From The Bimah: Jewish Lessons For Life

For years now, every few months I receive a failing grade as a good citizen.  Every quarter it comes in the mail: the dreaded and terrifying, triggering and retraumatizing Home Energy Report from National Grid.  It compares our energy usage to that of Efficient Neighbors and Average Neighbors. It is never pretty.  There are three possible grades:  Great, represented by a big smiling face; good, represented by a small smiling face; and the dreaded “Using more than average,” which is represented by a sad, frowning face. Shira and I try. We really do.  But every quarter, we get the sad, frowning face.  Not only do we use more energy than Efficient Neighbors, we use more energy than Average Neighbors. That is every quarter since forever.  It came then as a total shocker when, in the most recent report, for the first time ever, we did better--much better--than even our most Efficient Neighbors.  We got a big, smiling yellow face with the notation that we used “42% less gas”