So tomorrow is the 20th, and to celebrate we are having a spare the air day. Spare the air days are when the air quality will get pretty bad. We have a high pressure system, and the air temperature is in the upper 90's. Not a good recipe.
This is the 5th spare the air day, there is funding for free mass transit for the first four. We are also only in mid June, we have through till October of hot weather.
Of course we can keep nice and cool by walking along the waterfront, not on the beach though. Our local beach has been closed most of the last two weeks. Firstly there were "tar balls", which I guess is some oily globby polution. While they were fixing that there was a sewage leak, so the haz-mat teams were out for that.
It's been a hot dry few months, and we are into water rationing. Nothing serious yet, they are looking for a voluntary 19% reduction in usage. We used to double rinse our laundry, the deteregents used to leave a strong smell, but these new "free" ones are working pretty good.
Along with hot and dry comes fire season. To the south we have had some significant fires. Today there was one on my commute, CalFire were out in force for a 5 acre blaze caused by a car knocking down a utility pole.
So while watching some TV I saw a public service announcement reminding us that on hot day we may be subject to a power Flex Alert, meaning local brown outs. I guess from here on in we should run the washing machine late evening and load the drier on our way to bed. Still, we elelcted for a Bay Side community, so we don't often need AC ourselves, and don't have any installed. That's our contribution to reducing power consumption.
I just found out today that the plans were to spray half the state with pesticide. Town, cities and fields alike. Seems they have found an alternate. All this talk of poor air quality, and they want to spray?
If my online amigo Pascal reads this, he'll laugh at how easy I have it compared with Lebanon. It is pretty easy here, but it still is messed up.
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1 year ago
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Yeah, I'm laughing allright. Here in Lebanon we are experts at hight pressure. We've been living under that atmosphere since 1975. In fact, I think today's Homo libanicus is something of an adapted mutant at the genetic level. :-)
As for air pollution... let's just say this: every time I go shopping in Beirut, or even in the equivalent of its remote suburbs, I come out of the first store with blackened fingertips. Ubiquitous diesel particle dust. Plus, our heavy vehicles use a very low-grade type of diesel. Panic not, I don't LIVE there. (So I do hope I also won't die there from asphyxia, lung cancer, emphysema, lead poisoning, etc... But there's always the occasional Friday driver.)
Why Friday? Well, remember: Lebanon is part Christians, part Muslims! :-)
At least we don't have Jews, so Saturdays are relatively safe...
Tar balls are just what you said. The result of oil tankers illegally rinsing their tank bottoms (EYEW! Crotch juice!) in open sea. TOBAL, there oughtta be a law. I think there is, but that's all you can say. The story of our planet...
I've been familiar with those spots of beaches since I was a kid. "Ladies and gents, please don't forget to wipe your feet on the haz-mat on your way out". (And some concentrated heavy-duty detergent should take care of those stubborn remaining spots before they give you an epidermoid carcinoma.)
"We used to double rinse our laundry"
Ah, the quaint local customs of the Occident of Abundance! Alas, a fading era. Those indigenous populations will have to adapt to a changing world. No more taking the SUV to buy a loaf of bread two blocks away. No more jogging on motorized conveyor belts to lose all that extra weight gained by a too sedentary body. They'll have to walk it off the low-tech way, like in Caesar's days (and with Caesar's salad instead of McDonald's sadwiches). But, with a little bit of luck, with a little bit of blumen' luck, these walks will soon be in a much cleaner air. Watch your step for the dog fertilizer, though.
Let me tell you a brief and very meaningful anecdote. My uncle once visited us from the USA, with his American wife and his little daughter. The child's dress got a fruit jam spot on it. Right away, her mother put it in the trash bin. My Lebanese aunt has a Philippino housemaid, who saw the whole thing, and who asked permission to keep the dress, wash it, and give it to her own little daughter back home. (And she did just that.)
Gross wasting of resources are as quickly destined to change as the times of abundance. If throwing good food is considered a sin -except by the vagrants who then manage to feed from what they scavenge-, I believe throwing away the more and more limited resources of an exhausted planet ain't right either. More than 99% of my vast collection of videogames were bought real cheap from second-hand stores. What do I care if somebdy played them before me? It's not surgical material!
(Heck, I'd even marry a woman who's "biblically known" somebody before me. Without being married to said somebody. But please keep it to yourself, in this part of the world if the word did spread I'd be considered as weird and devoid of proud manhood.)
As for fire season... well, for once we in Lebanon are the ones who have it good. (SURPRISE!) Must be blue moon season? Nothing significant this year so far. Since there are no political citizen demonstrations, the fire trucks and their water cannons are free and available to go fight actual forest fires. Wasn't that way in 1998. I'm sure you understand. Priorities... :-P
In fact, we're having such a positive-looking year, that even the pine caterpillars have barely shown their urticant noses this year. The local administrations actually did the effort to apply control measures for once. Spraying of the uninhabited forest zones, and systematic destruction of the nests in residential areas like ours. There are lots of pines in Lebanon.
Now, if only the ban on bird hunting were enforced, maybe something else besides spraying might exterminate the caterpillars. Remember the law on wild tank rinsing?
"from here on in we should run the washing machine late evening and load the drier on our way to bed."
Ah, my aunt getting up in the middle of the night to turn the washing machine on when the power AND the water happened to be coming at the same time! Routine in the war years.
In fact, I'm writing a book telling what it was to live in these days, because there's so much and so weird to tell. Almost like Sci-fi chronicles of life on another planet. ;-)
I dunno if I had an easy childhood (okay, I know: I didn't), but it definitely wasn't boring! Did I tell you about the three consecutive nights when a sniper tried to off our canary? No? Well, you'll just have to read the book. ;-)
Oh, and I expect those classy Americans will lower their suburban visual standards in California and again allow for the use of direct solar power for drying the laundry... "Like, dream on, weirdo! As IF. Ya, SO not gonna happen."
To conclude on an ever so slightly serious note, heavy industrialization means that living in the West is not always better. Won't be any time soon that you'll hear about a Three Mile Island or a Chernobyl incident in a stone age country like ours.
How comforting. :-P
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