Thanks for the Memories, Mr. Edison

Moms are famous for throwing away things like old toys, old clothes, baseball cards etc….that’s part of their job.

But my Mom was different; she saved just about everything.  When my sister and I cleaned out the attic of our old house the fact that no valuable Honus Wagner or Mickey Mantle rookie cards showed up wasn’t her fault. It was mine. I never saved baseball cards.

But thanks to her, I still have all my old CHS Snips and Cuts and the Piedmont Annual….and old letter sweaters etc….things that mean a lot to me.


Perhaps the most amazing thing in that old attic was the light bulb hanging from the ceiling. My Dad put it up there when he and Mom moved into our home in 1936. Mom told me that it had never been replaced. I have no doubt that it would have made its inventor, Thomas Edison very proud.

It was still working when I carried out the last box of memories. It may still be working as far as I know.

I wish I had included that bulb in the boxes of mementos that I brought back up to our home in Virginia. I could pass that on to my grandchildren, because chances are that bulb, and those you now have in your home, may one day be as valuable as rare baseball cards .

As you know, in 2007 our ruling class in Congress passed an energy conservation measure that bans all incandescent bulbs by 2014. That’s when only compact fluorescent (CFL) bulbs will be legally sold.

But hey, we all want to save the planet, don’t we?

I'm sure you've already noticed the lack of incandescent bulbs in your supermarket.

There’s only one General Electric plant left that still makes those bulbs, (in Winchester,VA) and GE is in the process of closing it.

An article in THE AMERICAN THINKER by Ed Lasky notes that GE is actually glad to get rid of the light bulb business, both incandescent and CFLs “…because of American union rules and government regulations, it is simply not profitable.” Besides, he says, GE is positioned to be a big beneficiary of the massive “green scheming of America.”

Almost all CFL bulbs are manufactured in China.

The Washington Post quotes one of the workers, Pat Doyle, who has worked at the plant for 26 years as saying, “We’ve been sold out. First, by the government….then sold out by GE.

Lasky closes out his article by saying,

“Maybe General Electric’s new slogan should not be, “We Bring Good Things to Life,” but instead, “We bring Good Things to China."   -Ed