Journal

Been There Done That

Wed, 21 Jul 2010 21:39:32 -0500

This is me in a much earlier, air-conditioning free summer, with my bunny.
Living without air conditioning for the past week has reminded me of all my years of living without a/c when I was young. I remember being hot, most definitely. The worst was probably when we had to sleep in the upstairs bedroom at the farm, and the ONE and only box fan our family owned had to be positioned in a window blowing OUT. I know the theory behind this, as it was explained to me many times, that the fan would blow the hot air out and cooler air would enter the other windows and circulate throughout the house. But I never felt a breeze stir when I was lying there in that sweltering room, too hot to sleep, and it always seemed to me that a fan blowing on my sweaty body would feel much better. (I would still rather have a fan blowing on me, than performing some abstract function of air circulation when I am really hot!)
But, when I think of all those hot summers, I have to say I think we survived them very well. Of course you can’t miss what you never had, so nobody was sitting around bemoaning the lack of air conditioning. Movie theaters and a few stores had a/c but most of the places we went-- school, church, and the homes of friends and family members-- were not air conditioned. I knew of one private home that had air conditioning when I was a child. It belonged to a lovely retired couple who lived across the street from us, named Herb and Anna Holmes (Whom I called collectively “Her Banana” for years before-- and a few years after-- I learned to read.) They would often invite me inside on hot afternoons to cool off and watch Cactus Jim on their TV set. The air conditioning unit was an enormous box that blocked a window of their living room. When turned on, it made a mighty roar, dripped water into pans or buckets set beneath it, and seemed to require Herb’s constant tinkering with its buttons and dials. Herb and Anna were retired from the jewelry store business, and their house was full of beautiful and unusual things. It never even occurred to me that other, ordinary people would even have access to one of these monster cooling machine.
So how do you live through a hot midwestern summer without air conditioning? Here’s what I remember....
1. Living outside. It is usually somewhat cooler outside than inside, especially early in the morning, and after the sun goes down. We had so many suppers at the picnic table or on the screen porch, cold drinks while sitting in lawn chairs in the shade, even ate our breakfast cereal sitting on the back steps. A few times we were even allowed to sleep outside in the yard.
2. Lower expectations. My perspective on this might be a little skewed because I am remembering being a kid out of school for the summer, so of course the livin’ was easy for me. And I know that my elders had a lot of hot work to do with gardening and canning. But in the summer you had completely different habits, and completely different things were expected. And I think that allowances were made in life for living with the heat, and nobody pretended it wasn’t happening.
3. Strategic window opening and closing. We kept the windows open most of the time, for a breeze or ventilation, and when dust settled on everything in the house, that was just part of summer. Windows opened all the way, and everybody knew which ones needed to be open to get a “cross-breeze” if there was any breeze at all to be had. But there were times, like late afternoons when the sun was relentless on the west side of the house, that you closed the windows and pulled the drapes or shutters and even turned out the lights.
4. Awareness of weather conditions on a minute-to-minute basis. Now it is common to walk out the door and be surprised. “Wow, It has really cooled down (or heated up) out here....” Before air conditioning, you knew exactly what was going on outside at every minute. And when there was a slight cool-down at night, a cloudy day, or the temperature dropped after a rain storm, you always made the best of it and the temporary reprieve was welcome and heartening.
5. Wearing fewer clothes. As kids, we wore shorts and sleeveless tops or bathing suits every day, and wore shoes only when we had to. I remember many summers where I would not put a pair of jeans on for the entire summer, and it felt really strange to wear long pants again for the first time in the fall. For nicer occasions we wore light, pale-colored cotton dresses and sandals, which was what most adult women wore all summer. Since it was hot and everyone was hot, nobody was expected to dress up in formal or heavy/dark clothes during the summer months.
6. Everyone’s standards of grooming and cleanliness were lower. That sounds kind of unsavory, but again you don’t miss what you’ve never had. The expectation that everyone should look completely fresh and clean at all times simply did not exist. People did not bathe or wash their hair every day. I grew up washing my hair once a week, and didn’t question that until I was in high school and thought my hair got too oily. When we were kids, we would play outside all day, and then wash our feet off in the bathtub and go to bed. I doubt that anyone was freaked out by getting wet with sweat during the course of a summer’s day.... an occurance that sends us running for the shower now.
7. You eat less, and differently. Being hot all the time makes you lose interest in hot meals-- nobody wants to cook them and nobody wants to eat them. In the summer you eat cold things, and stuff from the garden, and drank a lot of ice tea (adults) and Kool-Aid (kids). And if you were really lucky you got ice cream or popsicles.
8. You get used to it. The body acclimates to the conditions it lives with, and adapts. I can’t begin to explain the physiology, but we all experience this in action. Just like we think we are freezing the first night the temperature drops down to 40 degrees in the fall, and that same temperature can seem almost balmy in January. When you are hot every day, your body’s cooling mechanism works at peak efficiency. Now that we keep ourselves in an artificially temperate climate, being suddenly exposed to 90 - 100 degree temperatures is a shock our bodies are not prepared for.
So back to the present....The good news is that we got a “loaner” installed today, which should keep us cool until the part comes in for our a/c system. It is already cool in here.... for the first time in a week, I have had the luxury of sitting here at the computer typing away, noodling with childhood memories, instead of thinking about how hot I am. Air conditioning is a luxury, and I am aware that many people still live without it. It is possible. I have done it. But I really don’t need to do it again.

