Eastwood Happening a Breath of Fresh Air
Wednesday, May 21, 2008
SEAN KIRST
POST-STANDARD COLUMNIST
The idea came to Lonnie Chu a few weeks ago. She had gone outside to hang clothes at her Nichols Avenue home in the Eastwood section of Syracuse. It was a beautiful spring day. People kept stopping by, either to admire the flowers or to simply shoot the breeze.
Lonnie spoke to the neighbors as she pulled wet clothes out of a basket. She saw it as a gentle celebration, a reminder of the glories of a neighborhood.
She was inspired enough to write about it on her blog, www.walkeastwood.org, where she described hanging clothes as another way of "living more simply, more authentically."
The response was so passionate it was startling to Lonnie. Several readers offered fervent replies about why they believe in hanging clothes on the line.
As she read their observations, Lonnie knew what she had to do:
The time was right, she decided, for an Eastwood Laundry Day.
"To take part, all you have to do is hang something on the line so everyone can see it," Lonnie said.
The event will be held June 28. Many Eastwood residents and merchants will participate, simply by using clothespins and a clothesline. They might choose only to hang their laundry, Lonnie said. They might hang clothes or banners in colorful patterns. They might even put up imaginative artwork that uses the clothesline as a canvas.
While Eastwood is the centerpiece of the event, Lonnie said she'd like to see it spread across Central New York, until it becomes a full-blown Greater Syracuse Laundry Day. She has
taken the proposal to several community groups, including 40 Below, whose Maarten Jacobs summed up the general reaction:
"I love it," said Jacobs, chair of 40 Below's Public Arts Task Force. "I haven't seen a whole lot of public art around Eastwood, and tying it into a green movement is a great way to do it."
The motivation is both ecological and emotional. Lonnie was inspired by www.laundry list.org, a Web site dedicated to hanging clothes on the line. The founder and executive director, Alex Lee, of New Hampshire, started the movement in 1995. He had just heard Dr. Helen Caldicott, a physician and environmental activist, describe how much energy is saved every time a load of clothes does not go into the dryer.
At the beginning, Lee said, "Everyone thought I was crazy." Now he receives national media attention, and his efforts are increasingly embraced by a nation worried about global warming and worn down by household power bills.
According to government statistics, Lee said, dryers account for almost 6 percent of the electricity used in typical American homes - a number that he said is probably low because it doesn't include gas dryers or commercial laundry.
For that reason, he was glad to hear of Eastwood Laundry Day.
While Lonnie Chu is certainly thinking about the environmental benefits, she also wants to reinforce the best elements of neighborhood life. Old clothesline poles were already in the ground when she and her husband, David Chu, moved into their Eastwood duplex in 2004.
For a while, the only time they thought about the poles was when they cut the grass. But David went out one day and bought a clothesline, and he used it for hanging their clothes in the sun.
Very quickly, the Chus realized what they'd been missing.
"You can throw all the clothes in the pile on the line," Lonnie said. "They bleach naturally in the sun, the whites get really white, and they smell really good."
The ritual provided communion with neighbors. The Chus also discovered that using hangers on the line causes wrinkles to fall out of wet shirts or pants, which gave the couple a way to skip ironing when they were running late.
Fifty years ago, when countless American families dried their clothes on the line, it would have been hard to imagine that chore as a trendy ritual. Yet Lonnie's dream is for homeowners' associations across this region to begin seeing clotheslines in a new way.
"There are a lot of communities," she said, "where people don't allow other people to hang clothes because they think it means you're poverty-stricken and you can't afford a dryer. What (hanging clothes) really means is that you're informed and aware we've got trouble on the planet."
Beyond that, she said, it can be a fine marketing tool. Lonnie and David live upstairs in their house and rent out the downstairs flat. They make a point of telling prospective tenants about their free drying service. People get excited when they hear it, Lonnie said, and they usually ask where they can find the dryer.
In the yard, in the bright sunshine, Lonnie says, "Right here."
This item was published on 05/21/2008
