Saturday, April 25, 2009

Have I found my encore performance?

I'm very excited. I think I may have rediscovered the passion of purpose in my life. I want to make an actual difference in energy conservation and alternative power generation in my community. I'm throwing myself completely into helping to make this dream a reality.
What I envision is a community effort with input from all the people who have any interest in this. In my mind's eye, I see a beautiful, towering, 1 GW wind turbine, arms reaching for the sky in a kind of ballet of hope for tomorrow. But that is a private image that may not prove to be practical or acceptable to the people of Rindge.
In any case, my motivation is not to build my kind of "science fiction" view of the project. My goal is to help Rindge build a power infrastructure that puts it into a position of having a sustainable local economy.
I have confidence that, as a community, we can research the possibilities together and make some choices. While we're looking for our "mother lode" of power, we can begin reducing our consumption and supporting people in the community who have the means to build alternative energy systems for their own properties.
We could even help someone start a business composting corn plastics...perhaps on the Famm Steel property? Would that be a good site for a wind turbine too?
I spent the morning at the Rindge Transfer Station helping with the Woman's Club sorting of recyclables out of the roadside trash pickup for Earth Day. They let me set up a table and talk to people about starting a committee or energy resource commission in town. I had a lot of interesting conversations with people in town. Some people think that photovoltaic is the way to go. One guy was pretty convinced that we don't have enough wind to even consider a wind turbine. Several of the people I spoke with had made improvements for energy conservation and were researching generating their own electricity via wind or solar. Seven people signed up to be involved.
I think this is going to be one of the greatest adventures of my life.