Thursday, January 21, 2010

This is my clothesline...


...on a spring day. I live in an old neighborhood that still has decades old clothesline poles in many yards (I 've always wanted to photograph them, empty, in winter when they look like strange metal sculptures). I love the way the clothes, especially the whites, look in the sun and wind. So does Older Son, the poet. Daughter makes fun of it and complains about "nubby towels," but when she was little she made dolls out of my clothespins. They wore tinfoil outfits.

I even love the act of hanging clothes on the line. I carry the basket out to the back porch in the morning sun, and I can feel the warm air, smell the flowers and take in the beauty of simple old city backyards. Mine is a very retro contraption: a pulley line from the pillar on the back porch to a metal crosspiece on the other side of the yard.

This simple (as well as good for the environment) pleasure is endangered in some places. Some communities' zoning laws prohibit clotheslines! But there is resistance, and even a documentary!

http://www.dryingforfreedom.com/

1 comment:

  1. How far away the warm air and the smell of flowers seems now! Reading this reminds me of the children's book "Frederick", about the mouse who, in the dead of winter, keeps the other mice going by telling them stories about the summer.

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