Living without a car is easy. Avoiding being killed by a driver is hard.
Today I was nearly killed by a man on a motorcycle who was travelling about 20 miles an hour, ran a stop sign at a blind intersection, and came within six inches of killing me.
Over the last month, I’ve been making my way through a lot of non-fiction and since it’s all coming from the library, I’m at least six months behind the cool kids.
Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma exploration of North American dependence on corn was far more interesting than I expected it to be and the descriptions of the miseries of industrial meat production were as depressing as always. This long excerpt at Mother Jones gives you a good sense of Pollan’s exploration of the meaning and possibilities of Polyface, an organic farm with an intricate pattern of pasturing that keeps the animals out of feedlots and claustrophobic, crazy-making barns.
I’m not a big meat eater and reading books like Pollan’s makes me more conscious of when I eat meat. Usually I turn to meat when I’m weary–when I’m tired it seems much easier than getting beans and rice and veggies on the table. The last couple of weeks, though, we’ve been getting deliveries of organic veggies from a local farmer. It feels a bit dear at times but the veggies are very good and we’re getting to eat things we wouldn’t normally buy.
Supporting local farming and adding more organics are both good things but the strongest motivation so far has been curiousity: What will be in the basket this week? How do you cook that? Do I like that? The arrival of the vegetable truck is now the highlight of my Friday.
Finally the heat wave has broken and my brain is less mushy.
We’re odd folk here. We’re still sans central air conditioning–mostly on principle. We have a portable air condition but we rarely use it.
So how do you survive a heat wave when you have to work upstairs during standard business hours in a house built nearly a century ago.
1. Prepare to complain a lot. The more creative the complaint, the better.
2. Make sure you have a thermometer since it will introduce a note of reason into the complaints.
3. Refresh your memory about why you’ve decided to forgo central air-conditioning.
4. Open all windows and doors once the outside and inside are the same temperature. Try not to despair as this magic moment drifts later and later into the night.
5. Despite warning on box fan, stuff it in window and run it at tornado level. The gentle summer breeze level and the gale level will do nothing for you.
6. Run the fan until you go to sleep, cursing your inability to fall asleep with the fan running.
7. First thing in the morning, run the fan just until that moment that the fanned-in air starts to smell like the roof tiles, then close all windows and blinds.
8. Run the fan in the upstairs office to create the illusion of a cool breeze.
9. Complain. Especially about the dull selection of appropriate liquids.
10. When desperate run the portable air conditioner. Try to ignore its jet engine decibel levels.
11. Spring for movie tickets. Hide out in the library. Move slowly in the grocery store.
12. Wait. And complain. And remember why you’re forgoing central air conditioning.
We’re back to sitting around but it’s been busier than usual with short trips hither and yon.
In yon, there was much walking which resulted in a blister in a never-before-blistered place. Interesting sites were seen though no photographs were taken. Good food in surprising places. And pounds and pounds of books and music were hauled back. Let’s see
After a short break, we headed out to hither for a family jaunt across the border for some baseball, pie, and decrepit miniature golf.
And now, home again where it’s calm if soggy.
