House Insulation Quotes

Survival often depends on a specific focus: A relationship, a belief, or a hope balanced on the edge of possibility. Or something more ephemeral: the way the sun passes through the hard seemingly impenetrable glass of a window and warms the blanket, or how the wind, invisible but for its wake, is so loud one can hear it through the insulated walls of a house.

Her Lips Are Copper Wire” whisper of yellow globes gleaming on lamp posts that sway like bootleg licker drinkers in the fog and let your breath be moist against me like bright beads on yellow globes telephone the power-house that the main wires are insulate (her words play up and down dewy corridors of billboards) then with your tongue remove the tape and press your lips to mine till they are incandescent

I am insulated from the weather by my house and its conditioned air. I eat strawberries in January. When it is raining, I can go inside. When it is dark, I can turn on the lights. It is easy for me to feel like climate is mostly an outside phenomenon, whereas I am mostly an inside phenomenon.

He'd never been in my house before and I was self-conscious, embarrassed by it. I was painfully aware of the fact that we didn't have enough books. My own room was less overtly deficient-- over the years I'd insulated myself from the rest of the house (the rest of the neighborhood, the rest of Ohio) with layers of ink and paper and poetry, like a squirrel lining a nest.

It may seem odd to contemporary readers to think of the natural year as a metaphor by which we live. As individuals, we have become far removed from direct participation in the patterns and particularities of the changing seasons. Insulated, air-conditioned, and jet-propelled, we have come to believe that we are largely independent of the earth’s basic rhythms. If we think of the year metaphorically at all, it is as a source of sentimental song lyrics and greeting card verses, rather than as a vital, ongoing ritual that includes us.

It [death] isn't an infection, she said. She might be right. Then again, we've nested in the walls like bacteria. We've taken over the house, its insulation and its plumbing —we've made it our own. Or maybe it's life that it's the infection: a feverish dream, a hallucination of feelings. Death is purification, a cleansing, a cure.

Survival often depends on a specific focus: a relationship, a belief, or a hope balanced on the edge of possibility. Or something more ephemeral: the way the sun passes through the hard, seemingly impenetrable glass of a window and warms the blanket, or how the wind, invisible but for its wake, is so loud one can hear it through the insulated walls of a house.

There are countries in which the communal provision of housing, transport, education and health care is so inferior that inhabitants will naturally seek to escape involvement with the masses by barricading themselves behind solid walls. The desire for high status is never stronger than in situations where 'ordinary' life fails to answer a median need for dignity or comfort. Then there are communities—far fewer in number and typically imbued with a strong (often Protestant) Christian heritage—whose public realms exude respect in their principles and architecture, and whose citizens are therefore under less compulsion to retreat into a private domain. Indeed, we may find that some of our ambitions for personal glory fade when the public spaces and facilities to which we enjoy access are themselves glorious to behold; in such a context, ordinary citizenship may come to seem an adequate goal. In Switzerland's largest city, for instance, the need to own a car in order to avoid sharing a bus or train with strangers loses some of the urgency it has in Los Angeles or London, thanks to Zurich's superlative train network, which is clean, safe, warm and edifying in its punctuality and technical prowess. There is little reason to travel in an automotive cocoon when, for a fare of only a few francs, an efficient, stately tramway will provide transport from point A to point B at a level of comfort an emperor might have envied. One insight to be drawn from Christianity and applied to communal ethics is that, insofar as we can recover a sense of the preciousness of every human being and, even more important, legislate for spaces and manner that embody such a reverence in their makeup, then the notion of the ordinary will shed its darker associations, and, correspondingly, the desires to triumph and to be insulated will weaken, to the psychological benefit of all.

There is nothing worse, after days of falling asleep by a babbling brook and waking up to a choir chirping birds, than to go inside a house with insulated walls and an obstructive roof. This torturous invention, a cage, a box, prevents you from seeing or hearing anything of natural importance. Make time to free yourself and find a bit of nature.

don't hesitate to insulate your house, especially the floor.

Fairly considered, the sewing-room was the most inconvenient study a man could possibly have, but it was the one place in the house where he could get isolation, insulation from the engaging drama of domestic life. No one was tramping over him, and only a vague sense, generally pleasant, of what went on below came up the narrow stairway. There were certainly no other advantages.

We are all, of course, wayfaring strangers on this earth. But coming out of the rainbow tunnel, the liminal portal between Marin and San Francisco, myth and reality, I catch sight of a beautiful, sparkling city that might as well be on the moon. I can name the sights, the streets, the eateries, but in my heart it feels as unfamiliar as Cape Town or Cuzco. I've lived here for fourteen years. This is the arena of my adult life, with its large defeats and small victories. Maybe, like all transplants (converts?), I've asked too much of the city. I would never have moved to Pittsburh or Houston or L.A. expecting it to save my soul. Only here in the great temple by the bay. It's a mistake we've been making for decades, and probably a necessary one. The city's flaws, of course, are numerous. Our politics can suffer from humourless stridency, and life here is menacingly expensive. But if you're insulated from these concerns, sufficiently employed and housed, if you are -in other words- like most people, you are in view of the unbridgeable ideal. Here, with our plentiful harvest, our natural beauty, our bars, our bookstores, our cliffs and ocean, out free to be you and me; here, where pure mountain water flows right out of the tap. It's here that the real questions become inescapable. In fact the proximity of the ideal makes us more acutely aware of the real questions. Not the run-of-the-mill insolubles-Why am I here? Who am I?- but the pressing questions of adult life: Really? and Are you sure? And Now what?

