This is my last summer without air conditioning
Dr. Convection
http://www.citizenonline.net/citizen/archive/article1761DD20705F4A50A2AFC48A
9BC54797.asp
This is my last summer without air conditioning
By Jacquelyn Mitchard
Twenty-three years ago, I moved to Wisconsin, and people here told me that I
had no need for an air conditioner.
I believed this.
Like so many things about life in Wisconsin, this was not a matter of
practicality or comfort, but of moral fiber.
It was a Wisconsin sort of thing, like wearing a denim jacket all winter and
saying you were so used to the cold you didn't really feel it.
It was like biking to work to save energy when the temperature hovered at
about 10.
It was like the bumper stickers that read, "Thirty below keeps out the
riffraff."
It was like the idea of having a football team in a town so bitterly cold
and far north that players, in the autumn, routinely, had to expose their
skin to sub-zero temperatures and roll in the frozen mud, while the fans
huddled in parkas and ski boots.
If you deliberately bought an air conditioner, you were considered a sissy.
If you had an air conditioner that you had, for example, inherited, even in
your car, you did not use it.
If your friends came over, and you had an air conditioner, and it was in
use, they stayed longer, but spent their time with you explaining why you
did not need an air conditioner and were using up your children's future
natural resources - just as they were using up your beer.
I believed them. I tried very hard not to turn on the air conditioner
Now, the thing is, I truly love air conditioning.
I grew up in Chicago, in an apartment with a flat tar roof, in which the
only room that was air-conditioned was my parents', and I spent many nights
sleeping on their floor as a child and even as a teenager. As a young woman,
I saved my first six paychecks - spending each evening sitting in my
underwear with a pie plate filled with ice cubes positioned on a stool in
front of a fan - and bought an air conditioner, after which I slept in my
nightgown in bliss and silence.
For the first 15 years I lived in Wisconsin (a part of Wisconsin that is not
the north woods) with the ice cubes and the fan again, sweltering, wondering
if this was a condition in which other people could sleep, talk, eat, watch
television or make love (even if they were single), in utter misery but in
moral security, until I moved to a house that came with central air.
I did not find the air stale and unnatural.
Stepping into the house from work each night was like stepping into a
beautiful Disney movie.
I figured, since the previous owners of the house had installed the unit,
the sin of karma was not mine.
This was after my first husband's death (he was a fervent protector of
fossil fuels). Much as we mourned him, my children and I kept the house at
69 degrees year-round, and we were happy.
Then, I fell in love and so did they with another conservationist.
My husband has had our attic reinsulated and has had vents installed, which
he believes will permit us never again to use central air.
My belief is that the good that will come of this is that we finally will
attract bats, which our bat houses have failed to do, and perhaps have fewer
mosquitoes.
My husband has rigged the entire house with an elaborate system of hall and
window fans.
All the doors must be open to a precise angle for maximum air movement, and
the fans must operate during the day and especially at night to cool down
the house for whatever the following day should bring.
As I write this, my hair is blowing back from my head, as it would be if I
were being photographed by Annie Leibovitz for Vanity Fair.
My eyes are dry, and the sound is akin to the pitch on the tarmac at O'Hare
Airport.
The fan in our window was built to cool cows in a barn.
The screens on the windows are being sucked in as if by poltergeist
activity.
The dogs' gums are flapping back from their teeth.
It is 11:45 p.m. and I would watch the television if I could possibly hear
it; but I could not, nor is reading easy when the velocity of the wind is
equivalent to that of a motorboat.
But I put up with this because it is now midsummer and we have not yet once
turned on the central air and my husband is convinced we are saving great
quantities of money.
It is as if he believes that the fans are not powered by electricity.
I am going to put up with one more summer of this.
And then I am going to build myself a hogan in the yard with windows that do
not open, and an air conditioner as big as a fir tree operating inside at
full speed. I will wave up and blow kisses to the children as they stand at
the billowing screens, in their underwear. And I will be happy.
Jacquelyn Mitchard welcomes readers' responses sent to Tribune Media
Services Inc., 435 N. Michigan Ave. Suite 1400, Chicago, Ill. 60611.
Ian St. John
"Dr. Convection" <Conve...@convection.uk> wrote in message
news:9jXPa.445842$Vi5.11...@news1.calgary.shaw.ca...
> From:
>
http://www.citizenonline.net/citizen/archive/article1761DD20705F4A50A2AFC48A
> 9BC54797.asp
>
> This is my last summer without air conditioning
Really? I hope you get a high efficiency unit and you might think about
insulating more. If you have a 'heated attic' you might think of chagning
over to put more space between you and solar heat gain.
John Ladasky
warning? What?
"Dr. Convection" <Conve...@convection.uk> wrote in message news:<9jXPa.445842$Vi5.11...@news1.calgary.shaw.ca>...
> From:
> http://www.citizenonline.net/citizen/archive/article1761DD20705F4A50A2AFC48A
> 9BC54797.asp
>
> This is my last summer without air conditioning
>
> By Jacquelyn Mitchard
[snip]
> ...I moved to a house that came with central air.
> I did not find the air stale and unnatural.
> Stepping into the house from work each night was like stepping into a
> beautiful Disney movie.
Dear Jacquelyn,
Life can be beautiful, but it is never a Disney movie. Weather
happens. Experience reality.
> I figured, since the previous owners of the house had installed the unit,
> the sin of karma was not mine.
> This was after my first husband's death (he was a fervent protector of
> fossil fuels). Much as we mourned him, my children and I kept the house at
> 69 degrees year-round, and we were happy.
Gosh, Jacquelyn sounds just like my renter. If he leaves the house
after me, I come home to a COLD house, with the thermostat set at 66.
He never even watches a weather report, so he doesn't know when he can
just leave the upstairs windows open for the day. If I'm the first
one in bed, I usually wake up with chills and cold, sore muscles
because he cranks the air conditioning to unreasonable levels -- and
then, sleeps under his blanket.
I'll keep the thermostat at 80 degrees during the day when I'm gone,
only so that I can cool the upstairs bedrooms to 75 in a reasonable
amount of time before sleeping (the house is brick, and is a huge heat
sink). By historical standards, that's luxurious. Even by modern
standards, that's still luxurious. There are over 6 billion people on
Earth, and I would guess that only about a half billion of them spend
any part of their day in an air-conditioned building. much less their
homes.
Let me guess. Like my renter, Jacquelyn probably sets the heat to 75
degrees in the winter, right? So she doesn't have to wear a sweater?
> Then, I fell in love and so did they with another conservationist.
[deleted description of misguided conservationist who seems to be
creating one electricity-use problem while solving another]
Well, there's Jacquelyn's karmic retribution, witnessing the theater
of the absurd playing out to gain that one extra ounce of comfort,
while trying to keep one last ounce of concern for others. Or, maybe
there's no karmic retribution after all. It appears that she hasn't
learned anything from her experience. She's dreaming up the plot for
an even grander Disney movie:
> I am going to put up with one more summer of this.
> And then I am going to build myself a hogan in the yard with windows that do
> not open, and an air conditioner as big as a fir tree operating inside at
> full speed. I will wave up and blow kisses to the children as they stand at
> the billowing screens, in their underwear. And I will be happy.
And Americans wonder why the world considers them to be wastrels. A
cellar would solve all of her probems, without electricity.
Would you do me a little favor, Jacquelyn? I'm moving back to my home
in energy-strapped California in a few months. Please make sure that
your Disney movie is filmed on location as planned, in Wisconsin.
--
John J. Ladasky Jr., Ph.D.
Department of Biology
Johns Hopkins University
Baltimore MD 21218
USA
Earth