The Little Geothermal Engine That Could

Right now it's sixteen degrees Fahrenheit here in Madison, Wisconsin. Temperatures tonight are expected to fall to somewhere around the original double digit, by which I mean not 10, but TWO. Windchills, which do matter, will take us to subzero levels I would sooner not dignify by naming.

This is a cold and barren place. Color has fled. The flowers, leaves, and most of the pretty birds are gone, and the skies are almost always white. It's amazing to me that kindergartners here persist in coloring the sky as the same skinny strip of blue across the top of the page as children who live in more temperate climes. Just goes to show you that optimism has not disappeared utterly from our planet; we still think of sky as being blue.

I went for a run yesterday, when it was even colder than today. My neighbor, out chiseling ice from her driveway, called out to me, "You're crazy!" This was from someone who has lived here, voluntarily and largely without protest, for forty-some years. At least I was moving fast and in a manner that wasn't damaging my spinal column. Craziness is relative, and endemic among my relatives.

I often wonder on days like this just why I came back to Wisconsin. I am not a hardy soul. I like sunshine and beaches and even that recently derided accompaniment to these preferred circumstances: the suntan. I will not be so stupid as to say if I die of melanoma I will at least die tan, but I can't say I haven't thought this. Right now, I am sadly observing how faint the lines from my swimsuit straps have become on my winter-paled shoulders. I have invested heavily in bottles of Vitamin D3, hoping to ward off seasonal depression. I'm unsure how well it's working. When I spoke this afternoon with a colleague who is spending her winter break in summery Argentina, I'm afraid I was borderline rude when she asked if there was anything besides sunshine she might bring me when she returns next week. "There is nothing that matters besides sunshine," I believe I snapped, icily.

Behind me, below the big windows of my office, Lake Mendota is freezing. It's lost its deep blue color, too, and is gradually turning solidly pale and white. You will know it is frozen the second the first ice shanty appears. Somehow ice anglers know the precise instant water becomes a solid. It is not their scientific training; it is far more precise than any science and less mathematical. On the other lake, the one behind my house, the anglers are already living in their winter community. A whole shantytown is out on the bays of Lake Monona. You would almost think Wisconsin winters are something we welcome around here. This, however, would be erroneous for most of us with IQs above 120. "Well, it could be worse," my boss commented with inexplicable gaiety today, "We could be in International Falls." I wonder what they say up in Barrows, Alaska. Maybe they just take sufficient consolation in their distance from Sarah Palin's Anchorage that they've become unflappable.

And what does any of this have to do with Senator Russ Feingold? Well, first let me clarify. Frankly, I believe that everything concerns Senator Russ Feingold. I believe that if the Senior Senator from the Good Progressive State of Wisconsin had as much time as he wanted, he would probably even care that my dishwasher is broken and that I don't know how to fix it or even if I care to try. Russ would like me to be happy here. He likes this state and would like me (and you) to like it here, too. To be able to live here comfortably. And so the problem of this state's frigid temperatures is something we need to address here.

We need geothermal energy installations that bring heat to our walkways and public spaces. We need bus shelters in which we can stand to stand and wait for buses that are stalled behind cars whose tires are spinning without propulsion on the sheets of ice that we euphemistically call streets. We need sidewalks that we can walk down, even run down, without considering first whether our health insurance deductible is so high that a broken or twisted ankle is financially untenable. Geothermal heat can give us all of these, an investment that makes sense both to those who lament and protest global warming as well as to the idiots who say our recent cold snap disproves global warming.

Really, what has happened to all the big public works projects that were supposed to start up as part of our national recession recovery efforts? The New Deal, in anemic modern form as originally proposed, seems to have become, with inaction, the New Deal, Anorexic Form. We need high speed trains and we need geothermally heated sidewalks and bus shelters. We are cold and many of us are unemployed. And those of us who are not unemployed are getting really really sick of having people with pinched faces tell us with inexplicable spite, "You should just be glad you have a job." It's as bad as being a kid at the dinner table again, hearing about kids starving in distant parts of the world. Me, I'm nearly to the point where I may just start replying, "And you should be lucky you have a mother. Otherwise no one might love you."

Russ, we need jobs. We need to start building all the projects pledged by the recovery plans. Things need to move. Governor Doyle submitted the proposal for the high speed trains; things need to stay in motion on this. I mean, remember in the flurry of national security reorganization that commenced after 9/11? All the agencies involved in identifying potent national enemies with the intention to wreak mass destruction of our citizens were going to be newly coordinated and their communication network strengthened and improved. This Christmas a man with a mission whose own FATHER had tried to alert the authorities nearly managed to set fire to another aircraft. We need to keep pushing for the recovery work projects to move forward. We want tracks laid. We want safe, fast, warm transportation that is energy efficient and puts people back to work on projects that make all of us happy.

Oh yeh. The child optimistic enough to color the sky blue all winter? I was one of them.