old timers

We've had at least 2 inches of snow at my house in north Minneapolis today. Here's a photo around 4pm. Our forecast this week is for temperatures down to -7C/20F. It was starting to feel like spring here in Minnesota, but this week we seem to be reverting back to winter for a few days.

I attended 2 online meetings today. One was for an eco-village project, and one was for some of us who were around for that other pandemic, AIDS/HIV.  The AIDS remembrance was hosted by local activist Patrick Scully.  We had about 20 people from around the planet. It was interesting to hear a lot of perspectives, all familiar and yet new in their personal uniqueness. As we ended the meeting, we spoke the name of someone we were remembering in these new COVID-19 pandemic times. I named Carl Collier. I really need to write that blog post about these two pandemics. It's a topic that is clearly on a lot of people's minds.

Afterwards, I finally knuckled down and did laundry. I have no washer or dryer, so for a few years I've been hauling my clothes to a nearby laundromat. On the assumption that I'm susceptible to SARS-CoV-2, I decided that I don't want to risk touching the many coins that would be needed from the coin machine to pay the washing machines and dryers at the laundromat.

So I washed my clothes by hand... in the bathtub. That's a first for me.

I used hot water and twice as much detergent as usual, then I spent several minutes scrunching the fabric and sloshing it around. The water obviously turned dark. I suspect that color had more to do with fabric dye than actual dirt. When I rinsed with cold water and sloshed everything some more, the water stayed much clearer.



I had to wring out all of the clothing by hand. That's tiring. I'm not nearly as efficient at that task as a washing machine which whirls everything in a circle to fling out the water. And I have no good place to dry everything, so it's all hanging on handrails in the stairway now.



Maybe I will spend money on at least a very tiny washing machine that can fit down my very narrow basement stairway. Someday, when people are allowed to roam again, when I can have someone indoors to install it.