Birmingham, AL: No AC

 

Fans in Rustavi, Caucasus Georgia. June 2012.

June 2021

 

I don't have AC in my Birmingham apartment, which is an interesting state of affairs when one lives in the South, and it is nigh on summer. 

The mental game

I am playing a mental game between now and when I leave Birmingham at the end of the month.

Every day that passes in which it is tolerable enough to sleep and during which I don't sweat in place - that is a day that has been stolen from Birmingham's God of the Furnace, Vulcan. 

The daily theft deeply satisfies my humid resentment toward a landlord who treats their tenants - the very same people who butter the landlords' bread with their rent payments - with contempt via malfunctioning, geriatric heating and cooling systems and shoddy installation and insulation, so that the tenants live with inadequate climate control AND pay extra because the machinery is energy-inefficient and the insulation is so poor that the tenant must also offset the influx of cold air in the winter and the egress of expensively-cooled air in the summer. 

Not that I hold a grudge. 

Fans

 

Other sweaty times and sweaty places

Not having AC in Birmingham takes me back to July in Rustavi, in Caucasus Georgia. Where it was so miserably hot and sweaty in the concrete vertical village, with screenless windows, and the sticky dilemma of what to do at night to sleep: 

1. Open the bedroom window to catch a breeze and invite the apocalyptic-sized grasshoppers inside; or
2. Keep the window closed, shutting the Satanic grasshoppers out, but sweating on the sheets?

A summer weekend in the country - in Gurjaani - the heat squatted among us, an uninvited guest: 

Even in the country, the heat was oppressive. It drained the energy from everyone. Many of us took frequent, short naps like dogs and cats. The heat pushed the odor of the outhouse into full bloom, and it wafted throughout the courtyard.

When one looks at photos of Tuscany -- the pretty scenery, the tables groaning with fruits, cheese, baguettes, and wines, the convivial gathering of smiling people, the grape arbors sheltering all beneath ... you don't think of the prosaic realities that accompany such beauty - flies that crash the party, fruit that over-ripens before your eyes, the aroma of super-heated humanity, the rationed water that means bathing is not a daily or every-other-day event.

 

In Nazret, Ethiopia, with its screenless windows, one can open the windows for breeze-catching until 6:00 p.m., and then you've got to close them firmly to keep out the bimbies - the mosquitoes. 

In Alamogordo, New Mexico, it was hot hot in June, until the rain came. The onset of the monsoon season, smack on time, July 1. 'Course, in Alamogordo, I had functioning air conditioning. Not like here in Birmingham. 

 

The Peculiar Blindness, Part 5: Missing Dates

 

Museum and Tourist's Center list of Important Dates in history of Washington, Louisiana. March 2015.

I'm in Birmingham, Alabama.

Juneteenth 2021 is coming up this weekend.  

I've been going through past photos, editing and organizing. 

I bumped into a photo I took in 2015: A list of Important Dates in the history of the historic village of Washington, in Louisiana. 

Apparently not a thing in Washington, Louisiana:

• Slavery
• Civil War
• Emancipation
• Opelousas Massacre (with its catalyst in Washington) (or heck, even call it the Opelousas "Riot")

Nor are these noteworthy events: 

April 9, 1866: The first civil rights act in the United States, which overturned the Black Codes and which established that "all persons" (including Black persons) born in the U.S. are citizens. [But: The Act specifically excluded most Native Americans from citizenship.]

July 9, 1868: The 14th Amendment to the Constitution re-affirmed that all persons born in the U.S. are citizens. [Note: But voting rights were denied to all women and to most Native Americans. The 14th Amendment was generally interpreted to deny citizenship to most Native Americans, as well.]

June 2, 1924 (less than 100 years ago!): The Indian Citizens Act allowed as how Native Americans are U.S. citizens, too.

Here in Alabama, the state scrubs out the federal holiday that commemorates Dr. Martin Luther King's birthday by bleaching it with a state holiday that honors Robert E. Lee, the Confederate general. 

In fact, Alabama has three PAID holidays that honor those who fought and died to protect their right to enslave fellow human beings.

In good news, there are efforts afoot to make Juneteenth a federal holiday. 

 

A couple of days ago, the U.S. Senate voted unanimously to make Juneteenth a federal holiday. 

Yesterday, the U.S. House voted in favor of same, over the objections of, yes, two of Alabama's four representatives. (On the other hand, Governor Ivey recently proclaimed Juneteenth as an important day.)

