How I Stay Cool During a Heat Wave

Whew. Long and Short Reviews did not anticipate, when they picked this topic for the first week of July, how bitterly ironic it would be.

At the time of writing some places are going into the third week with afternoon temperatures frequently exceeding 100 degrees Fahrenheit and overnight lows still warmer than most people really like.

At the time of writing my part of the United States seems to have got hold of most of the continent's supply of cool breezes and rain showers, and to be sitting on it.

Some of us had berries and cherries this year. The cool damp spring put plenty of berries and cherries in the orchard. In recent summers I've gone through the orchard picking a berry and eating it, picking a berry and eating it. This summer actually felt like picking raspberries again--they grow in clusters of six, and you pick them faster than you can eat them and take in more than you want to eat, what a concept. I picked the black raspberries on the sunny bank, which always ripen first; they weren't sweet enough to sell but they made two good meals.  What about the red and yellow raspberries, the wineberries, the blueberries, and the cherries? Every time I even thought about going up to check on them, it rained. The rain might have been saving me from myself. The orchard was sprayed with glyphosate, in the middle of the night, last year.

But nobody gets a satisfactory crop every year, and at least we didn't have a deadly heat wave. We're still revelling in 80-degree afternoons and 60-degree nights. 

If you readers believe you can't take another week of the heat wave, by all means come to the Blue Ridge Mountains. We don't have much to offer but cool green shade, but we have that. 

Now about heat waves...I remember 1980. We had hot days here, but not deadly hot days. Some more record heat waves occurred later in the 1980s. I remember especially the heat wave in July 1987, when I was renting a room that had one south-facing window and one west-facing window, had no air conditioners and no window screens (that was the cicada year), and was painted yellow. It seemed as if the thermometer just got stuck somewhere between 95 and 105 and wouldn't go down.

What did I do? What everyone in Washington does, of course. The question is, beach or mountains? In 1987 I was offered a free ride to the beach. I made the following scientific discovery: The skinny black mosquitoes that are native to the Eastern States, inland, will not bite me if they can find any other source of warm blood. The sturdy, yellow, hairy saltmarsh mosquitoes on Assateague Island, however, do not care. They eat tourists and all tourists are alike to them. The way to enjoy the island is to stay in the water. It is possible to have both Sunday School and church services with everyone standing waist-deep in the water. 

It is useless to bring anything that saltwater would hurt to the Eastern Shore in July. Socks, for instance. You wear boat shoes, little light leather shoes. As a result of being constantly soaked in salt water these shoes fit your feet perfectly and you won't need socks in winter, either, until it's time to break out the boots. There are cheaper alternatives to Sperry Topsiders that work just fine, but really cheap alternatives made of synthetic materials can ruin a trip to the beach.

Despite the Capital City's ancient tradition of dispersing among the beaches and the mountains during July and August,  however, there are days when one is stuck in the city on a Code Red day. In the 1980s we all had very relaxed work ethics. If the thought of walking briskly to Metrorail makes your head swim, call in sick--it's not a lie. You are young and strong, and the feeling produced by thinking about walking a mile on a 95-degree morning is as sick as you are likely to be all year.

You might have air conditioning. Green ideals be...You will lie on the floor in front of the air conditioner, wailing about the heat. You will take a lot of showers and drink a lot of tall glasses in which a small amount of liquid is poured over as many ice cubes as possible. In a typical Takoma Park house of six or eight people, the shower and the ice maker or freezer will be running more or less constantly. Try to avoid breaches of the peace like wasting water to wash mere clothes or dishes. 

If you think of it in time you can, however, wash everything everyone who really wants to work on a Code Red day intends to wear to work. As soon as the wet things come out of the washer, everyone puts them on and heads for Metrorail. Speaking of "heads," it will be useful if everybody has soaked theirs thoroughly in cold water before leaving the house. On reaching Metrorail, stand in front of the large ominous-looking pylon that houses an air conditioner. Drink in the odor of Stachybotrys mold. Say "Ahhh."

In the 1980s Metrorail was actually a pleasant place to be on a Code Red day, although this changed, inevitably, over the years. The combination of regular rail, elevated rail, and subway rail on the same routes means that Metrorail tracks and tunnels strikingly resemble a "thrilling tunnels" roller coaster ride. When the trains weren't crowded and the air conditioning worked, there was much to be said for riding Metro as a way to beat the heat. Libraries, museums, and art galleries also tend to have good air conditioning and little crowding. 

Anyway you are making real grown-up money for not doing much of anything, certainly nothing that could be called work in the sense that chemistry class was work. You might as well find your favorite tiny-niche-market shops. The Montgomery Mall on the outer edge of Bethesda used to be a cool, quiet place to shop. 

If your sick day must be spent in a room with a south window and a west window, in a house with no air conditioning, you might consider going to work after all. If you really are anemic, however, and have a stack of papers awaiting your attention at home already, get a cheap plastic "dish pan." Fill it with two or three inches of water. Slide it under your desk. Take a cold shower, fling a thick cheap cotton bathrobe over the chair, and see how much work you can get done before you dry out and start to perspire. Repeat as necessary. 

The human body requires very few proteins, fats, and carbohydrates to survive a heat wave. In fact, less of those consumed may be more actually digested. Food for Code Red days is mainly fibre and water, and should be eaten directly from the refrigerator. Watermelon actually contains a super balance of nutrients for surviving a heat wave. If you really want a slice of cold meat, cut one for dessert after finishing your watermelon. \

Heat wave meals can, of course, be more creative than just one melon after another. Forever vivid in my memory will be the week the store ran a big sale on little limes, and I created a lime jello mold confection consisting of lime jello and chopped limes. I thought it tasted pretty good, which was fortunate, because I think I was the only one who actually ate it.

In addition to the melon and citrus families we also have mangoes, pineapples, strawberries, and cherries. For protein and complex carbs we can add an occasional coconut. When all this sweetness gets boring it can be varied with lettuce, tomato, onion, and cucumber. The doctor I consulted in the 1980s, who was from Kenya, used to like an ear of corn, raw, straight from the refrigerator, but I never acquired that taste myself./

A Code Red day is a day to unplug everything  but the essentials--freezer, refrigerator, ice maker, air conditioner, fans. Unplug all electronics--they might catch fire. Unplug the microwave oven in between actual uses. Unplug any appliances you can unplug. Throw the circuit on an electric water heater, if you have one--you want cold showers anyway. If the tank is placed in front of a southwest window, during the heat wave the water heater will deliver enough hot water for shaving and shampooing. Whether you can stand to unplug the toilet during a heat wave depends on you--the heat will dry and char everything faster, but running a dry-flush toilet on solar power alone does take extra peat. 

Those permanent, big, cement-lined swimming pools everybody thinks they have to have in California? They're extravagant and not very Green, but if you have virtuously not installed one, try to think of some virtuous way to be nice to somebody who has one. 

How seriously do I take these ideas now? Meh. I now live in the mountains. Some days it does get hot enough up here that I unplug my Internet-free computer. 

Meanwhile it's actually fun to remember how I stayed cool during the heat waves that hit Washington when I was there. Ocean City, Assateague, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Ocracoke, Clarksville, and many were the times my husband and I escaped the heat by coming to where I live now. You can't take everyone in the city out with you but at least you can remove your warm body from the city.