I am proposing January 9th be proclaimed National “Put on a Sweater” Day. 

Among other commemorative celebrations this day, World Marriage Day reminds us to reflect on the beautiful gift of marriage and celebrate enduring love! How befitting that is for the former president to be laid to rest next to his lifelong love and partner in marriage.

On this eve of the day former President Jimmy Carter will be eulogized and laid to rest, I am remembering him when he was president. He took office during my last year of college in the Environmental Studies and Urban Planning School at Sonoma State University. Although I did not own a television, word traveled, through print newspapers and paper letters, conversations in coffee shops, radio shows, and at the local grocery. 

The Geysers, an alternative energy site

In 1977 I used computer programs for the first time to analyze data collected for a National Science Foundation grant. Several other senior students and I had sampled lichen distribution at the Geysers in the Mayacama mountains between Sonoma and Lake Counties, north of Napa. Wine grapes were beginning to replace local orchards, including the prune orchard my father’s parents had worked when they first immigrated to California from Germany in the early 1920’s.

The Geysers are the world’s largest geothermal field, spanning an area of around 30 square miles. They were being tapped as one of the Department of Energy’s efforts to achieve energy independence for the USA.

We laboriously punched key cards with the details of our data, then ran them through a computer that was easily bigger than a monstrous refrigerator. Results were printed out in dots on a stream of paper. 

We had no laptops, cell phones, tablets or any other electronic communication devices. 

While I did not see President Carter’s address to the nation on February 2nd 1977, I read about it. In spite of ribbing and ridicule, President Carter put in place many policies we have benefitted from, and have, sadly, in many cases, been overlooked, or overturned. He was a pragmatic man with a commitment to a great vision for the future. 

Gain energy independence through conservation

In his statement he asserted that through energy conservation we could save as much energy as we were then importing. 

He urged all of us set our thermostats at 65 degrees during the day and 55 at night. If everyone did, during that bitter cold winter, we could save half the (then) national energy shortage.

He also introduced a training program that benefitted me in finding employment between summer seasonal national park ranger-naturalist work at the North Cascades National Park. With support from the CETA program (Comprehensive Employment and Training Act) in 1978 I became the first female hired to the Skagit County Parks Dept. maintenance crew. The following fall I was hired as the first female in a non-secretarial role with the NW Air Pollution Authority (NWAPA) as an Air Pollution Inspector. The next fall I became an Air Pollution Technician in Whatcom County.

I pulled on a warm cardigan the morning of January 9th to watch the final public ceremony honoring a great and generous visionary, a president who did more than many remember for his fellow Americans, and left the world better than it was when he attained the presidency.