty stores of only one lighting outlet is doing this much glowing in the dark AND the day, it is surely safe to suggest that industry-wide, it’s an Electricity Extravaganza.
We are at war. Think black-out curtains. Think rationing. Think long term. Think common good.
But it’s not fa-a-a-ir, someone will whine. Dimming the lights will put their products in a disadvantageous light, pardon the pun. Tough.
LIFE is not fair, that’s my consistent experience. Fall-out and collateral damage aren’t even-steven. If ALL lighting stores and departments are conscripted to dousing the light, the impact will be uniform, its significance mitigated by societal benefit. In an energy crisis, the argument that people and entities are free to use as much as they’re willing to pay for just doesn’t hold water...the Other limited resource.
People who need to buy a lamp will not NOT buy a lamp because all the lamps are not lit, so long as it can be demonstrated that the lamp of their choice WILL light. People who feel deprived or pressured about choice because all the lamps are not lit will get over it, particularly when reminded that it’s part of the War Effort.
Setting aside the morality of this particular war...which is a pretty unGodly thing to do...I’m pretty sure that no war has ever been or ever will be won without effort.
...That 16th photo is a random corner, ablaze in the 7-11 manner. For sheer wattage, setting Lamps Plus aside, Greater Los Angeles is a cheerful cheerful place. Greater Los Angeles is NOT a cheerful place. We ought not even to call it Greater Los Angeles anymore. We ought to call it Bigger Los Angeles.
Big City, Bright Lights is so fifteen minutes ago. Big City, Dim Lights. Big City...pale, consumption, green, environment...lemme think. Emerald City Lite. Howz THAT for a public works project? Turning off, toning down, and generally trimming commercial electricity use from an at-war slash safety-first-advertising-last perspective. It ought to go without saying but doesn’t that, from an advertising perspective, the largest and most recognizable chains require the least illumination for identification.
It ought to go without saying but doesn’t that significant savings should have a downward influence on prices.
All things being equal, lower prices is a good thing.
Yeah, I know all things are never equal.
excerpted from Bright & Cool...as American as Utility Bills @
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