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Ask Dr. Babooner

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Dear Dr. Babooner,

This is something like the fifth day in a row that it’s been unbearably hot and humid and my nerves are beginning to fray.

And I don’t even have to suffer in the weather!

I’m lucky enough to have enough money to live the kind of life that protects me from discomfort on 100 degree days. In fact, I feel trapped inside all my air-conditioned spaces. My home, my car and my office all provide plentiful false, frigid comfort.

The outside seems very remote.

Even the health club is air-conditioned. While I’m flailing away on the elliptical trainer I think about the huge coal burning power plants that worsen global warming in order to make electricity so huge fans can blow cold air into a giant room so people will have to do intense workouts to break a sweat while they could just as easily get totally soaked merely waiting for a bus.

The desk attendant says “stay cool”, as I leave. Everybody says that when you’re about to head out into the weather during a heat wave. Whenever someone tells me to “stay cool”, I want to lose mine. What’s wrong with feeling the heat? Why are we so afraid of what’s really happening in the weather? How did people survive before we figured out how to refrigerate our spaces? Didn’t they wear heavy wool clothes then? We’ve become sissies. The world is insane.

Would I feel less mad if I tried living without air conditioning?

Quizzically,
Seething Over Summer

I told S.O.S. he (she?) would not find relief in a world without air conditioning, but rather a different kind of madness. Though you may feel cooped up and isolated from reality in your cool, dry bubble, those who have no choice but to endure the sauna also feel enclosed and unable to escape. How did people survive without air-conditioning? A lot of them didn’t. So stop whining and enjoy your good fortune!

Sorry about my tone, but the weather has made me short tempered and intolerant.

But that’s just one opinion. What do YOU think, Dr. Babooner?

111 thoughts on “Ask Dr. Babooner”

  1. Perhaps our age has driven us indoors.
    We sprawl in the semi-darkness, dreaming sometimes
    Of a vague world spinning in the wind.
    But we have snapped our locks, pulled down our shades,
    Taken all precautions. We shall not be disturbed.
    If the earth shakes, it will be on a screen;
    And if the prairie wind spills down our streets
    And it covers us with leaves, the weatherman will tell us.

    — Dan Jaffe

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    2. I go to weather.com when I want to see what the forecast for the day or the next few days is. If you go to the “hourly forecast,” you can click on something that says:

      “Alert me when it rains.”

      That boggles my mind. Whatever happened to looking out the window? Or, if you’re already outside, noticing the rain clouds moving in, then feeling the drops of rain?

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  2. Good morning. Try to strike a balance, SOS. That’s my advice. Spend some time outside in the heat and then get some relief in an air conditioned space. Become a supporter of alternative energy sources that can replace those coal burning power plants. Check out ways to keep your house cool that use less energy. Set a good example for others including me. I’m not very good at following my own advice.

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  3. Rise and Swelter Baboons!

    Hey SOS–Don’t you just yearn for the days of the large covered front porch and windows in the house that provided cross ventilation? It is amazing what one can do with those accommodations. They also had “summer kitchens” back in the day to cope with the heat. You can always build such accommodations onto your house rather than crank up the AC. But hot is hot and those accommodations don’t reduce that. There is also a gizmo they use in the west to reduce use of AC, but at this early hour I cannot come up with the name (swamp cooler?).

    So you can live without AC but you’d better be prepared with old-fashioned methods to survive.

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      1. We had something, when living in the 16-foot trailer in Colorado, called a water cooler -probably the same thing – air blows over a water-soaked something, really cools things down nicely. Illegal in humid places like here – can you imagine creating MORE humidity?

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        2. WP would not allow me to smile more than once yesterday. I’ll use winky smiles today.
          😉 😉 😉
          Take THAT, WordPress!

