One thing for the planet: the clothesline

I recently heard a fact that just flat-out astounds me: it's becoming increasingly illegal to line dry your clothes. Apparently 19% of Americans live in areas governed by a Home Owners Association (HOA) most of these believe that line drying clothes is unsightly and even threaten to foreclose an owner's home if they attempt the age-old practice. WHAT!!???!??!

Luckily I don't live, and never will live, in an HOA. And even if I did I'd probably line dry my clothes anyway just to be provocative, 'cause that's the kind of thing I love to do. Plus, my kid's cloth diapers take three hours to dry in the dryer, so they're on the line in nice weather, or on my drying rack next to the furnace, no exceptions.

But for those of you who do live in an HOA there is hope! I could go on and on but these sites say it better, visit one now to see how you can help:

Right 2 Dry : sign the petition and add a cool voting widget to your blog site (just put mine up!) Do it!

Project Laundry List: A great site with the top ten reasons to air dry clothes, the biggest one being that it can save about $25 per household per month and 15% of electricity costs. YES! $25 and 15%!! The site also has some great line-drying tips. One thing they don't say, however, is to give your clothes a good snap before you hang them up so they dry with fewer wrinkles.

Freedom to Dry: just for fun. A bit of legislation put up in Connecticut this past January that will ban any governing body (such as an HOA, or town zoning laws) from banning drying by "direct solar energy", otherwise a clothesline. Good for you Connecticut!

For a good laugh click on this cartoon to see six hilarious Doonesbury clothesline comics:


Happy weekend! I hope the weather is nice where you are and your clothes are smelling fresh!

A Kenyan Field Journal: Night

During a recent cleaning session in my house I stumbled upon my photo album from an educational trip to Kenya in 1995. I spent five weeks there with 31 other students studying wildlife management with the School for Field Studies. It changed my life.


Sometime after returning I wrote five essays on my experiences and stashed them in the photo album. I had forgotten about them until this past week. They are entitled The Rain, Bright Sun, Night, Simba, and The Rift in the Heart of Africa. Reading them brought back so many wonderful and thrilling memories. I'm posting them here mainly for the benefit of two friends I met there who have become friends for life: Dave and Agnes. Photos (with the exception of the tree dassie) were taken by me during my adventure, clicking on them will enlarge them. Enjoy!

Night

When the sun goes down on the African plains gentle no longer applies. It is night when most creatures wake up from their dreamy slumber and decide that they are hungry. It is night when little furry animals make sounds one hundred times their size. It is the first night that I hear the sound of the tree dassie.

A tree dassie is a small, fuzzy creature that resembles a prairie dog. They only weigh nine pounds but believe it or not they are actually the closest living relative of the elephant. This fuzz ball hides out in trees during the day, but when it decides to wake up and forage it emits the most blood curdling noise I have ever heard. It is not a sound you want to hear when your only protection from the African night is a reed hit with screen windows.

I awoke to this scream sometime near three AM and my first thought was something REALLY BIG is being slaughtered by something EVEN BIGGER. Whatever it was it wasn't dying very fast, the sound went on all night. The worst part was I really needed to use the choo. There was no way I was going out there, if Uni the oryx didn't get me then the screaming beast would! I retreated into my sleeping bag and mosquito netting and waited for first light.

By morning I was even groggier than the day before but I dragged myself out of bed, even if it was just to confirm that there should be a large carcass in the middle of camp. But there was nothing. At breakfast I sought out the first professor I could find and tried to describe the sound. "Tree dassie" was his curt answer. "What is it?" I said. "Little furry creature, 'bout yea big" and he pantomimed a creature about a foot high and two feet long.

I think I just stared back at him in disbelief. A house cat sized fur ball is going to keep me up for a month? And sure enough in the first field guide I could find was Dendrohyrax aboreus, cute, furry, feeds on mostly vegetable matter, and definitely not a threat to my life.