With plastic siding that was cracked and fading, the trailer squatted on stacked cinder blocks, a temporary foundation that had somehow become permanent over time. It had a single bedroom and bath, a cramped living area, and a kitchen with barely enough room to house a mini refrigerator. Insulation was almost nonexistent, and humidity had warped the floors over the years, making it seem as if he were always walking on a slant. The linoleum in the kitchen was cracking in the corners, the minimal carpet was threadbare, and he’d furnished the narrow space with items he’d picked up over the years at thrift stores. Not a single photograph adorned the walls.

My own room was less overtly deficient— over the years I'd insulated myself from the rest of the house (the rest of the neighborhood, the rest of Ohio) with layers of ink and paper and poetry, like a squirrel lining a nest.

You live an insular existence, going from your soundproofed cars to your air-conditioned, insulated houses. People would not say God is dead if they only looked up at the spectacular panorama of the night sky, or had an unobstructed view of the sunset.

All these years, I thought the first Watchers were a bit dense for giving power to only one girl. One Slayer to fight everything? One Slayer to make impossible choices? But... that's the beauty of it. Because the Slayer is young. The Slayer is a girl. The Slayer isn't some rich dude, insulated from life and pain and struggle, sitting in his Mr. Darcy house deciding who gets to live and die. The Slayer is on the streets, in the dark, in the night, walking right alongside the things she hunts. So when she makes life-or-death choices - they're life-or-death choices for her, too. Not just for the things she's hunting. She's not a committee, a council, a group working at a remove. She'd part of the darkness. And when you're already in the dark, you can see the subtle differences in the shadows.

I can't stop thinking about what Caroline said to Minna about death. It isn't an infection, she said. She might be right. Then again, we've nested in the walls like bacteria. We've taken over the house, its insulation and its plumbing - we've made it our own. Or maybe it's life that's the infection: a feverish dream, a hallucination of feelings. Death is purification, a cleaning, a cure.

True story: Some homeowner’s burning a yard pile just like this one. And he goes inside for lemonade and opens the cabinet under the sink to toss something in the trash, and this rat’s down in the bottom, gnawing a chicken bone. The rat had been driving the guy crazy for months, living in the walls and scampering through the attic at night like it had combat boots. So the guy grabs a rolling pin and beats it to death. Then he takes it outside and throws it on the burning pile.” “Good story,” said Coleman. “What’s the problem?” “The rat’s not dead. The heat wakes him up. It jumps off the pile and makes a beeline for the house. Except now its fur’s on fire. The homeowner tries to intercept, but it zips between his legs, runs back inside and gets in the walls. Ignited the insulation. Whole place burned down.

To the casual observer it may have looked like I was living a life of indolence, compared to the noisy industry with which the city to the north was ripping itself to pieces. It was true that, after a brief but regrettable entanglement with Higher Learning, I had fairly much confined my activities to the house and its environs. The simple fact of it was that I was happy there, and as I didn’t have any skills to speak of, or gifts to impart, I didn’t see why I ought to burden the world with my presence. It was not true, however, to say that I did nothing.

And she withdraws through the double, ceiling-high doors, which are really the only original feature left in this heavily converted apartment. And isn't the same true of me? All that was once me has been dispersed through the flux of a thousand thousand experiences. The 'I' has been partitioned off, remodelled, resurfaced and re-insulated, so that it cannot even remember what the original dados or mouldings were like. They say ninety per cent of house dust is dead human skin – and that's me. Dust on a windowsill, in a converted apartment, in a foreign city.

up for it, and I’m sorry. That’s not enough. You’re going to search until you find something, and you’re going to tell me. Right now. Sheri. Please. You do it now or we’re gone. You give me some way to have some sympathy for you as I stand in this nice house, all lovingly redone, and think about the broken house you left us in, with its leaky roof and no heat and no insulation and nothing. Tell your sob story about the fucking war, whatever it was that my mom thought you were so broken about. My grandfather closed his eyes. No story ever explains. But I’ll give you what you want. I think I know the moment you want, because I made a kind of decision. There was some change. But I can’t start the story at the beginning. I’ve never been able to do that. I have to start at the end and then go back, and it doesn’t finish, because you can go back forever. Do it, my mother said. I don’t think Caitlin should hear. She can hear. Okay. You’re her mother. That’s right. So I won’t give the awful details, but I was lying in a pile of bodies. My friends. The closest friends I’ve ever had. Not piled there on purpose, but just the way it ended up because I had been working on the axle, lying on the ground. And the thing is, the war was over. It had been over for days, and we were laughing and a bit drunk, telling jokes. There was something unbearable about the fact that we’d all be going our separate ways now. The truth is that we didn’t want to leave. We wanted the war over, but we didn’t want what we had together to be over. I think we all had some sense that this was the closest we’d ever be to anyone, and that our families might feel like strangers now. So that’s it? You couldn’t be a father and husband because you weren’t done being a buddy? No. No. It’s the way it happened, in a moment that was supposed to be safe. After every moment of every day in fear for years, we were finally safe, and that’s when the slugs came and I watched my friends torn apart and landing on me, dying. That’s the point. We were supposed to be safe. And with your mother, too, I was supposed to be safe. A wife, a family. The story doesn’t make any sense unless you know every moment before it, every time we thought we were going to die, all the times we weren’t safe. You can’t just be told about that. You have to feel it, how long one night can be, and then all of them put together, hundreds of nights and then more, and there’s a kind of deal that’s made, a deal with god. You do certain terrible things, you endure things, because there’s a bargain made. And then when god says the deal’s off later, after you’ve already paid, and you see your friends ripped through, yanked like puppets on a day that was safe, and you find out your wife is going to die young, and you get to watch her dying, something that again is going to be for years, hundreds of nights more, all deals are off.

