Valerie says that air conditioning was the death of the South. Well, it's been a couple days since ours broke, and I have mixed feelings. Our house was comfortably warm on Saturday, and felt much less artificial. Unused lights and computers were shut off because they produced heat, and the everlasting busy hum of them diminished.  Forced to unify in the coolest part of the house instead of dispersing to our various solitary amusements, I and my family played games together at the kitchen table under a gale-force fan. We thought and moved less, and valued the breeze. Ice cream was a great treat. We were no longer air snobs, hoarding our own better air inside and thumbing our noses at the plebian atmosphere. With windows open for the slightest breath of freshness, we sheepishly mingled our once-expensive air with the rest of it.
    All of this was quite nice, but then come the nights. My bed is dankly, hotly sticky no matter how I move. On Saturday night my open windows projected the sounds of a rowdy twenty-first birthday party in the yard behind ours until I finally shut them at 2 AM. There's a kind of quietness that sounds like heat. You can hear it when you shut the windows against the party and the outside air. I tried sleeping downstairs where it was cooler, but the living room floor was scratch-insecty against my skin through the thin blanket. I woke up more than I slept for several nights.
When the air conditioning gets fixed  today, I'll miss the real-house feeling of no computers squealing and lights only in the necessary places. It was nice to play desultory games, to eat ice cream together, to have the windows open and move little. Maybe these things were the heart of the South that Valerie misses. But, gosh-darn-it, I want to sleep.

Nothing could be more pitiful than a pitiable creature who does not see to pity himself, and weeps for the death that Dido suffered through love of Aeneas and not for the death he suffers himself through not loving You, O God, Light of my heart.
--Augustine, Confessions

Dancing again, oh my it was good.
I've been aware of the Pittsburgh Scottish Country Dancers for a while, but have never been able to make it down.
Last night, Valerie and I drove the hour to visit their class. Oh what fun! They were so welcoming, and had a great beginning class that Valerie could jump into. We stayed for the next class so I could dance as well. Then they had tea. All of them seemed very excited to have us, and wanted to know where I had danced before. One of the instructors knew Moon and Torf. It's a small world for Scottish Country Dancers...
It felt so good!
We danced a great jig called The Snake Pass. Has anyone done it?