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The ADVANCE, Morch 10, 2021/Page 5A
OPINIONS
“I honor the man who is willing to sink
Half his repute for the freedom to think,
And when he has thought, be his cause strong or weak,
Will risk t’other half for the freedom to speak.”
—James Russell Lowell
editorials
The Case of the Missing Rain Boots
I’ve looked
everywhere for
them — on the
shelves of our ga
rage, in closets, in
the trunk of the car,
underneath a pile
of gardening sup
plies left over from
last year’s growing
season, etc. Still, I
can’t find my rain
boots anywhere. They’ve been missing
in action (MIA) for about four months
now, and I’m aggravated about it. It’s as
if aliens beamed down to earth, picked
up my black rain boots with the multi
color polka dots, and absconded to their
faraway world hidden away in the stars. I
can’t come up with any other solution to
the mystery. Well, there is one other pos
sibility ...
I’ve interrogated my husband at least
a dozen times.
“Gene, are you sure you haven’t seen
my rain boots? Could you have possibly
thrown them away, by accident?” I’ve
asked over and over again.
The fourth or fifth time I asked, he
stopped what he was doing and stared a
hole right through my head.
“No, I didn’t throw away your boots.
I don’t know where they are or what hap
pened to them, but I had nothing to do
with their disappearance,” he said firmly.
I detect no dishonesty in his voice or
mannerisms, so I suppose he could be in
nocent in the matter of the missing rain
boots.
But where are they? What happened
to them? I know this: they didn’t just walk
away on their own.
My stepfather, Johnny Collins, gave
me the rain boots for Christmas two
years ago. Instead of buying Christmas
gifts for everyone in our large family, we
draw names, and Johnny drew my name
that year. The following week, he and my
mother asked me for a few gift ideas of
things I might like or need. I had seen the
rain boots on display at my local Tractor
Supply Company and thought they’d be
perfect to wear on gardening days.
“If they get muddy, I can quickly wash
them off with the water hose a snd set
them in the sun to dry,” I said. “And since
the rubber uppers go well up my calves, I
don’t have to worry about a copperhead
biting me and killing me deader than
dead.”
I was delighted to open the box con
taining the rain boots that year during our
family’s holiday gift-swapping extravagan
za. I thanked Johnny several times saying,
“These are exactly what I wanted. Thank
I ”
you!
I started wearing them the follow
ing week, and they were everything I’d
dreamed they would be. They were com
fortable; they kept my feet dry; they were
easy to slide on and off; and they were
easy to clean. After a few weeks, I began
leaving them outside our laundry room
door. It was a convenient location since
I’m constantly going in and out that door
during gardening season. Then one day,
they weren’t there.
I could tell my husband wasn’t a fan of
the big, clunky black rain boots — I could
tell the way he looked at me when I was
wearing them. He denies this, but I know
it’s true. That’s why he’s always been my
prime suspect in their disappearance. He
had a motive.
But he’s tired of being blamed.
“Do you think I’ll ever find them?” I
asked him last weekend as we stood in the
garage.
“I know you think I did something
with them, but I didn’t,” he answered. “So,
yes. At some point, some day, I think we’ll
come across them, and you will owe me a
big apology.”
We’ve lost things before. I’m always
amazed when socks disappear in the laun
dry, as if eaten by the washer or dryer
monster.
And lately, I’ve walked around the
house for five minutes looking for lost
reading glasses only to discover them
perched on top of my head, but at least I
found them, unlike my black rain boots.
A 2017 study revealed that Ameri
cans spend 2.5 days a year looking for
misplaced items. The top misplaced item
is the TV remote, closely followed by
phones, keys, glasses, and shoes.
I’ve already spent well over 2.5 days
looking for my black rain boots with the
multi-color polka dots, but I will never
quit searching for them — never, ever. I
wonder if I’ll ever find them.
How to Enjoy Retirement Traveling
Uplifting!
Nothing I write
to you is nearly as
interesting as what
people write back.
Morris and Sue
are retired Ken
tucky teachers who
owned an RV for
over a year.
Life on the road
turned out to be not
exactly their cup of
tea. They enjoyed it for a while, saw a lot
of the country, but as Morris put it, “You
can buy a lot of motel rooms for the cost
of an RV.”
Sue's breaking point was breakfast.
She was correct that most hotels offer a
free breakfast of some kind, some better
than others, and you just toss your trash
and walk away.
With an RV there was always a mess
to clean up, the thing needed mainte
nance and some days it was hard to find a
place to put it.
Morris's brother had a time-share in
the American Virgin Islands which he
could not use in his allotted time, so Mor
ris and Sue took their week.
They were hooked.
Morris and his wife enjoyed the
American Virgin Islands so much they
invested in a condo there, but not a time-
share.
They own it, but it has paid for itself
thanks to Canadian snowbirds and a local
guy who manages properties of absentee
owners.
After retirement they were free to
spend as much time as they wanted and
do.
Morris wrote that they watch for
deals on flights to San Juan, and once
they land, they start moving by ferry.
Ferries operate all over the Caribbean
as well as Alaska.
With a little planning travelers can
jump on/off ferries and see the state of
Alaska without being bound to the sched
ule of a cruise ship.
