ElderChicks

I’m an early adopter and adore almost all of the new technology. I just flew back from a conference in Vegas (ugh) and had a whole library of books in my Kindle app that I could read on my iPad without lugging a ton of carry-on weight and bulk.

But air conditioning? As much as I sometimes appreciate it (I love the heat), I am convinced that air conditioning has ruined civilization as we knew it. When I was a little kid in the 1950s, no one had air conditioning. In the summer, everyone stayed outside. My mom and her friends played scrabble on the front patio while the kids climbed our crabapple tree or played in the sprinkler. We knew our neighbors. We saw them every day. Not just the ones who lived one or two houses away, but the WHOLE BLOCK, and in the houses behind us and across the street too. Now? We run from our air conditioned cars to our air conditioned houses. I have met most of my neighbors only during power outages and blizzards when everyone comes out of their nests and, if only for a short while, becomes a community again.