Point of View
Legislator should mind her own dam business
By Carl Heintze
A lady legislator from Washington state has kindly informed us that California wouldn't have any power problems if we'd just turn off our hot tubs.
Yeah, and if Washington state would take back all those Starbucks branches busily brewing vats of coffee, we'd use a lot less power, too.
Seattle, the home of riots, earthquakes and Starbucks has a few problems, too, lady.
Our female "friend" made her remarks during a debate on whether, or not, the federal government ought to put caps on the rates that power generators charge for the power we use--presumably, including all those plants on the Columbia River that use its flow to make electricity.
Of course, she didn't add that the Columbia River dam and electrical generation system, including such places as Bonneville, Grand Coolee and McNary, were built with federal funds, to which we, in California, contributed our somewhat unfair share.
But no one said local chauvinists were fair.
Her comments are, I fear, typical of the way a lot of the rest of our friendly neighbors in the other states of the union view the Sundown State.
It's an attitude made plain to me once, some years ago, when I visited a distant cousin in Spencer, W. Va.
Spencer is a place about the size of Alviso (although more charmingly situated). My cousin runs a drug store there. It's a modest place. He's lived all his life in Spencer. A big trip for him is to go to Charleston, one of the major cities in West Virginia that, all in all, does not have many large places.
When he heard I was from far away and out West, he said, "Just keep those crazies in California, please."
At least he said please. Others, including the more or less native population of Washington state have been less polite, particularly to emigrants seeking to escape the crowds, freeways and other hazards of living here. Washingtonians, including, I presume, the lady who wants us to shut down our tubs, have made it plain they wish we would stay right where we are. And use our own power. And stop complaining.
When it comes to California and things Californian, the rest of the nation seems to remember only the Watts and O.J. riots, the Nature Boys of days gone by, orange and avocado trees, Hollywood, sandals, hippies, flower children and, now, Silicon Valley.
Most of them have only a vague idea of what a silicon is, how it is grown and harvested and what it is used for, but they are sure it is a symbol of our excess. They don't even know where Silicon Valley is. But, then, neither do a lot of us who live in it.
They may even think silicons, whatever they are, are something like Napa Valley wine, a good deal of which, of course, is not grown in Napa Valley anymore, even though it may be bottled there.
It's unfortunate that Santa Clara Valley, which really is Silicon Valley, was renamed by the computer revolution and given the zany reputation that comes with anything new.
Or that the computer revolution, particularly the rise and fall of dot-com companies, gave us the reputation of our current one of excess: too many young people, making too much money, getting too many stock options, drinking too much Starbucks lattes and expressoes, wearing too many jeans, being too laid-back and casual, and, in general, becoming the envy of the rest of the United States.
For all these folks, Silicon Valley is a place filled with mysterious machines, lots of money, too-expensive real estate and a lot of boastful overpaid executives who don't like Bill Gates, or Microsoft (which, of course, is in Redmond, Wash., not far from Seattle).
It's going to take us a while to shake this reputation and my guess is, for the foreseeable future, there are going to be lots of folks like the lady legislator from Washington state who think we are squandering, not only our power, but theirs.
I guess I also have to add the lady legislator is a Republican and Republicans in other states don't particularly look on California with affection.
Certainly George W. Bush doesn't have a lot of sympathy for a state that didn't vote for him. It's going to be a while before we are No. 1 on his hit parade.
Well, I have news for the lady Congressperson: I don't own a hot tub, so I can't turn it off. Nor do I have a home air conditioning system. We do use gas to keep us warm in the winter--at increasingly astronomical prices from places such as Texas.
I don't make silicons, but I was born and grew up in California. I never wore sandals or long hair, and I make my own coffee. Starbucks' coffee is good, but it's also outrageously expensive, about as out of line as the price of the power that the lady legislator doesn't want us to steal from the Columbia River.
Hey, turnabout is only fair play.
I could be just as good a neighbor as she is. It's no trouble, at all.
|
Saratoga, California Since 1955