Ferry ships operate all up and down
the coast of Alaska from Bellingham,
Washington, to Dutch Harbor in the
Aleutian Islands. It is known as the Alaska
Marine Highway System.
I knew a man who bragged that he
had won a cruise to the Bahamas.
After he bought tickets to Fort Lau
derdale and paid for the ground travel to
the marine terminal, he and his wife
boarded the ship for the “cruise” to Free
port, Bahamas. It was a four hour ferry
ride.
Once in Freeport, they endured a two
hour time-share sales pitch in order to get
the coupon for the free night in a hotel.
The “cruise” to Freeport was free but
the ride back wasn't. They were able to
buy “discounted” standby airline tickets
from the time-share people back to the
mainland to catch their flight home.
They were on the ground in the Baha
mas less then twenty-four hours and are
ashamed to tell anybody about their
cruise.
Ferries are a good way to travel, but if
someone offers you a free cruise kindly
decline.
joenphillips@yahoo.com
By Joe Phillips
Dear Me
Texas power debacle not
likely in Georgia says Public
Service Commissioner
Would you
like to hear an
encouraging
word? How
about “No!”
That was
the succinct
reaction from
Georgia Public
Service
Commissioner
Tricia
Pridemore when I asked her if what
happened in Texas where hell and most
everything else froze over, could happen
here.
Pridemore, a member of the state’s
utility regulator since 2018, gave me a
short course the other day on how
Georgia’s energy planning and execution
is designed to withstand the kind of
horror Texans went through when a
massive ice storm hit the state and much
of the eastern half of the country in early
February.
In Texas, some 5 million people
were without power, over 8 million were
having to boil their water, dozens of
deaths were reported, food in short
supply, fire hydrants unusable and to top
it off, some customers were greeted with
electric bills in the thousands of dollars.
Pridemore says that much of the
problem goes back to how Texas
operates its power system. “Texas is a
deregulated system,” she says. “On paper
that sounds great. It sounds like they are
constantly giving the ratepayers the
lowest possible price. The challenge
with that is since deregulation in Texas
in the 1990s to now, power companies
have made limited to no investment into
their system. There’s no incentive for the
companies to constantly innovate.”
At the Public Utility Commission
in Texas, there is a person whose job is
to find the lowest price per watt from 19
electric generators each day. The
companies are pitted against each other.
“It’s a giant eBay auction every day,”
Pridemore says.
A longtime Republican appointed
to the PSC by Gov. Nathan Deal,
Pridemore says, “People think
Republicans want to be for the lowest
cost, which I certainly do, but there is a
balance between having the lowest cost
and making investments that’s actually
going to help the system perform better.”
Texas is the only state in the
continental U.S. that operates its own
electric grid, making it difficult to get
power from other regions. Georgia is a
part of the Eastern grid system which
reaches from Canada to Florida.
Pridemore says, “We have the ability to
transmit electricity from another state if
we need it,” such as at times like the
infamous Snowmaggedon of 2014 and
Hurricane Michael in 2018.
Remember that during those times,
the power companies were still
generating power, it just wasn’t getting
to the end user because of downed
power fines. Texas wasn’t generating
power at all and because their grid is
intrastate-only, they had nowhere to go
to get power.
Pridemore says Georgia asks its
utilities — Georgia Power, which serves
some 6 million customers in the state,
the 41 Electric Membership
Cooperatives which serve 4 million and
the Municipal Electric Authority of
Georgia with some 600,000 consumers
— to do “reserve margin studies” to
ensure adequate levels of power in the
hottest and coldest periods of the year,
like a sweltering day in August when
everyone is operating their air
conditioners to a frigid day in January
when folks crank up the heat.
Georgia Power, the EMCs and
MEAG work extremely well together,
Pridemore says. “There is a tightness in
how the system works with government
and the three entities. We don’t pit them
against one another.”
The Public Service Commission
looks at power generation in a 30-year
period, broken into 10-year increments.
“This is how we decide how much we
are going to invest in generation,”
Pridemore says, “where and what kind.”
In terms of energy sources, it is
diversified. Georgia Power’s capacity
mix is 50 percent natural gas, 24 percent
nuclear, 13 percent coal, 4 percent solar
and a smattering of wind. The
commissioner says the Plant Vogtle
nuclear facility in Waynesboro, which is
jointly owned by Georgia Power,
Oglethorpe Power Corporation,
Municipal Electric Authority of Georgia
and Dalton Utilities, remains on track
for completion within the PSC-
approved schedule for Unit 3 this
November and Unit 4 in November
2022.
In summation, Pridemore says that
unlike Texas where there is plenty of
finger-pointing among all parties as to
who was responsible for the massive
outage, “In Georgia, the ratepayers have
a say in how decisions are being made
on their behalf. If they think I am doing
a good job representing them, they will
reelect me. If not, they will find someone
else to do it.” After hearing how much
more efficiently our power system
operates in Georgia as compared to the
debacle in Texas, she has my vote.
You can reach Dick Yarbrough at dick@
dickyarbrough.com; at P.O. Box 725373,
Atlanta, Georgia 31139 or on Facebook at
www.facebook.com/dickyarb
“"Abuance
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