I borrowed a friend's car not too long ago, just for a few hours. I think gas was $3.65 or thereabouts at the time. To thank this friend for his generosity, I decided I was going to fill his tank. There was a line at the station; this particular chain of stations offered the cheapest gas in Burlington at the time, and I sat and waited for my turn.

Ok, this week I'm cheating a little.

I wrote this piece a few years ago while taking a class on peak oil with Annie Dunn Watson, founder of the Vermont Peak Oil Network, an internet resource for Vermonters concerned with our growing energy problems.

But honestly, it's a good piece that I'm proud of, and I think it fits in well with the theme of my blog, although perhaps it is a tad bit more satirical than what I tend to write for Shift Happens.  I think it's important, though, to find the humor in what could otherwise depress us deeply.

My parents are officially hippy, granola-crunchy, Vermont radicals. It was a gradual process, but I think I became aware of their fate around the time they began listening to downloaded peak oil lectures for amusement and considered an afternoon of pickling to be a good time. Their world is one of growing their own food, living according to the whims of the weather, and staying in touch with the state of the economy to a degree many other Americans would consider mind-numbing and depressing.