Only In Vermont

[Jack Moroney (RIP)]

All you HF clandestine antenna UW warriors can once again return to yesteryear. There is still a place in the world where you can tie into an outdoor clothesline and camouflage your HF antenna while you tap away on your leg key sending out your BTB.

Storeowner argues for civil disobedience: Rules be damned, hang out that laundry!

September 22, 2008

By Josh O'Gorman Rutland Herald



WESTON — The owner of the landmark Vermont Country Store and catalogue business is encouraging people to engage in "civil disobedience" – over hanging laundry.

An editorial credited to "The Orton Family" that appears on the company's Web site and in the fall catalogue for the Vermont Country Store encourages people to "Set up a clothesline and hang your wash out even if you live in a neighborhood where doing such is prohibited."

Marketing company RDW Group credits the editorial to store proprietor Lyman Orton, who asks readers: "Do my tighty-whities hanging on the line really shock and embarrass anyone? If I have a clothesline, do you look down on me? Well, certainly not in Vermont!"

"I've got to say I am delighted and honored to have people of such prestige in the community as the Orton family advocating line-drying," said State Sen. Richard J. McCormack, D-Windsor, who has introduced "right-to-dry" legislation for several years. He said he inherited the cause from his younger brother, Curt McCormack, a former state representative from Rutland who proposed similar legislation in the 1980s to enable residents to line-dry their clothes despite any community covenants that might ban the practice.

McCormack said when he proposed legislation during the last session, a colleague in the senate objected because he felt the issue "lacked gravity."

"I think the problem is people find the discussion of clotheslines to be trivial," McCormack said. "What this legislation said was that energy conservation is important and the fact people don't like clotheslines is trivial."

"I'm sorry to say that even in Vermont this post-1945 bug has caught on and there are community associations and landlords that oppose this," said Alexander Lee, a graduate of Middlebury College and Vermont Law School and founder of Project Laundry List, which advocates a person's right to air-dry their laundry.

According to 2001 statistics from the U.S. Department of Energy's Energy Information Administration, 5.8 percent of residential electricity use goes toward the clothes dryer.

"This is some low-hanging fruit," Lee said. "Environmental groups have been pushing toward solar and backyard windmills and pushing Detroit to make hybrids, but laundry lies within reach for all income levels."

McCormack agreed that the line-drying issue affects low-income Vermonters.

"You keep pumping those quarters into those dryers and it becomes a big chunk of a low-income household's expenses," McCormack said.

McCormack said he would continue to introduce legislation affirming a person's right to line-dry.

"I'm not trying to outlaw mechanical dryers," McCormack said. "We just want to make it so if you want to air-dry your clothes, you may."

There is no comprehensive data on the number of people in Vermont who live in communities – many of the condominium associations – that have banned clotheslines, but Orton is urging them to ignore the rules.

"Is it not the height of snobbery to declare hanging clothes out to dry illegal?" Orton asks.

By the way: The Vermont Country Store offers a number of products, ranging from $34.95 to $59.95, for customers looking to air-dry their clothes.

[bricklayer]

At least the people in Vermont wash their tighty whities before hanging them out to dry. I know of some Maine'iacs who dont even do laundry, just go swimming and run around in their skibbies till their dry!