13 Thursday: Let it All Hang Out
1. When we were kids we thought the two bones that stuck out under our shoulder blades were where our wings would go when we died and became angels. Doing the Sunday Scribblings prompt on “wings” last week reminded me of it.
2. Have you ever noticed that being forced to overhear a loud cell phone conversation about someone else’s life is a little like breathing second hand smoke or having it blown in your face?
3. Did you know that clotheslines are banned or restricted by tens of thousands of homeowners’ associations nation-wide? I learned about this from the Laundry List, a project to educate people about how simple lifestyle modifications, including air drying one’s clothes, reduces our dependence on environmentally and culturally costly energy sources.
4. Dr. Helen Cadicott, founder of the Nobel Peace Prize winning Physicians for Social Responsibility, says, “”Laundry offends the aesthetic sensibilities of some people. Where in Victorian times, clotheslines were ubiquitous; Mrs. Brown’s brassiere blowing in the breeze has apparently become scandalizing to some modern Americans. A strange brand of prudery has made it impossible for some people to conserve energy and money by using a clothesline.”
5. I take photos of my laundry on the line because I like the way it looks, and just like trees change colors with seasons, so does my laundry. I call this one “bullfight.”
6. I also save answering machine messages. After my brothers died I was afraid to lose people’s voices, so now I copy them onto a tape recorder before I erase them.
7. Last weekend I was honored at a woman’s rite of passage ceremony, along with eighteen other women fifty-years and older. I’ve been wanting to write about it but all I have so far is the title: From First Holy Communion to Community Croning.
8. It’s Mara’s birthday today. For her birthday, she wrote all her Scrabble playing women friends Tankas and presented us with them at her Scrabble Birthday Party yesterday (more on that later).
9. My tanka says: I call your voice … mail with poetry … and leave tiny rhymes … because I’m so inclined – let go of punctuation
10. Mara is the same age I was when I met my husband, Joe. Although she wasn’t old enough to be honored at the ceremony, she was one of the seventy attendees who took part in the celebration. Now I’m worried that I’ll have to put up with her telling the world that I’m the “Poet Laureate of Floyd” and a crone.
11. But I wasn’t croned I was crowned I tell her.
12. Apparently, I’m not the only one who thinks laundry on a clothesline is art. I LOVE THIS video.
13. Proof of global warming as indicated by underwear hanging on a clothesline HERE and thanks to Susan.
Thursday headquarters is here. My other 13’s are here. View more 13 Thursday’s here. #80
May 3rd, 2007 9:35 am
At least you weren’t cloned! If you sang your poetry, you’d be a “Floydian Crooner”!!
I love the laundry title, “Bullfight”!
I still call those bones, “angel wing bones”, even though my chiropractor husband cringes when I use this term for scapula! (Especially when talking to his massage therapists!)
May 3rd, 2007 9:47 am
Ruth, you crack me up!
May 3rd, 2007 10:13 am
You might still be right about those bones!
Congrats on being croned or crowned?
I think Americans truly need manners courses again. Cell phone usage in public could use months in itself! How did we get to be so rude? I’ve wanted to smack a few folks!
May 3rd, 2007 10:17 am
I loathe those second-hand cell phone conversations… even though I now own a Blackberry (the electronic kind, not the edible kind) as a result of my job, I use it more for reading emails than I do for talking. When I have to talk to someone, I try to sequester myself somewhere where other people won’t hear me. I am reminded of a particularly insane cell phone conversation I overheard a couple of months ago… I’ll have to blog about it because it was a doozy. It also involved cigarettes.
Interesting comparison between overheard cell conversations and secondhand smoke… I am an ex-smoker and even when I was smoking I couldn’t stand secondhand smoke, or the smell of stale smoke on my clothes. I was probably the most nitpicky smoker you would have ever met, because not only did I loathe secondhand smoke, I went to great lengths to keep the smoky smell out of my clothes, car, apartment, etc.
May 3rd, 2007 10:18 am
#3 I first heard this from my friend who lives in Michigan. I line-dry almost all my laundry, all the time. I once submitted a pic of my laundry on a clothesline to a blog, the owner was posting laundry lines from all over the world, if I could only find the link now…
happy tt 🙂
May 3rd, 2007 10:23 am
Another great 13! I am glad to live in the country instead of a ‘homeowners association’ so I can do whatever I @#$% please on my land, even hang out my laundry if I am so inclined. Don’t get me started… it is hard to believe some folks live like that by choice.
Love the video of the clotheslines – the gloves look like they are waving. Found this one on YouTube this week, brings back memories of simpler times.
Thanks for the link! Hope you have a great weekend.
May 3rd, 2007 10:34 am
I’m afraid to let my clothes dry outside cause I was stung by a wasp in some sheets once!
LOL I’ll be 50 soon, no one will be honoring me 🙂
May 3rd, 2007 10:43 am
I have an old poem called “Communters on Cell Phones Rant” that I wrote while traveling that refers to the men in suits I saw with phones glued to their ears as … boys with pacifiers … attached by the ear to some substitute mama … cordless umbilicals to voice mail operators. The next line was about them fiddling in public phallic extensions that grew out of their suits!
