Everybody ought to have something meaningful to do. Wouldn’t you agree?
A job, a volunteer project, or at least some personal pursuit, to occupy one’s time in an activity that is beneficial to one’s self, or helpful to others, maybe even improving society.
Whether it’s a job with a private enterprise—a small business, a corporation, or a .gov agency, a non-profit foundation, or a personal pursuit . . .
Everybody finds benefit in having meaningful activity,
especially if it may make life better for the rest of us.
Recently I caught wind of some public discussion about maybe combining this need for individual productivity with work that benefits our public purpose. Consider the prospects of projects that would improve our infrastructure.
Infrastructure is, you know . . . roads, bridges, electrical grids, communication networks, parks, public spaces and lands . . . systems and places, etc. that we share—
networks and common spaces that tend to fall apart or degenerate if someone doesn’t take responsibility to maintain or take care of them.
As I was pondering this idea, my mind wandered back in time to an era in our national history--the 1930's-- when people working together got a lot of important work done by teaming up to improve what was our infrastructure at that time.
Back in that day there was a fella who went around lending a hand in public works of all kinds, and he wrote songs about his experiences,
Woody Guthrie.
Woody wrote a good ole song about the construction of the Grand Coulee Dam on the Columbia River, out west between Washington and Oregon.
It’s an authentic song about a great project. Listen to Woody singing Grand Coulee Dam, which he recorded in 1941.
And check out this pic of what that immense, power-conserving structure, when it was being built, back in 1933:
You can find more about the building of the Grand Coulee dam here:
As I was a-listening to Woody’s song about the Grand Coulee, the thought occurred to me that we should perhaps take on a similar project, or two, today—construction of a cooperative facility to provide electricity in a manner that is clean and green and maybe even carbon-neutral.
So I added a verse to Woody’s ole song:
“ In a trillion solar sunbeams of any shining sunny dayflies a steady stream of energy, more watts than man can say.We oughta build a great collector like the big Grand Coulee dam;and capture solar megawatts in this great Grand Solar Land.”
Have a listen and see what you think about it:
And envision electricity this way:
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