Clothesline controversy? Huh?

There was an article on Shelterpop last week about the controversy surrounding clotheslines in suburbia. Huh?

In what universe can this be an eyesore,

Heidi Zech Photography

but this isn't?

I fear for this country, I really do. The Shelterpop article mentioned a piece from the New York Times that dug into the matter in more detail. Apparently, 60 million people in the US live in 300,000 private communities. In most of them, hanging out laundry is forbidden. I cannot imagine ever living in one of those places, but plenty of people do. No clotheslines is but one of what are no doubt hundreds of Gladys Kravitz-isms written into the the community agreements that bind these places together.

I grew up wearing clothes that were line dried. I hang my stuff out now because I like how sun-dried laundry smells. More than how it smells, I like how it feels. There's something about stiff jeans and undies that makes me think my clothes are really clean.

When I was a kid, there was a madwoman who lived next door. She lived to terrorize us kids but she liked my mother. She liked my mother a great deal. Her reason for this unexpected affection? My mother "hung out a nice wash."

I wonder if suburbanites would get along better if they were allowed to have clotheslines. Of course, what drives all of this is that graven image, resale value. Around six percent of all residential electricity use goes to power clothes dryers. If even some small portion of that were conserved by hanging out some laundry some times, the savings could be significant.

Besides, isn't nice to be a human being from time to time?  Even in a gated community?

Well have no fear because there's a fledgling "right to dry" movement in the US. How American is this by the way? One side bans clotheslines and the opposition declares a right to a clothesline. Anyhow, this right to dry movement has spawned a documentary film called Drying for Freedom. Here's the trailer:




Well that seems a bit extreme, but no more extreme than the absurd idea that it's against the rules to have a clothesline. What do you guys think? Would your rather die than line dry? Would you man the barricades to defend your right to hang your clothes in the sun? What do you think of this clothesline controversy?

AIA sneak peeks

Here are two more great booths to see at the AIA show in Miami this week are Axor and Ceramic Tiles of Italy.

Axor is the designer line of Hansgrohe and they'll be debuting their Urquiola line at the show. The Urquiola collection is the result of Axor's five-year collaboration with Spanish-born Patricia Urquiola. Axor Urquiola combines Axor's technical prowess and efficiency with Urquiola’s artistic expressions of intimacy, poetry and warmth. Her distinctive point of view is apparent in every component in this eclectic line. Urquiola’s designs for Axor include numerous individual options and an open invitation to mix and personalize the entire collection.

Axor has a video that reviews the Urquiola collection and it's mesmerizing.




Wow.

You can see Axor at booth 526 at AIA in Miami this week. Let me know if those tubs are as beautiful as I think they are.

Ceramic Tiles of Italy will be at booth 379. Trust me, any time you know that Ceramic Tiles of Italy will be a trade event, go see them. Have an espresso, meet some interesting people and see what's possible when an industry reimagines itself.

Their booth was designed by Italian architects Dante Donegani & Giovanni Lauda of D&L Designs, it will showcase a range of new tile collections from Italy’s leading producers. You'll see oversized slabs and impossibly thin forms, bold prints and surprising textures, brilliant innovations and well-loved classics. More than 50 different pieces will be set out on six tables and visitors are encouraged to touch and feel these amazing tiles.

Here are two examples of what will be at their booth. First up is Cerdisa's Reflex Design. It's a glossy tile, it comes in two sizes (20"x20" and 9.5"x19.5") and in four colors - white, black, gold and silver.

Here's another wall tile to see. I love dimension and I love texture and it's great to find both in the same wall tile. The tile is called Enigma and it's made by Monocibec. It's available in three sizes (13"x36", 19.7"x19.7" and 26"x26") and in three colors: golden dark, intense ivory or total white.

If you're in the mood to get lost in the world of Italian tile, check out Ceramic Tiles of Italy's new project gallery and their new product gallery.

Remember: Axor at booth 526 and Ceramic Tiles of Italy at booth 379. And remember, report back if you're in Miami this week.

Something new under the sink

Somebody rethought the sink base. Check it out.

