Keith Burgess-Jackson, J.D., Ph.D.

To the Editor:

Re “Debate Follows Bills to Remove Bans on Clotheslines” (news article, Oct. 11):

Thank goodness environmental concerns are challenging these absurd prohibitions. Clotheslines have a long and honorable place in American life, with aesthetic benefits as well as economic ones.

“I saw love of craft, religion, politics, census figures, economics, sculpture, poetry . . . all on the scattered, unselfconscious clotheslines of America,” wrote Helen Mather after traveling 12,000 miles across America photographing clotheslines for her book “Clotheslines U.S.A.,” published in 1969.

Thirty years after Mather, I followed her line-blazing trail across the country and concurred with her appraisal.

As a longtime devotee of clothesline pleasures, I believe that it should be an essential right: to stand outside pinning up sheets and blue jeans, to gather laundry freshly dried, scented of sun and wind. Clotheslines are not only good for the environment, but they’re also good for the spirit.

Toby Sonneman
Bellingham, Wash., Oct.13, 2009

Note from KBJ: Amen.