A terrible downside to modern methods of indoor temperature control is that they zero out the existence of seasonality. Set the digital machine on the perfect temperature and then the outside weather doesn’t matter in the slightest. It could be snowing or blasting sun outside and the indoors is always the same.
These are houses in which the windows themselves never open and insulation is so impenetrable as to make external exigencies nonexistent.
What’s the fun in this? To me, this is weird and unnatural and drains the joy from life. Seasons are great, the source of mystery and magic since the ancient world. Wipe out the seasons and you delete hundreds of years of the best painting, poetry, and music.
Did the following ever occur to you? Maybe this strange obsession to stop “climate change” is really just a bunch of mad scientists trying to do to the weather outside what we’ve done to the temperature inside. Maybe our capacity to stabilize our domestic environment has tempted some crazy people to believe that they can do the same thing to the entire planet.
Sounds implausible? Maybe. But I’m not ruling it out.
On a practical level, in the domestic environment, it means that you never experience the joy of changing the sheets from linen to flannel. Above all else, it means you never experience the absolute thrill of digging through the closet and pulling out the gorgeous, happy, comforting quilts and woolen blankets you inherited from your grandmother.
But let’s say you do try to recreate this beautiful ritual and pull out the blankets. Here many households have a serious problem. For decades now, there have been strange pseudo-blankets floating around that people confuse with beddings whereas they are really just odd petroleum products pretending they are something they are not.
Sure, they feel soft, fuzzy, and spongy at first but there is no getting around the core reality that these things are not real. There is no such texture as springy in blankets made of natural products. My strong suggestion is that you go through your closets and find these offending items, put them in a lawn-and-leaf bag, and hurl them in the bin immediately.
They really should not exist.
Let me present my favorite item: it’s the solid-color wool blanket with a satin edge. The practicality and beauty of the thing intrigues me. Did you ever know a person who makes up the bed with the sheet extending some six inches beyond at the top? Do you know why? It’s so that the sheet can be folded over the scratchy blanket and create a perfect sleeping environment.
Think of the satin edge as a market innovation. It stopped the scratchiness of the blanket so that the wood did not always need a cotton wrapping around it. In this way, it’s an absolutely brilliant innovation. And it dates far back in time, to the late 19th century, so far as I can find out.
A few years ago, I visited the Whitney Museum in Manhattan and was astonished that so many expensive yet tremendously uninteresting things could be stuffed on so many floors of a valuable piece of real estate. Call me a Philistine if you wish, but to my mind, that museum can be toured in under 15 minutes to get the whole effect, which is not much.
That said, there was one exhibit I liked. It was a big stack of exactly these blankets, all in solid colors. I’m not entirely sure why it was considered high art enough to merit a place in this celebrated museum but I’m not going to argue with it. It was pretty much the only thing I liked. In fact, it brought me great joy, and I kind of wanted my own stack of these things at home.
In any case, once you lay your hands on one, you won’t need to be persuaded to throw all the petroleum products out. You will instantly realize that they are fake and won’t want them in your house. Then you will take great joy in bundling up in this beauty, whether on your bed or just snuggling on the sofa. It’s authentic. It’s American. And it’s beautiful.
Some people are simply unable to buy used anything. I’m not that way at all. Thrift stores are my happy place, and I’m an absolute fan of all things eBay. That said, these blankets are the perfect candidate for a great legacy product. They just don’t wear out the way anything made of synthetic fibers will. So you can be pretty darn sure they will be in excellent condition.
Here you can spend $35 to $100 and get a fantastic treasure for yourself or someone else for a gift. Put it in nice wrapping and give it away. Introduce someone to the glorious world of actual wool as opposed to whatever is common in blankets today.
That still leaves the problem of indoor air stabilization methods today which rob us completely of all seasons and the need for change. This is not a problem I have but if I did, I would shut it down whenever possible, get those windows open, put fans up in the summer and the blankets out in the winter. If you have a fireplace, use it. That’s right, embrace climate change as if it were your own! But make sure to have plenty of wool blankets on hand for seasons like this—times of climate cooling.
