afternoon

[fflo]

guilty pleasure: mandarin oranges, and the juice they're canned in

Went out for a long-break walkabout earlier. And now it's late afternoon, but still quite light out, on a lovely day in A2---the first one this year on which we've opened windows at the office.

I love the first day the windows get opened. Any day they're open, really, but especially the first of the year. Takes me back to junior high (which became middle school halfway through---a much less appealing term, to my mind). It was in college that I realized that open windows while you're at what you do during the day hark back to that time for me. It's all because my high school had no windows.

Built in something like 1975, my high school was supposed to be, as I understand it, all open-space classrooms in huge mod space; it didn't take long for them to realize that wasn't going to work (noise, distraction---maybe even anarchy) & throw up walls to make more traditional classrooms. The only outside light in most of the learnin' space came from the glass exit doors in each of those rooms, and those weren't opened for the coming of spring-like outside air.

It was a time when we thought controlled interior environments with canned air were the way of the future, anyway. You could probably blame sci-fi for that, as much as you could the cultural belief in progress-by-science that had peaked and was starting to diminish.

S'anyway, when I found myself in Bill Smith in my freshman year in the spring and somebody opened the windows, it was all I could do to pay attention to anything but the revisitation of that glorious harbinger, that lazy promising indication that school will be out for good soon, and even before that there'll be more and more time to play outside.

Comments

[madush69.livejournal.com]

I raked yesterday. It smelled springy!

open windows

[shmizla.livejournal.com]

the hotel in florida was one of those that have a/c and heat in one machine and it makes enormous amount of noise. so it was either that or opening the door. however, my roommate was of the southern persuasion which militates against naive letting of the outside air into one's living space. in fact, i was told that the way to get some fresh air in would be to close the door and turn on the machine, which could then "circulate" the air. i, of course, much rather circulate air, under the assumption that air is fresher outside than inside, by letting some fresh stuff in without the aid of machinery and the production of noise involved.

they also use leaf-blowers from the wee hours of the morning in florida. i haven't seen that since i lived in tx. i also haven't smelled their stench or heard their noise at 8am since that ancient time.

i also forgot that the way to socialize with people of the southern persuasion meant that i had to eat day in and day out, and usually nothing fresh. also we couldn't walk anywhere because that might make us sweat. walking on the beach was exercise.

[vjsmom.livejournal.com]

There were some teachers, as I recall, who would allow us to prop the glass doors open with chairs, but since there was only one glass door per classroom, you couldn't really get any good cross-ventilation.

At least in the late summer into fall, marching band practice got us outside in the middle of the day. I guess there was outside PE in the spring, but I managed to avoid taking PE for most of high school. As you may recall, I wasn't much of an athlete then either.