As I put my long johns on this morning it occurred to me that expecting every room to be warm all the time is a luxury that until recently, wasn’t something that anyone expected ever.
My house is a little chilly this morning – there’s a frost and I have the heat set at 65 °
But here I am expecting to be able to be warm while I put on these long johns in a bedroom that is not used at all during the day by anyone. Not that long ago this was unheard of, to have every room in the house warm all the time. Now we do expect it and so we are gong to lose the very nature of the Arctic.

I am planning to put up the plastic on the windows, I am a little late this year.
As I am one of those “poor” who make less than forty thousand a year, this is what I do instead of having permanent storm windows. I’ve gotten rather good at it over the years. It’s a routine.
Frst you wash the window, because whatever’s on the window is going to be staring you in the face for the next six months.
Then I put up double sided transparent tape (and this is where it does get a little pricey because it’s like $8.99 a roll and I usually go through four or five rolls). I buy the plastic itself in rolls too, that’s around sixteen dollars. It’s never quite enough for all the windows, but you don’t want to go back and buy another 16 dollar roll so at the end you always have to go out and get one of those window kits because you don’t want to buy another whole roll. The plastic is especially made for this purpose, very thin and shrinks up with heat.
I cut off pieces for each window, get it as tight as I can and then starting at one corner run a hair-dryer back and forth across it and it tightens up with heat. Once you trim the edges, you can hardly tell it’s there.

Heat in every room may be one of those things we should stop expecting again. Many people are thinking about what is being called Post-Oil. My own son is certainly among them.