Uncle John's Bathroom Reader Golden Plunger Awards (34 page)

The controversy started at Fort Hood in Texas. With about 75,000 soldiers, Fort Hood is the largest U.S. military post; it’s also home to the Fort Hood Open Circle, a Wicca congregation of less than two-dozen military personnel. The group’s members gathered monthly for worship and had been doing so for years. But in 1999, press coverage of their services enraged locals who believed that Wiccan practices verged on the satanic. Photos of the Open Circle’s rites (including some members dancing bare-chested around a fire) were published in the
Killeen Daily Herald
and the
Austin American-Statesman
, and in response, one minister was quoted as saying, “We need to stop them . . . God says, ‘Suffer not a witch to live.’ ” Ouch!

The group’s champion turned out to be none other than the U.S. military. Military regulations protect religious freedom for all, so Fort Hood’s Wiccans got the same treatment as everyone else—a place to worship, clearance for a clergyperson, and access to military support (including a mention in Fort Hood’s weekly newsletter that lists all worship services.)

Not only that, but the
U.S. Army Military Chaplain Handbook
also included Wicca as a legitimate religion, noting that even though some people consider its beliefs to be witchcraft, Wicca’s origins are rooted in nature worship. The handbook also emphasized that “it is very important to be aware that Wiccans do not in any way worship or believe in ‘Satan,’ ‘the Devil,’ or any similar entities.” This victory, of course, led to other military Wiccan groups coming out of the closet . . . and to more condemnation from the establishment.

Wiccans and the military seemed to coexist peacefully in life, but in death, things were initially a little thornier. Army Sergeant Patrick D. Stewart died in 2005 while serving in Afghanistan with the Nevada National Guard. He was awarded a Purple Heart and the Bronze Star posthumously. But when his widow, Roberta Stewart, asked to have his religious affiliation as a Wiccan acknowledged on his memorial stone, the VA (U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs) refused. Why? According to Stewart, it was because the Wiccan pentacle—an upright five-pointed star surrounded by a circle—offended Christian sensibilities. An upturned star (one with a single point facing down and two points facing up) is often used as a symbol of Satanism, but the Wiccan pentacle actually represents the religion’s five elements: earth, fire, water, air, and spirit.

According to the military, however, the reason the pentacle couldn’t be approved was the lack of a “central hierarchy” in the Wiccan religion. Because there is no one group of clergy or laypeople who make decisions about the religion’s practices, there
was no one for the VA to write to and have acknowledge the pentacle’s religious significance.

Roberta Stewart kept pushing, though, and finally in late 2007, the five-pointed Wiccan star was added to the military’s list of emblems allowed on veterans’ grave markers. As of 2007, 11 families nationwide were waiting to have their loved ones’ markers modified with pentacles. (Changes to military headstones often take time because the markers must be identical, and the 11 are spread across the country.)

That wasn’t the end of it, though. Don Larsen had joined the Army as a Pentecostal Christian, and his reputation as a chaplain was one of the “best,” according to his superior officer. But Larsen had a crisis of faith and he decided to become a Wiccan because its beliefs about feminism, equality, and nature were more aligned with his vows. But in 2006, when Larsen applied to change his religious affiliation and become the first Wiccan chaplain in the U.S. Armed Forces, he ran into obstacles from paperwork bungles to emails pleading with him to confirm that his request was an error. Eventually, he was relieved of active duty.

Many believe Larsen was the victim of outright religious discrimination. The superior officer who spoke so highly of him said, “I think it’s political. A lot of people think Wiccans are un-American because they are ignorant about what Wiccans do.” The Army offered little explanation for Larsen’s dismissal but stated that there are simply too few Wiccans in the military to justify a full-time chaplain. However, according to Pentagon figures cited in a
Washington Post
article about Larsen’s case, there are several faiths with small numbers that do have their own chaplains: “Among the nearly 2,900 clergy on active duty are 41 Mormon chaplains for 17,513 Mormons in uniform, 22 rabbis for 4,038 Jews, 11 imams for 3,386 Muslims, six teachers for 636 Christian Scientists, and one Buddhist chaplain for 4,546 Buddhists.”

Thanks to the efforts of Larsen, Roberta Stewart, and others—even the Pentagon itself—there are now recognized Wiccan groups at Fort Polk, Louisiana; Fort Wainwright, Alaska; and Fort Barrancas, Florida. But there is still no official Wiccan chaplain in any branch of the U.S. military.

Going off the Grid

Henry David Thoreau was a 19th-century rebel—an avid abolitionist, a tax resister, and the writer of
Civil Disobedience
, a book that advocated resisting government interference in daily life. He was also one of the first environmentalists, and he retreated to nature for a two-year experiment to escape what he saw as an encroaching and messy modern society. He documented his experience and what he saw as a need for self-reliance in the book
Walden
.

Today, people still take to heart Thoreau’s insistence on the importance of preserving nature and being self-reliant. And one of the ways they’re heeding his call is by “going off the grid.”

The United States began to get juiced on electricity around the turn of the 20th century, when homes started getting wired. Only 10 percent of rural homes had electricity (compared to 90 percent of urban ones) when President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Rural Electrification Administration law in 1935. Over the next 30 years, almost every home, farm, and business in the country got electricity via power lines and a place on the public utility’s power grid.