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  4. Few folks appreciate how powerfully Minnesota was affected by summertime heat-escaping Southern tourism in earlier times. My former home in Wayzata stood on the grounds of what had been a fabulous four-story hotel that catered to wealthy southerners. Near my cabin in northwestern Wisconsin, several of the Apostles Islands had similar magnificent hotels for summer use by southerners escaping the heat. Huge luxury hotels filled with southerners were a major element in Minnesota summers until air conditioning caught on.

    When I grew up in Ames, three kinds of places might have air conditioning: bars, movie theaters and some department stores. It was a summer treat for girls in my town to go to Yonkers to “try on clothes” for several hours in the heat of the day.

    As I wrote in my book about my parents, my grandmother sought relief from terrible heat in Chicago in 1934 by going to a movie at an air-conditioned theater. She saw a cocky man come in with a date that night . . . John Dillinger and the “lady in red.” A bit later my grandmother saw that man’s exit from this sweltering world.

    People used to rely on fans, electric fans or hand-held cardboard fans. Think of the trial scenes in To Kill a Mockingbird . . . all those fans fluttering. A man became famous in my grandmother’s town for stealing what might have been the largest fan in the state. The US Navy had some kind of office building where over 100 women worked while a huge fan in the front of the building tried to keep them cool. On one hot day the local prankster walked into the navy building wearing workman’s clothes and took that fan. The theft had over 100 witnesses, but nobody wanted to turn this character in. He’d repaid them in amusement while stealing that monster fan.

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    1. you know we all talk about the old days but the truth is the new days are ominous. the prospect of 100+ with periodic rain torrents like we have seen is the proposed consequence of screwing up the nice gentle weather traditions our parents cycled through. i get concerned about what legacy we are leaving to the next landlords. china doesnt care, george w doesnt care, tea party doesnt want to discuss or acknoledge it, but i do. 2020 is the target for lots of enviormental goals. my guess we will discover it is too little too late. our children will say remember when our parents used to say remember when.

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      1. Climate change deniers want to believe that the future will be just like the past, only two or three degrees hotter. No. Everything changes. We have terrible storms. Diseases crop up where not expected. We experience strange, violent storms. Great ocean currents change direction, screwing up the cycle of life.

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        1. What a lot of people don’t understand is that climate change isn’t something that’s GOING to happen starting Jan. 1, 2050 or whatever future date. It’s happening right now, and the planet we all knew, for which current species and cultures evolved, is already beyond recovery. Interesting coincidence: I just returned “Eaarth” by Bill McKibben to the library, which is about this very subject.

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      2. When we moved to ND 25 years ago, we didn’t need air conditioning because the heat of the day wasn’t too bad and it always cooled down at night-it was more of a desert climate. After a few years we noticed that there were more and more summer nights when it didn’t cool down, so we got central air conditioning in the house. That was clear evidence of climate change as far as I am concerned.

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        1. An identical story can be told about my daughter’s adopted home town of Portland. Even the homes of the well-to-do didn’t used to include a/c. Now there are window units being stuck in all over town.

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        2. Just had a similar discussion w/ the Teenager yesterday. I told her that cars didn’t have air conditioning when I was a kid – just windows. She said “oh, you mean back when the dinosaurs roamed the earth.” Sheesh!

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        3. When I was a kid (close to when dinosaurs roamed the earth) a few cars still had fans with rotary blades that sat on the dash of cars rather than being incorporated in a climate system.

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        4. No a/c in my car but I do have a little battery run fan that I can use at red lights. I drive a stick shift, can’t use my fan when I am driving. But, that is neither here nor there because car is dead in my garage, it is either the battery or alternator and in this heat even my curiosity won’t get me out there to investigate. Some people think my little fan is hilarious. I want to know whose idea it was AND why??? the little triangular vent windows no longer open!!! They created a breeze that made no a/c bearable. Oh, guess they went out with dinosaurs.

