Offensive clotheslines

Did you see this in the news, that a woman is in big trouble in her community for hanging her laundry outside to dry? This is happening in Peraksie Pennsylvania. Although there are no town laws preventing her from doing so, a city official called her and asked her to quit, and, she's received notes from neighbors telling her they do not want to see her underwear flapping around on the clothesline. For the record, she doesn't hang her underwear out, she says.

The article says, she is "one of a growing number of Americans demanding the right to dry laundry on clotheslines despite local rules and a culture that frowns on it." Did you know there are 5 states that prohibit it all together? That would be Florida, Utah, Maine, Vermont, and Colorado. Another 5 states are considering legislation to outlaw it. A lawyer representing homeowners associations in Philly says that it is an "aesthetic" issue. He says, "In most communites, people don't want to see everybody else's laundry".

I gotta say that I am both amused and amazed. We live in a society that freely uses sexual images to sell everything from cars to beer to laundry detergent, and where anyone with a few clicks of a mouse button can view any sort of pornographic image they desire, no matter what. For our viewing pleasure on TV, there is conversation, and explicit language, and visual images which a person with any sense of morality would blush at. The innnocent bystander eating a meal or walking down the street is assaulted by private content of cell phone conversations. Kids freely use street language which you thought was only applicable in armed forces boot camps. Ugly billboards dot our landscape, and the carving away of our forests and pollution of our rivers and oceans is ongoing. Smokestacks belching black clouds and odors hang over our cities. Ground water contamination and nuclear waste disposal issues are ever with us.

We have people sleeping under bridges here in Wichita, and I would assume, in Pennsylvania as well.

And there are those who are offended at the sight of a shirt or a pair of jeans, or a towel, or bedsheets hanging on a clothesline in the sun. I'm...wordless.

Aging Gracefully

It's Sunday night and I'm getting ready for another work week. What has happened to the weekend? I have enough coming up this week to make me want to bury my head in the covers and not get up, but alas, can't do that until I'm retired. And even then-I know some retired people who are as busy as they were when they were working full time. I'm glad when I see that people can do that.

Speaking of retirement etc., there was a lunch today for the "Senior Adults" in our church. And I was invited! I was not able to attend as we already had lunch plans, but I gotta tell you that I do not consider myself a senior citizen - even although the wafts of good things to eat were very tantalizing coming from the Fellowship Hall of our church. I was told that for the purposes of the "senior adult" lunches, if you're over 50 you can come, but I still can't do it. I'll be 55 next week and I still think I'm a kid!

And, I'm still young enough to like humor such as this:

Bumper Stickers View of Life

I feel like I'm diagonally parked in a parallel universe.

You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say will be misquoted, and then used against you.

Despite the cost of living, it's still popular.

I intend to live forever. So far, so good.

When everything's coming your way, you're in the wrong lane.

All good things in moderation-including moderation.

Living on Earth is expensive, but it includes a free trip around the sun.

I took an IQ test and the results were negative.

Forget about world peace, envision using your turn signal.

We are born naked, wet, and hungry. Then things get worse.

Always remember you are unique, just like everyone else.

Ever stop to think and then forget to start again?

I doubt, therefore, I might be.

If you try to fail, and succeed, which have you done?

I wonder how much deeper the ocean would be without sponges?