This is Merillat's new CoreGuard™ sink base. In a Merillat CoreGuard™, the door and frame of the cabinet are the species hardwood someone would expect, but the rest of the cabinet, the sides, the back and the floor are made from a seamless, water-resistant, engineered polymer.

What this means is an end to water leak and spill damage under the sink. Remarkable thinking Merillat.

CoreGuard™ made its debut at KBIS this year and will be available this fall. If you'd like to see one in person, Masco Cabinetry (that's Kraftmaid, Merillat and DeNova) will be at booth 2793 at the AIA show in Miami this Friday, Saturday and Sunday. If you're at the show, stop by their booth and report back on that sink base please. I saw it in Chicago and I was quite impressed. I'd love to get some other reactions. Good job Merillat!

The oil spill is a mirror

Chris Reid | Special to the Times

The oil spill crossed the Rubicon on Friday.

At sundown Thursday, families frolicked in the crashing surf at Pensacola Beach. A few surfers tried to find a wave. The beach bar troubadours played Neil Young and Eagles tunes as college kids knocked back beers. A skinny guy with a metal detector shuffled along looking for treasure.

All was as it should be, the classic chamber of commerce picture of Florida beach life.

On Friday everything was different. The families were still there, splashing around. The beach bars still sold brewskis to thirsty college kids. But in the surf line, mingled with the broken sand dollars and the calico shells, lay an army of invaders straight out of a science-fiction movie:

Thousands of shiny, reddish-brown globs, glistening in the sun — signs that the Deepwater Horizon disaster had at last stained Florida's sugar-white beaches.

Tar balls washed ashore along more than 40 miles of the Panhandle coast, from Perdido Key State Park on the western end of Escambia County to Navarre Beach in Santa Rosa County. Boats snared big tar mats floating in Pensacola Pass, and a dozen more mats were spotted late Friday in the gulf about 6 miles south of the Navarre Beach pier, according to the state Department of Environmental Protection.

The St. Petersburg Times, 5 June 2010

The oil reached Florida and so the waiting's over in the Panhandle. Now the waiting takes on more urgency to those of us farther down the coast. It's no longer a matter of will it get here, now it's a matter of when.

This spill didn't have to happen of course, but the unholy union of our culture, our government, our society and our economy made it an inevitability. As a Gulf Coast resident, this effects me personally and I want to blame someone. I want to blame BP of course. I want to blame Ronald Reagan for birthing a bankrupt school of governance that says that industries should be free to write their own regulations. I want to blame Haliburton. I want to blame globalization. I want to blame who ever it's politically expedient to blame.

But if I want to level blame with any degree of integrity, I need to blame myself for buying a tank of gas yesterday. I paid around $2.65 a gallon when I filled up my tank, a fraction of the actual cost to bring it to me. Despite its bargain price, I still groaned when I saw the total price go over $30.

According to a 1998 paper written by the International Center for Technology Assessment, the actual cost of that gallon was somewhere between $5.60 and $15.37. Mind you, that was based on a retail price of $1.25 and before the costs of invading and occupying Iraq are figured in. Part of me doesn't want to know what that number is now. Gasoline and petroleum prices are kept artificially low by the oil companies' practice of externalizing their costs. Most of these externalized costs are absorbed by federal, state and local governments. The costs to find the oil, drill for the oil, ship the oil, keep the shipping lanes secure for the safe passage of the oil, refine the oil, transport the refined oil, market the refined oil, discover new uses for the refined oil, etc. are either paid by governments directly, or indirectly through a series of subsidies and paybacks.

It's not just gasoline either. Crude oil gets made into the stuff that makes up life in 2010. Look around you, if you need a reminder of oil's omnipresence, here's a partial list: nylon zippers, ballet tights, plastic hangers, pantyhose, flip flops, fake fur, polyester, ball point pens, ink, computers, copiers, magic markers, telephones, microfilm, cameras, earphones, footballs, knitting needles, tennis racquets, golf balls, baby aspirin, stuffed animals, Band aids, Vaseline, Pepto-Bismol, hair coloring, soap, cough syrup, hair spray, lipstick and on and on. Oil subsidies and externalized costs keep these things and the raw materials that make them artificially cheap.

