Remember way back to the outset of the pandemic and the panic over toilet paper? Do those days seem like ancient history in light of all you have experienced in the intervening time as a survivor—or should I say “masked survivor”? Oh! The hardships you faced and still face. The disruption of your life and the fear that the grocery store will no longer have any toilet paper!
There’s nothing insightful in pointing out that we live relatively soft lives, but that thought of our softness came to me recently as I walked the towpath of the old C & O Canal just outside of Hancock, MD, and then proceeded to the old rail line turned paved bicycle path. Along the way there’s a parallel dirt farm road that runs past the site where an old farmhouse once stood. Still on the land and not far from where that house stood is the old outhouse, now missing its door. Inside, the seat has collapsed. Neither privacy nor function now available to the needy cyclist along the bike trail.
As I was saying, hardships like a resupply of toilet paper aside, we live relatively soft lives for the most part. In an age before Charmin, people lived differently. Take the lives of the men who dug the canal. During the “Big Dig,” laborers were hit with cholera—a number of them died and many ran off the job. Digging a 185-mile-long ditch in the second quarter of the nineteenth century meant standing in puddles while shoveling, living along a progressing canal, and having no modern conveniences, probably not even an outhouse. That one in the picture above post-dates the canal dig.
Yes, life was harder in general during the nineteenth century. I recall James Burke, author and narrator of the books and series Connections and The Day the Universe Changed, pointing out that the nineteenth-century folks had about 500 foods available to them, whereas you and I have about 50,000.* Just look around the grocery stores (they sell more than toilet paper). And I think about how his pointing out the difference in variety and abundance affects what we believe to be important. Take tea time, for example. Er, rather, think about making tea.
Feeling the pressure of your fast-paced world even during times of shutdown and quarantine? Worried that researchers won’t find a cure or a vaccine for COVID-19? Depressed to the point of wandering around unshaven or without makeup while saying, “Woe is me”? Prohibited by your city, county, or state government from going to a bar? How tough are these times?
Not to worry. There are researchers researching everywhere. It’s just that some of them aren’t researching a cure for a virus. No, some of them, notably and maybe even ironically in China, are looking into the difference between boiling water on the stove as opposed to boiling it in a microwave. I know. This has been a problem front and center in your frontal cortex for years. Sure, those guys digging the canal while mosquitoes and cholera plagued their hard labor might have had some problems, but they never had to concern themselves with how they would use the electromagnetic spectrum to boil water for tea.
Who wants to watch a pot of water boil? The process is notoriously a long one, and even the added pressure inside a tea kettle doesn’t make the shortened boiling time an acceptable duration for the impatient tea drinker. “I want my tea…now!”
So much for relaxation in a fast-paced world. Seems that we want instantaneous respite from daily concerns and activities; we want a fully stocked grocery stores with shelves and shelves of both food and toilet paper. What do you say? “Stick the cup of water in the microwave. Two minutes, tops, maybe less, depending on the microwave and the size of the cup. And, hey, since when did the tea cup become a giant Starbucks mug? Isn’t the typical image of tea time a tiny cup too small for swigs? Are little triangles or squares of ‘sandwiches’ that don’t satisfy hunger not your ‘cup of tea’? Give me a MUG,” you say, “and give it to me fast. I have only a short time to spare. Heck. I’ll drink the tea while I work or while I binge watch something until this damn pandemic is over.”
But now, thanks to researchers, at least we know that old-fashioned boiling water in a pot or tea kettle is different from boiling it in a microwave. This is the science we needed in these trying times of our fast-paced world and suddenly dangerous and inhibiting world. And where better to experiment with boiling water for tea than in the University of Electronic Science & Technology of China? Tea from China and getting a “cuppa,” as the English say, well, those two go together like horsepower and race cars or shovels and nineteenth-century canal digs. The problem the UESTC researchers addressed is the way the water boils.** Put a pot of water on a stovetop and you get boiling from the bottom up, convection at work. Put a cup of water in the microwave, and you get nonuniform heating, no convection cells. The top of the water can be hotter than the bottom of the water. Now there’s a problem no one considered while sitting in that old outhouse along the canal.
Does heating liquid foods in a microwave make a difference in your life? Well, I guess. Think of heating something like a bowl of chili or some leftover soup in the microwave. Gotta go into the liquid with a spoon to stir it about halfway through the heating process. Otherwise, the top’s super hot, and the bottom’s still cool. The same thing happens to that cup of water for tea.
Lessons? Sure. Some I see; others, you see.
I think of the technology difference between my ancestors and me, between those canal diggers and my contemporaries. Microwaves? What happened to burning wood? Iron pots? Pretty heavy, especially when filled with water. And then there was that process of cutting and hauling in the firewood. But when life was harder, people were probably harder. Had to be to survive. Doesn’t mean their lives were better, just different, though definitely, in daily activities, slower in some ways. If you’re used to watching the pot boil, then what’s the problem? If you’re used to one-minute-forty-second cups of tea, that’s what you expect. No slow sips, either. And multiple flavorings in exotic teas named after colors, black, green, white, all coming from lands far away, and all coming, if you desire, not as loose leaf, but in neat little packages for single cups—or mugs. What’s one of those little bags cost, anyway? At Starbucks, they appear to be as valuable as semiprecious gems when one works out the cost per cup.
Definitely, my life isn’t as hard as my ancestors’ lives, and definitely not as hard as the lives of those canal diggers or the farm family that had to go to a little building when Mother Nature called. And my impatience over boiling water, the impatience the extends to the number of clicks on a website, simply makes me a product of my times. So, from this, I take the lesson that I am truly a product of my technological times. And that makes me wonder how I am the product of influences other than technology. That canal, for example, gets numerous visitors each year as people ride canal boats in a recreation of olden days.
And my mind wanders in a stream of consciousness that includes other ways I’ve adopted a “microwave mind for speed and convenience.” I think of those long paragraphs in the essays of nineteenth-century writers, extensively developed and often for the twenty-first century reader, somewhat sleep-inducing. I think of ordering on Amazon and receiving the package in a couple of days. I think of flying from, say, Chicago to D.C., while riding in relative luxury, but occupying my mind with a book or magazine or a game or a movie or a quick nap or an observation about the physiography and that old canal over which I pass at 35,000 feet. I think about the flight attendant’s bringing me a cup of hot water and a teabag and imagine men in 1830 eating little that we would find appetizing and enjoying no toilet paper.
*Burke’s stuff is available online. Just search Connections by James Burke. Season 1, Episode 1 can be found at. https://video.search.yahoo.com/yhs/search?fr=yhs-iba-syn&hsimp=yhs-syn&hspart=iba&p=connections+james#id=1&vid=a58b4ce0999c567c3adc58e6d99ff9e5&action=click
**https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/08/200804111516.htm Accessed August 8, 2020.
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