The Daily: 30 June 2025

Last week was a rude awakening… Okay, so I knew it was going to be different. I suspected it might be uncomfortable. I did not know it was going to be hell.

I will remind you that my neighbors cut down the ancient maple in front of their house. There were reasons. The tree was disintegrating, dropping limbs every ice or wind storm. Or sometimes when too many squirrels climbed out too far. It was also guilty of invading the common sewer drain with alarming regularity. Maple roots do love to find underground cavities in which to spread out. That this pipe also contained water and nutrients (albeit laced with poison now and again) only made it all the more alluring. The last time I had the professional guys go in with an industrial plumbing snake, they pulled out wads of roots as big as basketballs once freed of the 6″ pipe. As you can imagine those root-balls had effectively blocked the drain… with predictable results in my basement… gross does not begin to describe it…

So there were reasons. But perhaps a judicious pruning? Or, I don’t know, have the city install non-porous sewer piping, perhaps… which seems prudent regardless of tree roots, given the aforementioned poisons and etc.

But no, the tree was chopped down. In the middle of an early winter ice storm, no less… leaving the mess to fester under the snow for months. (They only just got that cleaned up… did you know that anaerobic breakdown of sawdust and wood shavings kicks up a powerful stench… I didn’t.)

This tree used to shade the west face of my house (which, because all roads are catawampus in New England, actually faces a bit north of west, so directly into the afternoon summer sun). It used to filter the prevailing western winds also. I had already noted the lack of shelter to my porch. There were fewer leaves and twigs (though not no leaves and twigs), but there was far more stuff knocked off the porch railings and walls by gusts of wind. And there is much more dirt. The annual cleaning of the porch destroyed three rags, turning them utterly black with gritty dirt. I wouldn’t even put them in the washing machine. (Probably would clog up the sewer drain anyway…)

I knew the sun was going to be a little stronger on my house come summer. But I had not given much thought to that problem as winter seemed determined to keep hold of central Vermont right into July. Bigger fish… like the tomatoes that still needed protection on Memorial Day.

But then winter abruptly ended, going straight into Dog Days hell. Went from 50s to 80s and 90s. This happened on Wednesday, June 18th. I came home late from work, rather frazzled after a nearly ten-hour day trying to figure out an endless stream of convoluted projects (all trying to keep banking going despite the tanking economy). I had also stopped by the bookstore to pick up a special order that I wanted to read on my well-earned days off. (I took off the solstice since it was a Friday after the Juneteenth bank holiday, and I certainly was not going to waste my time on a stranded Friday.)

So by the time I got home, the unfiltered sun had been shining on the west side of my house for about five hours. It was about 90° and humid outside. My car was unbearable (I don’t use the AC as it, combined with Vermont topography, tends to drain the battery in minutes). Thus I was already hot and grumpy. But my house was properly sealed up, keeping it close to night temperatures. I opened the back door and sighed with relief. Not as dry as I would like it (I am still a desert rat…), but not suffocating heat.

Then I began to climb the stairs.

I should say that the stairwell is located on the west side of the house and has a charmingly aged window with diamond-lattice panes and wavy glass and zero insulation. Climbing the stairs felt like walking into a blast furnace. The heat was visible. (Okay, I might be exaggerating… a little.) It certainly felt hotter in that stairwell than it did outside, or even in my car, which being black is an effective little greenhouse. As I rounded the landing and passed the window, I felt the heat hitting my back and flowing around my body up the stairs — and straight into my bedroom.

I have a weather station in my bedroom (and you’re thinking, of course, she does…). It read 88° and 70% humidity. (So it wasn’t actually hotter than outside, but it was close…) I don’t know about you all, but I can’t sleep in heat like that. It’s not a matter of preference. In actuality, my body will not fall asleep. I lay there in an exhausted stupor, trying to get what relief I can out of fans and changing positions every few minutes. But there is no sleep. And when there is no sleep, then there is no rheumatoid arthritis drug in the known world that will keep the pain away and no amount of controlled breathing can regulate my arrhythmia. So let’s just say that this was potentially a question of mortality.

I have a window unit air conditioner. Just one. There are few windows that can accommodate such a thing in this old house. There are few windows that even open in this old house… In past summers, I had installed the AC unit in the guest bedroom and relied on fans running through the closet that connects that room with my bedroom. It mostly worked, though sometimes I decamped to the guest bed. (Which confuses my cat…) But having a sirocco wind blowing into my room would certainly negate the fan system.

Now, I knew the weather forecast, and I’d already planned on putting in the AC unit over the long weekend (there was worse heat to come, they said). I was even considering installing it in my bedroom this year so I didn’t have to use so many fans. (I figured in the unlikely situation that I had an overnight guest in the hottest weeks, I’d go buy a second AC unit… from the junk that is stored in the attic, using two window units seems to have been the norm in this house.) But putting the AC unit in my bedroom was… difficult.

To begin with, there are two windows that open, one that does not. One of the accessible windows was blocked by my bed because I hadn’t fully thought out placement of such things in the rush to move in. So I had one window that could open to the night cool. I didn’t want to forgo that for the sake of AC, which is not nearly as effective a coolant as night air. But that was the only window that was accessible.

