Blowing in the Wind, Not?

There are times when I cannot really believe what country I live in; no, what planet I live on.  The New York Times tomorrow’s edition explains to me the painful problem of association rules prohibiting people who live in ‘private communities’ (and according to the Times, 60 million Americans currently live in such communities) from hanging their laundry out to dry.  States (including neighboring Oregon) are now moving to pass laws in order to protect peoples’ right to hang out laundry, overcoming these private community rules.

People not only don’t want to look at old houses; they also don’t want to have to see their neighbors’ underwear.  It reminds them that their neighbors wear underwear, I guess; perhaps reminds them that they themselves wear underwear.  Or that there is something under the underwear, although there is certainly enough evidence of underwear in our daily lives given dress standards that you’d think we were passionately interested in looking at underwear, our own and others.

Yesterday, I was at the International Market here in Point Roberts when I could not miss a young man (maybe 20) walking ahead of me into the grocery store with the peculiar low-slung pants that one sees frequently on young men.  His, however, had passed all bounds of reason such that he was required to wear a belt to keep them on.  But, strangely, the belt—and his pants—were draped?  Had fallen? entirely below his underwear on the back side and then reached up higher on the front where presumably a nail kept it attached to his abdomen.  In any case, it was all underwear from my perspective.

I think, all things considered, I’d rather see it on clotheslines than in the grocery store.  But in a time when there’s a lot of serious concerns in the states, I am absolutely stunned to find that legislators must use five minutes of their time to protect our right to hang out laundry.  On the other hand, I’m so grateful to have such rights that, even though I have no laundry at the minute, I think I’ll wash some and go hang it on my clothesline in order to celebrate my rights.  Or something.

Relative Matters

I drove over to Tsawwassen today to do a little laundry. It does seem surprising that Point Roberts doesn’t have its own laundromat, given that so many of the houses here are quite small, cottages really, hard pressed to find room for big washing machines and dryers. On the other hand, the Tsawwassen laundromat is run by a couple from Lebanon and if one is interested in talking the middle east, he has a personal history that is worth hearing. Lebanon went through a 15-year civil war (the sequel to that seems to be in its opening scenes right now) and the laundromat owner was a teenager at the time of the first war. He has told me about going out and being part of the war when he was only 14. Perhaps he is exaggerating, perhaps not: I have no way to know. I can more easily imagine wanting to make a bigger thing of it than is true, than actually talking about it if I had done it.

In any case, seeing him, even when I don’t talk with him about the middle east, reminds me that every day in Lebanon, and Gaza, and Iraq, and the West Bank, and in Israel, real people, people like him and like me, are right now living in the middle of a war. Every week hundreds of people are killed or seriously injured, at least some of them with the compliments of my taxes. I think I fret about the price of gas or wheat or bread or apples because if I actually opened myself to the grim tragedies of choice that we are participants in, if only indirectly, or to the extraordinary tragedies of nature, like the Chinese earthquake and the Burmese cyclone, that are going on right this minute, I would sink into a slough of despair that would be hard to get up from.

When I went through the border today, there were about 35 cars in the standard line waiting to be spoken to by the Canadian border agents; when I came back, another 30+ were in line to hear from the U.S. border agents. In Iraq, the check points have people with guns who use them pretty easily, it appears. I once drove away from the Point Roberts border before I was told that I could; in the middle east, I suppose I would be a dead person now. The check points for Gaza and the West Bank are infinitely worse than anything this border could ever become, or at least that I could imagine it becoming, and I am grateful for that, but I am not grateful that others are required to submit to such injustices, such endless threats, disrespect, and violence. No Nexus Passes for the Iraqis or Palestinians, I'm afraid.

It’s a gray and a rainy day in Point Roberts and I have finished my dutiful work on past-time projects. Gasoline is $4.08/gallon, and the Canadians see it as a bargain. The relativity of so much of life may be the real lesson of age.