We didn’t know it then,' Hooper said. 'We used to talk about how when we got back in the world we were going to do this and we were going to do that. Back in the world we were going to have it made. But ever since then it’s been nothing but confusion.' Hooper took the cigarette case from his pocket but didn’t open it. He leaned forward on the table. 'Everything was clear,' he said. 'You learned what you had to know and you forgot the rest. All this chickenshit. This clutter. You didn’t spend every living minute of the day thinking about your own sorry-ass little self. Am I getting laid enough. What’s wrong with my kid. Should I insulate the fucking house. That’s what does it to you, Porchoff. Thinking about yourself. That’s what kills you in the end.

We didn’t know it then,” Hooper said. “We used to talk about how when we got back in the world we were going to do this and we were going to do that. Back in the world we were going to have it made. But ever since then it’s been nothing but confusion.” Hooper took the cigarette case from his pocket but didn’t open it. He leaned forward on the table. “Everything was clear,” he said. “You learned what you had to know and you forgot the rest. All this chickenshit. This clutter. You didn’t spend every living minute of the day thinking about your own sorry-ass little self. Am I getting laid enough. What’s wrong with my kid. Should I insulate the fucking house. That’s what does it to you, Porchoff. Thinking about yourself. That’s what kills you in the end.

The extermination of the Jews has sometimes been seen as a kind of industrialized, assembly-line kind of mass murder, and this picture has at least some element of truth to it. No other genocide in history has been carried out by mechanical means - gassing - in specially constructed facilities like those in operation at Auschwitz or Treblinka. At the same time, however, these facilities did not operate efficiently or effectively, and if the impression given by calling them industrialized is that they were automated or impersonal, then it is a false one. Men such as Hess and Stangl and their subordinates tried to insulate themselves from the human dimensions of what they were doing by referring to their victims as 'cargo' or 'items.' Talking to Gerhard Stabenow, the head of the SS Security Service in Warsaw, in September 1942, Wilm Hosenfeld noted how the language Stabenow used distanced himself from the fact that what he was involved in was the mass murder of human beings: 'He speaks of the Jews as ants or other vermin, of their 'resettlement', that means their mass murder, as he would of the extermination of the bedbugs in the disinfestation of a house.' But at the same time such men were not immune from the human emotions they tried so hard to repress, and they remembered incidents in which individual women and children had appealed to their conscience, even if such appeals were in vain. The psychological strain that continual killing of unarmed civilians, including women and children, imposed on such men was considerable, just as it had been in the case of the SS Task Forces, whose troops had been shooting Jews in their hundreds of thousands before the first gas vans were deploted in an attempt not only to speed up the killing but also to make it somehow more impersonal.

Whole Earth Discipline carries on something that began in 1968, when I founded the Whole Earth Catalog. I stayed with the Catalog as editor and publisher until 1984, adding a magazine called CoEvolution Quarterly along the way. The Whole Earth publications were compendia of environmentalist tools and skills (along with much else) and explicitly purveyed a biological way of understanding. Peter Warshall wrote and reviewed about watersheds, soil, and ecology. Richard Nilsen and Rosemary Menninger covered organic farming and community gardens. J. Baldwin was an impeccable source on “appropriate technology”—solar, wind, insulation, bicycles. Lloyd Kahn wrote about handmade houses. We promoted bioregionalism, restoration, and “reinhabitation” of one’s natural environment. There’s now an insightful book about all that by Andrew Kirk—Counterculture Green: The Whole Earth Catalog and American Environmentalism (2007).

The ghost was not a ghost at all, or so it claimed - it claimed to be a psychic energy baby, birthed in some ethereal dimension, and pulled into the phone by the powerful magnetism of phone signals. It remembered with perfect clarity how it came to be - remembered coalescing from the membranous surface of the world, streaked with reflected light, humming with surface tension under the pressure of emptiness underneath. The Psychic Energy Baby found form among the emanations of people's minds and the susurrus of their voices, it found flesh in the shapes of their lips and eyes made, the surprise of 'o's and the sibilations of 's's; its skin stretched taut like a soap bubble, forged from the wet sound of lips touching; its thoughts were the musky smells and the nerves twined around the transparent water balloons of the muscles like stems of toadflax, searching restlessly for every available crevice, stretching along cold rough surfaces. Its veins, tiny rivers, pumped heartbeats striking in unison, the dry dallying of billions of ventricular contractions. And it spoke, spoke endlessly, it spokes words that tasted of dark air and formic acid. It could speak long before it took it's final shape. And when it happened, when all the sounds and smells and words in the world, when all the thoughts had aligned so that it could become - then it found itself pulled into the wires, surrounded by taut copper and green and red and yellow insulation; twined and quartered among the cables, rent open by millions of voices that shouted and whispered and pleaded and threatened, interspersed with the rasping of breaths and tearing laughter. It traveled through the criss-crossing of the wires so fast that it felt itself being pulled into a needle, head spearing into the future while its feet infinitely receded into the past, until it came into a dark quiet pool of the black rotary phone, where it could reassemble itself and take stock.

