A word about temperature.
Oh, I’m Henry. Yes, a dog, brought to you by CAI (Canine Artificial Intelligence) if you missed prior missives.
(If you did, may I ask why? Are you really too busy to listen to a dog, when you lavish attention on swine? I’ll bet you know what inanities your fat fatuous former President uttered yesterday, yet you lack five minutes to check out one truly alternative p.o.v. a fortnight? Humans, I’ve observed, pay more attention to who is saying than to what is said. One grunt from Brad Pitt and, lawdy, it’s bruited all over town, though Mr. Pitt’s eminence has little to do with perceptive utterance. You’ve sages in your midst who, because they’re not celebrities, aren’t celebrated – and vice versa. I’m not talking Massah Carll, though he's worth sampling, notwithstanding his polysyllabic and alliterative propensities (enough with all those p’s!). Americans’ simultaneous addiction to renown and aversion to thought “is a puzzlement,” as Yul Brynner mused on both Broadway and the silver screen (we’re talking The King and I here). I’ve my theory about the connection between material prosperity and intellectual insipidity, but that’s for another outing if you deign to revisit my cramped canine quarter.)
We were talking temperature.
Humans, you may have noticed, spend all sorts of time poking thermostats and debating optimal degrees, centigrade or Fahrenheit. Astonishing really. More astonishing, they’re building buildings – big ones – sealed as Aida’s tomb, with windows you can’t shatter even should you desire to defenestrate. (Love that verb – we don’t have it in Dog.) Then they sell each other sweaters, woollies, hoodies, thermal socks, all manner of cozy coverings they’ve no need of because temperatures (and humidity!) are pre-set. And after all this fiddling, are they happy at the calefaction they’ve settled on? Not on your life – these are humans, after all. They keep tweaking, grousing, fussing, as if this topic repaid attention.
Who knows whether to laugh or cry. Dogs, in stark, startling, even stirring contrast, settle for all-weather habiliments, rain or shine, indoors or out, casual or formal, come hell or high water. (That catchy phrase first appeared in print May 1882 in Iowa’s Burlington Weekly Hawk Eye, a newspaper, if that term still resonates. Folks bellyache about AI but could you have retrieved that scrumptious morsel? Not I – not in a so-called “dog’s age.”) Dogs reserve our speculative might for matters that matter – the possibility of danger, say, or proximity of edibles – we do not squander it on insipidities. Mind-time is (arguably) the only time we’ve got – let’s prize it, coddle it, fondle it, with the fondness it deserves. Think of those millions of hours expended on (aptly named) Fox TV: howl!
This incessant temperature-twiddling is not only wasteful of consciousness, it corrodes both individual and planetary health. A body unused to thermal variations loses the power to adjust, risking morbidity or even mortality should those weather-proof, sound-proof, glare-proof, life-proof prophylactics ever break or (God forbid) the power go off (including back-ups). (“Daddy, where does power come from?” “The grid, my child, the grid.”)
That’s the hazard to persons. The global threat arises from the crazy cost of maintaining perfect air (which is never perfect), stoking the blowers, heaters, condensers, dehumidifiers, re-humidifiers and Lord knows what, gobbling from earth’s finite store more energy than our fair share, abandoning our enraged descendants to swelter or freeze. The irresponsibility, cruelty, hubris!
I don’t mean to yip. I’m grateful to Carll and Jane – no, really -- love them, as I understand that (very human) verb, but honest to Betsy, ARRGH!, if you get my gist.