Friday, September 19, 2014

Archiving and Moving On

I'm archiving this blog. Look for me on "A Twirly Life" (http://twirlyword.wordpress.com/).

Here's a parting photo -- just so you won't worry that I don't still love laundry and post about it incessantly. (I found it at another cool laundry blog: http://mrbrightlaundry.blogspot.com/ but I think it's someone's original work. I should look for that. I found it: Sophie Blackall! who also has a blog: Missed Connections. The internet is so cool.)


Tuesday, January 22, 2013

Laundry on the Line

Laundry hanging on the line has long been one of my favorite images. Friends take photos of laundry for me from all over the world.

Today, Andrew Sullivan posted a lovely photo as a winner in his "View From Your Window." If you want to know where the photo was taken, read the story on Sullivan's "The Daily Beast."  If you're like me, and you just like looking at other people's laundry, enjoy.


Saturday, September 24, 2011

The Laundry Song

The Laundry Song

Sunday, September 4, 2011

White Shirts


Are impossible to keep white. I've been thinking about it, and looking up solutions for keeping them white and so will post a couple of links here. Not very poetic, that may come later.

Googling "white shirt" and "poem" came up with some interesting things. Poems with that title, a whole book with that as title (by Laurie MacFayden), and lots of self-published verse.

By far the most moving, beautiful, startling, confusing, and fine is the poem, by June Jordan, called "It's Hard to Keep a Clean Shirt Clean" published on line at The Poetry Foundation, the beginning of which is this:

It’s a sunlit morning
with jasmine blooming
easily
and a drove of robin redbreasts
diving into the ivy covering
a backyard fence
what used to be
or doves shoving aside
the birch tree leaves
when
a young man walks among
the flowers
to my doorway
where he knocks
then stands still
brilliant in a clean white shirt

He lifts a soft fist
to that door
and knocks again
He’s come to say this
was or that
was
not
and what’s
anyone of us to do
about what’s done
what’s past
but prickling salt to sting
our eyes

What’s anyone of us to do
about what’s done

I tried to find a photo of a man in a white shirt, that represented the solemnity and joy of this poem, the grief and softness, but no luck. Too much pornography on the internet, women dressed in men's miliatry whites, nurses popping out of their hooker dresses.

I was resolved to find something beautiful, and switched the search to paintings. Lucky me, I found this astonishing self-portrait, appropriately titled "Man in a White Shirt" by Lucian Freud. White, gold, black, soft and harsh together. Like my hands after a day of trying to get those perspiration stains out of my own laundry.


Monday, July 4, 2011

"Laundry" by Ruth Moose

And because I can't stand not having a poem, here is a nice one that I didn't know before today.

Laundry
All our life
so much laundry;
each day’s doing or not
comes clean,
flows off and away
to blend with other sins
of this world. Each day
begins in new skin,
blessed by the elements
charged to take us
out again to do or undo
what’s been assigned.
From socks to shirts
the selves we shed
lift off the line
as if they own
a life apart
from the one we offer.
There is joy in clean laundry.
All is forgiven in water, sun
and air. We offer our day’s deeds
to the blue-eyed sky, with soap and prayer,
our arms up, then lowered in supplication.

Source: Making the Bed (Main Street Rag Press, 2004)

Laundry by Ruth Moose : The Poetry Foundation

Teaching My College-Bound Daughter to Wash Her Own Clothes

I think I'll write her a poem about doing her own laundry, but in the mean time, here are a collection of blogs advising college kids about doing their own laundry. There is not very much interesting (or worth re-posting) so I'll have to write my own advice.

"Life Is Just A Basket of Laundry" by Mary Marlowe Leverette

"Annie Gives Advice About Doing Laundry On and Off Campus" (in Illinois!)

My Own Advice
1. color (light, dark, or red)
2. temperature (cold or as hot as possible)
3. agitation (your bras or your blue jeans)
4. cloth (natural and not)

Friday, April 29, 2011

Discovering Ethel Romig Fuller

There is much that could be said about her, but I am still learning about this former Oregon Poet Laureate. This poem is a delight.

Today – Ethel Romig Fuller

I have spread wet linen

On lavender bushes,

I have swept rose petals

From a garden walk.

I have labeled jars of raspberry jam,

I have baked a sunshine cake;

I have embroidered a yellow duck

On a small blue frock.

I have polished andirons,

Dusted the highboy,

Cut sweet peas for a black bowl,

Wound the tall clock,

Pleated a lace ruffle…

To-day

I have lived a poem.