Lift Up Your Hearts!

I'm not unsympathetic to those who are genuinely suffering in the heat. I spent the first 30+ years of my life in the Northeast, where air conditioning was almost unheard of, even in critical care hospitals. The laboratory where I worked in the 1970's only had air conditioning in the computer rooms, and that only because—like art—the machines would not work under conditions that people were expected to endure with patience. Even in Florida, my grandparents' house, like most buildings before the late 20th century, had no air conditioning. (It was, however, intelligently built: two blocks from the ocean, and constructed for maximum cross-ventilation, to take advantage of every breeze.) I know unrelenting heat.

So how did we manage?

• Buildings, like my grandparents' house, were built to take the heat into account, with cross-ventilating windows, breezy porches, and shady trees arching over the roofs. Central Florida as it is built now could not exist without the HVAC industry.
• House windows were habitually opened as soon as the outside air cooled off at night, which it did most weeks of the year in the Northeast, and closed when the day began to heat up. This practice has a power that I didn't fully appreciate until we moved to Florida, where the nighttime cooling is ofttimes non-existent.
• Swimming: in ponds, lakes, pools, and/or the ocean. Plastic kiddie pools and running through the sprinkler helped a lot, too. When we first moved to Florida, we kept the A/C set in the 80's, and spent a lot of time in the pool. That kept us cool, but took a terrible toll on our energy. Once we gave in and brought the inside temperature down to the high 70's, we used the pool less—but got a lot more accomplished.
• Another advantage the more northern climes have is that the really unbearable temperatures are only for a short time. When we lived in Rochester, there were usually only two or three weeks in the summer when I was reduced to nursing my baby while immersed in a cool-water bath, and planning excursions based on whether or not the destination was air conditioned. In Florida, sans A/C, that would be the majority of the year.
• A few very lucky people had jobs in air conditioned buildings. As for the rest of us: we suffered; we endured; we dialed down our activities to keep our bodies cooler and our minds saner. And we looked forward to the first hints of autumn.

But that was then, and this is now, and now what makes it possible to have a comfortable, productive society is air conditioning. It's no secret that the closest thing the American South has to a secular saint is Willis Carrier. Air conditioning is as critical in the Sun Belt as heating is in the Snow Belt. Having heard people seriously suggest that the cause of France's heat wave is American air conditioning, I can only say, "Come back and talk to me about giving up my A/C after you've lived a winter in your country without heating." Better yet, discover air conditioning for yourself. Even if you only need it for a few weeks out of the year, you'll feel better, and can be pleased with how low your A/C bills are compared with ours, just as we Southerners feel better about hour heating bills in winter when we look at yours.

You might also consider investing in public places of respite, as I've seen in various cities here, where people can come in to get warm, or to get cool, depending on the season. As I said in my last post, one can stand a much greater intensity and duration of heat or cold if one can occasionally retreat to a more comfortable situation.

And gelaterias. We all need more gelaterias.