Progress

From The Old Farmer's Almanac, which I keep strategically placed for a brief read each day, comes this:

March 31 - Wabash, Ind., became first city to be lighted by electricity, 1880.

That made me think of the song Paradise by John Prine:

"And the coal company came with the worlds largest shovel
and they tortured the timber and stripped all the land.
Well they dug for their coal 'til the land was forsaken
and they wrote it all down as the progress of man.

"And daddy won't you take me back to Muhlenburg County
down by the Green River where Paradise lays.
Well I'm sorry my son but you're too late in asking,
Mr. Peabody's coal train has hauled it away."

We like and need electricity, but I'm pretty sure we don't have another 127 years of that kind of 'progress' left in us.