When I was little, we usually had one of those 20 inch deep wading pools, or, in more desperate times, just a sprinkler. We played a lot in the sprinkler, which was never used for the silly purpose of watering grass. It was our pseudo-beach-swimming-pool-oasis. We had great fun with it. For super fun, a sprinkler/wading pool combination was a treat. In summers when we could afford the fee, we might also get a pass to state parks, where we could swim in the local lake. But, park passes weren't always in the budget either.
This summer, my mother installed an above-ground swimming pool. As a life-long camper and once-upon-a-time lifeguard, I love swimming. I love the pool. And with the heat wave this week, and my hot swampy-smelling parsonage, I've been spending a lot of evenings in Rome (to Mom's delight of course.) It has been so warm this week that the pool water, without solar cover help, has been 85 or 86 degrees some days. It is actually almost too warm, we complain. Like bath water. You know you can't really claim your lower-middle-class status anymore when your pool water is too warm for you.
Last month Peter Sawtell, executive director of Eco-Justice Ministries, wrote his "Eco-Justice Notes" about air-conditioning, and the column has stuck with me. He talked about how amazed people are that his office isn't air-conditioned. He talked about hundreds who've died in heat waves. He talked about whether we can tolerate the inconvenience of being a bit too warm or a bit too cold.
Recently, I've asked our church trustees to look into an air-conditioner for the parsonage. These days, going for $80 or so, I'd pick up one myself, but of course the parsonage has those crank-out windows, and needs a special air-conditioner. But this summer, my fourth in the parsonage, the heat seems unbearable, even with sometimes three (three!) fans on in the room, and windows open. The thermostat read "91" in my bedroom several days this week. Ugh. I just can't do it.
I've never had air-conditioning before, except in my car (and it is currently not working). We never had them growing up. But now, we have two in my mom's house. One of my brothers has central air. Another brother has one in his dorm. Is it so much hotter? Or are we just so much more used to having complete comfort at all times? I suspect the answer is somewhat of "yes" to both. So an air-conditioner will be a guilty purchase. So many don't even have the access to fans that I do, or the park pass that I now get every year, or even the sprinkler and wading pool. But I fear soon air-conditioners will be as necessary as heaters are in Central New York weather.
Well, off to the pool...
5 comments:
Beth,
I enjoyed reading this, I was having the exact same thought a couple of days ago, when the bank clock in Athens, AL showed 101 degrees.
As I was driving home, I passed a cotton field. I started thinking to myself, how did my ancestors live and work in un-airconditioned structures, wearing wool and heavy cotton clothing usually with shirts, ties, and jackets in the dead heat of summer? They had to have been tougher than me. Airconditioning has made us weak. I just don't believe that 75 or 100 years ago, that people died en masse every time the temperature got above 90 degrees like they do now. But, I reckon they died of other things.
About 13 years ago, when I was single, I tried to go a whole summer in Decatur, AL without using AC to see what it was like. I lived in a 110 year old house that had been converted to apartments, so it had the high ceilings and good ventilation to support that type of living. I did pretty good and lasted about 8 or 10 weeks in middle of summer with temps in the upper 90s. However, it put a real damper on people coming over the apartment. In fact, it was friends coming over that forced me to run the two window ACs or else they told me that they wouldn't come back. I told them they needed to toughen up. But, now I've become weak too. 100 F seems a lot hotter now that I'm 39 than it did 20 years ago. LOL.
Here's hoping for cooler days. I see that you have a list of blogs that includes Progressive Christian. You might enjoy http://speaking-metaphorically.blogspot.com/, a blog that has a new post thought-provoking every Wednesday. The current post is "The Truth about Privilege." Check it out you will not be disappointed.
I remember a few years ago driving the elderly in our church van to the Annual Florida Folk Festival. The heat was ghastly. It just about knocked me flat. But the old folks, most in their 80s, weren't bothered at all. It's probably because they grew up without it.
For my three years in Ohio after college, I went without car air conditioning. And my first winter without heat. It's doable.
Hey Beth,
I like the fact that you think about such things, as I do too. Especially the psychology of suffering.
This is mostly my opinion being a member of a generation that spanned an era of increasing creature comforts. Though I grew up in Tennessee my roots and childhood were closely linked to the deep south. We didn't have air conditioning throughout our house growing up, but my parents did have a window unit in their bedroom, which we were sometimes permitted to enjoy. In the summers we would play outside in the fields and woods during the hottest of days knowing that we were in dangerously hot weather yet enjoying several hours of it anyway. We also intinctively found ways of finding cooler air. We knew the heat was uncomfortable in some way, but it wasn't unbearable.
For my parents and earlier generations life was exactly like that, uncomfortable at times, but not unbearable, just a fact of life. There are two facets to temperature that must be considered in either winter or summer the first of which has to do with our bodies ability to compensate and maintain its own internal temperature within range. The other is strictly an emotional consideration. Not that emotions don't have reason to be honored, but when one has little control over their environment concern for physiology overshadows our emotional response. Today we are mostly concerned about our emotional attitude towards our immediate environment - how comfortable we are. Rarely do we encounter any major threat to our bodies core temperature.
That isn't to say we are safeguarded from such threats. When large urban areas encounter power blackouts a very real threat exists to certain populations groups who might be unable to help themself move to a safer, if not more comfortable condition. The urban fabric is a part of the problem(but not an evil to be done away with) in that people can be exposed to abnormal and extreme temperature and other environmental conditions when the artificially controlled environment begins to break down. But even in parks, on farms, or practice fields more people have lost the instinctive ability to know how to adapt to severe weather. Healthy teenagers and adults routinely succumb to heat stroke because they do not understand the bodies warning signs and natures own provisions.
My arguable opinion on the matter is that what most people complain about today is not a threat their physical health at all, in fact they seem unable to sense that. They are most easily distraught over relative comfort levels that they certainly have the ability to adapt to mentally and physically. To extend ones awareness to a generalized trend in the macro environment based on very subjective comfort levels would not correspond with any scientific data because the person simply would not be able to detect the difference in trends at that scale. In other words, don't be concerned about global warming or the next ice age based upon your comfort level today or the next. The most dire predictions of either would not kill us and we could adapt and be comfortable. The irony to this is that if we give up the pursuit for absolute comfort we would not be driven to effect our environment as much. And that is the spiritual angle to the problem of suffering.
to be honestI think that overtherein the USA many of you are a/c mad. I froze and I hated it. Cooling the temperature a little - a breeze through the house is one thing, living in a refridgerator is quite another.
europeans aren't keen on a/c - though it is catching on in cars. soon we'll wonder how we did with outit.
I do believe that global warming is happening - though the result is not hotter summers, but milder and wetter winters. yuk. And they seem darker if the snow fails to stay.
Post a Comment