Earth Hour 2008
As any informed citizen already knows, Saturday March 29th was the day to mark Earth Hour. 8pm-9pm local time. Great idea. It started in Australia last year. Millions of people took part this year. The idea was to bring awareness to global warming. It worked. I have proof.
My husband is not the most environmentally friendly man around. He begrudges (albeit a little bit) my recycling, especially of cardboard. He says it takes up too much room in the garage and he doesn't like having to haul it all to the city. Yet this man was all for turning out the lights, turning off the furnace, unplugging the phones and the computers. It surprised me too.
We decided to have our Earth Hour at 7pm so our little girl could take part in it with us. We set a timer and at a few minutes to 7 we turned everything off and lit a plethora of candles all around the house. She had her bath by candlelight. We read books by the dim glow of her Mobi Tyke Lamp. She loved it!
At about 7:30pm my husband got a call to put out a fire so I was left alone. I poured a glass of wine and sat in the darkness at the kitchen table. As 8 o'clock came and went, I kept the lights off anyway. I took my wine and a few votives and headed to my piano. It was so nice just to sit in the candlelit room and play. I imagined all the great composers writing their music by candlelight so many years ago. After some time I went upstairs and had a shower by candlelight too. How completely relaxing. I carried my little beeswax pillar into my room and went to sleep.
So, we actually had 3 earth hours. I was glad to see that at least one more family in Delisle observed Earth Hour as well. I looked out the front window to see the darkened house of the elderly neighbors across the street with the unmistakable flickering light of a candle.
Earth Hour is a great idea. I, like many others, would like to do this more often.
