The Air-Conditioned Bunker

Kulchur 5 (Spring 1962). By way of William S. Burroughs, an attention-grabbing cover quicker to meet the eyes than the images below, of air-conditioned bunkers along the Maginot Line and so on. 

In Iraq and Afghanistan during the hot months, troops hang out in air-conditioned positions, drinking bottled water and surfing the net, listening to iTunes. 

The history of air-conditioned bunkers, tunnels and underground passages goes back nearly a century.  Once huddled down there, who'd want to come out into the open? 

Air-conditioned underground tunnels connected various elements of the system -- they still do. Beneath shopping malls, universities and whole chunks of cities, and of course beneath government facilities.   Then again, the typical shopping mall is a sort of air-conditioned delusion!

"Mr. President, I would not rule out the chance to preserve a nucleus of human specimens. It would be quite easy at the bottom of some of our deeper mineshafts. The radioactivity would never penetrate a mine some thousands of feet deep. And in a matter of weeks, sufficient improvements in dwelling space could easily be provided." -- Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964).

Let's not forget to check out Victor Bockris' With William Burroughs: A Report From the Bunker (1996).  Hard to beat the voice of Burroughs.  My maternal grandmother Catherine and her brother Curt spoke in similar cadences -- always enthralling.

Today's Rune: Wholeness.