Hot and sticky today. Not as hot as the midwest, nor as hot as it gets around here a few miles inland. At a meeting this afternoon, we all talked about the heat. Strategies varied, from cranking up a big old air conditioner, to getting cranky. I don’t like air conditioning, and prefer to get all mean and cranky. But today was mostly cloudy, the lack of sun made it bearable — for me, anyway. And I’m reading Wilfred Thesiger’s book Arabian Sands. He is travelling with five Bedu tribesmen through the Empty Quarter of Saudia Arabia, by camel and on foot. They have no more than a pint of liquid, camel’s milk mixed with brackish water, a day. The landscape: sand dunes, hundreds of feet high, almost no vegetation. Thesiger writes: There would be no food till sunset, but bin Kabina heated what was left of the coffeee…. I lay on the sand and watched an eagle circling overhead. It was hot…. Already the sun had warmed the sand so that it burnt the soft skin round the sides of my feet. No shade. Uncertain supplies of water. Whereas in New England, summer is a chance for us to bake our bones in comfort before winter sets in again.