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        5. Nan, those triangular wing windows disappeared for several reasons. By the time you add up all the hardware involved: the chrome slide, the locking mechanism, the pivot pins, the rubber weather gasket–there was a lot of money in those little windows. But what really killed them off was the lower number of smokers driving. Those wing windows had amazing abilities to suck tobacco smoke out of a car cabin, even when the main window was shut in winter. The wing windows disappeared at about the time they began building cars without ash trays (or maybe you had to order an ash tray from the option list). Originally, both front and back seat passengers had convenient ash trays to use. I think most cars still come with cigarette lighters, but they are there these days to accept a variety of electronic devices (phones, iPods, etc).

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        7. I think that maybe the loss of the triangle windows happened at the same time they put a/c in cars and expected that it would always work and/or that everyone would want to use it.

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        8. LOVED the vent window!
          My first car, Grandma’s ’67 Valiant, also had a little door down by your feet that opened and that made a nice breeze. And I’m told you could fit several cans of beer– I mean ‘pop’ in there and keep them cold. Less hardware on that door but it would bring some dust in.

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      3. The solution to climate change will require changes of all kinds according to a book I just finished called Hot by Mark Hertsgaard. There is a big need to reduce green house gases and a big need to prepare for changes in our climate there are already under way. We aren’t doing enough in both of these areas.

        We can adapt to the changes that are coming and we can find ways to limit climate change. However, we can’t go on wasting resources and and living in a world where every one seems to want more and more of everything. To make the changes needed we will have to completely change the way we live. The consumer oriented society we live in today will not work and protection of the environment will need to be greatly increased. If we can make these changes we will have a much better world to live in. That is Hertsgaard’s message as I understand it and it makes sense to me.

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        2. I think it is a very well done book. Some parts go into technical information, but I think it is not too dificult.

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  5. My daughter and family were going to visit DeSmet Friday as part of their trip to visit the other grandparents in the Sioux Falls area and as part of their LEW summer but they decided it would be too hot (to drive there at 70 mph on paved and not dusty roads in an AC car as opposed to what it was like then in those clothes and in that dirt and dust and insects).

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      1. Never mind, just checked – it’s coming a day later. I knew they’d be wrong, but was hoping it would be a day earlier.

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        1. And when that day comes, no doubt, they’ll tell us it will be another day or two later.

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  6. Dear SOS – As Someone Living Without Central Air-Conditioning, I say quit your whining. Be glad for what the modern world has brought you. You do not have to fret about what shape the dog will be in when you get home because he is not allowed to go into the basement to cool off (he’d snack on the litter box…eeewwww). Nor were you likely up late last night killing wasps that got into your offspring’s room through the tiny cracks between the window air conditioner unit and the sides of the window frame. And I’m betting you haven’t looked at your thermostat this week and wondered if an overnight temp of 75 degrees is enough to cool off the house currently clocking in SLWCAC (who, just like they did back in the day, went to a movie to get into the AC yesterday, ate lunch out where there was central AC…and yes, enjoyed her small splash pool in the back yard, but you can’t sleep in it, at least not safely – alas.)

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      1. I second that suggestion. Dogs are very vulnerable to heat. Yesterday I saw a boxer that had collapsed on the sidewalk, panting for air, while being taken for a walk. Poor thing.

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    2. Anna – I think we’re living the same life, but without the wasps!

      When the noise mitigation program came to my world two years ago, I made the decision to get windows and not central air. Everyone I know thinks I’m crazy. Yeah, it’s occasionally rough – especially having to share the bed w/ the teenager since only my bedroom has central air, but I still stand by my decision.

      Spent quite a bit of time outside yesterday – never underestimate how nice an umbrella can be while watching a parade!

