Hanging Your Laundry Out to Dry
by Martha Nelson

As I write this, it is a sunny day outside.  A steady breeze ruffles the leaves.  It's a perfect day for a walk, or for hanging the laundry out to dry.  This morning, I have done both.  On my walk, I happily noticed that many of my neighbors have put their laundry out to dry.  For me, a clothesline with shirts and blue jeans and sheets flapping in the wind is a beautiful sight and a natural part of the landscape.  It animates the scenery.  It is evidence of human life when often there is none otherwise. 

I realize that not everyone considers clotheslines to be a beautiful sight.  And declaring a scene or human activity to be natural or unnatural is after all a subjective call.  But what can't be disputed is that clotheslines provide a simple, quiet, and non-polluting way to dry clothes.  Using them produces no carbon emissions.  A clothesline takes few materials to manufacture, is easy and inexpensive to install, and requires no electricity or fuel to operate. 

Not to be overlooked is the fact that drying clothes outdoors is free.  Switching to this natural method of evaporation saves you money.  By some estimates, electric clothes dryers account for up to 6% of the energy consumed in the average household, and as much as 10% in others.

And using a clothesline isn't dangerous to your life and health.  There is no need to draw up evacuation plans or keep a supply of pills on hand should the line break.  There is no harmful waste to store or barriers to erect to guard against human attack.  (A person can't help but wonder how it was that human beings came to consider engaging in activities that do require these things to be an acceptable, even desirable, way of behaving, and to declare it a safe thing to do to boot.)

For many people, laundry is an unsightly, or at least a private matter, better kept out of public view.  What will the neighbors say?  Will it lower property values, as some realtors claim it does?   Many people in the United States do not have the legal right to hang their laundry outdoors.  Condominium and community associations, landlords, and zoning laws often prohibit the practice.  Only two states—Utah and Florida—have enacted "Right to Dry" legislation that specifically protects the right to use clotheslines.  (A Right to Dry bill was introduced in the Vermont Senate in 1999 but did not pass.) 

In 1995, the pro-clothesline advocate Alexander Lee founded Project Laundry List, a non-profit organization that seeks to demonstrate how personal energy choices make a difference for the earth and that specifically promotes the right to use clotheslines.  Author Bill McKibben and Dr. Helen Caldicott are members of the organization.  Lee's campaign against the use of automatic clothes dryers began when he heard a speech given by Helen Caldicott at Vermont's Middlebury College in which she referred to our aversion to clotheslines as a "strange kind of prudery."  She commented further: "If we all hung out our clothes, we could shut down the nuclear industry." 

Drying clothes on a line in your yard or on your porch is a simple step you can take to help solve a complex environmental problem.  When weather conditions don't allow outdoor drying, you can string up a line in your basement or in other rooms in your house.  A quick drying method is a wooden drying rack next to the wood stove.  Wet laundry in a room acts as a moisturizer on those dry winter days.

By taking the small action (and perhaps small act of civil disobedience) to not use an automatic clothes dryer, you will enhance the health of the earth.  And you might give others something to think about.  It might just happen that, before you know it, there goes the neighborhood, following your example.

For information on the activities of Project Laundry List, go to their website www.laundrylist.org.  For information on what you can do to get Right to Dry legislation enacted, contact them at info@laundrylist.org.

Martha Nelson lives in Dummerston.  She is an editor of the Earth Matters column which is sponsored by the Windham Environmental Coalition.  To receive a copy of the column guidelines, contact Martha at mhnelson@sover.net.

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Aaah, the Farmers Market.  It evokes the feeling of total old-fashioned goodness, doesn’t it?  Buying your weekly fruits, veggies, meats, and other ingredients from local farmers you’ve come to know and trust.  Running into old friends and making new ones while savoring a delicious meal. Selecting a beautifully handcrafted necklace or piece of pottery as a gift for a friend. Hearing the sound of children’s laughter, acoustic bluegrass, and the lively interaction between producer and community member.  It’s a celebration of summer and all that makes you feel good about life and the people you share it with. Friends, family, and neighbors, all right there, supporting local farms and building community in a day and age where both seem to be disappearing.
 
Summers are short in Vermont, and alas, so is the summer Farmer’s Market. But don't fret, the Winter Farmers Market is upon us!
 
In an effort to relocalize our food and economic system and promote sustainability and community building, Post Oil Solutions, a local grassroots organization, is for the 2nd year organizing and hosting the Winter Farmers Market.  With it comes the bounty of autumn: the root crops like carrots, turnips, and the oh so sweet parsnips. The bulb crops such as garlic, onions, and shallots.  Also the winter squashes: butternut, acorn, pumpkin, wonderful curry, and sweet delicata.  Apples, apples, everywhere, of all varieties, shapes, sizes, and colors.  And we can’t forget the greens that are having their fall revival: kale, chard, collard, even spinach!  You'll also discover the finest in locally raised and often organic and pastured meats, particularly pork and lamb. Cheeses, granola, chocolates, candies, chutneys, wines, maple syrup, pastries, pies, preserves, pickles, and many more of the tastiest, loveliest, most wonderful homemade products.  All of these are produced within a thirty mile radius of Brattleboro, and many are brought to you by your favorite farmers at the summer market, as well as new farmers who specialize in just the winter specialties. 
 
