I haven’t been writing much lately. One of our cats, Calypso, is very ill and my mind has been occupied with that. There isn’t much we can do for her other than make her comfortable and assure her that we love her, but that doesn’t keep me from fretting.

However, I think writing about miscellaneous “good stuff” is an appropriate way to take my mind off that, so herewith…

When I was a kid, the book A Hole Is To Dig was one of my all-time favorites. My grandmother gave it to me, and hearing her read it in her cultured British accent was a real treat. I can still hear the way she did it. One of my fondest memories.

That book came back to me today when I spotted a link to a really nifty web site (thank you, userfiriendly.com Link of the Day) that lets you plot on a map exactly where you’d come out if you dug straight down. We always assumed it would be China. It isn’t. Who knew?

I’ve been seeing more and more links to “How to keep your house cooler” tips these days, and quite rightly so. Unfortunately, one of the best tips is “Live in a dwelling that was built before people assumed everyone was going to have air conditioning.” This house was built in 1930 and does a reasonably good job of keeping us cool sans a/c on hot days if we just do a few simple things like pull in as much cool air as possible with fans at night, close up all the windows before the air starts heating up for the day, and go spray down the southwest-facing wall with the hose late in the afternoon to help cool the hot stucco wall. But I don’t suppose that kind of common sense advice will fly with just everyone. I wonder how people like me and my brothers survived all those years without air conditioning. Three out of four of us are children of the 50s when a/c was a luxury for the rich and nobody ever heard of air conditioning a public school. Not that I’d want to go back to those days and make all the kids swelter in class with only a fan or two and an anemic “blower” under the window to try to push away the sticky, sultry heat, but still…

There were several things that parents did, that I swore that I’d never do when I became a parent. I think I’ve done pretty well on “Don’t tell your kids they aren’t entitled to their own opinions” and “Don’t make arbitrary rules about curfews and bedtimes without considering the individual kid and his or her needs” and “Don’t view boys and girls as differently important,” but I’m still having problems with “When I was your age…” and I utterly failed in the matter of “Because I said so.”

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