This is one of my favorite graphs. It shows what percentage of Americans had which appliance or convenience over time. When I saw this the first time, it brought back memories of my mother telling stories about the "good old days". My dad was born in 1910 and my mother was born in 1917. They both grew up on rural dairy farms in Vermont. The were born into a world with no electricity and I have a picture of my mom as a teenager doing her homework under an oil lamp. I used to fill my grandmothers woodbox with small sticks of wood for her kitchen stove. What is striking now is the amazing changes they saw over their lives. And yet their memories of growing up without this stuff, based on the stories I grew up hearing them tell, seemed pretty normal if not downright bucolic. I guess my take away is that we don't need all this stuff to have pretty much OK lives, and very possible better lives.
So when someone says we "need" more and more and more electricity and we will be miserable if we had to use less (or worst), I don't buy it. I gotta go turn off the radio, turn down the thermostat, brush my teeth with an electric toothbrush, set my digital alarm clock, text everybody about carpooling tomorrow, check my kids Facebook pages, get bread out of the freezer for the morning, check the digital thermometer and listen to the weather radio, and go to bed.
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