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      1. Up until yesterday it wasn’t so bad – but the wasps were really the icing on the cake. Mostly we can handle it (including the dog), but when overnight temps stay above 70 or 75, it’s hard to cool the house down overnight. (Btw – a part of my first post went missing…must have deleted it while I was taking a bite of breakfast…oops…”cool off the house currently clocking in SLWCAC” should have read, “cool off the house currently clocking in at 86 degrees. Grumpily, SLWCAC.”)
        Dog will survive – he has plenty of water and fans to keep him cool. I have thought about allowing him into the basement on days like today, but frankly, he is so trained not to go down the stairs, I doubt he’d go even if we left the gate at the top of the stairs wide open. 😦

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  7. Dear SOS,
    You will feel a lot better if you share your bounty. Invite folks without air conditioning to sleep at your house until the current heat spell breaks, lend me your car since after 12 years air is only conditioned in my car by rolling down the windows, bring boxes of Popsicles to a rec center in North Minneapolis, drive around with a cooler full of iced beverages and share with construction workers and others who work outside, deliver a crate of cool watermelons to th eDorothy Day Center, etc. Your heart will be warmer and you will feel cooler!

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    5. Once last year, a #14 bus driver stopped a Schwan’s truck at Lake & Bloomington Ave, bought a box of popsicles and had a passenger hand them out to everyone on the bus. It was a hot day and his a/c was not working. He changed the mood on the bus, made me smile the rest of the day.

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  8. it is surprising how relatively cool the shade is on these hot days. i played golf last week with a group where we had a 12 noon tee time on a 100+ heat factor day and wearing a lite shirt and shorts made it tolerable. this week i have found sitting on the porch with a little music and a book is nice and if the shade is there it is much cooler than in the sun. a couple miles an hour of breeze is al it takes to make it tolerable. yesterday my son and i had a 9 am tee time and while it was hot it was not bad. my son did whine more than i expected but we got through it just fine. i wondered about the tee time guy whose job it is to sit outside and tell you its ok to go ahead and tee off. he has a little booth with plexiglass on windows to keep the rain from spalshing when that is going on. he was pleasnat and happy and didnt let on he was in a warm job description. the golf course had 1 tee time for the day setup yesterday. we didnt stick around to see how they did but there were a couple folks showing up at 1 as we finsihed our round and they didnt have to worry about being too fast or to slow. they had it all to themselves. the dogs need to get out and while it slows them down they need to be able to get out and be in the outdoor space. shade and water is all they need. i think the same may be truer for us than we know. the old front porch with a rocking chair and a book is southern tradition that works. remember the whole house fan that was installed in some homes where the fan was stuck in the ceiling of the living room in a 1 story house and would suck all the air in from outside and blow it out through the attic. air circulation was all that was required on hot summer afternoon and evenings. i am afraid we are raising a whole crop of very sof people who are afraid they will melt in the heat. it is nice to have air as an option but to stay in the house rather than go out into that unbearable heat seems sad. we are in such denial that we look for close parking places on the way to the health club. what a world. you gotta love minnesota where the 100+and the 50- are both part of the deal and make the news with equal fervor. ya shure. renee, donna chris and other foreigners are welcome to talk about their weather too but it only inspires us to tell another minnesota story. glad to hear sherrilee got out into the parade mode yesterday.

    Ninety degrees ‘neath the trees where it’s shady
    Hundred and ten in the hot sun
    Heat from the street burned the feet of the ladies
    See how they run

    harry nilsson

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  9. Relative cool is the name of the game here.
    It is relatively cooler in our basement.
    It is relatively cooler in the shade.
    It is relatively cooler at night and if we throw open all the windows and there is a breeze (like last night, it is actually pretty pleasant).

    We went to the Como Pool yesterday with friends, then out for ice cream. We thought about returning to the pool, but it was filled to capacity, so we couldn’t.

    I know this will sound crazy, but I found real joy in knowing that while there are so many refridgerated spaces with computer screens in them available, the good old city pool was filled to capacity

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    1. reminds me of the summer days spent at bush lake beach in bloomington day after day after day. no folks, no sibs, just a towel and a buddy. life was simple.