Yet, the next night once again Africa disturbingly crept into my sleep. Literally. The front door to my banda consisted of a wooden bottom with a latch and a reed shade that tied down to the wood in the middle. Secure is not a word that describes this contraption. Something in the middle of my second night in this wild place, and I mean SOMETHING, awakened me, and it was inside my banda. In fact, it was on my feet! At first I thought I imagined it and then I left it again, a slight pressure on my lower leg, then again a little closer.

It slowly crept along my body towards my head. My mind was racing. What was it? A tree dassie? If it was I was mentally willing it not to start shrieking, if it did I would probably have a heart attack right there. Then what ever it was, it began to make a noise. At first it was a low, guttural rumbling, almost like a frog with a strange ribbit. Frog? No, the closest water was a mile away. But it did feel like the size of a really big bull frog. It was getting closer. I could feel it making its way along my mosquito netting trying to get as close to me as possible. The netting was supposed to protect me from the deadly malaria parasite, but it was gossamer thin and this creature could claw right through it if it wanted to.

I found the mental strength to search for my flashlight that I kept under my pillow. It was there, right where I left it just in case something like this happened. I switched it on just as the creature brushed up against my shoulder. A life-saving beam went out beyond my net. Two yellow eyes blinked in the brightness. Their pupils contracted to narrow slits. It stopped making its rumbling noise. I thought: 'it's going to eat me'. Then it rubbed its head against my shoulder again, nestled next to my arm and began to purr. I was being stalked by Jua Kali's fierce and dangerous pet house cat who had just decided that I was a warm and soft place to spend the night. Once again this wild place became gentle in a single gesture.

With all the dangers and risks I was warned of during those first days I wish someone could have warned me about the pet cats and tree dassies. There was the one-horned oryx, the lions, spitting cobras, charging elephants and malaria. With all of these potentially deadly creatures out there I was most afraid of nocturnal screaming fur balls and trespassing house cats. I slept more deeply from then on.

A Kenya Field Journal: Bright Sun

During a recent cleaning session in my house I stumbled upon my photo album from an educational trip to Kenya in 1995. I spent five weeks there with 31 other students studying wildlife management with the School for Field Studies. It changed my life. Sometime after returning I wrote five essays on my experiences and stashed them in the photo album. I had forgotten about them until this past week. They are entitled The Rain, Bright Sun, Night, Simba, and The Rift in the Heart of Africa. Reading them brought back so many wonderful and thrilling memories. I'm posting them here mainly for the benefit of two friends I met there who have become friends for life: Dave and Agnes. Photos were taken by me during my adventure, clicking on them will enlarge them. Enjoy!

Bright Sun

Themeda trianda. Red oat grass. This was the first official Latin name I learned during my African summer abroad. I watched the zebras graze on it as our plane taxied on the Nairobi runway. Where wheat wasn't growing, oat grass lined the road all the way to Jua Kali. Bright Sun. Bright sun, gentle rain and hungry fire all fed this grass, the lifeblood of East Africa. Every herbivore from the tiny bushbuck to the might elephant eat it. It is the ice cream of the grass realm, although I never tasted it.

I was to stay for four and a half weeks at Jua Kali, although the Jua Kali didn't shine every day it was out that first day. Jet-lagged and blinking in the sunlight I gazed in awe at a giraffe that munched at the gates of the ranch owned by a particularly eccentric man named David Hopcraft. On this ranch lay Jua Kali, the research station where, although I didn't know it at the time, I would eventually not want to leave.

The ranch raised game for sale, once shot in the cover of darkness and butchered, to local restaurants in Nairobi. Along the short road from the gates to the research station we passed hartebeest, ostriches, zebras, wildebeest, gazelles and a whole array of creatures all destined to one day be on someones plate. They looked so content in their naivete as they happily grazed on red oat grass, which would only fatten them up more.