Like the summer market, the winter market features a variety of beautiful, locally produced handicrafts. Gorgeous dried flower wreaths to hang for the autumn and balsam wreaths for your holiday door. Exquisitely designed silver and beaded jewelry, and pottery as practical as it is spectacular. You’ll find pen makers, weavers, seamstresses, knitters, spinners, ironsmiths, herbalists, and soap makers, all bearing their homemade, homegrown wares of excellent quality and supreme beauty. And of course, you’ll still be able to bring your children, enjoy lunch and listen to local musicians.  
 
All this happens under one roof, the roof we (the people) and they (the folks of Building a Better Brattleboro) raised, the Robert H. Gibson River Garden, located in the heart of downtown at the intersection of Main and High streets.
 
The Winter Farmers Market opens on Saturday, November 3rd and will be held Saturdays, 10am – 3pm weekly through December with the exception of November 17th, the date for the last outdoor market at the Brattleboro Area Farmers Market regular location on Rt. 9 in West Brattleboro. Post Oil Solutions will also be "taking the day off" from the market on Saturday, Dec. 1st, the date of the Annual BAFM Holiday Market, which will again be held at the River Garden. And this year, we are extending the market to include three Saturdays between January and March.  The Winter Farmers Market will be open on Saturday, January 12th (Martin Luther King weekend), February 16th (President's weekend) and March 15th (St. Patrick's Day).
 
Please join us in a bustling atmosphere of goodwill and cheer to continue the celebration of the earth’s bounty and the spirit of humanity. Come support local farmers and artisans at your community 2007 Winter Farmers Market.
 
For more information and for a list of market vendors, go to www.postoilsolutions.org., or contact Market Co-Managers, Cindy Hellmann at 254-5417 or Sherry Maher at 869-2141.
 
The Earth Matters column is sponsored by the Windham Environmental Coalition whose mission is to inspire, educate, and lead our communities in adopting sustainable practices that promote environmental health and community well-being.

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Older citizens remember what it was like to embrace a mission to conserve vital resources.  During World War II, we shaped shiny balls out of used aluminum foil and sent them off to the government.  We canned food from our “victory gardens,” ate margarine instead of butter, and consumed only rationed amounts of meat, sugar, and gasoline. We felt needed and heroic, part of something much bigger than the small circle of our ordinary lives.
 
After the war, things began to change rapidly in the United States.  A retailing analyst named Victor Lebow summed it up: "Our enormously productive economy demands that we make consumption our way of life, that we convert the buying and use of goods into rituals, that we seek our spiritual satisfaction, our ego satisfaction, in consumption.”
 
Now the pendulum is swinging back.  We are being called to shake off our addiction to mindless consumption, to do our part to slow global warming before the earth becomes uninhabitable. Our government remains largely uninvolved and silent. President George H.W. Bush assured those gathered at Kyoto that “Our way of life is not negotiable.”  Our current president urged us to go shopping after the shocking tragedy of 9/11.  Nor is the urgent summons to conserve heard from television networks owned and managed by large corporations that depend upon endless growth to create stockholder profits.
 
Nevertheless, inspired by grassroots alarm in an awakening citizenry, and with new leadership from Nobel Peace Laureate Al Gore and others who are knowledgeable on the subject of global warming, businesses and non-profits, town and state governments are stepping up efforts to put existing technology to work in cutting CO2 emissions. Stories of these efforts are finally beginning to show up regularly in the press, in documentaries and in periodicals.
 
But here’s the rub:  Saving the environment clearly requires significant change in the living standards of the middle and upper classes in the developed world--so states Roger Gottlieb in his recent book A Greener Faith: Religious Environmentalism and Our Planet’s Future.  Many of us spend three-fourths of our discretionary time watching television peppered with ads reminding us that we deserve everything, deserve it now (easy with credit cards), and at the lowest possible price, sweatshops be darned!.
 
Amory Lovins of the Rocky Mountain Institute, endowed with unshakable confidence in technology and cutting edge innovation, would dispute Gottlieb’s statement as “gloom and doom” blather.  He claims that we can eliminate the use of oil by 2050, cut coal and natural gas consumption, and build our prosperity to new heights at the same time. Where others see problems, Lovins sees solutions like the “negawatt,” a watt of electricity that need not be produced because of energy saving measures, and the “Hypercar,” an ultra light vehicle made of carbon fibers.  In other words, with an ever-increasing use of new technologies, the “earn and spend” party can go on after all.
 
Historically we’ve seen that as humans figure out clever ways to save energy, they think up clever new ways to use it.  Let’s remember that each day there are more and more humans using up the planet’s finite supply of resources. Even with dazzling new technologies, it looks like ensuring a decent legacy for future generations will involve curbing our prodigious desires and profligate ways.
 
