Finding Ulysses

PBS is working with a group of online organizations to sponsor a collective fiction project called World Without Oil. The idea is that the project organizers describe the broad parameters of a fictional oil shortage, and participants write about the events that take place as a result where they live. The purpose is to get people thinking about energy issues and the problem of dependence upon petroleum in relation to their local communities.

Each day in the project is a week in the fictional World Without Oil. The project started on April 30, so today is Week 8 in the fictional oil shortage. In this week of the alternative reality, the United States has made a small military incursion into Alberta in order to secure some oil fields, and the price of gasoline is an average of $4.79 per gallon in the United States. Would the USA really violate the sovereignty of Canada at just $4.79 per gallon? I’m not inclined to think so, but for the purposes of the project, that’s what’s going on.

Currently, there are about 1,220 people writing, most in the USA, but some in foreign countries, for the World Without Oil project. The closest places to us represented by someone writing for the I’ll be jumping into the project are State College, Pennsylvania, Budd Lake, New Jersey, and Troy, New York and College. Seeing that, I thought that the Finger Lakes in general, and the Town of Ulysses and the Village of Trumansburg in particular, ought to be seen as part of the fictional world. So, starting later today, I’ll be adding articles from Finding Ulysses to the World Without Oil alternative reality, writing about events here in Trumansburg, Ulysses, and Tompkins County.

I’ll mention businesses, institutions and groups, like the Village Board and Back to Democracy, as part of this fictional set of events, but I’ll do my best to avoid writing about real people who live here unless you get in touch with me and ask me to include you as a character. It seems unfair, in a small community like ours, to control the fictional events of people in such a public way.

Of course, I need not be the only local contributor to this collective fiction event. If you’d like to write for the World Without Oil project here at Finding Ulysses, just leave a comment with your email address, and I’ll get in touch with a password for you so that you can do so.

As always, feel free to leave comments at the bottom of each article, positive or negative.

To keep the distinction between reality and fantasy clear, and avoid people jumping over Taughannock Falls in a War Of The Worlds type of panic, every article I write here for the World Without Oil project will have the phrase World Without Oil in the title, the graphic that you see off to the right, and the disclaimer that you read below.