What a wonderful night last night was!
My observance of Earth Hour actually started at about 9:00 because my mom and I were at an open house to celebrate a family friend's ninetieth birthday (some of the stories told were extremely funny to the point that I was bent double with laughter). When we got home most of the lights had been turned off (thanks, Tom!).
I took some photos for the Earth Hour Global group on Flickr (I cranked the ISO up to 800 and made sure I used a tripod in case of long exposures. I also avoided candles at all costs because that subject had been done about a million times before.) and then I decided to grab my violin and play something in the dark. I started out with some easy pieces and then moved on to more difficult ones like Beethoven's Minuet and Trio in G, and The Two Grenadiers (once I got to the second half of that one I just blazed through it).
Some of these pieces I hadn't played in a while so it was wonderful to dig them out and dust them off. Sometimes I played in total darkness, but when I hit a piece that I had trouble with I turned the stand-light back on again.
We kept our lights off until about ten--half-way through Earth Hour in the Eastern time-zone (I have quite a few friends who live in that time-zone, including two in Toronto, so that was rather cool).
When I write it out here, it doesn't seem like I did much. But it felt like a lot last night.
Earlier I noticed that on the Earth Hour website it seemed as though there were more people who were using the forum to state how they were going to turn everything on in participation of a so-called Human Achievement Hour then there were people who were going to turn everything off. Hmmmmm........ What's wrong with this picture? If all our "achievements" (fossil fuels, clear-cutting, polluting the rivers and streams, etc.) end up destroying our home is it really an achievement? Yes, this species has done some wonderful things (the civil-rights movement, composing beautiful and moving music), but by turning everything on and calling it an "achievement" I think it's celebrating the worst of the species. Okay, I'm done.
From CBC.ca: Canadians douse lights to usher in Earth Hour 2009
Here's a video that really tells what Earth Hour about:
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