HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Citizen, 2011-07-14, Page 5THE CITIZEN, THURSDAY, JULY 14, 2011. PAGE 5.
I have had a good many more uplifting
thoughts, creative and expansive visions
while soaking in comfortable baths than I
have ever had in any cathedral.
– Edmund Wilson
Ah, the pleasures of the bath. It didn’t take
humankind very long to cotton on to the
luxury of a leisurely soak in an oversized
bucket of unusually warm water. The Japanese
and Turks figured it out a few centuries ago.
For Ancient Greeks and Romans a sojourn at
the public baths was frequently the social
highlight of the day.
And today? Sorry, too busy. Public baths are
quaint, bordering on extinct. Filling a tub just
for oneself is too finicky, environmentally
wasteful and takes far too long. There’s
just enough time for a quick spritz under
the shower head and then it’s back to the rat
race.
We used to surrender to the pleasure of
‘drawing a bath’. Now, it’s more like a
NASCAR pit stop. Bathtubs have become
something you try not to slip in while
showering.
That helps to explain why bathtubs are
disappearing. Rooms in Holiday Inns used to
have tubs in every bathroom. From now on
only 55 per cent of their new hotel rooms will
feature tubs.
It’s a trend. Marriot Hotels forecasts that
soon 75 per cent of the rooms they rent will be
‘showers only’. “Most business people are on
the run and take a quick shower,” says Marriot
vice-president Bill Barrie. “There’s no time
for baths.”
I ‘tch tch’ this development strictly on
principle you understand. The fact is, I haven’t
had a bath in years.
It’s not that I’m a big shower fan or a time-
management fanatic – it’s just that the bathtub
ain’t what it used to be. I grew up with those
massive, cast-iron water-guzzling clawfoot
tubs that occupied an entire wall of the
bathroom. They took 10 minutes to fill, but
you wound up reclining like a sultan with the
water up to your lower lip. The hot and cold
water taps were down by your feet and they
had big knurly knobs on them, the better to be
manipulated – make that ‘toe-nipulated’ – to
keep the water piping hot. It was pretty
ingenious and delightful as human inventions
go. And then some designer fool came along
and decided that bathtubs weren’t svelte
enough. They went plastic, lowered the
profile, squinched up the dimensions and
added water jets and moulded soap dishes. The
result? The modern bathtub. Once you’ve
folded in your legs and hunched in your torso
you’re lucky if the water level reaches your
navel.
Much nicer lines that the old clawfoot of
course; a sexier ‘silhouette’ I suppose – but a
lousier experience.
The irony is, psychologists are discovering
that people actually need the pleasures of a hot
bath – need it, in fact, even more than we used
to. Researchers at Yale University studied 400
people between the ages of 18 and 65 and
discovered that modern folks use hot baths and
showers as a way to connect with, not escape
from the world around them.
“The lonelier we get, the more we substitute
the missing social warmth with physical
warmth,” says psychologist John Bargh.
“We don’t know why we’re doing it, but it
helps.”
Well, no offense Doctor Bargh, but I know
why we’re doing it – because it harms no one,
won’t frighten the horses, contains no calories
and feels fabulous.
A lot cheaper than a pricey odyssey with a
psychoanalyst too. Nobody put it better than
Susan Glassee who wrote, “I can’t think of any
sorrow that a hot bath wouldn’t help just a
little bit.”
Amen to that. Alas, I fear the glory days of
the real bathtub are behind it. Nearly a century
and a half behind, to be precise. The modern
bathtub was invented in 1850.
Alexander Graham Bell made the first
telephone call to Watson, his assistant in 1875.
Just think.
There were 15 glorious years when you
could soak in the tub without having the phone
ring.
Arthur
Black
Other Views Haven’t had a bath in years
In the matter of three days Huron East lost
two of its most important political figures
of the last 10 years when clerk-
administrator Jack McLachlan retired and
former mayor Joe Seili resigned from his
position as Brussels councillor.
Of course they both left their posts for very
different reasons, but the faces around the table
at the July 19 council meeting will look very
different than at the July 5 council meeting.
For the majority of my life at The Citizen
every second Tuesday ended with McLachlan
and Seili reading bylaws together. The pair had
developed a cadence in reading their respective
parts of the bylaw process and they got better
at it every meeting.
After last fall’s election Mayor Bernie
MacLellan has been chairing meetings and
soon new clerk-administrator Brad Knight will
be accompanying MacLellan through the
bylaw process. It’s a big change for a council
that has seen very little turnover throughout the
years.
My second day on the job I had to cover a
Huron East Council meeting and the first
person I spoke to was McLachlan with what
must have been the urgency and panic of
someone with a body in his trunk who needs
help hiding it.
I needed help, I knew no one and I had never
been to a council meeting of any kind before
and it was Jack’s calming voice that assured
me I would be fine.
He was always there for me and he always
helped me out despite how simple my early
questions must have been.
As I’ve mentioned in this column before, Joe
Seili and I got off to a bit of a rocky start.
One of the first times his name appeared in
one of my stories, the information was mixed
up and it undeservedly made him look bad.
And he gave me a call once the article hit the
newspaper to tell me just that.
As time went on, however, I earned his trust
back and I’d like to think I became someone
Joe felt he could be honest with.
Honesty, however, has never really been
something that Joe has been conservative with,
so maybe I’m not quite as special as I’d like to
think I am. In his days at Huron East Council,
as well as Huron County Council, he was
always honest and he always spoke his mind.
