I first heard of Earth Hour just this morning, in a Daily Kos diary, and I immediately decided that our family would participate. We live in a small town in a very conservative, rural area and I do my best to teach my daughter to live by the progressive principles that I believe in. At 7 years old she's already a budding environmentalist, I'm proud to say.
I told my daughter and my husband about Earth Hour and they agreed that it was something worth doing. At 8:20 I lit a few candles and started turning off the lights. (We did leave a small night light on in the hallway because my daughter is apprehensive about the dark.) Off went the TVs and computers. My husband was showering; she insisted I take a candle in the bathroom for him so that he could turn off the bathroom light. We did not turn off the fridge, the chest freezer or the various power strips throughout the house, so we weren't completely electricity-free. I checked out the window a few times but didn't notice any other unlighted houses on our street.
My daughter wanted to read a book so we grabbed a little battery operated book light and I read the next chapter in Laura Ingalls Wilder's "Farmer Boy." I stopped a couple times to point out how the Wilder family managed without not only electricity, but also without cars, Wal-Mart, McDonalds, and lots of other things she takes for granted.
My husband finished his shower and joined us in the living room, now scented with fragrances from three different scented candles. Putting the book and book light aside, we decided to just sit and talk. I'm not sure how we settled on the subject, but hubby and I took turns sharing stories about our experiences at scout camps when we were kids. My daughter was enthralled and full of questions. "Did you have bathrooms?" "You mean you had to put the flag up the pole every morning and take it back down every night?" "You really hiked 10 miles?" "What's a sit-upon?"
The hour flew by, although by the end my daughter was getting impatient to turn the lights back on. So at 9:30 we did just that. Turning our lights out for an hour may not change the world, but every big change has to begin somewhere.
What's your Earth Hour story?