Reading temperature in room a timeless skill
I have a simple plan that can save America. Instead of arguing about politics, we can argue about the thermostat.
Everyone has an opinion when it comes to the thermostat, and it can get downright nasty now that heating oil is pushing $6 a gallon, up 75 percent from a year ago. Our homes, offices, businesses and houses of worship are becoming battlegrounds as winter approaches.
Since America is committed to conservation, the FBI will probably start a thermostat surveillance program, and the Department of Homeland Security will commandeer our Google Nest accounts in an attempt to curtail our constitutionally guaranteed right to regulate the temperature and overheat our homes.
Our country is already coming apart at the seams, and it could get worse as husbands and wives, parents and children, bosses and employees, Baby Boomers and Zoomers duke it out for control of the thermostat.
With the price of heating oil and natural gas rising, Joe Biden may be forced to follow the example of Richard Nixon and Jimmy Carter, who confronted a similar crisis.
During the dark days of the OPEC oil embargo, Nixon launched Project Independence, which urged Americans to lower their thermostats 6 degrees to a daytime average of 68.
Two years later, Jimmy Carter — with the homespun appeal of Jiminy Cricket — cajoled Americans to drop their thermostats even more. Public buildings weren’t allowed to set temperatures above 65 in the winter or below 78 in the summer. To Carter’s credit, it saved 300,000 barrels of fuel a day.
Not to be outdone by Nixon or Carter, my father pushed the thermostat down to 55 at night even though it got pretty cold in the backwoods of Pine Rock Park, Shelton. Every morning, my mother surreptitiously raised it to 72.
My sisters and I were required to wear sweaters and long johns, and when it got really cold, the dogs would climb into bed with us … but not under the covers.
In the spirit of Greta Thunberg, I urge you to lower your thermostat to help control global warming. It will also ensure you have enough money for groceries and scratchers.
When it comes to the thermostat, I’m a conservative and my wife is a liberal. Over the years, I followed my father’s example. I kept the setting low and made my daughters wear hoodies, leggings and wool hats.
I have little compassion for family members of a certain sex, who wander around the house whining, “It’s cold in here,” especially if they’re wearing negligee from Victoria’s Secret. That might play in California but not Connecticut. Our oldest daughter would crank the thermostat up to 79 when we weren’t looking. The house got so hot we couldn’t breathe and began “sweating like pigs,” to use a favorite phrase of my mother.
Throughout the day, my wife hovers over the thermostat and mutters, “Oh my gosh, I’m freezing!” But she resists the temptation to raise it because she pays the bills.
I was recently accused of “thermostat patriarchy,” which is the tendency of men to regulate the temperature to their preference without any consideration for women, who have a different metabolism, according to science. Am I allowed to say that?
In 2018, when “Sex and the City” actor Cynthia Nixon (no relation to Richard) debated Andrew Cuomo in the race for governor of New York, she demanded the temperature in the room be raised to 76. Cuomo wanted it lowered because he has a tendency to perspire during debates, but Nixon fought back and complained that cold rooms are “notoriously sexist.” She had a point … and Joe Biden better take that into consideration or he might lose the female vote in 2024 unless he promises to pay their heating oil bills.
Years ago, I had to quell an insurrection in my newsroom because the staff was constantly quarreling over the temperature. Some were always cold — and they were women. Others were always hot — and they were men.
As a result, everybody would sneak up to the thermostat to change the temperature. The building manager got so angry he put a lock box on it, but the insurgents managed to circumvent the lock box and use a paper clip to change the setting. All day and all night, there were cries of “It’s too hot!” and “It’s too cold!”
To settle the matter, he put a thermometer in the middle of the newsroom, but someone stole it so he put out another one, which certified the temperature was in the range prescribed by the Human Resources Department in accordance with regulations established by Big Brother in Washington.
The staff still complained. Women started wearing fur coats and earmuffs while the men walked around in T-shirts.
I thought the problem would go away when winter was over, but summer was worse because they began complaining about the air conditioning. “It’s too hot!” “It’s too cold!”
In my frustration, all I could do was repeat the woeful words of the famous orator Cicero, who hated August in Rome and would often groan: “O temperatures, o mores!”