Seven Reasons Why It's Good to Be Hot

I like to be comfortable as much as the next person—sunny days at 75 degrees with an occasional light breeze. But following my air-conditioning rant, I set myself the task of thinking of 10 good reasons to accept hot weather. And going to New Orleans in July, many of these will be tested! Here’s the list:

             1.    It slows you down. You don’t need an excuse for not mowing the lawn today.

       2.   It gives you something to say to your neighbor. (“Hot enough for you?”)

       3.   It sweats out impurities. Think Finnish sauna.  

      4.  If water is nearby—ocean, lake, river or shower, isn’t it deliciously refreshing?

      5. It inspires you to plant trees and seek out their shade. And trees are good for

          everyone and everything.

      6. It increases your gratitude when a hint of a breeze comes along. You grow thankful

          for small pleasures. And gratitude is always worth cultivating.

       7. Attractive people are attracted to you. (Oops! That’s the other kind of “hot.”)

I suggest we have a Turn Off the Air Conditioner and Sweat Day. (But ceiling fans allowed.)

The Air-Conditioned Nightmare

I’m always so happy when I’m packing for a teaching trip to a warm place. In go the Tivas, the shorts, the colorful short-sleeve summer shirts that I only get to wear a month or two each year. In goes the cool straw hat I bought in New Orleans, the bathing suit and the sunglasses.

And then I pause and remember. I will be teaching indoors and almost everywhere these days that means… air-conditioning. Not the kind that takes just the right edge off the heat and makes everyone comfortable. The kind that is 10 degrees too cold, even in my blue jeans and thick long-sleeves shirts. Unless I’m in Singapore. Then it’s 20 degree too cold.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but I seem to remember something about the way air-conditioning releases hydroflourocarbons into the atmosphere and this greenhouse gas eats away at the ozone layer. We knew that when much of the world used hand-waved fans or electric fans or best of all, ceiling fans. Low-tech, low-electricity, low-impact on climate change. And yet—especially ceiling fans—mostly effective.

But now air-conditioning is on the rise, especially in large populous countries like China and India. And the irony is that as the planet gets hotter from such practices, the people will want to stay cooler—with air-conditioning.

As far as I can tell, with air-conditioning you lose three ways:

1)   It’s designed to make you comfortable in hot weather, but mostly, because it’s turned up so high and often out of your control in buildings with a central system, it makes you uncomfortable.

2)   The contrast between the freezing cold inside and the heat outside is good for exactly no one’s immune system.

3)   And then there’s climate change.

The Air-Conditioned Nightmare is a book by Henry Miller critiquing the excesses of American culture. Now that most of the world is following our worst example, the nightmare has grown larger.

I ended up wearing my air-plane clothes (another always too-cold air-conditioned nightmare!) the whole two days I taught indoors here in Puerto Rico and finally got my shorts and summer shirt out this morning as I walked two hours from the hotel to Old Town San Juan and back again. It was hot!

And I loved it.

What’s so bad about being hot? Part II coming up.

On the Road Again

In a brightly lit, too-cold room in the Conservatory of Puerto Rico in San Juan, where I’ll try to sleep for an hour before teaching all day after flying during the night. Arrived at 6am (2 am San Francisco time!), had breakfast at a restaurant that Barack Obama had visited—the restaurant was proud of it!— and now some moments to lie down before teaching 20 University students and then various groups of kids—in Spanish. This after a full week of classes at school that included two twelve hour days with after-school workshops with young teachers training in the Bay Area Teacher Training Institute (BATTI).  I’m either crazy or inspired (and probably a little of both) to throw myself into the deep waters of non-stop teaching here, there or everywhere.

This is the place where I’ll meet the student I taught 48 years ago and in the airport, passed an Orff colleague heading out after flying down here from Michigan to see Hamilton. That’s unusual! And then there appears to be a festival for San Sebastian this weekend with large masks called Cabezones that I might be able to catch. Driving to the Conservatory in the early morning dawn, the streets were filled with joggers and there to my right were the beaches. And even though Puerto Rico is a territory of the U.S. (need to do my research on this!), it most definitely is it’s own culture and kids mostly speak Spanish in schools.

My older cousin Susan, may she rest in peace, lived in Puerto Rico half the year (the other half Long Island) and always encouraged me to come visit and I’m sorry to say I never did. She passed away too young (around 70) some four years ago and it’s nice to think of her a bit. I always liked her spirit and she was one of the few people who actually would include a handwritten note with her annual Christmas card.

My 3 hours of plane sleep is calling me to lie down. More to come.