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    2. In some parts of the country the pools are all filled up. I take real joy in thinking of how many Minnesotans can jump in a real lake–no chlorinated water there!–and swim with the sunfish.

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      2. Yup, that chilly Lake Superior water would be most excellent today, but I would feel I was contributing to the problem if I burnt enough fossil fuel to get there.

        Now, Lake Phalen……..I should give that my consideration. Bet that beach is packed too. Good.

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  10. As someone like Anna (SLWCAC), I would like to say the days are moderately tolerable but the nights are miserable when it is humid. In fact, after suffering last summer, we bought a room air conditioner in the spring and finally put it in on Tuesday. Until then we were doing fine with windows open at night and shut in the day, shades down, fans, etc. We don’t cook much if at all when it’s hot, because we lose our appetites and just drink lots of water. However, the prospect of the extended humid heat wave with not enough useful cooling at night finally pushed us to finish what we had started..
    Now we can sleep. (Our house is rather small and the cool air shoots from one end of the living room to the kitchen. The other rooms even get some benefit.)
    Outside? My husband raked hay (with horses) yesterday, taking breaks and letting the horses stand in the shade during the breaks. He also mowed more hay with a tractor, and he said the breeze was nice. On the other hand, I have not mowed the lawn (push mower) because if I wait a few more days the air will be drier. (What’s the rush?) I know that if we lived in the south I would not have the luxury of waiting a few more days. However, here I am excited to think that soon I can turn the A/C off and still sleep at night.
    So SOS, moderation in all things seems like a goal to work for. And Beth-Ann’s ideas are wonderful, too!

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    1. Vicky – I put my window unit in just last week as well. I always try to wait until July 1 (not sure why this is… I also have arbitrary dates for bringing the sweaters down from the attic and putting the coats away in the spring) but I broke down last Saturday. I was turning off the air conditioner at 10 and letting the night air cool the house down, but that quit working two nights ago. Can’t wait to hear birds in the morning when the unit gets turned off again!

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      1. I agree, I can’t wait to turn it off. This morning we had an odd thunderstorm at 4:30, and it was hard to hear with all the windows shut. Maybe tonight or Friday night?

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      1. Raking hay with horses is always cool, but it’s “cooler” when the weather is too. I think one thing the husband likes a lot is seeing and hearing animals that don’t realize he’s there because horses are so much quieter than a tractor. He used to use them for mowing too, but that’s really harder work so he has cut it down to raking.
        And yes, Tim, the longer grass is probably healthier, but I cut mine high to start with so long in this case could get a little silly.

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      2. I one year and only one year raked hay with horses, at about age 13. We used horses for everything except haying, but one year we needed to save money on gas. But the only thing we could any longer pull with a horse was the rake. To me horses are things you use in the winter for logging. But one summer we did log with horses (long story why).

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        1. I’ve seen lots of pictures of people logging with horses but we have not done it. That must have been quite an experience to do it in the summer!

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        2. Long story short: power line was coming through our land, about 3/8 of mile through woods. My dad contracted to clear the land with the power company and then we got the wood and the timber, which was substantial white and red pine he was waiting to cut in a few years when he had his saw mill built. It was in some wet ground into which he did not want to take the tractor and to save the gas. We had a rubber-tired four wheel wagon we could pull wit the tractor or the horse. Only a little skidding. On the North Shore, so not hot, but BUGGY!

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  11. I’m amazed at how many of us SLWCACs there are. Here’s my routine:
    – upon waking: close east, south, and west windows and pull shades, take walk, do yard stuff
    – heat tea water and (if cooking) make breakfast in summer kitchen, which consists of hot plate and electric frypan on table outside back door
    – on hottest days, work in basement, or read with a fan, in coolest room on main floor
    – go to library, or a movie if library is closed
    – eat mostly salads and other non-cooked things (frozen cooked shrimp is great…); make more ice cubes
    – after supper, screen porch may be cool enough, esp. with fan
    – sleep on screen porch (It’s only a double size futon there, so we’ve been taking turns)

    That said, there are moments when I go this is insane, why don’t we just get C A/C! Like yesterday when it got too hot to come upstairs to the computer – I would’ve had to move a big fan to be here more than 30 seconds.

