The C word

C is for Canicule, French for heat wave. This year’s canicule has begun. No one knows if it will be as bad as 2003 when 30,000 died, ten times the number of people that died in 9/11. It is why I lose patience with Americans who drive SUVs and tell me that 3000 people were killed in the WTC collapse. In fact every time I see someone in anything but a gas efficient car, anytime someone drives unnecessarily say from one store to another in the same shopping center or to a neighbors three houses away, I want to yell, “Murderer!!!!!!!!!! Stop your climate-changing behavior now.” I won’t even mention the desire to trash any SUV that sports a support-our-troops sticker. Fortunately I don't see many in Geneva or Argelès.

A lot of those 30,000 deaths were older people and the fact that air conditioning is not as prevalent in Europe as it is the States did contribute, but until 2003 extended heat waves were never a problem. Buildings with thick walls and shutters keep temperatures comfortable. My first Swiss home in a tiny valley was need-a-sweater-inside cool even when temperatures outside soared.

In Argelès, although my flat is in the grenier (the attic where grain was once stored), my curtains are quilted on the sun side and the thick wall do leave it relatively cool aided by a fan. Llara, my daughter, insisted I buy air-conditioning, and I did, although I hope she won't expect obedience in all matters. At night, I run it if necessary to take the temperature down. Although it is in the 90s now as I write this, the flat is comfortable with a fan and natural air.

My flat in Geneva caught a cross breeze. I kept the shutters closed during the day with the windows open and raised the shutters after dark. With the exception of the 2003 canicule only on a couple of nights was it unbearably hot and those nights I slept on the balcony.

Nothing, however, can match the 100+°F temperatures my office reached in 2003. This was with the shutters closed and the lights off. We were sent home early. Water was distributed during the day. I debated sitting nude, except I figured somewhere there was a rule against that. There were less workers around. All employees had a minimum of four weeks holiday (two by law had to be taken together) and many chose to take them to escape the heat, although they would have had to go to Northern Sweden or Norway to do so.

I will be spending the summer months in Argelès, Geneva and Rome. In Geneva, the house is near a lake and the finished basement offers refuge from the heat. In Rome I will spend five-days inside a hotel at the conference I am attending. I doubt it will be air conditioned to US standards (I hope not like the conference I went to in NY when the room temperature even with 100 bodies never reached 60°, certainly extreme and environmentally hostile.)

In Argelès in the late afternoon when it is the hottest, there’s the beach or a café. One place in Village has a breeze even on the worse days. There is nothing like sitting there with a cold beer and listening to the rustle of the wind in the trees overhead.

My biggest resentment toward heat is the lack of energy, but this year I have decided that heat is time to read another book, go to the beach and not try and get through my to-do list that would be too long even on a high-energy cold day. Am I getting smarter in my old age as the world gets hotter????