2:43am April 19, 2013

I’m really worried about this summer.

I’m using the air conditioner that the BHA gave me, so it’s obviously one of the ones they consider good.

And my legs are completely bare and the air conditioner is pointed straight at me and we rearranged my entire room to make the duct as short as possible to make the air conditioner function as well as possible.

And I’m sweating so much – at night, on a fairly cool day – that it’s rolling down my face, fogging up my glasses, and making them slip down my face.

And I’ve felt terrible all day long from the heat and am only starting to feel marginally okay now that it’s 2:30 in the morning.

And it’s not summer yet.

And I’m not sure I or most people here can literally survive summer if this is the ultimate in wonderful air conditioners we are supposed to have, and it’s this crappy, and most people here can’t afford them and won’t be given them by the BHA. And we are no longer allowed normal window air conditioners that cool the building better and that we are able to afford, for various self-contradictory reasons trotted out by the BHA.

I wish I could post all the details of what’s been happening but I can’t, I don’t feel well and I can’t. But if you go here:

http://keepuscool.org/

You can read about it in much more detail.

And I’m not exaggerating my concerns. The west side of this building turns into a greenhouse in the summer and can get upwards of a hundred degrees even on summer days that aren’t nearly that hot. Like everyone else in this building I’m part of virtually every vulnerable population to heat injury and heat death. These air conditioners they want us to get are too expensive for most of us and don’t cool worth crap even if we get the “good” ones. I have no means of getting to a cooling center during a heat wave. And this fairly mild spring day is already putting me closer to heat exhaustion than I’d like to be. If this is what spring is like we don’t stand a chance this summer unless they can be persuaded to stop banning the window-mounted air conditioners we’ve been using all this time. There’s more information on the above website and it’s really important (and this isn’t something specific to me, it’s the entire building that’s being put in danger, we are all seniors, disabled, or both, and they are doing this to all of us at once – but if as many people called the people described to call on the website about what’s happening to all of us, as called the hospital about me, then maybe something will actually happen beyond the BHA making empty promises about giving us means to get their crappy air conditioners that won’t even cool us enough if today is any measure).

Sorry for the rambling I’m not feeling well at all since just went through minor surgery as well as the heat, but if you go to keepuscool.org you can read much more coherent descriptions of what’s happening.

5 notes