Perhaps I shall be understood better if I substitute the terminology of physics for that of the more appropriate psychology, and say that life will only flow in circuit; insulate it, and it becomes inert. Let us take the human personality as an electrical machine; it must be connected up with the power-house, which is God, the Source of all Life, or there will be no motive power; but equally it must be "earthed," or the power will not flow. Every human being must be "earthed" to the earth, both literally and metaphorically. The idealist tries to induce a complete insulation of all earth-contacts in order that the inflowing power may not be wasted; he fails to realise that the earth is one great magnet. Tradition declares from of old that the key to the Mysteries was written upon the Emerald Tablet of Hermes, whereon were inscribed the words, "As above, so below." Apply the principles of physics to psychology, and the riddle will be read. He that hath ears to hear, let him hear.

Of all the terms used in the world's religions, none is as controversial as jihad. Jihad literally means "struggle," and Muslims have traditionally understood it to point to two kinds of struggles: the spiritual struggle against pride and self-sufficiency; and the physical struggle against the "house of war," namely, the enemies of Islam. The second of these struggles calls for a variety of tactics, including preaching, teaching, and working for social justice. It may also include war. Some apologists for Islam have tried to minimize the importance of jihad, and to insulate Islam from its extremists, by arguing that, of these two struggles, the spiritual struggle is higher. A Muslim merchant I met in Jerusalem took this argument further, contending that jihad has nothing whatsoever to do with war because jihad is nothing more than the personal struggle to be good. "Treating me with respect is jihad," he said. "Not ripping me off is jihad." The Quran, he added, never even mentions war. But the Quran does mention war, and it does so repeatedly. One Quranic passage commands Muslims to "fight," "slay," and "expel" in the course of just two sentences (2:190–191), while another says that fighting is "prescribed . . . though it be hateful to you" (2:216). Whether it is better for a religion to largely ignore war (as the Christian New Testament does) or to carefully regulate war (as does the Quran) is an open question, but there is no debating the importance of the themes of fighting and killing in both the Quran and Islamic law. So while it is incorrect to translate jihad as "holy war," the plain sense of this struggle in both the Quran and contemporary Islamic practice is both spiritual and military.

Things change, not only in one’s life but also in the economy and on the political scene, and it pays to be aware. Is the foundation of your financial house secure, with an income that is guaranteed? Have you built solid walls, investing appropriately, and keeping inflation at bay? Are you living under a reliable roof, with assets positioned to grow? Is your house insulated and sturdy, safe from any economic storm?

Our laughter became more raucous as our fooling around intensified. All this suddenly ended when we heard a loud intense knocking on the door. Once again, the doctor had had enough and came up to complain about the noise we were making. These old houses didn’t have any insulation between the walls to dampen the noise. Instead, it was kind of like being inside a drum. In a way, I could understand why he was upset and we could have been more considerate, but on the other hand, we just didn’t give a damn! It might also have been that he knew what we were doing and didn’t like it. In the puritanical 1950’s this sort of thing was frequently frowned upon and perhaps still is, but inconsiderate as it may have been, we didn’t care! Es tut mir leid! (German for I’m sorry! Said in a sarcastic way.) Laughing, Ann told the doctor that we would behave. As he started back down the stairs, she turned to me and said, “Let’s go down to the basement.

Americans might be the loneliest, most desperate, and intensely depressed culture that ever existed. Americans’ ability to own their houses, drive their own cars, and sit alone in front of their televisions sets and personal computer screens results in inconspicuous Americans living largely in isolation of one another. Insulated Americans understandably crave a sense of shared experience, a means to cross the universe, to be part of a chain of love. Americans yearn for social contact. The broad halo effect proffered by music enables lonely people to feel linked to the artist as well as connected to other fans of the appreciated musician. For many Americans, the circle of life begins and ends with a musical accompaniment, because music exemplifies what they feel in their hearts, what they perceive with their eyes and mind, personifies their ring of doubts and fears, voices the illustrative majesty of their hopes, and shares with other people the splendor of their most vivid dreams. The collective intones of music exemplifies the cultural nimbus of Americans’ auspicious spirituality.

In the general US population, fewer than one in two hundred people hold a law degree. In the House of Representatives, it is over one in three. In the Senate, it is over one in two. Statistics on wealth are just as striking. The median net worth of an average American is just under $45,000.115 The median net worth of an average member of Congress, by contrast, is over ten times as high, and that of senators higher still. Marked by the growing role of courts, of bureaucratic agencies, of central banks, and of supranational institutions. At the same time, there has been a rapid growth in the influence of lobbyists, in the money spent on political campaigns, and in the gulf that separates political elites from the people they are supposed to represent. Taken together, this has effectively insulated the political system from the popular will.

The most effective ways to cut down your emissions are to reduce your intake of meat (especially beef, which can cut out about a metric ton of CO2eq per year), to reduce the amount you travel (driving half as much would cut out two metric tons of CO2eq per year and one fewer round-trip flight from London to New York would eliminate a metric ton of CO2eq), and to use less electricity and gas in the home (especially by installing loft insulation, which would save a metric ton of CO2eq for a detached house).

