True Stories From My Life. Part 4: The Mystery of Electricity

My town is in the midst of an "arctic vortex" of unusually-cold winter weather. This afternoon, I drove my 2003 Saturn Ion 1 about half a mile from my home to the Salvation Army, to see a social worker about a pair of glasses. The Major was behind the desk, and he told me that the social worker wasn't in today. I said I was surprised they were open at all today, because of the weather. He said they were open today, with a skeleton crew, precisely because of the weather: in case someone needed to get indoors somewhere and warm up.

From the Salvation Army I drove to Kroger's, about 2 miles. After I had Kroger'd, my car wouldn't start. I went back inside Kroger's, searched my wallet, and found an AARP card. (My Mom had gotten me an AARP membership, and told me that roadside assistance was the most important part of the membership.) To my surprise, the card said that my membership was still active, until May 2019. After about half an hour on the phone, I found out that my membership had been cancelled.

I went back out to the Kroger's parking lot, and this time my Saturn started. I was not as surprised as I had been when a similar thing had happened in earlier years: drove my car to a parking lot, shopped, car wouldn't start, waited about a half hour, then it started.

Since this wasn't the first time, I wasn't completely surprised. But I still don't understand what happened. Perhaps my not understanding it just shows that I know laughably little about electricity. Maybe engineers who are reading this are shouting at the screen: "It's the condensation, you idiot!" Or something else if it's something other than condensation.

I've been trying to learn about electricity, because the world is converting from petrochemicals to electricity. I can't claim to have made much progress. I open books such as this one:

-- and am immediately baffled. it maik munkee brane hert. And there are other textbooks in physics and math whose equations make my brain hurt much more than the ones in this book. I stopped studying math in the mid-1970's at age 15, as soon as I was allowed to stop, and now I'm hopelessly behind. (Also: I still don't actually like math. That's why I stopped studying it: because I hated it.) I have heard that Einstein used tensor analysis to come up with the theory of relativity. I've heard that. I don't know whether it's true, or partly true, or a misleading statement, or what.

I do know that my 2003 Saturn Ion 1, if it doesn't start on a cold day, may start a while later the same day. I know this is so, but I do not know why this is so. There's an entire world of STEM -- science, technology, engineering and math -- which is mysterious to me. And yet I know that I know much more about such things than do many poets and artists. And I know that many scientists, engineers and mathematicians are just as woefully ignorant of history and philosophy and the arts.

And so for today, grateful to be back home and grateful that the heat is on, I shall be as one crying in the wilderness for geniuses of various kinds to become less ignorant about one another.

I hope you're not too cold out there, reading this.