I see that more time than usual has passed since I posted anything about the most-beautiful-city-in-the-world, and I apologize.
I suppose I could just stop there, but if I had a note from my mother to present to the teacher it would say:
“Please excuse Erla from not writing anything on her blog. She and all of Italy have been suffering from an extreme heat wave which has destroyed her will to live, which flickered out only slightly before her will to write. The heat wave comes from North Africa and is called ‘Charon’ (“Caronte,” in Italian), the name of the mythological man who ferried the deceased across the rivers Styx and Acheron to the world of the dead. Unfortunately, he seems very happy in Italy, what with the pasta and gelato and art and all, so he’s showing no signs of wanting to go elsewhere. I don’t know what he’s done with the dead people. She’ll be back as soon as she escapes.”
I would gladly send a post from Lapland, or Baffin Bay, or Queen Maud Land. But I’m stuck here.
More on other topics when I can manage it. Sorry.
4 Comments
There seems to be a “competition” in Europe for the most spectacular hot-weather-reports: In Vienna, the news websites wrote: “We are the capital of heat. Sunday we had 36.8 °C. That’s 5 degrees more than Rome, 13 degrees more than Madrid”.
I guess you wouldn’t want to send a post from Vienna 🙂
I don’t know if people in Vienna or elsewhere in Europe consider hot weather to be a normal summer phenomenon. I can understand why it might be a little unnerving when you compare your Alpine country to the sweltering Mediterranean. But here we have the lagoon, as you know, and there is almost always a breeze somewhere, so I’d take Venice out of any potential competition. Anyway, if Vienna is the “capital” I raise my hat, I offer them a medal and a cold beer.
Ugh! We were in Venice in early July 2010 and it was just dreadful. Enervating. Sapping. An Oven. Four nights, and by day four the temps dropped 5-10 degrees so that it was merely hot and not dreadfully hot.
I realize that I gave the most accurate description I could manage, but it was really more to offer a somewhat rational excuse for my not having written a post in a while. Hot weather, like horses and dogs, like small children, needs to be managed, not fought against. I try to do what my mother did — she having been born and raised in Tennessee. I get up early, do the absolutely necessary work (including cooking) before 9:00, draw the blinds, and essentially stop moving till sundown. Drinking cold liquids. Walking slowly in the shade. Wearing a hat. Using a fan. If I were a farmer suffering from the drought it would be another thing, but hot weather does not ESSENTIALLY disturb me any more than high water or any other temporary natural event. I obviously don’t include natural disasters in this meditation. Winter gets its turn, summer gets it turn. Why should it be otherwise?