:: Wednesday 1 August 01
Surfing the heat waves, here in the midwest. Yesterday was astonishing--98 degrees, heat index around 110. This morning we had rain, heavy, dense, straight-down, tropical-monsoon rain--the kind that doesn't cool things one whit, just ups the humidity, which frankly I didn't think was possible.
Yesterday I couldn't even contemplate leaving the house to go someplace air-conditioned, movement of any kind just seemed too strenuous, so I sat, all fans going, cold washcloth at hand, confabulating scenes of Ray and Fraser north of the Arctic Circle. Thinking about hypothermia, trying to remember and describe the exact nature of the agony when a cold-numbed extremity begins slowly coming back to life, the way that in extreme cold one's breath instantly crystallizes into ice particles when one exhales, the way that each inhalation freezes the sides of the nostrils to the septum, for just an instant. And storing up memories of the heat, to use in January when I'll be bitching about the cold.
But I finally had to venture forth at 5:30, because P. had bought us tickets for the Bacchus Society Wine-and-Beer-Tasting Paddleboat Cruise on the Mississippi, and damned if I was going to wuss out. The cruise was actually kind of surreal--we all had to stand on the dock in the grilling sun for 20 minutes beyond scheduled boarding time, so that when we all finally stampeded onto the boat, everyone was dehydrated and raging with thirst and fell upon the beer tables like survivors of the Bataan Death March, and of course everyone immediately got thoroughly schnockered, and I tell you, there's nothing like spending three hours (including half an hour at dead standstill going through the river locks) trapped on an excursion boat with a hundred schnockered suburban couples in 98-degree heat.
P. and I got into a rather mean-spirited quasi-Survivor contest, trying to reach consensus on our prime candidate to throw off the boat ("Him! Him! That jerk in the polo shirt who's holding up the WHOLE buffet line 'cause he can't decide which fucking kind of mustard to put on his fucking sandwich!!")
But the view from the river is actually lovely, once you get through the locks, and once the sun went down it wasn't quite so wretchedly hot, and I survived.
Not everyone survived. The big local news story today is that one of the Vikings football players died this morning, as a result of heat stroke suffered during a practice yesterday. His body temperature was 108, when they got him to the hospital, and his organs just gave out. He was apparently upset with himself for not having done well in practice the day before, and was pushing too hard. He was apparently a hell of a nice guy, involved in local charities, liked by all, leaves a wife and small child.
It gave me occasion to reflect once again on how much I hate the ways in which a variety of social organizations, from sports teams to the military to street gangs, encourage young males to act self-destructively in the service of the intense need that young males apparently have to maintain face, to prove toughness, to gut it out and be Real Men. There's such pathos in that need, and heartbreaking vulnerability, and a really dangerous disregard for sanity. One news story noted that 19 football players, pro and college, have died from heatstroke in the past six years. Which, by my standards, is a lot of utterly needless death.
One can't always protect people from doing self-destructive things, of course (as I know all too well). But in situations where someone adult, someone responsible, is ostensibly in charge of things and able to enforce sane behavior ... well, to me it's not a complex issue. Yo, coaches? 98 degrees? 108 heat index? NWS issuing Heat Danger Alerts? Do you (a) encourage people to go do hours of full-scale workouts in full pads in the open sun, or (b) say, "Y'know, let's chill, tomorrow's another day." Not exactly rocket science.
fandom journals
Anna | Aral | Athena4 | AuKestrel | beth666ann | Brighid | CLFinn | Colleen | Debchan | Destina | Dine | Erica | Fluff on Top | Gemma | grit kitty | Helen | Ins | Jane St. Clair | Kate | LaT | Livia | Maygra | Mia | Miriam | Mona | Nestra | Olwen | Rowan | Sheila | Shrift | Simplelyric | Soo | Pam | Te | Valeria | Viedma | Viridian | WitchQueen | xen | ZorroRojo
other sites
Bad Hair Days | Hissyfit | kottke.org | lileks | memepool | Mighty Big TV | plaintive wail | Tomato Nation
"I'd learned on the highway and in the circus, in the army, and at boxing gyms that even if you have a cutman in your corner to stanch the blood, it doesn't obviate the need for stamina, self-reliance, and keeping oriented to what I think of as the earth's magnetic field. You can have allies, mentors, be married, but still you're going to be alone most of your life, and if you're going to run off the rails, you had better be good company for yourself."
--Edward Hoagland