I’ve been shopping for Thanksgivukkah. The last time Chanukkah took place this early in the Gregorian calendar was in 1861, two years before Lincoln created Thanksgiving. Depending on whom you ask, the next time will either be 2070 or 79,811 A.D. I'm guessing this is my one shot to enjoy a merging of my favorite American holiday and the Jewish Festival of Fat.

This year, the fun will start at dusk on Wednesday, Nov. 27, with candle lighting and maybe some squash donut holes. We'll remember, at least briefly, the story of the miraculous jar of oil that lasted eight times longer than expected and allowed our forebears to rededicate their place of prayer. 

On Thursday, as we sit down to a fairly traditional turkey dinner, if you call the inclusion of crisp, golden potato latkes with applesauce and gravy traditional, we'll stop to consider the abundance that awaits our appetites and the effort and energy that we, the farmers, the plants and animals, and the earth itself gave so that such a meal can be possible, at least for some of us. We'll fill our plates, and eat, and some of us will fill our plates again. Not from hunger, exactly, not from need, but because it tastes so very good. 

I've been thinking about abundance, about eating until satisfied and then taking one more bite, in the aftermath of a recent meeting to discuss wind power research off the coast of Maine. When Sea Grant Director Paul Anderson opened the meeting at the Bristol Consolidated School, November 14, he said one of his agency's jobs is to “certify the need for power in our country and the world.”

“How do we create electricity for this planet?” Anderson asked the audience of about 70 fishermen and other citizens. 

This was the second of three meetings in Midcoast harbors, called to inform residents about plans for a two-turbine test site in the Gulf of Maine, about 2.5 miles south of Monhegan Island. Installing the wind towers is the next step in a project that has already sited a one-eighth scale model floating turbine near Castine and would, if successful, potentially lead to a commercial-scale wind farm covering a significant area of open sea in the Gulf of Maine.

For now, the group leading this effort is talking about two floating energy generators, each of the turbines held aloft by a 30-foot high by 45-foot wide concrete base. Just two. The tubular sections of concrete are designed to hold enough air inside them to keep the structure buoyant, bobbing gently on the storm-tossed sea, held somewhat in place by three mooring cables that stretch at a scope of 7:1 or so from the rocky bottom 300 feet below. The UMaine design is expected to be more stable and better suited to this coast than Statoil’s single spar concept.

“We're not talking about an 8-square-mile farm any time in the future,” University of Maine Vice President for Innovation Jake Ward said to his skeptical audience. “Please put the pitchforks away now.”

The team presenting the proposal included the Darling Center's Damien Brady, who is monitoring the environment, and SGC Engineering's Senior Project Engineer for Global Coordinator-Power Engineering Dick Hall. 

The immediate issue, at least for those who fish between Monhegan and Bristol, is the approximately 15 mile long, 6-to-7-inch diameter cable that would take electricity from the turbines to a Central Maine Power substation on shore. The questions they raised, as Ward and the others took us through the plan and fielded concerns from the audience, focused primarily on how the floating platforms, their moorings, the cable, and the onshore power lines would restrict movement on sea and land.

What limits would be placed on fishermen's historic access to the bottom?

As I listened to these practical concerns, and to the rational and competent men who answered them with facts and details, my thoughts kept returning to the question Anderson started with, one that, as far as I know, is only being asked by the earth's human residents: “How do we create electricity for this planet?”

I recently picked up the book “Deep Economy” by Bill McKibben, written in 2007, before McKibben became famous for calling attention to the danger of raising the level of atmospheric carbon past a safe 350 parts per million. Most Americans who take that threat seriously are looking to alternative sources of energy, such as ocean wind, to enable humanity to continue on its current, energy-intensive path without missing a beat.

What I read in McKibben's book, and what kept tickling my brain during that meeting in Bristol last week, is that we seem unwilling to ask ourselves a more basic question: “How can we live comfortably without destroying the natural systems of the planet?”

While it is reassuring to know that engineers estimate the life span of a concrete base for the turbines is two to three times that of the steel used in oil platforms, that they can probably be maintained on site, that much of the material used to make them can be produced here in Maine, and that the hulls will be certified by the American Bureau of Shipping, none of these facts answers our apparently insatiable need for power, electrical or otherwise.

Fishermen may be reassured by hearing their routines may only be disrupted while the cable is being laid. They might have walked away convinced that the jagged bottom will gracefully accept the heavily insulated copper, fiber optic, and steel cable. But when they wake up in the morning, chances are they will still do what most of us do each day, which is to turn on a bunch of lights, start up their coffeemakers, climb into 25-mpg motorcars and head to work; in their case, beginning the work day at the docks, where a fleet of high-powered diesel engines idles, waiting for another trip across the water.

If they are to make enough money from their work to support their lives and their machines, the fish they catch, like the electricity to be harvested from the wind, will probably be marketed and sold to folks from Massachusetts, Connecticut, and points farther afield.

In “Deep Economy,” McKibben introduces his readers to an economic theory based, not on the ever-expanding growth model that was born around the time of the American Revolution, codified by Adam Smith and brought to its peak with Clinton-era globalization, but on an understanding of the limits and relationships inherent in our physical environment. He suggests that our future diets would have a greater chance of being as diverse and abundant as they now are, if we return to the local markets that sustain not only our physical hungers, but the social and emotional ties that make life truly enjoyable. 

It would be lovely to think that we can build and buy our way out of the mess humanity is making. That, somehow, we can keep shopping and growing and having more room and more stuff and more and more and more. From where I stand, it seems we may not be able to turn from this path, no matter how many locavores it takes to unscrew the light bulbs and replace them with sustainably harvested LEDs. 

I may be tilting at high-tech, $1 million-per-megawatt, windmills when I suggest we need to change direction. I'm not sure I would know where to begin such a change, except by raising the question. 

Most members of American society are living at a level of comfort that our great-grandparents could hardly have imagined. As one who has lived below the U.S. poverty line for most of my life, I still enjoy a lifestyle that much of the human world would find luxurious. Meanwhile, in order to maintain our comforts and economic structure, we ignore the physical realities of the environment that supports our existence, as well as the spiritual and cultural needs of our own human communities. 

McKibben writes that our constant push toward larger and more centralized systems has eroded the relationships and communities necessary for a true quality of life. He cites some pretty persuasive statistics to tell us what anyone can see, just by looking. We spend more time in isolation, interacting with machines and getting to and from our jobs, more time producing more stuff to fill a hole in our lives that nothing material can ever satisfy. 

I'm not saying we won't build those windmills or even that we don't need them. But, while we investigate the durability of the materials, the potential disruption to commerce, the impact of deep water vibration on marine wildlife, and the cost and potential benefits of this cable route or that one, let's at least begin to ask ourselves when we will have enough.

When will we learn to recognize the abundance we already have and develop the self control to push back from the table with a prayer of gratitude?

Enjoy your Thanksgivukkah. Please, turn off the light when you leave the room.

Shlomit Auciello is a freelance writer and photographer, living in Rockland. To contact her and see more of her work, visit the website at shlomitauciello.com.