One of Haldeman's methods of operation, the reporters knew, was 'deniability.' This was the device of insulating himself from controversial decisions by implementing them through others so that, later, he could deny involvement... Deniability was the rule in the White House staff system; the bosses stood behind an impenetrable beaver dam. If Haldeman stood behind Watergate, it was unlikely he had left tracks.

The manager told of being in on the development of a miraculous insulating material, which had been used on rocket ships to the Moon. This was, in fact, the same material which gave the aluminum siding of Dwayne Hoover’s dream house in Midland City its miraculous insulating qualities.

Such improvisation may have originated in part out of necessity, just as quilting itself did. Gee’s Bend houses were poorly insulated, and women made quilts for the simple reason that they needed to keep their families warm.

Just before noon one sunny summer’s day, three bears were returning home from their morning wander. They lived in a sturdy wooden cabin, unpretentious and rustic. Approaching the house he’d built with his own paws, Daddy Bear felt a sense of satisfaction. The residence blended in with the forest rather than standing out from it. All the construction materials had been ethically sourced. The wood came from trees felled by storms. A thick layer of turf on the roof provided insulation in winter and kept the cabin cool in summer. In addition to being practical, the turf looked pretty. Its grass sprouted straight up like hair jutting from a mythic head. A little too big to be quaint, yet a little too small to be showoffish, the house was just right. And just right was the way Daddy Bear liked things.

Purina’s exposure to the hog business was not limited at all. The volatile markets exposed that fact. In 1998, the US hog market experienced a shock comparable to the stock market crash of 1929—a market convulsion that obliterated all the rules everyone thought applied to the business. The root of the problem could be traced to the very industrialization that created Purina Mills’ feed business in the first place. Now that hogs were raised on factory farms, the supply of animals was enormous and inflexible. Farmers were raising herds of tens or even hundreds of thousands of pigs. When prices started to fall, these industrial farms couldn’t adapt quickly. They had mortgage payments to meet on the big pig houses, and they needed to keep production high. Factory farms were a machine that wasn’t easily turned off. The flow of pigs continued into the slaughterhouses, and prices fell even further. Then everything spun out of control. Hog prices plummeted, sucking the entire business into the ground almost instantly. The price of hogs fell from about 53 cents per pound to 10 cents per pound in a matter of months. When adjusted for inflation, this was the lowest price for pigs in US history. It cost far more to raise a pig than the animal was worth. Purina Mills should have been insulated against this crisis. It only sold feed, not the hogs themselves. But with its decision in 1997 to start buying baby hogs, Purina had exposed itself to the risk of falling pork prices. Dean Watson began to discover just how large that exposure was. As one farm economist put it at the time, the rational number of hogs to own in 1998 was zero. Purina discovered this fact quickly. It bought baby hogs, and turned around to sell them to the farmers. But there were no buyers. The farmers refused to take them. “The people who we were supposed to be selling the pigs to were basically saying: ‘Sue me.’ The people we had bought the pigs from were saying: ‘You’re not getting out of my contract or I am suing you,’ ” Watson said. “All of this ownership risk that I was assured didn’t exist started to just come out of the woodwork.

The crime scene was a small burned out house, blackened support beams sticking up like rotten teeth from the piles of char and ash on the ground. The occasional curl of half-burned insulation lay like thin snakes, poisonous and waiting.

We know that the infant and very small child need to feel that they can count on these powerful beings to relieve tension and alleviate fears. And we know that the child’s later ability to tolerate tension and actively deal with anxiety situations will be determined in good part by the experiences of early years. During the period of infancy, of biological helplessness, we make very few demands upon the child and do everything possible to reduce tension and satisfy all needs. Gradually, as the child develops, he acquires means of his own to deal with increasingly complex situations. The parent gradually relinquishes his function as insulator and protector. But we know that even the most independent children will need to call upon the protection of parents at times of unusual stress. And the child, even when he can do without the protecting parent in times of ordinary stress, still carries within him the image of the strong and powerful parent to reassure himself. “If a burglar came into our house, my father would kill him dead.” The protective function of the parent is so vital in early childhood that even children who are exposed to abnormal dangers may not develop acute anxiety if the parents are present. It is now well known that in war-time Britain the children who remained with their parents even during bombing attacks were able to tolerate anxiety better than the children who were separated from their parents and evacuated to protected zones. But

