Anyways, I have been able to read a lot because of all my bed rest time and just finished a book called "City of Light" by Lauren Belfer. It is one of the random books I picked up at Goodwill and bought for $1 because it looked interesting on the shelf. I ended up absolutely loving it.
The story is set in Buffalo New York in 1901 when electricity was new and being generated by water power through the Niagara Falls. The story is told in first person through the headmistress of the Macauley School for Girls in a time where it was thought that education made girls masculine. It was a fascinating read as I learned about that time period, the political and social culture of 1900's Buffalo NY, and also about the resistance that environmentalists put up against using the Niagara Falls for industry purposes.
We all take electricity for granted now, and reading about the struggles of living without it and trying to embrace the power it offered really opened my eyes. One of my favorite quotes from the book is a picture of the dream Tom, who was the chief engineer on the electricity project at Niagara, had for what electricity could and would eventually offer the world:
"The glow of commitment filled his eyes. And it was a glorious vision. I saw it with him: an end to child labor, an end to the beating-down that so many women endured simply to get by from day to day. I wanted to embrace that future with him--it was a miraculous place of hope and freedom, intoxicating to imagine."
[pg. 34, City of Light]
Incidentally, I have been to Niagara Falls--on the Canadian side. Below are pictures I took when I was there in the winter of 2004.
Thanks for reading!
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