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    1. My crock-pot has been my friend this week – though I’m not always sure I want a hot meal at the end of the day, husband does…so meals have been whatever I can create in my little cylinder of wonder that requires a bit of electricity but doesn’t heat up the whole house in the process. When Husband brought home a take-and-bake loaf the other night to go with what i had in the crock, i resisted the urge to shriek at him, “you want me to heat up an oven to 375 degrees so you can have more carbs?…I don’t think so!” The bread bakes up quickly, but even for the 20 minutes the oven was on, I wasn’t too pleased…

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      1. I haven’t even eaten anything hot this week. And I even looked on the internet last night see if I could find a no-bake version of my Blevins contribution for Sunday!

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      2. We’ve been grilling a lot this week. Like you say, who wants hot food when it’s this hot anyway? And Kelly said just yesterday, ‘I love the microwave on days like this’…

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    1. Not this year – it is scheduled for the same weekend as the festival in Fort Dodge. I believe the team has gone there in the past, though, before I joined.

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  13. Morning-

    We’re also SLWACA… Yep, open windows at night, close windows and blinds during the day. Yesterday a friend brought out his small window AC unit that he’s not using at the moment. We put it in the dining room window and it helped in there. Son’s room in the SE corner gets the worst of the sun / heat.
    We have lots of floor fans and all the rooms have ceiling fans. I grew up in this house and we didn’t have the ceiling fans then. I remember my parents moving the bed so it was between the two windows and putting the fan in the door to pull the night air in.

    Glad I’m not still milking cows in this weather… I’d be ornery AND miserable!

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  14. OT: Just read rest of yesterday…sorry about your tree, Steve – glad you’ve still got the 2/3.

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  15. I’m a wimp (she’s as wimpy as can be)
    A total wimp (even wimpier than me)
    I’m not hefty, hefty, hefty
    I’m a W-I-M-P, a wimp!
    -Carla Sciaky

    My house has central air and I use it. I barely function in this kind of weather. Pippin is living in the basement.

    I wait to turn the AC on. It has to be humid and at least 88 degrees before I use it. I try lots of other things first: keeping the windows open at night then closing up the house in the morning, using fans, a dehumidifier and closing all the blinds. Pippin is getting walks before 7 a.m. and after 9 p.m. I haven’t mowed my lawn for over two weeks. tim is right, it’s healthier for the lawn when the weather is hot and dry.

    It’s interesting that the storms seem to be hitting the same places repeatedly and completely missing others. We haven’t had rain here at all since before the middle of June. In that time, the northland has been flooded and the Twin Cities has been hit by storms. My rain barrel is empty and I’ve had to water the garden with city water every day now. The corn is getting that curled up look and there are patches in bean fields that look stressed. At work we’re getting calls about northern pike mortality in some lakes (they are a cool-water species). The sky was dark and I could hear thunder a few mornings ago but it didn’t rain here.

    I’m not proud of my wimpiness, but I’m willing to admit it.

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  16. My wife’s internal thermostat is wacky from lupus and a dead thyroid, so heat is very hard on her. Makes her quite ill. She is having a tricky medical procedure today–injecting stuff in two places in her spine.Outpatient. And we are doing emergency babysitting. So I have some juggling to do. Kids are well-behaved, but I will keep them in AC to be sure.
    My wife’s sister, a basket case in many ways, but with very bad arthritis who a year ago had a major surgery on her neck from front and back.She fell yesterday ans shattered her shoulder.

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  17. On a day like today, this one is sort of a “gimme”…but maybe a little Ella tonight with an iced cocktail will allow me to feel a little cooler (physically and otherwise).