100%

So I’m back at school full time and all the metaphors—like a fish in water riding a bicycle with pants that still fit—all ring true. I was born to teach children and it continues to sustain, refresh, astonish and delight. And adults too. Though I’m leaning toward naming a date where I might finally cut the cord to the school where I’ve worked for 44 years, I’ll never be “retired.” Just a teacher working wherever I’m invited.

But meanwhile, school is still home and I even went to a Staff Meeting my first day back! The highlight of the meeting was someone reporting that an outside consultant was astonished because current parents, alumni parents and even parents who left the school for one reason or another were all interviewed and 100% of them gave the same answer to one of the questions. 100%! Think about getting 100% of a random group of people in any room answering any question— not likely! 

Before revealing the question, I ask you: Would you want 100% of a school’s parent body to agree on? That the school prepared their children for high school? For doing well on standardized tests? That the school had up-to-date technology? That the school had a dress code and behavior policy that it enforced meticulously? That the school had an amazing art’s program? (Well, I'm partial to that!)

The question asked and the answers given were precisely the ones that makes me so damn proud of my 44-year (and more to come) association with the school. Here it is:

“Does the school care about and care for children?”

100% said, “Yes.”

How many schools can ask that question and get that response? How many advertisers? How many manufacturers of kids’ toys? How many food industry institutions? How many entertainment industries? I would like to think 100%. But not yet.

Amidst all the hoopla about test-scores, STEM, STEAM, Design-Thinking, Behavior Management or the latest edu-wind to blow through the buildings, it all comes down to genuine care for children and their deepest needs. Not their imagined “wants,” not our imagined wants for them, not what makes money and gives prestige and wins prizes. The child's deepest needs, which all point back to the most fundamental need—somebody cares about this child. And if that somebody is every teacher in the school and everyone at the front desk and everyone working on the grounds, that’s a lot of care and not an ounce of it is ever wasted on a child. They’ll need it all to sustain them through the turbulence of childhood and the storms ahead.

It’s the right question.

And yes—100% yes—is the right answer. 

PS I once read about a child psychologist who asked his kid patients, "Who loves you?" And more often than any of us would hope to hear, was given this heartbreaking answer: "I don't know."

Let's make our families and schools and neighborhoods places that genuinely care for children, so that if any of them were asked the same question, their answer would be: "How much time do you have?"

Still Ringing

I don't know a single person who doesn't think we live in crazy times. But hasn't this always been so?

Except for climate change and nuclear annihilation, neither of which can be taken lightly, there isn't that much new under the sun. It brings me a crumb of comfort to think that we've been through this before. But perhaps we could say that the lows have dipped to new lows in some areas and risen to new heights in others. 

Almost 170 years ago, the poet Alfred Lord Tennyson wrote a New Year's poem and I can't help but be struck by lines like "the feud between rich and poor and the ancient forms of party strife" taken to new extremes in today's reality, can't resist shouting Amen! when he calls for "nobler modes of life and sweeter manners." Couldn't we all use a bit less "civic slander and spite"and a bit more "larger hearts and kindlier hands?" And we certainly would benefit by "ringing out the false" (Trump's 1760 proven lies and a few more tonight as he claimed that laid-off government workers and past presidents supported his shutdown and that Obama built a wall around his house) and "ringing in the true." And "a thousand years of peace" sounds pretty good to me.

Enjoy the poem and keep working to ring in hope and light.

RING OUT, WILD BELLS

Alfred Lord Tennyson (published 1850)

1) Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky.

The flying cloud, the frosty light.

The year is dying in the night.

Ring out, wild bells, and let him die.

2) Ring out the old, ring in the new,

Ring, happy bells, across the snow,

The year is going, let him go.

Ring out the false, ring in the true.

3) Ring out the grief that saps the mind.

For those that here we see no more.

Ring out the feud of rich and poor,

Ring in redress to all mankind.

4) Ring out a slowly dying cause

And ancient forms of party strife.

Ring in the nobler modes of life,

With sweeter manners, purer laws.

5) Ring out the want, the care, the sin,

The faithless coldness of the times.

Ring out, ring out, my mournful rhymes

But ring the fuller minstrel in.

6) Ring out false pride in place and blood,

The civic slander and the spite,

Ring in the love of truth and right,

Ring in the common love of good.

7) Ring out old shapes of foul disease,

Ring out the narrowing lust of gold.

Ring out the thousand wars of old,

Ring in the thousand years of peace.

8) Ring in the valiant man and free,

The larger heart, the kindlier hand,

Ring out the darkness of the land,

Ring in the light * that is to be.

                                                                  

    * Original poem says “Christ”