Electric Bills, Gas Companies, winter coming on...and Poor People.

Sunday has a way of making you lonely all on its own.  Whether it be because of the past… when as children we were going to church on Sundays… sitting in that pew waiting to escape from the Sunday clothes or the confinement. We couldn’t wait to get to the world of play and day off from school fun. 

Escape has arrived for us as adults and now that we have a permanent go nowhere on Sunday morning if we wish… and maybe some might feel there is something missing? I don’t know… but Sunday’s for me seems to be a time of reflection still… a time to think about the past week… and always that hope for a better one ahead… escape.

As fall in its festive colors and its brisk winds of dance are poised to make their entrance this Sunday, many of us are dreading the season of winter that lies just a number of days hence.  I have to think that winter will be colder than the last only because I am older.  Being older alone makes us cold I think.

Are we older because of age?  Or are we older because our bodies have aged?  Or are we older because our perceptions have changed?

Here in the north poverty plays a large role in this perception.  Those who can afford a warm house and nice car probably don’t reflect on the changing seasons in the same way as a poor person.  Those that ski and have snowmobiles probably don’t…they may actually look forward to it. This for me boils down to the high cost of winter and its lonely isolation as older friends avoid traveling for visits as shorter days and nights of unending darkness close in.

The object of my thoughts this week is the ridiculous cost of energy here in this rural area.   By luck of location I am stuck with NYSEG.  Yes location because just a couple of miles away my neighbors have Rural Electric service or their own village electric, both having much lower rates for useage.

Here in Eaton we have natural gas wells everywhere… a massive gas substation that is no longer going to pay school taxes, another in our town that is providing service to Hamilton, wind turbines that are trying to drop their tax paying status… and yet we pay a ridiculously high price for our energy!

When I was staying at my mother and fathers house in Solvay my electric bill was the cheapest in the United States and when I came home to Eaton I was paying one of the highest.

I listen and view so many on the Internet complain about welfare programs.  They spout about cutting services for the elderly and the poor, cutting welfare… and cutting social security… in truth they are actually not facing the reality of living in poor areas and being old.  What we should be doing is leveling the playing field… forcing the electric and gas and oil companies to pay up for what they are taking from us… especially here in Eaton…and elsewhere.

We should be able to utilize our own natural resources instead of letting others rob us of it and allow corporate investors to reap money from it.

Good case on this is the solar industry… I have friends that are in this plan… great idea but a catch…how do the poor tap into it?  It costs thousands to install this service…while I struggle to pay for this months electric service.

Next time you flip on the light or an extra heater think of the poor who can’t afford that luxury… oh you say they can get HEAP or help… aren’t they the programs that you are trying to cut????

As old Uncle Basil used to say…yes things and people change… they get worse…  and private corporations make a profit on the backs of the elderly and poor!  Don’t cite New York City or large city statistics on Welfare programs…find figures for a poor rural area that is daily being robbed of its resources.