A Cold Day in Heck
Nobody's really serious about global harming, not Al Gore not 60 Minutes, not any of the corporations that are claiming to be going green mainly because of the public relations benefits, none of the scientists. The reason I know is that you don't hear anybody talking about the energy waste of refrigerators, and it's monumental. I would even be willing to go out on a limb, with zero statistics to back me up, and say that taken together they're the single biggest waster of energy in the country, if not the world, and doing something about it is astonishingly easy. It's just that people, including those who say they care about global harming, would resist it like crazy. Anybody who's ever lived on a small boat and has had to rely on generators and batteries for electicity knows about this. I'm talking about changing from top loading to front loading. Cold is heavier than heat. Open a refrigerator door and instantly a huge amount of cold spills out the bottom. Open a top loader and the cold just sits in there. Oh sure, it takes some serious organization. It's not easy to find the mayo when it's underneath a pile of other stuff, but if we really do care, it's worth it.
posted by John M Crowther @ 7:12 AM
10 Comments:
In the olden days when the iceman cometh and goeth there was no such thing as an energy-wasting frig. Few homes had installed electricity, but every home had what was then called an “ice-box,” which, as the name suggests, was cooled by a large block of ice someone had to carry up the stairs and deposit inside the contraption.
It was often said of an excellent salesman then that he could sell an ice-box to the Eskimos. Well, times have changed —witness John’s drawing—and now aggressive sales-people are convincing the Eskimo population that they need refrigerators along with their snow-mobiles. Soon the sled and a team of huskies will be a thing of the past. The solution to global warming and a declining economy is to harness these dogs, those sleds and carry blocks of ice from melting glaciers down the continent to every home in Canada and the United States.
I'm all for chest-type refrigerators and freezers.
I have very fond memories of the chest freezer we had as a child.
My mother, singularly lacking in organizational skills, would just throw food in. Since we had a huge garden, and dozens of fruit trees, and we spent a great deal of time freezing the food for winter, it was always a jumbled mess.
Whenever we needed to find something in there, I would be hoisted in to dig around and find it. It was the only time my small size was an advantage and I felt very important.
There were dangers, however. We raised Dachshunds and if one was born dead my mother would freeze it. She always intended to autopsy it (she was a biologist, after all), but never did, so there were a number of dead Dachshunds mixed up in there that I had to contend with. Sounds gruesome, I know, but it was very convenient for science fair projects. When science fair time came, I'd find a puppy and dissect it. I always won.
Kate, I think it admirable that your Mother-the-Biologist kept dead Dachshunds in the chest freezer. You undoubtedly learned a valuable life lesson at her side --“waste not, want not”-- proven by your success in science fairs and I hope in present life. As for me, I have trouble defrosting.
>>Nobody's really serious about global harming, not Al Gore not 60 Minutes, not any of the corporations that are claiming to be going green mainly because of the public relations benefits, none of the scientists<<
And the warm and fuzzy purchase of carbon credits allows us to go on polluting with impunity...*sigh* Whoa what a footprint... big foot had nothing on us!
Wow, prof. Your "defrost" post just caused a memory flash of something log forgotten.
After a bad storm where the electricity went out, we had to throw out everything in the chest freezer. I decided I would bury the three puppies that we found in the freezer, so I put them on a brick planter we had in our backyard, which happened to be right next to our basketball court.
Several days passed and they were placed high above my eye level, so I didn't think about them,
All the kids in our little town liked to come to my house because we had lots of things to do and no parental supervision so there were about 20 kids playing basketball. At one point the basketball bounced way out of bounds, over to the planter, and knocked the plastic wrapped puppies to the cement below. Three days of Alabama summer had set in, and when the gas filled puppies hit the cement they exploded. And an unbelievable stench was released.
That little incident sealed the fate of our reputation of the modern day Addams family that lives to this day.
Great entry John!
Kate, you need to write a book...what a fascinating childhood you must have had! When my older son was in elementary school he had ambitions to become an entymologist. You can imagine the kinds of "escape artists" that crawled out of his room! His walking stick collection became so prolific we had to freeze entire generations to keep their numbers from growing, (never felt good about that...but what were the alternatives?) We had interesting things in our freezer as well...probably just as disorganized too. My poor squeamish hubby!
Exploding dachshunds? Kate, this is one of the funniest stories I've ever heard.
I agree with John. Kate's childhood would make a great gross-out movie for teens or a Hallmark classic.
I read this yesterday right before breakfast (!)... it's taken me till now to erase the thought from my mind... euuwww!
Even if I had the talent to write (which I don't), I have the attention span of a gnat.
Besides, I can't imagine anyone believing my childhood. They'd think I made it up. I mean, who would believe having an eight foot Monitor lizard (the kind that eat small children in Africa) living behind your refrigerator, and having to remove breeding aquatic turtles from the tub every time you wanted to shower?
The pets we had: mice, rats, snakes, frogs, skunks, rabbits,
possums, tarantulas, lizards, cows, horses, ponies, cats, chickens, ducks, turtles and pot belly pigs (there wee more, too) would have been not too unusual if we had lived on a farm, but we didn't. But the stories that go along with them, like the fact that I took a neglected pony home when I was 11 and hid it in my backyard for more than a year, or the calf that we raised in our basement, make the stories a little more interesting. Most eventually wound up at our farm that was in south Alabama; another entire level of bizarreness.
But thanks for the vote of confidence
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