Saturday, November 24, 2007

Clotheslines: icon of rural life, object of urban disdain

A recent story on NPR told of the "right to dry" movement in New Hampshire, where a bill has been introduced to give the states' residents the right to dry their clothes on clotheslines. The use of clotheslines has become a matter of dispute, for example, in communities of condominiums, where clotheslines are seen as eyesores.

A clothesline as an eyesore? My own associations with clotheslines are positive. That is partially because I link them with the rural idyll, with pleasant rural landscapes populated by industrious and frugal people. Of course, clotheslines are a good thing in that they save energy (which now matters more in these days of awareness about climate change), and that may ultimately save them -- no matter how ugly urban folks think they are.

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