Emily Paine Carter

Recent columns

• Readers write of run-ins with political bigwigs
• Recording holds clues from 6 decades ago
• Rubbed shoulders with any big names?
• Column archive

Maybe by the time you read this, we won't feel so "weathered." Hot hot hot, eh?

Even writing long sentences seems too taxing. Whole, sensible paragraphs? Wish me luck!

Seriously dirt-streaked, draped in iced scarves, stumbling in from the yard, I must look like the subject of a possible horror film: "It Came from the Garden."

Some special headbands/neckbands -- their "magic" beads stay cool awhile after soaking in water -- have helped me cope; Northwest Roanoker Lynn Davis first scored one for me when she helped time the 1996 Atlanta Olympics. I've also coveted the pith helmet-with-fan from Cabell Brand's African safari.

Dusting with talcum powder is cooling, although I'm not crazy about inhaling crushed rock (talc). Cornstarch? Would it mix with perspiration to form rivulets of gravy? Never mind!

My scorched garden resembles a giant bowl of that old Southern favorite, wilted lettuce salad. The recipe calls for drizzling greens with bacon grease -- that's how many gardeners feel: baked and greasy.

Our weird winter warmth -- so wrong! -- had found me urging "go back, O foolish daffodils!" Indeed, a late spring freeze played its cruel hoax, withering my wisteria and damning my cherry trees to fruitlessness.

So, I've been hauling water and apologizing to my pitiful plants. (One good rain will rejuvenate a lawn.) The hardy Happy Returns daylilies seem to smirk at the parched, imploring impatiens. And is the drought-resistant zebra grass, dancing and mocking us, putting the "mental" in "ornamental" grasses?

"Sorry, it's been so blasted hot," I told the heat-miserable former Salemite Martha Hooker Preston and her daughter Lucy, back "home" for two weeks to tend to Martha's dad, retired Roanoke College teacher Zeb Hooker. Martha's 35 years in England's cooler climes made our almost-all-day-in-the sun childhood summers seem even more distant.

So how does invincible Bob Archer manage to run these Salem streets every day? (My husband Rod, a recovering jogger, assured me that such exertion leaves one feeling cool all day. By contrast, I reckon.)

And to think that last night I saw "Winter Weather Tips" on Channel 3! (In fairness, "Heat Emergencies" followed.)

Right now my arms are sticking to the computer wrist support -- oh, how one suffers for art!

But then I think of others who truly suffer.

Among the worst: women in dark burqas. Such thoughts always trump a whine.

And how do construction workers stay alive? For crying out loud -- and maybe they would like to -- it's so hot that shoes and car tires have left tracks in a local asphalt parking lot!

What about heavily costumed team mascots? Bless your melting heads.

And I really must check on my brother, a landscaper in Atlanta.

Remember when neither houses nor cars were air-conditioned? When we opened windows at night, then simply "closed up" during the day? When swimming pools were rare, and water pistols were small?

Today I won't quarrel with Rod about global warming. I'm just way too warm, locally.