{"id":38,"date":"2009-04-11T21:03:11","date_gmt":"2009-04-12T04:03:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/basweeney.com\/writings\/?p=38"},"modified":"2009-04-11T21:03:11","modified_gmt":"2009-04-12T04:03:11","slug":"the-fan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/basweeney.com\/writings\/?p=38","title":{"rendered":"The Fan"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>By Barbara Sweeney<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Grating cucumbers into an icy bowl,<br \/>\nI notice the blades of the fan<br \/>\nspinning black with soot<br \/>\nand long, sticky sweeps of dust.<\/p>\n<p>It is hot here.<br \/>\nOur air is measured in particles.<br \/>\nThe Windmere table fan has never spun<br \/>\nas long as it has this summer,<br \/>\nwhich has worn out its welcome<br \/>\nand simmered long into October.<br \/>\nThe fan whirls black<br \/>\nwith what we must be breathing.<\/p>\n<p>The cucumbers drain<br \/>\nwhile I clean the blackened blades,<br \/>\nremembering how I used to sit with my face<br \/>\nin front of my parent\u2019s Toastmaster floor fan.<br \/>\nIf you spoke or sang into the fan<br \/>\nit made a sound like frenzied gargling<br \/>\nthat you could alter by pitch,<br \/>\nlow, or high,<br \/>\nuntil you arrived at a kind of strangled scream<br \/>\nand someone from another room would shout, \u201cStop that,<br \/>\nand get away from that fan!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I reassemble the Windmere,<br \/>\nplace the setting on \u201chigh\u201d.<br \/>\nWith my back to the hot kitchen<br \/>\nand my face up close to the hum,<br \/>\nI consider how the cool promise of a regular life<br \/>\nhas blown right past me.<br \/>\nFrom behind their grid of safety,<br \/>\nthe clean spinning blades are mercifully quiet<br \/>\nas they circulate this imperfect air.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Barbara Sweeney Grating cucumbers into an icy bowl, I notice the blades of the fan spinning black with soot and long, sticky sweeps of dust. It is hot here. Our air is measured in particles. The Windmere table fan has never spun as long as it has this summer, which has worn out its [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-38","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the_fan","category-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/basweeney.com\/writings\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/basweeney.com\/writings\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/basweeney.com\/writings\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/basweeney.com\/writings\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/basweeney.com\/writings\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=38"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/basweeney.com\/writings\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":39,"href":"http:\/\/basweeney.com\/writings\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38\/revisions\/39"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/basweeney.com\/writings\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=38"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/basweeney.com\/writings\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=38"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/basweeney.com\/writings\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=38"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}