And in the end it was a growing frustration
with topics he was very outspoken on that
made his decision to leave council a little
easier in his mind.
Joe can be an intimidating presence, and
that, coupled with his insistence on being
outspoken, has been known to rub some people
the wrong way (as I’ve seen it through several
council meetings) but I tended to find it
refreshing. Even if I was on the receiving end
of it like after that all-candidates meeting in
2006. I couldn’t blame him. I was the one who
made the mistake, so if I was him, I would have
been irritated and I would have called me too.
Often, especially in politics at all levels,
people clamour for honesty from their
representatives. However, too often (not to go
all Jack Nicholson on you) people can’t seem
to handle the truth.
Joe didn’t massage the truth. He was an adult
who treated other adults like adults, thinking
they could handle the truth; something that
sounds like it should be commonplace, but
more often than not it isn’t.
And while they may have had very different
personalities, Joe and Jack will both be missed
for the very different views they brought to the
Huron East table, whether people wanted to
hear what they had to say or not.
Parting ways
We’ve all seen them, those t-shirts,
posters, forwarded e-mails and
bumper stickers that say “All I
need to know I learned in...” followed by a
period of life that seems ridiculous, even
once explained, and I, for one, disagree with
them.
While elementary school did teach me a
great deal, and, while much of that was in
kindergarten, it certainly wasn’t when I
learned everything I needed.
In elementary school I learned how to deal
with other people, I learned my strengths, my
weaknesses and made friends.
High school taught me many things – things
I was sure I would never use, yet seem to be
perpetually popping up in my mind.
Over the weekend, for example, I found
myself dismantling a weed wacker (or weed
weasel, or grass gasher, or whatever you wish
to call it) as it didn’t seem to be working. That
was only possible using the skills I learned in
an automotive class in high school.
Anyway – back to the issue at hand.
My belief is that everything you need to
learn, you learn from people you want to learn
from.
If someone truly believes they learned
everything they needed to in kindergarten,
well then they must not have thought very
much of anyone they encountered after they
graduated to Grade 1.
Every lesson I’ve learned has been one that
came from someone I made the effort to listen
to.
Sometimes it takes one instance, sometimes
it takes months, but it always takes a desire to
learn.
This is why the realization I had just this
morning is so incredibly frightening to me.
A very important person in my life told me
once that air conditioning made people ill.
It wasn’t anything as crazy as the cold air
causes cancer, or the compressor leaks
chemicals that cause growths – no, it was
something very simple.
People used to controlled temperatures and
environments can’t handle it when they leave
the climate-controlled environment.
Someone who works in a constant 23 ºC, for
example, suddenly finds themselves vomiting
when they spend a weekend doing yard work
under the unforgiving, hot sun.
Last night was the first night I tried to sleep
with the air conditioner on.
I don’t like air conditioners as a rule. Central
air systems aren’t much better, but air
conditioners are always a risky bet.
Having something hanging out of the
window, regardless of how well it’s mounted,
isn’t the greatest system, and those large floor-
mounted units (which is what my girlfriend
Ashleigh and I have) rely on tubing that, in my
experience, breaks far too easy.
For those reasons, I find a window fan that
pulls in fresh air, even if it is a tad warm, is a
far better bet. Little did I realize, it was also
leaving me far more ready to embrace the
morning drive.
I woke up halfway through the night feeling
very ill for some reason. It was as if my body
just couldn’t find a comfortable location until
I decided to get a glass of water.
The second I was out of the area affected by
the air conditioner, I felt fine.
The house, with some windows open for
ventilation, was a decent temperature I
found.
And so it dawned upon me that, while I’m
sure this isn’t as immediate a response as was
indicated by the original lesson – air
conditioning had caused me to be sick.
It was frightening, as I looked back,
to realize that, like kids who aren’t allowed
to play in the dirt, like kids who are shielded
from experiences, kids who grow up
in air conditioned houses may find themselves
at a severe disadvantage to those, like
myself up until I was 15 years old, who
toughed out the harsher summer weather
and came to enjoy the sunshine on their
faces.
I believe that working, playing, sleeping and
swimming in the sun gives us not only
necessary vitamins and fresh air, but also
conditions us for the real world.
I sweat buckets when cutting the lawn, but I
certainly don’t feel ill. Quite the opposite, the
infusion of fresh air and exercise, paired with
the alone time and music invigorate me and
leave me with the energy to do more yard
work after.
So I say to you, reader, shut off that air
conditioner if you’re running one, or good on
you if you’re not.
Not only is shutting off the AC saving your
energy, and preventing those annoying brown-
outs that plague Ontario in the summer, you’ll
be doing your older self a favour.
In the long run, spending time outside in the
breeze, or in the hot, sticky motionless air of
summer will leave you healthier, just like
embracing dirty situations gives your immune
system much-needed exercise from time-to-
time.
I’m no doctor, all I am is a guy who knows
that he always feels healthier outside, whether
it’s with a lawnmower, with the windows
down in my car, or with my laptop on my
deck.
We have so little summer to enjoy, why
waste it in an artificial winter?
Shawn
Loughlin
Shawn’s Sense
Denny
Scott
Denny’s Den
Shut off the air conditioners
Perpetual devotion to what a man calls his
business, is only to be sustained by
perpetual neglect of many other things.
– Robert Louis Stevenson
Final Thought