Excuse me if my column this week is, well, a little dry.
It’s about Susan Taylor of Oregon, subject of a recent CBS News report.
Taylor is pioneering her cause.
Oh sure, there are lots of causes. Every once in awhile we have another of those tea party rallies, where people protest for the right to continue our bad health care, oppose spending money on road repairs and other infrastructure improvements and think it is all going to result in loss of our freedoms.
They know, and we should too, that going into massive federal deficits will endanger our freedoms if the money is used for domestic reasons. If the cash goes to the rich so they can afford to build plants in third-world countries or to wage a war in Iraq we should have never started, that is preserving our freedoms.
But Taylor's cause won't increase the federal deficit. If everyone does as Taylor, we might have a slightly smaller deficit, because less money might have to be put toward ending global warming.
Susan does what my mother did and maybe yours, too. She hangs her clothes out to dry.
But she lives in a pristine allotment and she signed an agreement with the homeowners’ association saying she would not dry her clothes outside.
But she told CBS News that was before global warming was such an issue. So she is thumbing her nose and her clothes pins at the agreement and is hanging her clothes up.
Her neighbors are aghast at the thought of sheets and towels and can I say it, possibly underwear, billowing in the breeze.
Granted, there are trees and what looks like beautiful valleys in the neighborhood. I would call it rustic.
Well, isn't rustic sort of a throwback to earlier times? And what says rustic more than clothes on a clothes line?
One snooty neighbor told CBS to the effect, "How would you like to look out and see this every day?"
Frankly, I wouldn't think too much about it. Of course, I live in a naturally rustic area, complete with dirt roads and septic tanks.
My mother, when we were growing up, hung her clothes in the side yard. She had a line going from the house to a post that marked the property line. But hold on, the neighbor had a line from that same post to her home.
I won't mention any names, but I know at least one kid who, when seeing sheets billowing up in the wind, would run and try to dive under them, often smacking into those clean sheets. Of course, that was something you did when mother isn't around.
And instead of communicating with people hundreds of miles away on Facebook, my mom and the neighbor would talk while hanging clothes.
I've written about another wonderful and healthy way to fight global warming, ride a bicycle to work and wherever else possible. There is a day set aside each year when everyone is supposed to ride their bikes to work.
I've learned there's also a day to hang your clothes out. It's April 19. Whoever came up with the date didn't live in Ohio. Here it would probably be raining, if not snowing.
Laundrylist.org tells us hanging clothes can be therapeutic. It is the only time some people can be outside and feel the wind and hear the birds. (What about riding a bicycle?)
Laundrylist tells us 6 to 10 percent of U.S. energy goes toward use of clothes dryers. The average American uses as much energy drying clothes as the average African does for everything.
Vermont on June 15 passed a law allowing people to dry their clothes outside, even if an allotment prohibits it. Hawaii is considering such legislation.
Common sense would tell you if the U.S. is the cradle of freedom, why in the world should laws even need to be passed stating you can dry your clothes in an energy-efficient, economical way if you want to?
But think how many rights today had to be fought for and laws passed or amendments made to the Constitution.
Women and members of minorities should always have had the right to vote. But it wasn't that easy. African-Americans should have always been able to walk into a restaurant to eat or go to a drinking fountain or public swimming pool. But it took years to accomplish this.
We are still struggling with allowing people to choose a life partner no matter the sex and have equal rights with everyone else.
So why should drying clothes outside be any different?
One final note: You won't be seeing Lebzelter sheets or unmentionables drying in the air. Wife thinks they feel too stiff. We use our clothes pins to keep potato chips fresh.
I would invite those who live in one of those prohibitive allotments to bring your clothes over to my house to hang them out to dry. But then, burning that fossil fuel to get here would probably defeat that purpose.
Also, I suspect that kid who likes running into billowing sheets is still around.
Lebzelter is special sections editor. E-mail him at bobleb@starbeacon.com. Read past columns at bobleb.blogspot.com