The other problem in my bedroom is that there are two electrical outlets, only one of which is close to a window. Of course, that one was behind the bed. I could put the AC unit in the open window, but then I would need to run an industrial extension cord halfway around the room (either way) in order to plug it in. This did not seem wise…

So to put the AC unit in my room — which, as I stood there with sweat running down my back as I considered the problem, was seeming increasingly like a necessity not a choice — I needed to move nearly all the furniture.

Those of you who read my blather regularly know that I love moving furniture… but I hate moving my bed. It is heavy. It is awkward. And there is no way I can get a rug underneath all the bed’s several footings at the same time. (I should say that there is no carpet in my house, for which I am eternally grateful, but which means that moving furniture means moving rugs also… adding a bit of a challenge…) Plus I had to figure out how to move all this stuff with very little room in which to move it. At the height of the mess, I had the mattress precariously balanced at the top of the stairs and the nightstands perched on top of the guest bed and books piled nearly everywhere.

I started this project at about 6pm. I finally collapsed into my rearranged room with a humming air conditioner alongside my bed (after a shower…) at 11:55… so it wasn’t quite Thursday, but it was close.

I’m not telling this story to complain… okay, so, yes, I am complaining… but to illustrate a predicament that is going to be ever more common. I live in Vermont. It is not notably warm here. That is part of the reason why we relocated to New England. (The other part being water… though that is working out a bit less pleasantly… comes down to choosing the disasters you can live with: fire or flood…) Not notably warm and yet I still feel compelled to run an air conditioner. Probably would not live well (or at all?) without AC in the worst of the summer heat.

This has been exponentially magnified by the shade tree removal. Which is going to be increasingly common in a world of tree stress. Thus increasing the reliance on artificial air conditioning.

But the lack of shade trees and the running of AC units are things that are driving the temperature upwards, so that even in Vermont it is too warm at night to sleep. It is a positive feedback loop, with all the devastating effects of such things. More heat, more dying trees. More dying trees, more heat. More heat, more power use for AC. More power use for AC, more heat. (This is pretty much the plot for The Ministry for the Future, along with some horridly accurate illustrations of privilege muscling its way into the equation to the devastation of millions…)

Predicaments like this are unsolvable. I suppose I could try to bear it. Maybe camp in the basement (though that has its own issues in the moldy summer months). But my life would be measurably worse. Eventually the heat and lack of sleep would lead to ill-health, possible heat exhaustion emergency room bills (which I just got done paying off from last year), and missed paychecks (which I just can’t afford).

This is why I bought the AC unit to begin with. I have never lived in a house with true air conditioning. (In New Mexico, there is this delightful hell called evaporative cooling… makes the house a swamp…) I’ve gotten by mostly with opening the windows to the night air and closing the house up to the day. But that system depends on cool night temperatures, windows that open (preferably screened to keep out mosquitos and other night evils), somewhat decent insulation, and not having a wall irradiated with the full force of the summer sun all afternoon. None of these things are guaranteed anymore. In fact, in most new housing developments the world over, none of those things are true at all. And an average apartment tower is just an oven in the making.

But an increased reliance on artificial AC to make up for the increased heat in the atmosphere increases the heat in the atmosphere. And on and on and on it spirals until the system breaks. My little window unit is probably not drawing too much power. (Though I am not going to be happy with the summer’s electrical bill, I’m sure.) But it is drawing more than I did in prior years, which was almost nothing for AC. Add that to the increased reliance on an oil furnace for heat in the winter, and I am using more energy on climate control than I ever have. Almost makes me want to move back to New Mexico where at least I could power it all with solar panels. (Though… fire…)

And I have the privilege of choice. I honestly don’t know that I made the right choice. I don’t know if there is a right choice… But I had the choice to make. And maybe my choice makes it harder on others who have no choice. Maybe my choice is one of millions that is making life miserable for billions of choice-less people. Maybe this choice of mine today will make my own life that much more miserable when the power finally goes out after a decade or so more of atmospheric heating, exacerbated by my choice. I’m being all dramatic, I know… but still… this eats at me.

I am trying to reduce the harm I cause in the world. But there is already so much harm that, if I am to live (which I suppose is not a strict necessity, but still…), I have to increase the harm I do. The whiney kid in me is wailing about the unfairness of late capitalism. The practical adult is worrying about where this is all going. The millions of stories like mine all acting in concert to break things… even while we are trying our best to not do precisely that…

So…

Last week was a rude awakening… and I made the choice that would allow me to sleep… there is a metaphor in that… perhaps not a particularly flattering one…

And tomorrow is July… we’ll see if central Vermont can squeak through a summer without a devastating flood on the 11th… though, let’s just say, the storm systems being kicked up by this heat are not reassuring. Maybe the inevitable flood will hold off until August. Give me a little more time… I still have some choices to make about flooding in the basement and the garage… Probably all wrong…

Sigh…

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©Elizabeth Anker 2025