Risky Holiday lights!

As the end of year’s Holidays are around the corner, the fashionable thing to do, nowadays, is to transform trees into large, illuminated objects and while we thought for a while that too many lights wrapped around trees might hurt them, the advent of LED bulbs has minimized that risk a great deal. 

If we factor the low consumption of these new lights along with the use of a timer, tree illuminations shouldn’t cost an arm and a leg. 

There are of course safety issues to take into consideration. Like the type of wiring used, a weatherproof light box and, obviously, how the lights get attached to the tree, which leads me to a seasonal observation of Latino workers literally taking their lives into their frail, poorly secured 48 feet ladders in ways that would make OSHA scream. 

This is the scene we witnessed the other night, ten unsecured workers scrambling to attache strings of light on a barren aspen tree!