David McElroy

Many of us have thought that Big Brother might arrive in our homes through TV sets, but what if we had the wrong appliance? What if Big Brother is really coming to control your refrigerator and oven and other very mundane appliances?

In Great Britain, the National Grid — the group that runs the power grid — has proposed that all appliances be required to have special sensors that give the power operators control to shut appliances down temporarily if they need to manage shortages of electricity. (I don’t like to link to RT.com, because it’s a propaganda organ of the Russian government, but this story appears legitimate.) The plan is also backed by power operators across the European Union, who want it adopted all over the continent.

Here in the United States, some power companies are adopting what they call “smart meters.” Who could oppose a “smart” meter? It sounds great, doesn’t it? For a power company, smart meters provide obvious benefits. They can monitor your power usage remotely, so the company no longer has to send someone to your house to read the meter. Just as important to the company, though, these meters give a power utility the ability to shut off your power remotely and “manage” your usage in other ways.

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I caught myself acting like an angry jerk the other day. I don’t like myself when that person comes out. It reminds me too much of some things I grew up with — and of things I’ve spent quite a bit of time trying to escape.

It really wasn’t a big deal. It was just a few seconds. Nobody else would remember it. Few would have noticed when it happened. But it’s stayed with me since late last week, almost taunting me like something from the past that I thought was dead.

I was driving down a busy road near my house last week. I think it was Thursday afternoon, but it might have been Friday. There was a car trying to turn left out of a business, so the driver had to turn across a lane of traffic to get to another one. Instead of waiting for a time when traffic was clear in both directions — or turning right and then turning around — he instead pulled out and blocked one lane of traffic completely while he waited for the other lane to clear so he could pull out.

What he did was rude and against all traffic rules. He ended up holding up quite a number of people for 30 seconds or so, which seemed a lot longer while it was going on. But in the scheme of things, it wasn’t a big deal. I wasn’t in the hurry. It didn’t affect my life one bit.

But I was angry. He was violating the rules. He was cheating. He was holding me up. I blew my horn in righteous indignation.

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The people of Bessemer, Ala., are finally free of the dangers of an old man and his friends playing the blues in an old back-yard garage each Saturday night. Police raided the “juke joint” known as Gip’s Place Saturday night, shutting down one of the last of the old-style musical roadhouses still surviving today. I know I’ll sleep better with this terrible threat gone.

Police are only saying that Henry Gipson’s place was an “illegal business,” but this strikes at the core of business licensing. Why does a man need permission from a city or state to transact business with willing customers. His place was known far and wide as a great place to listen to the blues, one of the last remaining places to hear authentic blues in a raw setting. A couple of years ago, NPR called Gip’s place “a blues lover’s dream.” And here’s a three-minute piece about Gipson put together by a local photographer.

But after letting Gipson run his informal performance space every Saturday night for decades, the city of Bessemer decided this weekend to shut him down, according to a post on the Facebook page for Gip’s Place.

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