Do you guys think power would fail for us in this heat wave?

stacey wrote: I stopped by the Key Food last night and they were closed due to "Power Problems"!

Well if it does I'll be right outside playing with the kids and the hose

i might join if the ac goes out!

WhyFi wrote: It's hot.

It's three-layers-of-deodorant hot.

It's maybe-people-that-use-umbrellas/parasols-aren't-crazy hot.

they have a whole article about umbrellas on washington post.


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/31/AR2006073101305.html

Washington Coverup
Portable Shade Devices Deployed in Streets

By Linton Weeks
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, August 1, 2006; Page C01

Deadly ultraviolet sun rays in the summer, acid snow in the winter, torrential rains all year long -- there's no telling what the skies will throw down these days. We need all the protection we can get in these angst-ridden times. Maybe that's why more and more people seem to be carrying open umbrellas all the time, on perfectly sunny days as well as dark and stormy ones.

Walk along the Mall on a pretty afternoon and see for yourself. There's a large blue one with a floral print. There's a bright red one. And a small green one.

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Hot item: Umbrellas aren't just for rain anymore.
Hot item: Umbrellas aren't just for rain anymore. (By Susan Biddle -- The Washington Post)
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"I can protect more of myself," says Inci Bowman, 66, a retired University of Texas medical historian who lives on Capitol Hill. On a recent weekday, she's sporting a beige umbrella as she strolls toward Pennsylvania Avenue. Overhead the sun is hot, but clouds and leafy trees provide intermittent shade, and breezes sweep along the streets. Bowman never lowers her umbrella.

"It's cooler to carry an umbrella than to wear a hat," she says. Besides, "it could rain every day. You never know."

She keeps the umbrella open "just to be on the safe side."

Valerie Steele, director of the Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York, says that people are carrying umbrellas more on sunny days because of concerns about global warming and danger to the skin. It can be an emotional aid, she says, in "an uncertain environment."

The word "umbrella" comes from the Latin word for shade. Originally, umbrellas were used for sun protection. In earlier civilizations they were a status symbol -- Egyptian royalty are pictured with umbrella-bearing attendants. (The modern equivalents are the valets who have carried umbrellas for celebrity royalty, such as Michael Jackson and P. Diddy.) The ancient Greeks and Romans believed that carrying umbrellas was okay for women but not for men, the 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica tells us. In the mid-18th century, a British traveler wrote home from France of the en-tout-cas, an umbrella that protects from both rain and sun. And he suggested that Brits should start carrying them.

Guidebooks through the years have urged visitors to the British Isles to carry an umbrella at all times. Historians tell us that British soldiers even toted their umbrellas to the Battle of Waterloo in 1815.

A legend accompanying a watercolor of a parasol at the National Gallery of Art explains that parasols were introduced to the United States in 1772 by a Baltimore entrepreneur. "Soon the fashion centers of Philadelphia and New York took an interest in this kind of accessory," the legend reads. "By the 19th century, parasols were commonly used by women for carriage rides or for promenading."

The umbrella, on the other hand, "was declasse," says Steele. "You were supposed to have a carriage to keep you from getting wet. Only middle-class people carried umbrellas." In the mid-19th century, Louis Phillipe of France carried an umbrella. He was known as the Bourgeois King.

Parasols were considered a more genteel thing in the southern United States, Steele says, where many people wanted "to keep their skin as light as possible." The same was true in India. She adds that parasol carriers were also trying to avoid heatstroke.

Today the answer to the umbrella and parasol is a 24/7 omnibrella. All-weather umbrellas are offered in gift catalogues.

Neil Cross, president of Umbrellas.com in Rye, N.Y., sells many styles of umbrellas. He says people are buying his wares for "rainy days and sunny days."

More and more, he says, "people are using umbrellas for all sorts of different things."

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Hot item: Umbrellas aren't just for rain anymore.
Hot item: Umbrellas aren't just for rain anymore. (By Susan Biddle -- The Washington Post)
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His company will soon be offering a beach umbrella with ultraviolet light protection.

Lynn Rose, owner of California-based Soleil Chic, makes umbrellas with ultraviolet ray protection sewn right into the fabric. She has been in business since 2003 and sales have improved each year. "If you use an umbrella for rain that can't really harm you," Rose says, "why wouldn't you use an umbrella to protect you against the sun that can kill you?"

The sun, she says, "has some very bad effects. You may not die from it, but you can be scarred."

Though she won't give out figures, she says that sales are up "because it's just so hot. People are looking for something to break that intense heat."

Back on the Mall, Luz Alzate, 50, is visiting from Colombia. She is walking along the sidewalk near the USDA under a black umbrella. "I didn't used to carry an umbrella around because the sun wasn't that harsh," she says through an interpreter. Now she takes an umbrella everywhere because "there is a lot of sun and there is a lot of rain, too."

While other countries understand the value of sun-thwarting parasols and "sunbrellas," contemporary America is just beginning to warm to the idea. When an open umbrella was spotted on the Zapruder film of President John F. Kennedy's 1963 assassination, conspiracists saw it as something unexplainable. Today there might be a few more open umbrellas at the scene.

On the Mall, the Moore family of Blacksburg, Va., takes in the sun-drenched sights. Teresa Moore, 43, and daughter Samantha, 9, carry umbrellas. Teresa's is lavender, Samantha's pale green. In black skirt, black shades and a black T-shirt that reads "My Mom Rocks" in pink Gothic type, Samantha looks especially hip.

Teresa says she owns seven umbrellas and takes one wherever she goes.

Her husband, Walker, 38, laughs and says Teresa might start carrying one at night to protect against "moonburn."

Mother has taught daughter always to carry an umbrella. "It's a handy tool," Teresa says. It's a fashion accessory. It's a weapon. It's a sunshade for the empty car.

"When there's rain, you've got it," she explains, "and when it's hot, you've got it."

And, Samantha adds, "it's good for scaring pigeons."