Instantly, I noticed that our conversation was easy, flirtatious and exciting. It didn’t take very long for us to get to know each other. To start with, I was a little taken aback with both of them being so friendly and talkative. As we talked, I really didn’t know what to call Rita and I stammered some as I attempted to navigate around the social aspects of my dilemma. I didn’t know her last name and “Mrs. Whatjamacallit” didn’t seem appropriate, so I continued using her first name. What seemed awkward to me at first, soon became and sounded acceptable. I also noticed that Connie alternated between calling her mother “Mom” and “Rita.” At first this was strange, but soon I kind of understood the unique relationship between them. For me it seemed different, however I tend to adapt easily and now I was becoming acquainted with a girl who called her mother by her first name. The house was without central heating, but it did have a big cast iron Franklin stove in the living room. Rita looked over to me and asked if I would light the fire. “Guess so,” I replied. I soon found out that lighting the fire encompassed getting and splitting the firewood, and then tending to it. Connie showed me to the front porch where there was a big pile of cordwood, just dumped in one heap. I also noticed that the wind was picking up and was blowing the white stuff onto the porch and covering the woodpile. “Might be a good idea to bring in enough wood to last the night,” I thought aloud. This was going to become a full time job! With Connie’s able help I got a roaring fire going. Rita made sandwiches and poured us all some Coca-Cola, which she topped off with some Canadian Whiskey. Turning the damper down on the fire, I thought to myself that the Franklin stove would never heat this size house, besides the wind was coming in through the cracks around the windows and doors. I knew that the house didn’t have much insulation by how cold the walls were. The windows were single pane, which also didn’t help much, but at least it was shelter. When I mentioned this, Rita said, “Never mind, we’ll all be able to stay warm in bed.” By this time, Connie and I were clowning around and Rita reminded us that she was also there. “I may be momma but I’m not about to freeze, while you kids have all the fun! Besides we only have one bed.” Suddenly the whole scene came into focus. The sandwiches on the kitchen table wouldn’t be our only food. The sandwiches we would have that night would just be the beginning of a feast.

She felt sorry for him. His worldview was so limited, and it hadn't necessarily been his fault. He was a victim of his upbringing. "I don't expect you to understand. But you can respect what we want and drop all of this legal stuff. No one cares about it. No one's paying attention to you. It's why Mom hasn't come to court. We have more important things to tend to." He seemed to realize he'd lost control of the conversation, and he groped around to take it back. "You're still a child, Meredith. You don't get to make these decisions." "Dad. Is this what you really want? To be in a house alone with me and Cliff? It would be so weird and awkward. You know it. I know it. So please, just let us be happy here. We'll all be so much happier if we admit what we want and allow each other to have it." Cooper sighed and chewed on the end of his sunglasses. He looked around at the property as if surveying the place, but she knew he was just avoiding eye contact. "Fine. If that's what you and Cliff really want." He put a hand up to the back of his head. "I love you guys, no matter what she's been saying to you. I'm still your father." Her face softened, and she put her arms out for a hug. "I know, Dad. I love you, too." He put his arms around her, and she could smell his cologne, like spicy, deep-hued oranges. He was such a fragile man at his core, and she started to write a spell in her head for his protection. Corn silk wrapped around an abandoned turtle shell until you can't see it. Must be kept in breast pocket of coat for storage against the heart. Words said while wrapping, "This man is a soft by-product of insulated privilege. He does not have the armor for this world. Give him this shell and protect him from harm."

Like most well-built Russian homes, Spaso House had been 'furred in', built with an extra layer of wall between the exterior and interior to provide additional insulation against the cold.

When Sweden opened its country up to Kurds, Bosnians, and Somalis in the 1990s, they placed the newcomers in abandoned public housing units, immediately insulating them from the rest of the community.

We should not forget another major issue related to heating or cooling buildings: many of them are deficient from an efficiency perspective. They often have poor quality windows and doors, or low insulation in walls and ceilings. In warm climates, many buildings do not have insulation at all. Many countries do not understand the benefits of insulation when it is very hot, to keep a house cool, and to reduce air conditioning needs.

In the last 15 years, German cities including Freiburg, Tübingen, Hamburg, and Berlin have developed cooperative building programs called “Baugemeinschaft” or “Baugruppen.” This is a development model that allows the future owners to become the developers. By developing buildings individually, plot by plot, a diverse, high-quality, and more affordable building stock is possible. The Baugemeinschaft approach bridges the individual and private needs of residents and their common and social needs. Seldom do urban dwellings respond to the needs of an active and growing family. Often, the only way to have a home designed to your own specification, is to find a site outside of the city and build a detached house. Designing your own home in an urban setting is often only an option for the wealthy. New apartments offer some choices, but they are limited to things such as bathroom tiles and kitchen cabinets. The idea of being able to influence the design of your own urban home, including the dimensions, layout, heating system, and insulation is extremely interesting.

He stepped into the foyer, impeccably suited and scarved, with a silk tie knotted at his collar. Each evening he appeared in ensembles of plums, olives, and chocolate browns. He was a compact man, and though his feet were perpetually splayed, and his belly slightly wide, he nevertheless maintained an efficient posture, as if balancing in either hand two suitcases of equal weight. His ears were insulated by tufts of graying hair that seemed to block out the unpleasant traffic of life. He had thickly lashed eyes shaded with a trace of camphor, a generous mustache that turned up playfully at the ends, and a mole shaped like a flattened raisin in the very center of his left cheek. On his head he wore a black fez made from the wool of Persian lambs, secured by bobby pins, without which I was never to see him. Though my father always offered to fetch him in our car, Mr. Pirzada preferred to walk from his dormitory to our neighborhood, a distance of about twenty minutes on foot, studying trees and shrubs on his way, and when he entered our house his knuckles were pink with the effects of crisp autumn air.

More power-efficient washing machines or better insulated houses will help the environment; but they also cut our bills, and that immediately means we lose some of the environmental gain by spending the saved money on something else. As cars have become more fuel-efficient we have chosen to drive further. As houses have become better insulted we have raised standards of heating, and as we put in energy-saving light bulbs the chances are that we start to think it doesn't matter so much leaving them on.