Most of the 31 other students assumed we would be allowed to sleep as soon as we were assigned a banda. This thatched hut would be our home for most of the four weeks in Africa. Every banda was named after an Swahili animal. There was twiga (giraffe), tembo (elephant), simba (lion) etc. I was to sleep in nyumbu, which I later learned meant mule. My luck. I'm the one on the left below.


We weren't allowed to sleep of course, but were were fed. One thing that Jua Kali is blessed with is David. David is a five star chef from Nairobi who tired of the city life. With only a manually lit gas stove and a not-so-reliable pantry he was able to create some of the best cuisine I have ever had anywhere in the world.

Better than any restaurant I have been to in Paris, New York, Boston, Chicago or San Francisco. Yes, right in the heart of the African bush that first morning David fed us banana stuffed pancakes! It was like ambrosia to stomachs that have only had airline food for two days. David was a god-send to students a little worried about not having a McDonald's right down the street. Unfortunately he only did breakfast and lunch. Who was to cool dinner for forty people every night? Us. No further comments will be made about that.

Once we were fed and settled in our lion, giraffe, elephant and mule huts we were told to scope out the place. The choo, for instance, was a little tricky. This African version of the outhouse was guarded by Uni. No, Uni wasn't an ascari, a watchman, he was an oryx. A one-antlered oryx at that.


An oryx is a rather large antelope-like creature that stands taller than my head. And I know this because I came across Uni many times. He liked the grass around the choo (pronounced choh) because it grew particularly lush there, LOTS of fertilizer. As long as Uni was warned that you really need to use the choo RIGHT NOW he would lazily step aside. We were told to clap as we approached the choo, especially at night, so as not to startle him. Having been told this information I immediately looked up oryx in my field guide. Its antlers looked like unicorn horns and pretty sharp at that. I decided clapping was definitely a must even though I felt like I was applauding Uni for so nicely trimming the red oat grass.

"Do you have a flag?"

OK, so I'm not trying to create a blog empire. I do admit, though, I love my FEEDJIT Live Traffic Map. I do. I love logging in every morning and seeing a new flag pop up from somewhere exotic, like Chennai, or even just in the next town, like Topsfield. It's not for egotistical purposes that I like to wrack up another flag. It's just that I find it unbelievably fascinating that someone in Guam is interested in raising snowy owls - do they even HAVE snowy owls in Guam? Or someone in Saudi Arabia in interested in sea lampreys, I'm pretty sure there are no sea lampreys in the desert. Australia logged in for info on rain barrels and North Dakota was wondering about spring peepers. And just this morning someone in Finland was looking for info on organic gardening and Monsanto.

I recently installed this fun little widget on my friends Bev and Ana's blogs. And I'm having even more fun logging into their pages and seeing flags pop up in Bulgaria, Croatia, Malaysia.... One of their daughters even changed my map to the satellite view and was able to see the house of someone who logged into my blog from Beijing! They live right next to the Forbidden City. Now THAT was cool.

This is all a part of my trying to live more mindfully. Now I can really see how one action of mine affects someone all the way across the world. So hello Guam, Portugal, Vietnam, Korea, Australia, Hawaii, The Philippines, Saudi Arabia, China and even Topsfield, Massachusetts. Thanks for visiting!

A Kenyan Field Journal: The Rain

During a recent cleaning session in my house I stumbled upon my photo album from an educational trip to Kenya in 1995. I spent five weeks there with 31 other students studying wildlife management with the School for Field Studies. It changed my life.


Sometime after returning I wrote five essays on my experiences and stashed them in the photo album. I had forgotten about them until this past week. They are entitled The Rain, Bright Sun, Night, Simba, and The Rift in the Heart of Africa. Reading them brought back so many wonderful and thrilling memories. I'm posting them here mainly for the benefit of two friends I met there who have become friends for life: Dave and Agnes. Photos were taken by me during my adventure, clicking on them will enlarge them. Enjoy!

