Heat is Austerity, Cold is Misery

...Swami Bhaktivedanta Prabhupad, the guru of Krishna Consciousness, was supposed to have said.  Gerald Ensley, a columnist for our local paper, devoted his space today to hot weather being a fact of life in Tallahassee in the summer.

And it seemed appropriate.  There is really nothing else happening here at the end of July.  I worked this weekend, but it would have been a waste of time for me to do a Blogging Reference post.  The streets were empty.  If it were not for the people coming in to access the Internet, the library would have been almost completely quiet.

R. attempted to go to Governors Square Mall on Saturday, and couldn't find a parking space, so I guess that is where everyone was, if not at the beach or out of town.

I did have a man come in first thing on Sunday, looking for reviews in Consumer Reports for HVAC units.  But CR doesn't evaluate them, nor any one else.  I think that there are too many variables.  So much depends on a competent energy audit and the installation of the right unit for the house in question.

At some point, air-conditioning became a requirement for life in the South.  When I arrived at work Saturday morning, the A/C was off.  A county technician got it going before the library opened.  The idea of being without it was too uncomfortable to contemplate, though the library does have windows that can be opened if need be.

Until the age of eight, I had little experience of A/C.  We and our neighbors did not have it at home.  On hot summer days, we went swimming for relief.  In 1962 we moved into a new house in Maitland that had central heat and cooling, but the new school I attended there did not.  Open windows and fans kept us cool.

In 1969 I entered the eleventh grade at the new buildings for Winter Park High, which had sealed windows and an HVAC system.  Attending FSU in the '70's, the classrooms were air-conditioned, but the dorms were not.  Large fans were something everyone brought with them as incoming freshmen.

Now we expect it. But if air-conditioning the Sunbelt were to become unsustainable, I think most of us would adjust to it.  And for those who found it unbearable, perhaps they would return to the Northern states, leaving Tallahassee and the South to return to its hot, slow, pace of life.