Today, a growing number of people are “going off the grid”—meaning living their lives without taxing traditional water and power supplies. Why? According to the Department of Energy, electricity usage is growing about 1.3 percent each year. That’s about one-third of the growth the United States saw in the 1970s, and about half of what it was in the 1980s and 1990s. Yet today’s
average American uses seven times more electricity than his or her counterpart in the 1940s. And electricity suppliers haven’t been able to match the increase in use, which has led to a series of blackouts (total loss of power to a region), brownouts (partial loss of power), and rolling blackouts (series of planned successive power losses) in major cities over the past several years.

Other concerns are the environmentally damaging emissions that come with generating electricity and the inefficiencies of the process. In 2000, 40 quadrillion BTUs of energy were used by the electrical sector, but only 12 quadrillion actually went to consumers. The rest were lost (mostly emitted as heat) during production.

Somewhere between 180,000 and 250,000 people in the United States live off the grid, with more going for it every day. Off-gridders don’t have as much power as those on the grid, so they have to conserve—an off-gridder wouldn’t watch television while doing laundry, for example. To get their power, they rely on the sun, water, or wind. By far, solar is the energy generator of choice for most off-gridders. With solar panels, sunlight is converted to usable energy and then stored in batteries. Plus, solar power is clean and doesn’t add pollutants to the atmosphere.

For its part, the U.S. government encourages people to go off the grid by offering federal tax credits. (Some states pony up tax credits and rebates.) Those credits help to make up for the initial investment. Installing solar power can run from $10,000 to $25,000 for a house.

Water and wind power are also options, but they can be more restrictive. Relying on water power requires that you live near a running water source, though hydro power is more efficient than solar because it collects energy all of the time (solar panels can only collect energy during the day). The equipment is also substantially cheaper: often under $10,000. To harness the power of the wind, you’ll need a rotor—one about 50 feet in diameter will work for most houses—and a stand to support it.

Off-grid power living is growing by 33 percent, and sales of renewable energy sources like solar panels are seeing similar growth. We think Henry David Thoreau would be proud.

Fluorescent Light Bulbs

Most people associate fluorescent light bulbs—used primarily in business and industrial settings—with giant tubes that emit a persistent hum and sometimes flicker annoyingly. When fluorescent lights were reconfigured as regular screw-in light bulbs for lamps and other home lighting, they did-n’t work as well as traditional incandescent bulbs, and they cost a lot more. But now, they light up our lives, and all it took was a little retooling to show consumers how a compact fluorescent lamp (CFL) could deliver five times more power than an incandescent bulb.

The principle of a traditional incandescent light bulb is relatively simple: The bulb gets its energy from the electrical outlet, and that energy heats up the filament (a small metal wire) inside the bulb. When it gets hot enough, it glows. Voila . . . light! On the other hand, fluorescent light bulbs (the old ones and the new CFLs) have two filaments, one at each end of a tube. There’s also mercury vapor inside the tube. As the filaments heat up, atoms bounce around, knock into the mercury, and move between the filaments. All that activity makes light.

Currently, Americans buy one billion incandescent light bulbs every year. CFLs have only 6 percent of the market, but their
share is growing—in 2001, it was only 1 percent. Other countries have adopted CFLs at a much faster pace: in Germany, the share is 50 percent, and in Japan, it’s 80 percent.

CFLs use drastically less power than incandescent bulbs, which are remarkably inefficient because most of their energy is wasted in the form of heat (from the filament). Plus, the amount of light incandescent bulbs produce is small compared to the amount of energy they consume (15 lumens per watt used).

CFLs produce 50 to 100 lumens per watt used. In fact, the CFL is so much more efficient that it will produce the same light as an incandescent bulb with four or five times more wattage. Since roughly half the country’s energy supply comes from coal-burning power plants, cutting down on the energy used to produce light can significantly reduce the emission of greenhouse gases, which also make CFLs better for the environment.

There’s more to the story. CFLs not only save money by using less energy. They last longer, too. They have a lifespan lasting years, so they don’t need to be replaced that often. Fewer light bulbs used means fewer spent bulbs in the trash—yet another environmental benefit.

CFL technology began to take off in the early 1980s, after the rising price of energy in the 1970s led people to look for less expensive options. Still, while the technology was there, the initial savings weren’t. CFLs were a lot more expensive than incandescent bulbs (as much as $25 each). And although the energy savings meant that they paid for themselves over time, consumer demand wasn’t high enough compared to industrial usage.

The ballasts of the bulbs (the electrical part that supplies electricity to the bulb) were sometimes slow to conduct electricity and kept the bulbs from illuminating immediately, which is why old fluorescents often took a few seconds to fully light up. And the electrical current charging through the mercury gas emitted a distinct hum. It was easy enough to ignore in an office setting, where other background noise drowned it out, but much more difficult to overlook on a quiet night at home.

As the technology of fluorescent lighting evolved, both of those
problems were fixed. What hasn’t been fixed entirely is the type of light the bulbs emit. Typically, incandescent bulbs emitted a warmer, softer light that was easier on the human eye, while many people complained that the old fluorescent bulbs were too harsh. Even though testing among consumers has shown that CFL light is now as warm as incandescent, some people remain unconvinced. And it’s true that CFLs are brighter and stronger and, therefore, can be more off-putting when used in multiple places in the same room. To counteract that effect, most people use a mix of both CFLs and incandescents.

Over its entire life, one CFL will prevent a half-ton of CO
₂
from being pumped into the atmosphere compared to its incandescent counterpart. If Americans replaced just 100 million incandescent light bulbs with CFLs in their homes, they’d offset the greenhouse gas emissions of one million cars. That’s a change worthy of an award.