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  18. Yesterday was kind of surreal for me. My daughter, her five kids, and numerous friends of each of her kids did the only sane thing people do when the heat index reaches 113: swim in the lake. What struck me was how visibly small I am in contrast to all these burgeoning adolescents. Even Mary’s 11 year old is taller than me. Frankly, I feel like the incredible shrinking grandma. I used to be 5’3″, 140 pounds; I’m now not quite 5’1″ and 109 pounds. My tallest granddaughter is peaking at 5’10”.

    The highlight of several hours by (and in) the lake, however, was that each one of the five grand kids sought me out separately, sitting with me on the lake swing and telling me all about their lives. It’s indescribably delicious to be a person these evolving humans choose to share their innermost feelings with. Bottom line: I’m grateful for the heat index because it brought so many gifts 🙂

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  19. I used to be so proud to be an SLWACA. However, the MAC came in with the opportunity to add A/C and some windows to sound-proof my home and I took it. I didn’t really care about the sound of the planes but thought that A/C would be nice on the one week of the summer when it was needed and it wouldn’t hurt property values. Plus room air conditioners are so noisy.

    I did resist turning it on until last weekend and I do have it set pretty high (I think). My house is kept pretty cool by a coating of ivy and a huge tree in the front.
    Just living without A/C would be bearable (though it makes me very sleepy) but working from home makes it more necessary.

    My body is a magnificant sweater. If I exert myself in any way, my hair and clothes just drip.
    My car A/C became very unreliable a couple of weeks ago. I’ve had it in and out of the shop 3 days waiting for parts. Because I needed it in between, I’ve been walking back and forth from the repair place. I “glow” big time after each trip.
    Monday, I biked to a Zumba class, zumba-ed and biked home. I stopped to wade in Lake Harriet. Refreshing until I realized how warm was the water.

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  20. When I didn’t have air conditioning I used to say that when it got too hot it would be cheaper to go stay in a motel on the hottest nights of the summer than to invest in a/c.I only got air conditioning because my son’s bone disease caused him to dehydrate while he was asleep. Unfortunately I am now so used to it that when it tried to die this week I was miserable. It responded to some low key fixes.Sending cool thoughts to all the SLWCAC’s!

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  21. We’re managing to stay relatively cool in our well insulated, SLWCAC house. We have a couple of window A/Cs, one in the bedroom that makes sleeping comfortable. The other, in the dining room, pretty much keeps temperatures on the main floor tolerable. Don’t know how hot it would have to be for us to lose interest in food, so we grill a lot, and I make tabouleh and other cold salads, raw or grilled vegetables with various kinds of humus, easy to prepare and fresh meals. Meanwhile, my sister back in Denmark is going to the Canary Islands to get a little sun next week!

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  24. I was going to post ‘Summer in the City’ by the Loving Spoonful, but the album cover is a little risque.
    So how about this:


    (Mungo Jerry, ‘In the Summertime’. Check out those sideburns!)

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  25. I really feel for all the people who have no electricity yet! And some of them must be in high rise apartments, nursing homes and senior residences… We forget when we build these things that we didn’t always have electricity, and there will be times when it’s not available. Come the revolution…

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    2. Man. I wish I could have seen Janis!
      (long time ago, some kids had parked on our road, then had car trouble and I gave them a ride back to town. Janis was on the radio and I commented on that. One kid said, “never heard of him”. I made him get out. Not really. But I should have.

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  29. I am 74 and one half years old this summer and I am not above running thru the sprinkler on hot humid days…there have been no other kind of days this summer. Try it—it is refreshing esp. if you have well water which is about 55 degrees below zero after it runs for awhile. I think we have a direct link to a northern Hudson Bay aquifer. I am not HOT after the sprinkler- in- the- country-deep-well- run….it is more than refreshing and it takes hours to warm up even outside on a 95 degree day with 90 percent humidity.

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