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TODAY Monday 9 June 1997 Each weekday. Conn Nugent on what's new in the world, on the site. |
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TODAY Monday 9 June 1997 Each weekday. Conn Nugent on what's new in the world, on the site. |
TODAY IN THE WORLD:
Summer in New England, which starts at graduation and ends at Labor Day, is surely worth the wait. A few days of 95-degree-heat, 98-percent-humidity will wear down some people, and others will complain about the insects -- the season begins with black flies and ends with mosquitoes -- but it's so much better than springtime. Mark Twain said that in Massachusetts they kill a poet each April.
One of things you can do in the New England summer is swim in a natural body of water. There are four variables for knowing when to start: saltwater or fresh; southern New England or northern New England; courage or cowardice; drunk or sober. A hardy boozehound can swim in a Connecticut lake by about mid-June while a teetotaler worried about death by exposure should be confined to two minutes in the Gulf of Maine on the last Sunday of August.
Moderate in all things, I live in middle New England and swim in a pond after the Fourth of July. I immerse two inches per minute while simulating intricate stretching exercises. These stretches are said to demand one's full concentration, so occasionally I yell at young children who "inadvertently" splash me. When the water reaches my nipples I give out an ecstatic whelp and plunge right in; after three quarters of an hour, my body is fully acclimated and I enter the Pleasure Zone described so alluringly in the oral traditions of the sport.
I undertake to swim in order to avoid a hodgepodge of responsibilities. One is gainful work; another is non-gainful work; still another is family duty, like telephoning my mother or engaging my children in meaningful exchanges. "Guess I'll go for a swim," I announce, to general indifference. But mostly I swim to avoid responsibility for eating sensibly -- swimming is the only reliable way for me to burn up the calories I shouldn't have swallowed in the first place. And swimming is my only reliable form of calorie-burning because, for reasons of upbringing and inheritance, I am able to swim and not think at the same time.
It is only a curious form of eco-guilt that makes me swim outdoors at all. Since I go to Amherst, Massachusetts on most weekends to be with the kids, since Amherst has a great swimming pond, and since I come advertised as an environmentalist, it seems kind of inappropriate to insist on the chlorinated lap pool at the Northampton Y for the months of July and August. So off I go to chilly Puffer's Pond and seek natural analogs to the familiar weekday narcotic of dividing one's time into units of eight breaths each. Come September, I go back to the indoor pools fulltime.
The operative word here is "go." Pool or pond, lake or ocean, I have to travel for my exercise fix. In Amherst, it's a three-mile drive; in New York, it's a three-stop subway ride. I don't have the money to dwell by a body of water or to build a pool; I don't have the discipline to burn off fat on some Nordic Track you can store in the closet; and I don't have the serenity to just stuff my face and take the consequences. In exchange for a feeling of (somewhat) robust well-being, which is a big part of how I want to experience the natural world, I'm happy to regularize a routine that is entirely artificial and, in its modest way, ecologically harmful. Ninety percent of the time I travel to a large building where I take hot showers before and after moving around in a chlorine solution by means of body movements that were not invented until the late 19th Century. So if a vague sense of unease makes me spend the other ten percent of my swim time in water that's untreated and unenclosed, well, maybe I deserve it.
TODAY ON THE SITE
Speaking of water, this Website features one of the leading international authorities on fresh water: its availability, its distribution, and its relations to government policy in general and security policy in particular. Peter Gleick is President of the Pacific Institute and consultant to governments and NGOs around the world. He is also a persuasive advocate on behalf of the proposition that every human being on the planet has a right to a minimum daily supply of water, a supply that can and should be quantified. To begin your education on fresh water, there's no better place on the Internet than Peter's High Fives of the best water Websites.
6/06: Enviros and Transpo
6/05: Fabulous Ethanol
6/04: Swine and Federalism
6/03: A New Measure
6/02: My Front Yard
5/30: Funders
5/29: Quantification
5/28: Over the Top
5/27: Solar Hippies
5/23: Spiffy Cars, Clunker Bikes
5/22: Petroleum Heresy
5/21: We Irish
5/20: Shallow Backpackers
5/19: Songbirds
5/16: Fat, Fat, Fat
5/15: Our Forthright Administration
5/14: Coral Reefs of the Sahara
5/13: (Life Before) Death and Taxes
5/12: Kids
5/09: Free Trade and Hormones
5/08: Sherry Boehlert, Republican
5/07: Fort Davis, West Texas
5/06: Europe (yawn)
5/05: Divorce, Mothers, Equality
5/02: Killer Grannies and the Highway Bill
5/01: China
4/30: Pity the Mangrove
4/29: Grizzlies off Battery Park
4/28: Mighty Monsanto
4/25: Growth
4/24: Refrigerator Wars
4/23: The Day the Earth Day Stood Still
4/22: Doorman Ecology
4/21: Toyota Steps Out
4/18: Victims of Extremism
4/17: Our White Guy Problem
4/16: Coca-Cola and the Merrit Parkway