Is the path to a sustainable future paved with grim deprivation and austerity?  I think not. These are clearly the wrong words, for they imply loss and diminishment.  What so stirred me during World War II was the sense of joy that comes with willing sacrifice. It is what motivates countless heroic acts at times of natural disaster when individual human life is quickened and enhanced by selfless giving. There is deep satisfaction and freedom to be had in living more lightly on the earth in harmony with nature.
 
In his recently published book Blessed Unrest, Paul Hawken reports the discovery of more than a million organizations around the world that are fiercely determined to create ecological sustainability and social justice. Hawken sees this nameless, leaderless phenomenon as the largest social movement in all of history, and likens it to an immune response to the serious threats our environmental support system is experiencing. Our earthly home is endangered. Ordinary people everywhere are rising up and making vital connections to defend it. Old, outworn patterns are disintegrating.  These are exciting times to be alive!
 
Marcia Bourne convenes the Steering Committee of the Brattleboro Chapter of the Vermont Earth Institute, a Sustainable Living Network, and the Windham Environmental Coalition.  She can be reached at justmart2@verizon.net.  This monthly column is sponsored by the Windham Environmental Coalition.

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            As the publisher of Green Living Journal, a quarterly publication that explores "green" living, I was recently asked  "So, what does it mean to be 'green?'" It's not a simple question and does not have a simple answer. It's almost as complicated as that crossroads you face at the end of the checkout line, "Paper or plastic?"

            Green can be a verb, noun, or adjective. "Greenmail" refers to the Wall St. practice whereby undervalued companies are acquired, chopped into little chunks and sold piecemeal, a reminder that only a single letter separates the word "green" from "greed."

            Green is the color of money. A dollar bill is a greenback, not to be confused with a "wetback," slang for an illegal alien who does not possess a green card. A ring of cheap or false gold will turn your finger green.

            Within the business community a topic of hot debate is greenwashing, what happens when a company cloaks itself in a mantle of green, not as a commitment to the environment, but as a marketing strategy. You can attach solar panels to Wal-Mart, say detractors, but what you get is Wal-greens. Beware of wolves with green fur.

            Green politics can be confusing. The Green Party, a political organization that supports an environmental agenda, is widely blamed for costing Al Gore, an environmentalist, the Presidential election.

            Perhaps Kermit the Frog said it best when he lamented "It's not easy being green." Some real world frogs, living in altered natural habitats, are finding that to be true.

            Has the concept of "green" been so co-opted? No, it is the flexibility and resilience of "green" that give it staying power. Other words have tried to replace green. "Natural," "authentic," "organic," "ecological," "sustainable," and, currently, "local" have their moments of linguistic glory, but we always return to green.

            A rookie in baseball is green. Green is the relaxing backdrop for ballparks, and at least at Fenway, you can watch a ball disappear over the Green Monster.

            Green is ephemeral, but green can be precious and enduring. Emerald is at once a gem and a shade of green. Forest, lime, olive, sea, Hunter, Kelly, and British Racing are distinct shades of green.

            Mix them together and you get camouflage, often associated with hunters and the military. Deep green describes the most committed environmental stewards, such as members of Greenpeace. Think of what will be possible if we can get these green extremes to recognize that they are different hues of the same color.

            The Green Room is where actors relax before a performance. You might find the band Green Day hanging out there, or Al Green, or Tom Hanks, who starred in The Green Mile. Green is the color of envy, but also the color around our gills just before we get sick.

            Green is the patch of grass around which our village is centered, but it's also the finely manicured spot on the golf course where you hear lots of cursing.

            My most exciting moment of the year is in April when I peek under the mulch that covers the garlic planted last fall. The garden is half mud, half frozen dirt, with nary a sign of life. I brush away the snow and gently lift the straw.  There it is ... a delicate slip of green reaching for the sun.

            Soon the landscape will be roaring with green. Nature will be abhorring vacuums and filling every void with life. Vermont, itself an anglicized combination of the French "vert" and "montagne" will be resounding with the meaning of green.

            At a recent conference I saw a t-shirt that proclaimed "Green is the new red, white, and blue." I disagree. This would mean that green somehow belongs to America. Although I am completely in favor this country setting a green standard for the rest of the world (we've got a long way to go), the common ground of our environment must transcend political boundaries.

            Another t-shirt at the same conference stated "Green is the new black." The wearer was African American. This a provocative statement open to varying interpretations. The one I prefer is that matters of environment supercede those of race. Global warming, after all, is an equal opportunity natural disaster that promises to affect people regardless of race, creed, color, or national origin ... unless we all start to live more green.

            Green living, therefore, is the winning strategy for people, community, and planet in the future. Green, we will learn, is the new gold.

Stephen Morris is the editor/publisher of Green Living Journal, a publication founded in Brattleboro by Marshall Glickman in 1990. His most recent book is The New Village Green (New Society Publishers, 2007).

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