The best solution is to put a dog bed in your living space, a comfy spot to rest that’s all her own. During the initial house-training phase, though, she should spend the night in a crate in your bedroom. There’s a mind-boggling selection of doggy beds on the market, so take your time choosing the one that’s right for you and your pooch. As in the case of real estate, location counts most when it comes to a dog bed. If your pup’s sleeping accommodation is on carpet or hardwood, you won’t need a lot of padding in the bed, but if it’s on concrete, linoleum or tile, you’ll need an adequate barrier against cold and moisture between the floor and the bottom of the bed. If your pooch sleeps in the basement or some other area where the temperature will be dipping below 60°F (about 16°C), consider a slightly elevated or well-insulated bed. Look for low-maintenance beds that are large enough to allow for a six-inch (fifteen-centimetre) buffer around your pup. And feel free to buy a bed large enough for your pup once he’s full grown. Look for materials that can be washed regularly.

between a trailer and a house. Technically, it was her home, her house . . . but everyone in River Bend who wanted to dig at Zoe’s status made sure they referred to it as a trailer. Her BFFs, Mel and Jo, never said trailer. Even on nights like this . . . when the calendar said it was early summer but the evenings in River Bend, Oregon, didn’t get the memo. Those paper-thin walls that lacked insulation and girth didn’t do a good job of keeping away the cold. The rain had held out for

All these years, I thought the first Watchers were a bit dense for giving power to only one girl. One Slayer to fight everything? One Slayer to make impossible choices? But . . . that's the beauty of it. Because the Slayer is young. The Slayer is a girl. The Slayer isn't some rich dude, insulated from life and pain and struggle, sitting in his Mr. Darcy house deciding who gets to live and die. The Slayer is on the streets, in the dark, in the night, walking right alongside the things she hunts. So when she makes life-or-death choices - they're life-or-death choices for her, to. Not just for the things she's hunting. She's not a committee, a council, a group working at a remove. She's part of the darkness. And when you're already in the dark, you can see the subtle differences in the shadows. Some things are so absent of light that there's no question. And other things, like werewolves, like the Dougs and Clems of the world, they're delicately shaded. I think of Artemis and Honora behind the wheel of that truck. All those shades of darkness in demons. Just like in humans. My ancient ancestors actually got this one right. The whole one-Slayer thing wasn't a flaw. It was a feature. The fact that there are more of us now doesn't change that. This is my calling. My duty. My right.

she says something nasty.’ ‘Well, not nasty, exactly,’ Gertie said. ‘More sly, isn’t it?’ Celeste nodded. ‘Like the time she said that you were looking well.’ Evie gave a mad sort of laugh. ‘Yes!’ she cried. ‘She said I suited the extra weight I’d put on.’ ‘And the time she admired my dress,’ Gertie said, ‘and then went on to say that she wished they’d come in petite so that she could have one too.’ Celeste gave a knowing smile. ‘I don’t think it’s natural to be as skinny as Simone,’ she said. ‘No,’ Evie said. ‘Didn’t she once say that she hated chocolate? How can you trust anyone who doesn’t like chocolate? It’s not natural, is it?’ ‘It certainly isn’t,’ Celeste said, enjoying the jovial mood between them and wishing it could be like this more often. ‘And if she says my fingernails look like a man’s one more time, I swear I’m going to scream,’ Gertie said. The sisters laughed together before getting out of the car. Oak House was on the edge of a pretty village in what was known as ‘High Suffolk’ – the area to the north-west of the county famous for its rolling countryside. The house itself wasn’t attractive. Or at least it wasn’t attractive to Celeste, who was suspicious of any architecture that came after the Arts and Crafts movement – which this one certainly had. She still found it hard to understand how her father could have bought a mock-Tudor house when he had lived in a bona fide medieval home for so many years. She looked up at its black and white gable and couldn’t help wincing at such modernity. It was the same inside, too, with neatly plastered walls and floors that neither sloped nor squeaked. But, then again, Oak House had never known damp or deathwatch beetle and there was never the slightest chance of being cold in the fully insulated rooms with their central heating. ‘God, I’d rather spend an afternoon with Esther Martin,’ Gertie said as they approached the front door, which sheltered in a neat little porch where Simone had placed a pot of begonias. Celeste didn’t like begonias. Mainly because they weren’t roses. ‘I popped my head in to see if Esther was all right this morning and she nearly bit it off,’ Celeste said. ‘I’ve given up on her,’ Gertie said. ‘I’ve tried – I’ve really tried to be nice, but she is the rudest person I’ve ever met.’ Evie sighed. ‘You can’t blame her

Mr Ambrayses nodded. “Two explanations are commonly offered for this,” he said: “In the first we are asked to imagine certain sites in the world–a crack in the concrete in Chicago or New Delhi, a twist in the air in an empty suburb of Prague, a clotted milk bottle on a Bradford tip–from which all flies issue in a constant stream, a smoke exhaled from some fundamental level of things. This is what people are asking–though they do not usually know it–when they say exasperatedly, “Where are all these flies coming from ?” Such locations are like the holes in the side of a new house where insulation has been pumped in: something left over from the constructional phase of the world. “This is an adequate, even an appealing model of the process. But it is not modern; and I prefer the alternative, in which it is assumed that as Viriconium grinds past us, dragging its enormous bulk against the bulk of the world, the energy generated is expressed in the form of these insects, which are like the sparks shooting from between two flywheels that have momentarily brushed each other.

