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Hot Time, Summer In The City
By Joe Renna
Coping with this year's record heat wave has been an exercise
in complacency. Extreme weather has always swarmed us. Yet we
treat it as the apocolypse. Have we become so removed from nature
that heat or cold changes our disposition?
Sure it's uncomfortable and even a nuisance, but it shouldn't
be dominate.
Extreme weather could be fatal to extreme people - the extremely
old, extremely young and extremely sick. But if you don't fall
into any of those categories and find life impossible then you
may just be spoiled.
City folk understand extremes. The more experienced in life
ignore it completely. Witness the turnouts to three Peterstown
picnics in the thick of the heat wave. The heat kept some people
away, but there was still a large turnout. And the polls show
that the seniors were the majority whooping it up. Summer is made
for picnics, reunions and outdoors. Anyone old enough to remember
Apollo 11 landing on the moon has a history of living through
extreme weather without synthetic relief.
It wasn't that long ago that air conditioning was not common
place. Much like the family with the first color TV on the block,
whomever had an air-conditioner was considered elite. There was
a cusp when the announcer described a boxer's trunks by color
and then by contrast if "you are watching on black and white
TV". This same era found few, if any, air-conditioners in
the neighborhood. So how did we cope?
A few fans strategically placed throughout the apartment meant
a constant flow of warm air
will move over your exposed skin and cool you as it carried your
sweat away.
Your metabolism slowed and you relaxed, meditatively, closing
your eyes
and stopping your body function except for the bare essentials.
Even Historical "Restoration" usually includes
electricity,
heat and air conditioning!!! It wasn't too hot for George Washington
to shack up comfortably. Imagine generations having to exist
with the basic luxuries we take for granted . . . working in the
home,
office, factory. Remember it's not the heat, it's the humility.