Page 575 - Demo

Aging Gracefully569had another non-profit as a possibility, and when I met with two of their representatives, they seemed very interested in taking on Ghost Barns as a project, but were sure their organization wouldn%u2019t be able to make a decision quickly. After more than a year, they also backed out. Without any other immediate publishing prospects, we decided to put about a quarter of the pages from both Ghost Barnsand Signs of the Times on the website as previews. They were well received by the people who viewed them, yet we held back enough so each title would appeal to book buyers in the future %u2014 if they were ever actually published. %u2022%u2022%u2022%u2022%u2022Ever since Lynn and I moved to rural Monroe County in 1984, we%u2019d been subject to occasional electrical outages more often than if we%u2019d lived in town %u2014 usually the result of trees or large branches falling during storms and knocking down overhead power lines. We considered it a small price to pay for living in a secluded wooded location. Fortunately, most of the outages were only minor inconveniences, lasting but a few hours. We coped easily with flashlights, a battery-powered radio, and eating a meal or two in Bloomington. At one point, we bought a rechargeable 110-volt back-up battery that had enough capacity to use in the evenings for a reading lamp, or for our television and DVD player. But in recent years, the frequency of outages, and their duration, had been increasing, likely due to climate change.For example, in June of 2023 our electricity went out and stayed out for more than four days, 104 hours in total. According to the National Weather Service, the long line of storms that caused our outage was technically classified as a derecho. Like most people, we%u2019d never heard of a derecho, but we learned it was a Spanish word, and was defined as a widespread, severe windstorm over land with straight-line winds (58 to 75 miles an hour) at least 250-miles long. Because there were so many people in Indiana without electricity %u2014 well over 100,000 customers %u2014 the affected power companies had to bring in workers and equipment from adjoining states to make repairs.