I was on a rant! It was in the early days before everyone had them and these guys in suits would be holding them up to their ears while not saying anything. It looked so wierd and I finally figured that they were listeing to their voice mail.
Susan, I LOVE that video. It was very touchng. The youngest Nelson with darker hair looks so much like his dad.
May 3rd, 2007 11:59 am
The cell phone one is pretty funny. We don’t want to hear the conversations of others, but if we get a call, we are sure to answer. 🙂 I like the thing about ‘saving voices’. I’ve done that, on occasion, with my grandchildren, children, and Mother. I would love to hear my Daddy’s voice again
Check out my TT.
May 3rd, 2007 12:09 pm
I love hanging the laundry out on the line; there’s nothing like sun-dried sheets for the bed!
I miss the voices of those I have lost so much!
May 3rd, 2007 1:52 pm
Can you believe that I’ve never hung laundry on a line? I have had a deprived life!
I love how laundry looks on the line. Makes me know real life is happening there.
Congrats on the cro(w)ning.
May 3rd, 2007 2:07 pm
(6. I also save answering machine messages. After my brothers died I was afraid to lose people’s voices, so now I copy them onto a tape recorder before I erase them.)
Colleen, I knew I wasn’t the only one!!! When the mood and time is right, I will sit back with coffee in hand and listen to previous phone messages from family, friends and business calls. . .and they all arouse different emotions at different times in my life.
Some people are so predictable when leaving a message while others are so spontaneous. And then you have those, like a cherished worn folded letter, that I rewind several times over to capture the uniqueness of the message being sent!
May 3rd, 2007 2:37 pm
Yes Stu-art! And when you put them all together you can get a nice time capsule of your life. There are a certain few that I won’t even erase after I tape them, like my friend Juniper barking like a wolf at me because she knows my dad used to call me Colly Wolly Wolf Wolf — or the one where my son Josh says: Tiki tiki tembo no sarembo hari hari kuchi pip perry pembo (from a childhood book I use to read to him).
May 3rd, 2007 4:58 pm
I’ll add to the laundry quandary… we never dry any of our shirts in the dryer. We installed a decorative wooden rod, held in place by wooden pineapple brackets… Kind of like old luggage racks on trains… we hand all our shirts to dry. They also make those laundry lines that attach on opposite walls with a zippy line that stretches out. So… association or community restrictions aren’t really a solid reason against air-drying either. Where there’s a will, there’s a way.
Very thought-provoking today. I like your “Bull Fight.”
~S
May 3rd, 2007 7:29 pm
Congrats on the crown. I agree with you about the cell phones, and I love that video!!
May 3rd, 2007 9:37 pm
I hung my laundry outside today–and was highly tempted to take a picture of it. Somehow though, it never looks as artful in the photograph as it does in my mind.
May 3rd, 2007 11:28 pm
What a great 13! I love the bullfight photo!
Michele sent me today! Can’t wait to hear more about your “croning”.
May 3rd, 2007 11:55 pm
Ooh, you’ve reminded me why mobile technology can be so odious. In the wrong hands, it encourages the kind of behavior that makes the rest of us cringe.
Common sense and empathy….does the basic cell phone make such things evaporate from some people?
May 4th, 2007 12:04 am
I want to hear more about the croning ceremony! 🙂
Susan
May 4th, 2007 12:12 am
I love the You Tube video you linked too. Newfoundland is across the country – but definitely one of the places I’d like to one day experience first-hand.
Thanks for the visit. I checked out your writing site as well. The stories of your brothers (from what I read) resonated with me.
Would love to learn more about your “croning.” – Until next week, XINE
May 4th, 2007 9:10 am
Your cell phone line is really poignant – I’ve thought that before too, and I’ve hit save for as long as I can with some messages. But I’ve never taped them.
All your laundry info – wow! Terrific. I love the video. Really cool. Preach it, Laundry lady! 🙂 I hate that laundry lines are banned in some places too. I think it’s such a calming thing, to see laundry hanging to dry.
May 4th, 2007 12:53 pm
Axalways Colleen…a GREAT TT…and so filled with rich images…I LOVE Laundry hanging on lines…It reminds me of childhood…! The Cell Phone & Smoking Analogu is BRILLIANT, my dear!
May 4th, 2007 1:14 pm
I love the “bullfight” clothesline… not that I like bullfights, actually I think them the most barbaric practice disguised as sport. But the red really pops. Someone at your house really likes green too!
May 4th, 2007 1:20 pm
I’m very anxious to read about that Community Croning. It sounds like a very creative and inspirational thing to do!
May 4th, 2007 1:23 pm
I probably should have said, my husband is a soccer coach and those are soccer shirts! There were gloves flapping too. I thought it looked like I had been visited by aliens. And I can’t explain the bag, but I like what it says.