[lit-ideas] Re: Phasing out the incandescent lightbulb

Light bulbs, don't talk to me of light bulbs. Yesterday evening I needed something from the garage. I went to switch on the light, found that it would not work, removed the bulb, went to the closet where bulbs are kept, found my way impeded by a bag of goods one daughter has been "going to" clean up for some considerable time. I lifted the bag onto the top of the closet and was attacked by a rock tumbler, a machine that polishes rocks by simple use of grit. It was the grit that spilled all over the floor. Out came the vacuum cleaner and, would you know it, the bag was full. And the door that leads to the bag was somehow jammed. But all problems have solutions and in no time at all I had a new bag in, the mess cleaned up and was ready to replace the light bulb. I found that we had only one sixty watt bulb remaining. In it went. No luck. The bulb was a dud. Just to check, I pulled a bulb from the table lamp beside our computer. Yes...the garage light works...some of the time.
Would this be a good moment, I wondered, to replace the nasty old incadescent bulb in the table lamp, with a wonderful new and whizzy fluorescent? We have plenty of these in stock. Well, in spite of reservations about the number of times this lamp gets switched on and off and questions about how much this would shorten the life of a fluorescent bulb, this I did. And it didn't work. My guess is that the design is not right for the ballast.
So here I am, on a grey Oregon day, typing in the dark, cursing all bulbs and getting ready to go burn fossil fuel in order to buy a sixty watt heat-chucking burner of fossil fuel...that works. 

David Ritchie,
Portland, Oregon

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