The Rain

What really amazed me was the rain. In Africa the rain comes straight down. And it's never a mean rain, or fierce or blustery. Having grown up in New England I was used to rain that came down in torrents, the wind blowing this way and that. Even on a calm day there is always a hint of wind. And if it's not raining hard in New England then it's a wispy mist. But in East Africa it's gentle and straight. Serene.

Emerging from the recycled air of a DC-10 the aura of Africa didn't hit me right away. I could have just landed in and sunny, bright destination hadn't it been for the zebras grazing at the edge of the runway. Nairobi is not your average sunny destination. You have to be patient with the slow baggage claims and customs officials. I had to wait until I was stuffed in the belly of a refurbished Land Cruiser and on the road before it sunk in. I was in Africa. Wild Africa. Untamed. Yet gentle.

Why gentle? It had to be the rain. I had to wait two weeks before I experienced it. I arrived in July, the middle of the dry season. Being one of thirty-two college students wanting to memorize the Latin names of all the flora and fauna of Kenya. We were there to learn, but we got so much more. The first time it rained it began gently as all rainstorms there did. A drop here, then over there, then suddenly everywhere. I was in an open top Land Cruiser in the middle of the Masai Mara surrounded by over 100,000 zebra and wildebeest.

We were in the middle of the great migration as these massive herds of ungulates followed the rain and the emerging new grass back south into the Serengeti. As the rain came down harder its sound mingled with the braying of the animals until it became a cacophonous symphony of nature. We rolled up the tarp that was the Land Cruiser's roof and drove back to camp.

Things happen in the African rain. Wild creatures that wouldn't normally venture near human creatures lose their reserve. Lying awake in my tent that night listening to the rain I heard sounds that can make your heart thump louder if you let them get to you. Lions called to each other all night over the surrounding Ngama hills. At moments of particular cowardliness, especially when I thought about how thin tent fabric is, the grass brushing off the tent walls sounded to me like lion whiskers.

The next morning the sun showed all her glory over the plains of the Mara and we awakened to the sound not of lions, but of hot air balloons. For $400 a rich tourist could hire one out to bring them on a sunrise ride followed by a white-gloved champagne breakfast. Instead, we ate our stale bread toasted over an open fire while Professor Wayne examined fresh lion prints on the path to the fire pit.


After breakfast I flattened the lion-whisker grass surrounding my tent.

My "Monsanto Sucks, Michelle Obama Rocks Organic Garden"

I've been a little deprived of news lately but I caught a brief bit of the Daily Show the other night and was appalled to learn that the big three agro-business corporations are criticizing Michelle Obama for planting an organic garden. Apparently, Monsanto, Dow AgroSciences and Dupont believe it is irresponsible of the First Lady to not use pesticides and chemical fertilizers in her 1100 square foot plot.


A few months before I heard the news that Michelle Obama was planning an organic garden on the White House grounds I decided to turn an unused 6 by 14 foot patio into a raised organic vegetable bed. The plan is to plant the veggies that we never get enough from in our Community Supported Agriculture farm share from the organic Green Meadows Farm in Hamilton, Massachusetts. You can see my bed half-finished above. I still have to move about a yard of loam I had delivered from Wolf Hill, my husband and I are giving our backs a break for a day. My little 84 square feet of awaiting dirt is nothing to Michelle's, but it's all I can fit in our 3200 square foot plot (and half of that is a house).

Now after hearing that Mrs. Obama is taking heat for not using chemicals, and unknowingly NOT teaching America that we need these chemicals in our life, I've decided to provocatively name my little patch of land the "Monsanto sucks, Michelle Obama Rocks Organic Garden". I'm already envisioning a nice sign with Michelle posing oh-so sophisticated in her gardening gloves with her foot crushing a bottle of pesticides and a bag of genetically altered seeds.

I know that not everyone in America has even the mere 84 square feet that I have to grow organic vegetables. Nor can everyone afford them in the grocery store. But, if you do have a patch of land, and like to garden, what's the big deal if you want to make it organic and therefore not expose your family and pets to chemicals? Realistically, without some kind of pest management it would be hard to grow enough food for the world's growing population. But major agro-business and a family's home plot is worlds apart.

