Sticks to fight the heat

It's hot. Too hot. It's going to be over 90 today and the forecast indicates that there is no end in site.

I've always thought my next door neighbors, an older couple named Edu and Orelia, were silly to live in a dark hole. Orelia would come over and marvel at how much light there was in our piso. After she'd left we'd roll our eyes and be amazed at older Spanish peoples fixation with the dark. How could they live in cavernous spaces with windows shuttered and curtains closed?

Well let me tell you right now I'm sitting in the living room. The windows are wide open but the exterior shutters firmly shut blocking the direct rays of the beast of el sol. It's calm, slightly romantic and much, much cooler. The beauty of shutters is that they block the light and as such the heat but let air circulate. It's a convection thing. It must reduce the temperature by 20%. All this with out a noisy, wet, ugly, expensive, poorly engineered inefficient machine blowing out refridgerated air. Shutters also let me sit here buck naked. Having been sewn into my underwear at a very young age this is to say the least a very new experience for me. Do you know how hot the bottom of an I Book gets? Believe me, I do.