Sun-dried Clothes

The other day I posted on Facebook that I'd dried bedsheets on my clothesline and they would smell like sunshine. Someone asked what sunshine smells like. Hummmm. Well, it is not an easy fragrance to describe. It smells like heat but not the heat from a woodfire or from a hot coil in a space heater. It's the heat from the sun. It does not last long. By the second night of sleeping on sun-dried sheets, the scent is gone. This fragrance cannot be captured in any bottle no matter what the makers of detergent and fabric softener say.

I went through a brief period of using these products but the perfumey odors assaulted my nose. I figured that was not a good thing so I went to unscented soaps and gave up softener except for cleaning paintbrushes. There are times when I have to use a clothes dryer but I'd rather use the clothesline. A few years back I read an article about how clothes dryers literally erode clothing. Every spin breads down the fibers and eats away at the integrity of the fabric. Clotheslines are not only cheaper to use but clothing lasts longer.

But using a clothesline takes time: time to hang out the clothing, run out to grab them off the line if a rain shower springs up, take them in before evening when rising humidity makes them feel damp again. Some people complain that sun-dried clothes, especially towels, are stiff. Use the dryer for a few minutes to 'relax' the wrinkles before hanging out the clothes and that takes care of the stiff-as-a-board problem.

As a child, I used to hide in the clothes hanging on the line never realizing that my mother could clearly see my legs and feet and knew exactly where I was. She didn't like me dong this because sometimes I pulled the sheets loose from the line so they fell on the ground. Few people use a clothesline today but young children probably still hide in clothing racks in stores. It drives parents crazy.

Besides the cost of the clothesline - less than $100 or build your own for less - the sun is free.

No more "it is what it is"

I'm fed up and more than tired of inequality for all and by all I mean humans and our environment. There is absolutely NO room for the phrase "it is what it is" in our vocabulary any longer except for the weather. Would you care to hear "it is what it is" regarding slavery? Women and African Americans not being able to vote? Literally beating cart horses to death to leave them die and rot in the streets? Having a landfill built next to your residence?

I think not.

We MUST reverse our complacent apathetic attitudes. But I know it is not easy - it's much easier to not rock the boat, just let it go and not do anything. Will that solve a problem? No. Will the problem continue? Yes.

Do your part. Join a group. Give your time. Your actions do matter.

We have these rights in no particular order:
* to feel safe in a movie theater, a restaurant, our place of work and worship, our schools, driving down the damn road.
* to know what is in and on our food AND if it has been genetically modified
* to drink clean water and breathe clean air
* to love and/or marry who we want
* to have LOTS of wild spaces to enjoy



We have these responsibilities and obligations to:
* care for each other
* ESPECIALLY not to do anything to someone we would not want done to us
* to raise our voices against things that are wrong and fixable
* to speak with our actions because our actions are LOUDER

I'm just one person but if you speak and act and others speak and act we will be heard. 

Glad that is solved

I don't always rant. Sometimes I have saner, more calm moments. Lately I have been thinking about what I want to be when I grow up and I've decided I, like so  many, don't really want to grow up. I tried. I got married and divorced and then decided not to marry again. Long ago I decided not to have children because they are a real commitment. You can't divorce a child and you can't exchange them. They are yours! Well, some people have abandoned or abused their children but that is not how the relationship is supposed to work. So, if you don't think you can live up to the rules you should not have children. But you can try marriage and if that doesn't work you can get divorced. I'm a responsible adult. I work, I vote, I pay taxes, sometimes I even obey speed limits, but I wish I had the sense of adventure and happy-go-lucky-ness that I had as a kid. I wish I didn't know about all the things in the world that really hurt us.

Glad that is solved.

So now I'll address this issue of gay marriage and maybe this will be one of my quiet rants. Love is hard enough to find and who knows what brings love between two people, what makes it last, and what makes it work, so if you find the right partner and both of you want a legal union why not? I cannot see how two people of the same gender who marry can erode or threaten or destroy the man - woman marriage ideal because from what I see it is not always ideal. Sometimes love goes bad whether it's man - woman, man - man or woman - woman. Nor can I believe that a child raised by a gay or lesbian couple will turn out to be homosexual. Maybe but maybe not. I just think that love is hard to find and keep so if two people want to share life together they should be able to do so without being ostracized.

Glad that is solved.

Then I saw this today in the Huffington Post: "The Abstinence Education Reallocation Act, brought forth by Reps. Randy Hultgren (R-Ill.) and Daniel Lipinski (D-Ill.) on Valentine's Day, seeks to award $550 million in Affordable Care Act grants over five years to programs that provide teenagers with abstinence-only education." I think maybe some education about sex and birth control, vaccinations for diseases, condoms, etc would be a lot better than abstinence education. I was a teenager. I know the biological urge to have sex is pretty darned strong. I have to wonder if any of the men sponsoring this bill practiced abstinence or if they just used a rubber. Really? Just say no? Really?

Glad that is solved.

And now I'll leave you with this thought and I might offend some people with it but that's the chance I take in writing and you take in reading. I read those signs in front of churches. Sometimes they are quite clever but the one that says Pray to Jesus because he answers prayers? I just want to say, to all of you who are praying for war and famine and drought and blizzards and floods and hate, please stop!

Good night.