So I say to DuPont, Monsanto, Dow AgroSciences and the other members of the Mid America Croplife Association: "Keep your grubby chemically hands out of my backyard" and even more so "keep your genetically modified and genetically dead seeds out of my backyard". It's all heirloom veggies in my plot, and Neptune's Harvest organic fish emulsion fertilizer if I need it. My compost from last year's growing season will do most of the work.

Here's my plan courtesy of Gardener's Supply's Kitchen Garden Planner. I can already taste the organic tomatoes, green beans, basil, lettuce, carrots, spinach and cucumbers...

I applaud you Michelle Obama....so take THAT Monsanto!

One thing for the planet: unplug your wall-warts

My husband is always going around unplugging our AC adapters. Sadly, until I met him, I was completely unaware that many of these so-called "wall warts" continue to draw power from the grid even if the appliance they run isn't plugged in at the other end. My roommate and I left our phone chargers plugged in to the kitchen outlet 24 hours a day.

You can tell your wall wart is wasting energy if it's warm to the touch when your cell phone, laptop, etc. isn't charging. Most of the ones in my house are this wasteful model. There is a fix to this problem: manufacturers could install switches in them, but that would make them more expensive.

So in the meantime do one thing for the planet: unplug your cell phone charger, your laptop charger, your baby monitor charger, your battery charger, your ipod charger...

A Little Respect: kids and lack of manners

It's school field-trip season. Every spring thousands of school kids pour into my place of business, tear around the building, and hopefully learn something about aquatic science.

I work at a public aquarium, and mostly in an exhibit where I can hear everything the public says. From my experiences with the thousands of kids that I see every day I'm starting to lose faith in how we, as adults, are raising our children. As the years have gone by kids are getting less and less respectful of people in general. And it's mainly American kids.

Hundreds of kids come by my exhibit every morning during my hour-long cleaning spree. The French Canadian kids patiently look through the mesh to see what's in there with me. I speak French so I can hear them guessing, pointing out animals they see and ask each other interesting questions. The Europeans also spend a lot of time looking, asking me intelligent questions, etc. You get the point.

The American kids - and this is a generalization, it's not true for ALL American kids, just a lot of them - come up to the mesh, say "hey! what's in here!" or "dude, there's nothing in here" and move on. No "excuse me", nothing. One time when I had my back to the mesh a high school boy said to his pack of friends "hey look, it's the ass exhibit!" and they laughed and ran off before I could find out what school they were from to complain to their head chaperone.

Rarely do I get an "excuse me" before a question, or a "thank you" after I answer. For a while I was ignoring kids until they said "excuse me" until a mom got really mad at me for ignoring her child. I wanted to say "well, if you taught your kid some manners then I'd answer his question, but letting him get away with 'hey you! what's in here!' does not warrant my acknowledging him." I'd probably get fired for that though.

But sometimes I do get respect. And it's the best thing in the world. This past Sunday morning I had an amazing experience, which prompted me to share this with you all. A small boy, about seven, came up to the mesh and poked his head above the water line of the tank to get a closer look. Then he said, "excuse me, do the birds eat the fish?" I looked up to see his genuinely curious little face. "Sometimes," I replied, "the tern can catch them if she wants to but she's usually too lazy so she eats the worms I put out". "Cool!" he said, asked a few more questions and ended with a big thank you. When he walked off I looked around for his parents, suddenly realizing in a panic they weren't nearby, but they were. They were hanging out in the shadows letting him talk to me on his own. And they didn't even have to prompt him to say his pleases and thank you. If I could have walked through that mesh to hug them I would have.

As I'm currently listening to my seventh-month-old going down for her nap I'm realizing more and more how much we've lost by not teaching our youth basic manners. Even now, at her tiny age, I use please, thank you and excuse me in my daily speech. I want her to know that a simple excuse me and thank you can really make some one's day.