The Right to Dry

It's one of life's frustrating ironies: As many of us try to reduce our energy consumption, we live in old homes with rusting clotheslines hulking in the backyard. Like the ultimate Southern California irony, the Los Angeles Red Car line, these metal contraptions were allowed to rust over or removed altogether when clothes dryers became the rage.

When I rented a house in Monrovia, we had something like this clothes tree in the backyard:



Just picture that contraption 50 years on, creaky and sagging in spots. But I had no dryer at the time, and hey - it worked great! If I did my wash strategically (which I seldom did), I could even peg up the unmentionables on the inside and hide them from view of the house in back (which shared a lot with ours) by stringing the sheets on the outside.

Although I did eventually get a dryer, I continued using a clothes line, especially on hot days, until my kids came along. With the volume of laundry that little kids produce, the dryer really was a savior at that point.

But now that I'm washing for two again, I've been wanting to get back to line drying and I rigged up a short line near my garden this summer. The notion was reinforced when I interviewed an advocate for the right to dry movement a few months ago.

So how fortunate was it when I whizzed past a little hulk of metal and wood on someone's curb yesterday? I turned my bike around and discovered a fold-up drying rack that I slung over my shoulder:



It was in great condition except that one metal rod had come loose from the wooden rack. A hot glue gun, a nail and a bit of packing tape, et voila! Good as new.

Power Grab

Election season is cranking up in California (oh, joy!) and the TV machine is once again flooded with confusing, innuendo-filled adverts for candidates* and propositions.

Whenever these commercials start running incessantly, I ask two questions:

Who's paying for these ads, and what do they stand to gain from them?

In the case of Proposition 16 (the "taxpayer's right to vote act"), I didn't have to look far.

Turns out that editorial boards all over the state, along with the League of Women Voters, have come out against this $35 million power grab by PG&E, the utility that supplies power to Northern California.

Big electric wants to protect its monopoly by making it virtually impossible (know how hard it is to get a two-thirds vote for anything?) for cities and communities to band together and supply their own power with "community choice" programs. "The organized opposition, lacking a wealthy backer, has raised about $20,000," notes the San Jose Mercury News.

How's that for cynical and Orwellian? The "taxpayer's right to vote" - sounds great. What taxpayer wants to give up her right to vote, especially in this year's extreme "throw the bums out" climate?

But what the proposition really does is take away the right for taxpayers to get locally provided, and potentially lower-cost, electricity. And, of course, it entrenches PG&E's monopoly and likely boosts its ability to raise rates.

This is yet another perfect example of why California's ballot proposition system is institutionalized insanity. Big tobacco, big power and other deep-pocket corporate interests are the ones that bankroll these initiatives and they use deeply deceptive ad campaigns to get uninformed voters to approve them, usually to their own long-term detriment.

How do we stop this? Tell everyone you know about the reality behind Prop. 16, and tell them to explain it to everyone they know. Help out with the No on 16 campaign, which is being outspent 100 to 1.

It may not help much, but it's the least we can do.

*Speaking of candidates, check out last weekend's This American Life episode for a humorous take-down of gubernatorial candidate Steve Poizner.