Related posts

• The Peculiar blindness, Part 1: Introduction
• The Peculiar Blindness, Part 2: The "Yes, But" Mask
• The Peculiar Blindness, Part 3: You Don't See What I Don't See
• The Peculiar Blindness, Part 4: Casual Contempt

 

10 Years Ago: On Being Location Independent

 

Internet cafe, Vakhtangisi, Caucasus Georgia.March 2012.

 

Stuff has happened in the last 10 years re: location independence for working people.

My 10 year-old article on location independence for workers was a snapshot of that time. 

Today, we might put location independence into three buckets:

1. #vanlife digital nomads: The worker lives out of a home on wheels (car, van, bus, RV) and relocates with their wheeled home every few weeks or months.
2. Tourist digital nomads: The worker lives out of hostels, short-term rentals, or house-sits, and relocates every few days, weeks, or month(s).
   
3. Settler remote workers: The worker settles in a community for a year or longer (hey, like me!):  More and more cities, states, and and countries are trying to entice such workers to settle in their communities. Such as here and here.
   

Next to the genre of nomad, the most important variable in location independence is the worker's internet access needs: Do they need real-time, on-camera internet access (and how often) for 1:1 or group meetings or is most of their work in not-real-time? Do they have lots of stuff to upload? If yes, do they need to upload daily, weekly, or less often? 

And what's their budget?

Sadly, I've not yet been able to find writers in categories 1 and 2 who offer realistic, reliable, under-the-hood information on how they manage the technical aspects of their remote work. 

Instead, there is a glut of writers who litter their sites with the words like "you should do this, too!" and "freedom!" and "amazing!" as if internet access were universally accessible, reliable, and fast enough for the nomad worker's needs.

There were informative nomadic writers I used to follow, but who, since I published the 2011 post below, have turned to other interests.

Because I teach English online most days, and require real-time, on-camera, upload/download reliability and speed, neither #vanlife nor tourist nomad life are realistic for me. Not for the lack of trying, but my experience has shown me that one cannot rely on the internet service in hotels, motels, airbnbs, so-called free wifi spots at cafes, libraries, or even at friends' houses in a Major Urban Center.

Quel dommage.

Saturday, April 16, 2011

On Being Location Independent

In my view, working "location independent" will only get more popular as technology and imagination gloriously expand, freeing people to live where they want. Location independence could rejuvenate small towns foresighted enough to invest in distance technology for their current and potential residents.

From asimov wikia

Puts me in mind of an Isaac Asimov series with robot Daneel Olivaw and robot-phobic and agoraphobic police investigator Elijah Baley. The Spacers can live and work on huge estates, in physical isolation, but in virtual proximity to anyone, anywhere.










A comprehensive site on location independence:

Location Independent: Connecting You With All the Resources You Need to Live and Work Anywhere You Choose [2021 UPDATE: The link is thanks to the Wayback Machine aka Internet Archive, as the site owners moved on to new endeavors since 2011.]

One example of Location Independent's resources is house-sitting, a concept I thought went the way of schemes such as "vacation for free while delivering a car across the country!" or "see the world as an airline courier!" But apparently house-sitting is alive and kicking. On further reflection, this makes sense - I'm guessing pet care is a common expectation for house sitters.

Agencies the site recommends, among others:

House Sitters America

Mind My House

House Carers

 

Word of the Year: Joy 6: Color

 

Colorful coverlet, Birmingham, Alabama. May 2021.

 

At the thrift store, a cotton coverlet called to me from atop sedimentary layers of cloth.

The colors!

Sweet 'n juicy cantaloupe, butterscotch hard candy, periwinkle blossoms, hot-skinned August tomatoes.

My spirit soaked 'em up like a parched plant does water.

I felt deeply satisfied. Joyful. I even sighed, I think.

I brought the coverlet home. I shook it out, let it fall floaty-like onto my airbed, and smoothed my hand over the slightly nubby surface. I'm pretty sure I sighed again. These colors, like a dawn that cracks a crevice of red-orange-yellow light from behind the dark.

A few weeks later, I saw a flash of a young woman on the street in a summer dress, ostentatiously, outrageously, loudly, flowery colorful. So fresh! Ah! 

And then, and then ...... when I stepped into a Target, I saw more splashy, happy, joyful colors!  A produce stand of a summer's first fruits. 

 

Colorful summer dresses at Target. Birmingham, Alabama. May 2021.

Colorful summer dresses at Target. Birmingham, Alabama. May 2021.

Colorful summer dresses at Target. Birmingham, Alabama. May 2021.

The colors bring hope that the end of a long sepia COVID winter is coming. They bring joy.