Sheila Landre's Towel Manifesto

My mother asks that I post this as a public service announcement to all towel users, present and future.

ABOUT TOWELS
An Expository Essay

These guidelines for towel usage will help you form good habits and save money in the future when you are in charge of towels of your own. There are many kinds of towels and each has its own purpose. Some require extra care and some do not. Some are more cost effective than others. Some have sentimental value to their owner and some do not. Some are disposable. Some last forever if properly treated.

Bath towels are decorative and useful. They are usually made of cotton terry cloth, come in several sizes, and are often purchased to match the decor in color and style. They are intended for public viewing as well as private use. They are meant to dry by absorbing clean water from human skin. Please do not mop the floor with them, wipe off hair dye, toothpaste or whitener, or bodily fluids with them.

Rinse all that off before you get to a towel so that you are merely wet. Then hang the towels neatly on the rack or a hanger to dry out for the next usage. Otherwise towels must be washed using extra soap, water, and electricity. Over time utility bills will increase as more and more towels are unnecessarily washed and dried. Eventually the towels wear out faster and need to be replaced.* Someone has to pay for these.

*Such worn-out or nonstandard towels may be redesigned as “Utility Towels”, used whole or subdivided, stored separately, folded to indicate they are no longer for use on human surfaces, and can be marked as such with an indelible marker. (See Paragraph 4. Use as an alternate to Paper Towels).

Kitchen towels serve a similar purpose and come in two categories: small towels for drying hands, usually terry cloth, and small towels for drying tableware such as plates, pots and pans and silverware. These are cotton or linen and are often decorative, even seasonal. Some households choose to use the same small towels for both hands and dishes while others differentiate. Each is used to dry plain water from surfaces. Dishcloths (sometimes called “dishrags”) are meant to be soaked in soapy water in order to wash dishes, etc. and countertops. They are then rinsed clean and hung by the sink for future use or put in the washer and replaced by a clean cloth.

Kitchen towels should not be used to wipe up spilled drinks or food, mop the floor, clean spaghetti sauce off the stove or jelly off children’s faces. Do you think somebody’s grandmother embroidered these things just so you could destroy them? If you want to clean up messes which might leave stains, use the dishcloth and then rinse it or use the paper towels (or utility towels) --that’s what they are for!

Modern paper towels --or “PT” not to be confused with “TP” (toilet paper) on a shopping list--come in a variety of configurations and absorbencies as well as with colorful decorations. They are meant to be disposable. Please fit the product to the need and do not use more than necessary. Paper towels now can cost nearly $3 a roll so why would you waste great gobs of them simply to dry your wet hands when there’s a perfectly good hand towel right there? And while you’re at it, why not hang the towel back up the way you found it? Paper towels are ideal for those little messes which are dropped on the floor, for cleaning jelly faces or the emergency bodily fluid situation. Don’t overlook the usefulness of a box of tissues or an efficient house pet to augment your kitchen towel needs. They come in a wide variety of sizes and styles.

Of course if you have unlimited financial resources your choices are broader. You may choose to use paper towels for all your cleaning and drying needs. You may not care if your best bath towels are stained with tomato sauce or bleached with tooth whitener. You may delight in washing every towel after every use and drying them until they are hot enough to burn your hands. You may enjoy the feel of masses of paper toweling soaking up water from your barely damp hands and then filling up the garbage can with their wadded masses. Some people find that very satisfying. Maybe you enjoy defiling your grandmother’s handiwork by using her lovely day-of-the-week tea towels as a mop. When you are calling the shots, that will be your choice.

Thank you for reading my essay on towels. I hope I have given you something to think about and that someday you will consider passing this information on to your children, grandchildren, other family members, and closest friends.

Happy drying!
Sheila

Summer

Spent an afternoon catching some pretty light around the ranch.

The Moon's Twin

Where DOES the time go??

I have been doing a lot of reading lately, mainly Natalie Angier's The Canon: A Whirlygig Tour of the Beautiful Basics of Science. A whirlygig tour, indeed! Whether you are a science-head like me, or just a fan of fantastic prose, this is a book worth reading. Ms. Angier has a flair for the alliterative and the poetic. Reading her paragraphs is like a hyper-speed Easter egg hunt. Just when you think you've spotted every pop-cultural reference and hidden couplet, you realize, in retracing your steps, that there was one more gem hiding in plain sight. Not only do I love the book, but the book makes me love and treasure science again. The wonder of childhood magnifying glass adventures is restored, and the magic of our world is made real again. Tall order, eh? Yes, and delivered with a bow on top in this fast-paced, fluid and compact volume.

Speaking of magnifying glasses, have you seen this piece about grains of sand? It makes me want to run out and buy a magnifying glass right now. And spend all day at the beach looking at sand.

(copyrightProfessor Gary Greenberg, SWNS)

Gorgeous!

I've just finished the chapter on Astronomy, and am headed into Geology (completed Statistics, Chemistry, Molecular and Evolutionary Biology and Physics). Here's something I've learned that you might not know either: at the center of the Earth, there is a moon. Rather, there is a dense, solid central core, made mostly of metals, about the size of our moon.

The original chunk was part of an orb that collided with the Earth in the early days of our planet's formation. In return for giving up a chunk of itself, this roller-derby queen of a planetary object lopped off a section of Earth that now floats in orbit around us, tethered by the gravity of our comparatively large mass, and the weight of our dense, metallic center. Like Shel Silverstein's Missing Piece, or the long-lost human halves in The Origin of Love, the pale, reflective, floating moon is doomed to circle its lost counterpart, held tight by its gravity, forever kept at a distance by its magnetism.

Isn't science beautiful?