The Yankee Swelters

It's Monday afternoon, and we still do not have full power on campus. That means electricity but no air conditioning and no hot water in the entire residential complex, which consists of four dorms, two Guest Houses, the refectory, Cafe 1823, and the kitchen. Some of the rooms have no electricity either. We have the same situation in the administration and academic buildings. Fortunately the Welcome Center, the Library, faculty/staff houses, the Center for the Ministry of Teaching in Key Hall, and Sparrow Hall all have power and air conditioning.

Yesterday afternoon we made contingency plans for people staying in the dorms and the Guest Houses for the Summer Academic session and for classes. Three people asked to be moved to accommodations with air conditioning. Everyone else decided to stay in their rooms and make do with fans. I also stayed in my apartment last night. I opened all the windows and put my fan in the bedroom. It cooled off enough last night that I was comfortable enough to sleep. Once the sun rose high enough to hit my bedroom window I shut all the windows and got ready for work. Because my office is in the Guest Houses, I packed up what I needed for the day and used the Welcome Center. One advantage of having a Virtual Desktop is that I can work pretty much anywhere on campus. If I have the some additional software loaded onto my netbook, I could work just about anyplace I had an internet connection.

Today it looks like we'll be without power for another night. A couple of more people have asked to be moved for the duration. Many of us will continue to manage. Fortunately, the humidity has stayed fairly low for the past few days.

I can recall many sweltering summers. As kids we rode our bicycles places even on the worst days. I remember one summer morning my brother Scott and I rode to the public library, and the librarians made us sit down for a while before they'd let us go look at books. Scott and I argued every summer over whose turn it was to have the huge window fan in our bedroom window to cool the rest of the house, even though we both knew exactly whose room it had been in the summer before. There were days spent under the big maple in the front yard playing with plastic army men or Hot Wheels cars. Or the marathon Monopoly games that went on so long that we had to make more money for the bank in order to keep playing.

The point is that we lived for years without air conditioning. Now during the summer so many places are cooled to the point of needing a sweater. Of course, we also had many fewer appliances and electronic devices generating heat. Yesterday someone commented that they hadn't realized how much heat their laptop generated until their a/c wasn't working. Right now i'm sitting in my living room with the window open and the fan on. Even with the comptuer on, it's fairly comfortable. Although I wouldn't want to be doing anything too physical.

In fact, today would have been the perfect day to take a cooler full of ice tea and or lemonade, a chair, and a good book and set up under a shade tree for the afternoon. Maybe swelering isn't quite the right verb.