This is not some dark conspiracy or nefarious plan. My spending habits and my need for speed and convenience created the whole mess. Every time I buy a dollar bottle of shampoo or a $4 T-shirt I give my consent to the whole system. I vote with my money and so does everybody else. Calling for the head of Tony Hayward, BP's Chief Executive, won't stop any of this. It won't clean up the Gulf and it won't stop the world's dependence on (artificially) cheap oil. Boycotting BP won't help either. The Deepwater Horizon disaster is their fault and their problem, of that there can be no doubt. But this disaster could have happened at any offshore platform anywhere in the world.

Exxon Valdez groundings and Deepwater Horizon explosions will continue to happen in a world where consumerism reigns supreme. All of the talk about energy independence and alternative energy sources don't amount to a hill of beans when most of what I touch, buy, own and use starts out in an oil well and is sold to me at an artificially low price.

Oil disasters and oil-related world instability will continue so long as oil subsidies continue. Deep water oil drilling Russian roulette will continue without back up safety plans so long as the oil industry continues to call the shots. But oil subsidies won't go away and a functioning regulatory environment will never come to be in a world where you and I demand $2.65 a gallon gasoline and $4 T-shirts.

Thinking about this stuff is of zero comfort as I wait for the tar balls to arrive at the beach down the street or in my beloved Pass-a-Grille. This monster's awake and I don't think anything can stop it at this point. The oiled wildlife will suffer and die, the fishing fleets will stay in port and our already shaky economy will suffer a blow this summer that hurts to think about too much.

The road out of this can't stop with addressing the Deepwater Horizon disaster. We have a lesson to learn here, as a society. The newly fouled Gulf is a mirror and in its iridescent sheen anybody can see the gruesome reflection of a world gone mad. The oiled pelicans in the news this week are the result of a society that will go to any length to keep energy and consumer goods as cheap as possible. When you look at those birds, think about your role in how they got that way. Then vote with your dollars or pounds or euros or pesos. How you spend your money will determine what's next. Let's face it, at this stage of the game, it's the only meaningful vote you have.

A recipe hack that doesn't work and a smart one that does

Our pals at Apartment Therapy figured out that you can't make whipped cream in a French press this week. Duh.

In yet another sterling example of why a working knowledge of chemistry will set you free, had the brave experimenter paid attention he or she would have known that whipped cream is milk fat mixed with air. Whipped cream needs to have at least 80% of its volume made up of air and there's no way something that works as a plunger can get that much air into a liquid. The need for air thing is the reason you can't make whipped cream in a blender either.

Short cuts abound but I find the best way to make whipped cream is to make it the way my grandmother did, with a bowl and a wire whisk. Making whipped cream by hand can be quite a work out but I find that when I have to work at something like this, I am more in touch with what I'm eating and I also eat less of something when I know how much labor went into it.

Take a glass or stainless steel mixing bowl and a wire whisk and put them in the freezer for about an hour. Once they're chilled, take a cup of cold, heavy cream and a tablespoon or two of powdered sugar and add them to the bowl.

Put the bowl in the crook of your arm and commence to whisking. You can also set the bowl down on a table or counter but I find I have more control if I hold the bowl against myself with my left arm.

Whisk for about ten minutes. Nothing will happen for about the first half of that time but the mixture will slowly thicken. About 9/10ths of the way through the cream and air reach critical mass and the mixture stiffens significantly. You're at the soft peak phase. Soft peak is what you want if you're going to add your whipped cream to another recipe.

This is what "soft peak" whipped cream looks like. Once you're at this stage
 you have about another minute to go. Photos from Pastry Pal.

If you're making a dessert topping keep going for about another minute and your whipped cream will reach the consistency of the whipped cream that comes out of a can of Redi-Whip. Stop immediately.

If you keep whisking, the fat globules in the whipped cream will begin to stick together instead of the air bubbles you just worked into the mix. When that happens, the mixture separates into butter and butter milk. That in itself is pretty cool but probably not what you're after.

Congratulations, you just made whipped cream.

You want a low-fat version of this? Eat a teaspoon of it instead of a quart.