Clothesline and Clothes Pins

Day 256: Clothesline and Clothes Pins

Sun streaming through bright white sheets. The breeze making a line of shirts and pants dance, catching a woman's long dark hair, shaping her skirts to her slender legs. Children playing hide and seek amid sweet-smelling, clean laundry. A clothesline.

At the eco-resort where we stayed in Costa Rice, tourists were invited to hang their wet things on nature's clothes drier: hemp rope strung between cedar posts. What could be an easier way to reduce your environmental footprint than to let nature do the work? Isn't there something supremely absurd about using fossil fuels to perform osmosis?

In theory, yes. In fact, what could be more irritating than attaching 50 socks to a clothesline, returning four hours later and having to reattach them because the inside didn't get dry? What would more uncomfortable than stiff sheets off the line? What could be heavier than a laundry basket full of wet clothing? What could be more time consuming than waiting for laundry to dry? What could be more embarrassing than having your stained old bras and underwear visible to every passenger vehicle that drives down Packard Road? What could be more frustrating than a twisted and bent line that keeps sliding down the tree to which it's affixed, dipping your formerly clean clothing in leaf mold? And what could be easier than pivoting your torso to shift the clothes from the washer to the drier?

I comfort myself with the thought that hanging my clothes on the line will not buy the Earth and all its species one more minute, not unless my neighbors start doing it too. And their neighbors, and theirs, and theirs. I hung my clothes on the line for several years, and no one followed suit except Jess - and I'm guess she would have done so, with or without me.

Perhaps if I had a better set-up. A pulley system that would allow me to stand on the back porch and pull empty line towards me, so that I wouldn't have to move a step stool, for example. An apron full of clean new clothes pins. A secluded backyard.

But I have none of these things. All I have is this old clothesline, which fell to the ground a few days ago when our fence got knocked down in a wind storm. Will I pick it up, untangle it, sort out the broken clothes pins and start over? Or will it be one more casualty of the stuff project?

Need you ask?

Blank Insurance Claims Submissions

Stuff to enhance human health and prolong
lives: insurance claims forms from
when Rich was in private practice

Day 114: Blank Insurance Claims Submissions

Our lack of diversity in agricultural crops is a disaster waiting to happen, a set piece for death by starvation at rates comparable to the Irish potato famine, scaled up to encompass the entire world. That was the message of the keynote speaker at this year's American Public Gardens Association meeting, Simran Sethi. Perhaps genetic engineering isn't the worst of Monsanto's sins; its worst sin (along with other agro-conglomerates) is relentlessly narrowing crop diversity. Like the 19th century investor who put his whole fortune in the steam engine, we are headed for ruin.

The message that wasn't included - that is never included - that is too hot even to speak aloud - is that a reduction in world population (for whatever reason) would be good for the environment. Famine, virulent disease and contaminated water may be bad for people, but they are good for the ecosystems in which people live. While solar energy may be better for the environment than burning coal, it won't really solve the problem. And the Affordable Care Act, while good for the average Joe, may have the side effect of increasing our lifespans yet again - and thus increasing the human population size.

Whatever happened to the conversation about population control? I remember this topic being widely talked about in the '70s. Didn't my mother tell me that she and my father had originally wanted to have four children, but decided to stop at three after they started thinking about the population explosion and its impacts?

When a species becomes too dominant, nature reaches out a hand and gives that species a slap. Sometimes, she eliminates that species altogether. 

And life goes on. Not human life, necessarily, but life.

Human beings have the ability to understand, analyze and plan for changes in our environment. If we can act for the public good, we don't have to wait for nature to cut us down or wipe us out. Resolving that each couple will have only one child would result in an immediate, dramatic reduction in the environmental impact of our species. If we persisted in this practice for 100 years, the earth might have the ability to absorb reduced humanity's greedy consumption of resources. 

"If they would rather die," said Scrooge, "they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population." Could it be that Scrooge, the epitome of selfish greed, had his finger on humanity's best interests?

Point-and-Shoot Camera

Day 54: Point-and-Shoot Camera

My children, nieces and nephew are privileged to be invited to cruise the world with their grandparents during their 13th summer. Sam visited Anne Frank's house, climbed Hadrian's wall with a new friend, and shot goals at the Scottish Football Museum. He also took pictures with a little red Sony one-shot that we gave him for his 12th birthday.

Already taking pictures!

The exponential increase in cruising most likely isn't doing the oceans any good. Air pollution, sewage, and vessel discharges are all getting activists activated. If you're thinking of taking a cruise and you're interested in minimizing your eco-footprint, check out this cruise report card and choose accordingly.

Sam hasn't used the one-shot since the big trip, almost four years ago. Once again, his iPhone is the wonder-device that does it all, including instant posts to Vimeo or Twitter. The Sony has been sitting forgotten in a drawer. Now it's my niece Kaeli's turn to travel, and we've handed it down. She thinks it's pink and she loves it.

Cell Phone

Day 51: Cell Phone and Case

The case is harder to give away
than the phone, because it
belonged to my greatly loved
father-in-law, Bill. So much
stuff has great sentimental value

Beam me up, Scotty.

In the 60's, the flip phone was the limit of our imagination, the apex of unattainable high tech, a fantasy as remote as traveling by molecular rematerialization. Now it's a piece of junk in the bedside table.

This is Rich's old phone. He was more Finnish than American in his attachment to it. Finns replace their phones every 74 months, Americans, every 21 months. The environmental consequences are severe.

Although the perky, dumbed-down language of the Story of Stuff: Electronics can be irritating, the analysis and recommendations are spot on. This tour bus we call Earth is heading for a cliff. No matter how well-meaning we are as individuals, legislative change - in this case, extended producer responsibility - is the only way to change course. In the meantime, given the questionable nature of electronic recycling, hanging on to your phone for 74 months - and writing your Congressional representative - is the best thing you can do to avoid poisoning the environment.

Sorry for the high horse. Have you seen the Global Change Research Program's report on climate change impacts, just released this week?

You can view it on your mobile device.