Crying in a lab didn’t feel right. If you broke something or made a mistake, you could get mad, but sad didn’t fit. So she talked. “She had one hundred forty-five hours in orbit and helped design Discovery’s arm. She was an electrical engineer.” It was like opening a closet door—everything fell out. “Judy Resnik played piano and had a picture of Tom Selleck in her locker.” Mr. Pete had a bank of lockers from NASA in his house and she could fit inside them. It was good to be small in an orbiter because there was no extra room in them. Mid-mission, Judy Resnik had held up a sign that said HI DAD. Nedda loved her dad too. She told him about Challenger’s insulation, the felt that made it lighter, about how much it could haul, about ceramic tiles. His hand stilled when she stopped talking, like he knew when she was empty. “That’s an awful lot. Do you feel better?” “I guess.” But she didn’t. She pulled away and climbed onto the lab table. She wished she’d brought a quilt.

What Are The Main Advantages of PVC Doors They usually have a clean floor with bright paint-free in order that they'll keep away from the discharge of any toxic gas within the air which might be very dangerous to human physique especially if they use the decorative paint. PVC doorways have another advantage in that they are surroundings pleasant because they are often recycled after their life is other to other varieties by melting them and then remolding them.In addition to the above advantages of PVC doors, you find them to be good for your own home as a result of they are very simple to put in in addition to simple to maintain. Moreover, PVC upvc doors ipswich doorways are straightforward to take care of. As a result of the truth that PVC is manufactured from plastic, there are much less possibilities of injury from other parts. Cleaning them just requires a wet piece of cloth with little cleaning liquid.The opposite most important advantage of those PVC doorways is that they're climate proof. They aren't affected by presence of extra water or moisture since they don't take up any amount. They can not warp in case of direct heating. Also, they do not lose their colour when exposed to direct daylight and this has led to their increased utilization worldwide. Another good motive why PVC doorways are fashionable is that, under regular circumstances, they are generally straightforward to take care of. Cleaning a PVC door is relatively easy to do. All it's good to wipe its surface clean and it'll look pretty much as good as new. Furthermore, PVC doors don't require stripping or repainting, and are typically quite sturdy. The identical can't be said of conventional wooden doorways, significantly those which can be sensitive to moisture and chemical compounds. Traditional wooden doorways require cautious maintenance to be able to preserve their appearance and wonder. Initials PVC stands for polyvinyl chloride which is a chemistry time period used to discuss with a certain type of material which may be very durable, has great insulating traits and does not emit any harmful fumes under regular conditions. Its chemical properties could be modified so that it turn out to be very robust and stiff like in a PVC door and even very flexible like in an inflatable swimming pool. PVC is getting used all around the world due to its power. The following are the advantages of PVC doorways; PVC door does not require upkeep, repainting or stripping and you solely need to wipe its floor occasionally for it to look good. Compared to timber door body which shrink and develop over time, PVC door body often remain steady as it is 100% water proof. Whereas doors from other materials discolor and fade if they're exposed to direct daylight, PVC’s one does not fade or discolor as a result of it is extremely UV resistance and thus it can remain looking new for a very long time.

Uses of Custom Blinds Customized blinds may also be used to control the temperature in any room. For example, if the room in a home is chilly during the day time, the owner of the house and their family members can simply open up the blinds so that they'll let the sunlight in. The daylight helps to heat up the room without changing the temperature on the wall. Additionally, when it will get too sizzling, the household can shut the blinds so that they can cool the room down as nicely. Whatever the scenario, these blinds can be utilized for a wide variety of various purposes. Out there, there are various kinds of window shades. Choosing the right window blind is usually a bit hectic if it’s your first time. Listed below are some various varieties of window shades that you can choose from. Venetian blinds are the commonest and in style at this time. They're constructed from horizontal slates connected to one another. They function on a change or pull string. Some are product of wooden, plastic or composites. They are appropriate for each houses and places of work. Vertical blinds are among the most unique varieties of window blinds you can get. They are good insulators and can be used to Custom Blinds utterly block daylight penetration. The vertical shades are also robust enough to stop any harm from strong winds. They are low cost but stylish. Some are constructed with the power to adjust themselves in response to the time of day. Customs blinds can be used for each casual and office settings. This innovative thought means that you can use pictures as blind. With regards to makes use of of custom blinds, there are different options. Using your individual imagination, customized blinds might be adorned with completely different colors, designs and patterns. If your window is of an additional ordinary size, there are basic window blinds which can be customized to slot in. These are the roller blinds. Attributable to know-how, they've been advanced to be extra reliable and durable than earlier than. They're now less likely to breakdown. You possibly can select from all kinds of colours and patterns. Before coming to a conclusion on the perfect kinds of window blinds, it is very important do some extensive research. The images can be printed on a high quality curler and you should utilize vertical blinds, that are fade resistant, easier to clean and final for a number of years. In case your home windows varies in sizes, contemplate the images that will look one of the best. For a big window, a large panorama image can be effective. If the window is kind of slim, you need to consider photos corresponding to flowers or bushes.

[w]e should not think that we can do enough simply by buying fuel-efficient cars, insulating our houses, and setting up a windmill to make our own electricity. That is all wonderful, but it does little or nothing to stop global warming and also does not fulfill our real moral obligations, which are to get governments to do their job to prevent the disaster of excessive global warming.