Dog Days

I think that it is safe to say that we have are mired in the dog days of summer. The days have started to grow shorter, but the heat is still intense. Folks and dogs alike look weary and dismayed as they stand around on the parched grass, in the dark, sweating out temps locked in the mid-90s. The talk often turns to speculation on the question, "How much longer till the heat breaks?" Optimists say six weeks. Realists say at least two more months. Optimistic realists say, "At least we are halfway through."  

So it was with a little annoyance that I read in the New York Times last week an article about people around the country who have decided to face the recession and protect the environment by giving up their air conditioning. Say what? The reporter interviewed folks from Florida and Tennessee as well as Brooklyn and other places who have decided that paying $2,500 a year for air-conditioning was a budget breaker; they'd rather sweat instead. (Never mind giving up cable or that unused gym membership or simply turning the thermostat up a few degrees.) Although their children have come to hate them, these brave souls have discovered the old-fashioned joys of seasonal life. They live outside in the evenings, ignoring TVs and computers (and mosquitos and roaches, too, apparently). They say they get used to the heat after a few days and cope by drawing the shades, drinking more water, sitting beneath fans, and dressing down. The implication of the article is, of course, "Imagine how much better the world would be if we all gave up that evil modern invention of artificially chilled air." 

My initial response to the article is unprintable in a family blog, but you can guess it I am sure. Every year the Times prints some article disdaining the climate control that makes life in most of the southern and western sections of this nation bearable for modern living nine months out of the year. And I never notice articles that suggest the benefits of giving up, say, refrigeration and the flush toilet, inventions that wield an equally large impact on the environment. I don't care how hot it gets in Memphis; I'm pretty sure that it is not regularly 105 degrees in the shade as it has been here for weeks. 

That said, the reporter smartly gave herself an out by thinking of the pets. Animals, it turns out, can't handle extreme heat. Sitting in front of a box fan with a glass of tea with melted ice cubes won't cut it for them, she says, providing as proof an anecdote of a cat that had heat stroke while living in an unair-conditioned flat in Brooklyn. The message being that A/C is, of course, essential if you have pets. Well, thank you very much. I'm glad we can agree on something. 

I live in the vain hope of someday seeing an article about northerners who give up heating their apartments and condos in winter because it's the noble thing to do. And the animals won't offer any good excuse in that case. (My Roma was perfectly content to walk around in 20 degree weather when we lived in Massachusetts. She hated our stuffy apartment, heated to a roiling 65 degrees unless one of the tenants opened the foyer door. Then the temp plummeted to the 50s.) 

So the lesson is, of course, keep cool however you can—whether this means sitting by the A/C or giving up reading annoying articles in the Times or waiting until dark to walk the dogs. See you out at Park. 

Comings and Goings, Part 1

When the weather is good, I leave open the big patio door that leads from my bedroom to my desiccated backyard, and the dogs flow in and out as they want. Muzzy, my young one, has until recently been a bit of a clinger, sitting right behind  my desk chair, lifting her head to check every time she hears the keyboard stop clicking or my desk chair squeak. With our new open-door policy, she can widen her range of watchfulness. She goes outside to check on Roma, the Old One, who is usually dead asleep in the sun, or to chase the few squirrels that are brazen enough to walk along the tops of the privacy fence. Everyone is happy with this situation, and it will last until the weather gets hot and buggy, and we have to close the doors and the blinds against the raging Texas summer heat. Our house, sunny and open and breezy in the late winter and spring, with almost permeable boundaries, becomes a dark bunker during the summer. We go out only when we have to. 

Dog park is also a place with permeable boundaries. The fluidity I mentioned yesterday also applies to the population. Months can go by before someone says, "Whatever happened to so-and-so—and her owner?" And then we all scratch  our heads. As in any community, people and their dogs come and go. One dog was lucky enough to move to London. (Lucky Monkey!) A bunch have migrated to Seattle--a place where a dog can enjoy summer for a change. Of course, dogs get old and die. So do their owners. Dog Park is full of little memorials for those who have left us. 

I'd  heard tales of the memorial to a woman who died before I discovered Dog Park. She'd died of cancer, I think. I don't know what kind of dog she had. In her last months, she'd hobbled around the park with a cane. After she died, one man told me, as a memorial, her friends had tossed her cane up into the trees. Surely I had seen it. For years, I looked for it. I assumed it had fallen down or been removed by the tree trimmers who occasionally come through and decimate the live oaks, pecans, and wild plum trees that line the trails. Then one day, for no particular reason, I looked up into the trees, live oaks that form a canopy over a steep and rocky part of the trail, and there it was—a thick wooden cane with a rubber stop on the bottom, stuck like a fish hook in the thicket of branches. I actually felt a  little zing as  unwanted thoughts of mortality injected themselves into the place I go to chill out and socialize. It was like seeing a tombstone sitting on a stool at your favorite bar, or a death notice in the middle of the comics page of the newspaper. Then, of course, I forgot all about it. I went back to looking down, watching my own feet on the rocks, because I'm a bit of a clutz, and it seems safer somehow.  But I'll look again to if it is still there, having survived yet another season or two or three hanging silently above us.