The Great Blue

Sun, 18 Jul 2010 09:48:02 -0500

Last week opportunity and luck finally came together. I took my camera to work with me and carried it on my morning walk for a few days, because I had been spotting the Great Blue Heron fairly frequently. The first day or two of course there was not a sign of animal life anywhere, not even a frog or chipmunk. This happens so often I sometimes wonder if there is some kind of weird energy that the camera emits, or I project when I am stalking photos instead of just ambling, that warns the creatures away. But finally, my favorite Great Blue proved that theory wrong. It was a little earlier than usual, on a brilliant morning, and the big bird was so busy with his fishing that he ignored me, inching closer and closer with my zoom lens. Twenty minutes later, I had 114 pictures... and the biggest smile!
Seeing a heron always feels a bit like a gift from the universe. I have watched them appear sporadically (and always singly) along the little creek where I walk, and have begun to feel as though they are a good omen, and always a reminder to me of how rewarding it is to make the natural world a part of every day. Watching the heron balanced in perfect stillness, patiently waiting for just the right unsuspecting fish, always inspires me with a spirit of great calm.
Is the Great Blue Heron my totem animal? I feel as though I have somehow not completely earned the right to adopt that mythology, and yet it continues to resound. I looked up some information about the GBH as a totem animal and this is (in part) what I leaned:
Spirit of the Blue Heron
Role: Peace Maker
Lesson: Balance between relating and standing alone
Element: Air/ Water
Wind: East -- Peace and Illumination
Medicine: Uniqueness
“Persons having the Great Blue Heron totem are strong-willed, dignified, and uniquely independent. They stand on their own two feet and know what is best for themselves. Heron people are very observant and instinctive and take successful advantage of opportunities others might not notice.
Heron People are not followers. They ‘dance to their own drummer’ and do not feel the need to fit in or ‘keep up with the Jones’. Although they enjoy socializing, they are perfectly content to be on their own. They are versatile and adaptable and enjoy exploring new and different avenues in life and learning new skills. People with the Great Blue Heron as their totem are of strong character and take full control and responsibility for their actions.”

Thumbs Up

Mon, 12 Apr 2010 20:41:29 -0500

I spent a lot of last week working on portrait drawings of some of the kids Alexis works with in Youth Lead. They are going into the paper that will be presented at the conference she is attending right now in Hawaii. We decided to illustrate the paper with drawings because the photos they had were “candid snapshot quality”-- full of clutter, extra people or parts of them, poorly lit, etc. The challenge was to take this very limited reference material and come up with portraits that showed something about the character and personality of each of the people being profiled. Quickly. I think I was fairly successful, considering that I was working from photos that I would never have chosen if I were going to do a portrait.
When I draw someone I always think a lot about them. It is a meditative and kind of an intimate process in a one-sided sort of way-- studying someone’s face so carefully until you are finally able to see what makes that person unique, what makes them look like themselves and nobody else. In this case, I don’t know these kids personally, but I know a lot about them, and all of them were represented here because they have been successfully working in this group to reach beyond their disabilities. As I drew each one of them , I kept thinking how beautiful they were, and how much their big hearts and spirits showed in their expressions. These are kids that most of the world has written off. They have developmental disabilities of some kind, have aged out of the public school system, and now need some support as they try to move into adult lives.
They are learning to advocate for themselves, and to speak their own truth. I am inspired by how brave and honest they are. Some of us without any disabilities struggle with those things as well, even though our resources are so much greater. Anyway this project was reminding me again to really look at people, and try to see beyond the first impression or the assumptions we make about them. Judgement is the killer of so many possibilities. When I am able to do this, I feel like I live in a friendlier universe.
The other day I was standing in line at Borders (why is there always a line?), and reminded myself just to look at every person in the line as someone who was valuable and to wish the best for them. Suddenly the woman behind me said, “Would you like to have this 30 percent off coupon? I have an extra one.” I had forgotten mine, and gratefully accepted. It seemed like more than a coincidence that I had just determined to feel friendly toward my fellow line-standers when one of them reached out to me in a friendly way. I sometimes think that intention is more powerful than we ever realize.

Mystery Coyote

Mon, 15 Feb 2010 19:19:12 -0600

In case you haven’t had your daily dose of weirdness....
I just happened to be driving by the building next door to my office, and noticed what I first thought was a dog in the lawn between buildings. But... wait a minute, that’s no dog, it’s a.... coyote.... and it’s..... way too still. I had to stop and look at it, and finally got out of the car to investigate further. (I reminded myself of that very old SNL skit with the two old guys just staring and pointing at something saying, “What in the HELL is that?” “What in the hell IS THAT DANG DEAL?” )
Someone has positioned a dead (probably taxidermied) coyote in the space between two office buildings and anchored it to the ground with metal rods. It made such a strange sight, standing there dead in an attitude of alertness, with snow drifting onto its fur and sunken glassy eyes.
I went back to work and told my coworkers about it, and they were as freaked out as I was. One person had seen it a few days earlier, and said it had been moving around, which adds another element to the mystery. Why would anyone put a stuffed coyote outside an office building?Someone suggested it might be to scare away the geese that wander up from the park. Well maybe. But there are so few of them it hardly seems worth such a drastic solution. The grounds of these office buildings are maintained by big landscaping companies, and I don’t think they would be using dead coyotes as a standard geese deterrent.
Maybe somebody just decided to do something weird. I almost like that answer better, even if it is a little creepy in this case. It always interesting to come across something you just don’t understand. Since my opportunities to go places I’ve never been are kind of limited, I like it when things I’ve never seen find me!