In Texas, you grow up with AC the way you grow up with religion. It sticks with you. It becomes a part of you. You believe. But I grew up on the shores of Connecticut. To me, summer has always been a time of heat, the sun baking the paint on the bottom of old wood dinghies, small waves breaking, blackberry ice cream dripping down your forearm...And this video, a little thought for a cooler future:
The earth was drunk on heat. It had been drinking it in the entire day and now it lay there in the darkness, steeped... It was one of the least productive and most memorable summers I've ever had. (Air head, Salon.com)
(Hat tip, Distillation)
6 comments:
Thanks for the comment, and I'm glad you liked the commercial! Best of luck with the heat wave -- I hope it doesn't interfere with your running too much.
I keep telling myself that running in this heat is only making me stronger, right? Running a marathon in October will be easy peasy!
Growing up in MA, I never had AC. But I think we never had more than one week of 90 degree temps for the whole summer...
As much as I LOVE summer, this heat is killing my runs. Here's to cooler moments!
I spent most of my childhood in eastern part of the US and remember the summers fondly. Out here on the Arizona desert, we approach heat differently. It starts to build in mid-March when the rest of country is setting their sights on spring. By the end of April, more often than not, the temps have broken through the artificial 100F barrier and then settled back a little, giving us the first taste of summer. We push through the rest of April and May thinking that the high 90s aren’t all that bad and just how hot can it get anyway? By mid-June the temperature has exceeded 110F and it's just plain HOT, but we can take it. July starts and the temperature exceeds 115 (it was 116 on the 4th of July) and you start to question your sanity for living in what feels much more like an oven than an actual community. By the end of July, the dominant winds have shifted and moisture is sucked up from south causing substantial storms to form spontaneously in the afternoon (can the locusts be far behind?). August – I can't think about August, too painful. Next comes September, the month where those of us from the east expect the temperatures to drop – HAH! The talking heads on the local news channels start up the nightly reports giving us the number of consecutive 100F+ days we’ve lived through and the temperature stays up through some mysterious and unnatural phenomenon. And then, just as we are about to break down into a slithering mass of jelly, the temperature drops in mid-October. By November we’re laughing at the poor bastards in the northern climes putting up with snow and freezing rain; all thoughts of heat behind us. Boy, we’re a dumb lot.
Phil - You're too funny. I'll admit that I felt a little silly calling this a heat wave, knowing what y'all are going through out west. Then again, some of us are dumb for piling onto one teeny tiny island filled with concrete ;-)
I think especially New Yorkers are super sensitive to heat. Last night I wanted to go for dinner at my fav place, where I can sit outside and they closed the outdoor seating with the reason "it's hot and we are lazy". Duh, it's not that hot any more - how can you miss this? Besides I think we are waisting a lot of energy by overblasting our AC's. What's little sweat? It won't kill us!!!!
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