Our summers in Paris: the book

In what may become the first step in turning this journal into a book, I have started making PDFs of all previous years' journals, going back to 2000.  (The first two years, 1998 and 1999 were written by hand on paper.)

This morning, I finished making the PDFs for August 2003.  This took time, because I had to re-read each one for that particularly unusual month.  In August 2003, a deadly heat wave plagued Paris for a couple weeks.  The aftermath of the heat wave dragged on for a couple more weeks.  In my journal, I chronicled the experience.  I, and others in France, became aware of the disastrous death toll gradually.  Every few days the estimates would rise, significantly.  By the end of that month's journal on August 23rd, I thought the final figure was about 13,000.  In reality, by the end of August, the official heat-wave-related death toll in France was over 15,000.

The Eiffel Tower after the heat wave of 2003 ended.

The air pollution during that 2003 heat wave was horrific.  This pollution damaged my health, and it affected Tom's as well.  Surviving that entire heat wave without air conditioning was not easy.

The heat this summer has been much easier to tolerate, because it has come in smatterings of a day or two here, and three or four days there.  While the air pollution levels have been elevated on some of these days, they have been nothing like the poisonous, visible smog of 2003.

In 2003, I reported on the finger-pointing by French officials who were trying to assign blame for the poor response of the health care system and social services.  Since then, many changes have been made to make certain that poor response will not be repeated.  Since then, the air has become cleaner.  Since then, the apartment where we stay has awnings, more fans, and new, double-glazed windows/french doors.

So on days like today, when the temperature is predicted to be 92 degrees F, the bad ozone level will be merely "elevated," but not extremely dangerous.  We can manage to keep the apartment at least 10 degrees cooler than the high temp for the day, even with its southern exposure.  Rain is predicted for the late evening, and then both temperatures and bad ozone levels will fall.

If you want to read about that historic heat wave of 2003, to get an idea of what it was like, my journal for those dog days is still online at these links:

b2cool.tripod.com/paris03/8-8.htm
b2cool.tripod.com/paris03/8-9.htm
b2cool.tripod.com/paris03/8-13.htm
b2cool.tripod.com/paris03/8-15.htm
b2cool.tripod.com/paris03/8-19.htm
b2cool.tripod.com/paris03/8-21.htm
b2cool.tripod.com/paris03/8-23.htm

So yes, I am thinking of writing a book, Our Summers in Paris.  Would you like to read it?

Eiffel Tower and Seine in the air pollution during the heat wave of August 2003.