This Southern Belle and Manual Labor ...

I never thought Southern Belles were into manual labor. I certainly am not.

Oh, sure. We do some housework. Sometimes a lot. And some yard work - we call it gardening - much more gentile. I have shoveled and spread my share of bark around the yard, too. After all, I am tough - I lift weights at the gym. No problem, right?

When I got divorced, I was determined to do lots of things myself. I hung curtains (the rods were already up), I moved the furniture around, I hung pictures, I painted the furniture, I sprayed for bugs. I took care of basic home maintenance, right?

But I drew the line at power tools and propane - no grill for me. I was just not taking chances with blowing myself, and possibly others, up. Or maiming myself with a power drill. I traded a homemade dinner for a friend drilling the holes for the under shelf  CD player. Fair enough.

So it was a nice change to date, and then marry, a guy (JS) who handles the propane grill, the propane stove on the sailboat, and sundry macho chores around the house. I could do them, but he is good at it! And I do reward him for his labors ... in a wifely way. And I brought back lunch from Subway!

So imagine my surprise when I realized that there was so much work to do on our sailboat, Duchess, last weekend - and just the two of us to do it. If I did not help, it would take three or four times as long to prep the boat for launch. So much for reading, studying lines, learning some new songs - the weekend I had pictured.

Instead, I found myself on a ladder, scrubbing the hull. And not as easy as just scrubbing away. You have to make sure use one cloth to put on and take off the cleaner on the white stripe, and another set on the blue. Or it smears them all together. And makes a mess. To say nothing of what it does to my fingernails. Until I found rubber gloves to wear.

This job requires finesse while standing on a ladder applying pressure to a cleaning cloth over my head??? Are you kidding? But I did my part. And I went over those lines while I was at it.

JS, of course, did the heavy lifting - the larger and higher part of the boat. WITH A POWER TOOL! (See it there on the ground at the foot of the ladder.

 

 

Of course, he had to use finesse, too. But he has lots more experience at this than I do.

 

Together we pumped out the bilge (I did the pumping) and put up the main sail. It was my job to feed the grommets into the slot and straighten it all out. Then I lined it all up as it came down and tied it with straps and put on the sail cover. After a few seasons, I am pretty good at that. My balance has definitely improved, since it is easier to do all this while we are still coming into the dock.

 

He does the technical stuff - he knows how to charge the batteries, and check them. I just turn the switch on command.

 

Finally, I went through all the canvas pieces of the bimini and dodger to see which seams need reinforcing. My 75-year-old sewing machine will not handle these industrial seams so I wanted to take the bad pieces home to find someone to fix them. Then I did some domestic tasks - sweeping inside and out to get rid of the grime from winter storage.

 

I ran out of tasks I could do myself  before JS did. So I took the time to look over at Lake Erie. The boatyard is just across the street from the lake, and the stiff wind from the North had been chilling us all day despite the almost 70 degree day. But the view was amazing - a little hard to capture from the deck 15 feet up without falling off.

 

In two weeks, Duchess will be in the Lake, and we will begin another summer of sailing, hanging out with wonderful friends and enjoying the beauty of  the wind, water and wild life in the Lake Erie Islands.

 

I guess a little manual labor never hurt anyone. Thank you, JS, for introducing me to this wonderful world!



My reluctant activist husband

You have to know my husband (JS) to know how significant his actions for the last few weeks have been.

He is a musician - an artist with lots of ideas in his head for songs, lyrics, books, plays, stories. He just spends so much time making a living - he renovates and rents houses by day and sings and plays guitar at night - that he does not have time to express himself nearly as often as he would like. But he has lots of dreams and someday ...

Lately his days have become even busier since he decided to try a strategy of making videos of his songs - both covers and originals - and put them on Youtube. He bought cameras and a recording machine. He designs the videos, sets some cameras on tripods and puts me in my hands. Then he spend over 20 hours on average editing the sound and video to get them as good as possible without hiring professionals.

In addition, we have both spent hours trying to understand the dynamics of online videos and social media and how you can influence the number of people you reach. It is not easy and it seems to be a moving target, changing all the time.

So it is amazing to me that when a political issue arose in the town where he lives, JS felt it was his duty to respond.

You have to understand that this is a guy who hates to read the newspaper or listen to the news. He does not want to know all the bad things going on in the world on which he cannot have an effect. He always says that those things drive him crazy.

But if there is a situation where he can have a positive impact, he is the first one in line, whether it is loaning money to an old friend who is in jail, or helping  someone who is down on their luck. He does it without an expectation of being paid back. And he is usually right. But he still does it.

So I was very surprised to walk in a few weeks ago to find JS studying a map and some documents that arrived by certified mail from the city planning office. He lives in a college town and for years the city has been trying to balance the needs of the year-round residents and the thousands of students who rent houses near the university.

One way to limit the conflicts has been to pass ordinances limiting the number of unrelated people that can live in areas zoned for single family residences. Of course, when the new rules were passed, there were a number of places that were grandfathered in to the old rules. They could continue to rent the houses but were prohibited from making any structural changes. Over time, the idea was that the concentrations of students would be reduced to a level that promoted more harmony with the local families.

Now, some landlords are asking for exceptions to the rules, and there is a draft of a plan that would essentially move more students into the area in which my husband lives. None of the single family home owners realized this was happening until the certified mail came. JS went to a work session of the city council, spoke against the plan and came home worried that it was going to be passed rapidly as a "pilot," targeted at his neighborhood.

JS started calling neighbors and knocking on doors, looking up details about the plan, emailing copies to the people who were interested. He got the notice of the neighborhood council and was asked to join. He hesitated, afraid that he would be working or traveling during the meetings. But he prepared to speak once again at next work session of the City Council where this topic was to be discussed.

The night before the meeting, we sat and talked about his part in all this.JS was really struggling. "I just want to be an artist," he said. "I wish I could ignore this, but I just can't."

I hoped a good night's sleep would make him more positive about the meeting, but he awoke filled with anxiety. It was another packed day, too. He had agreed to be in a student film for a young man he met while singing at a local bar, and we had friends coming into town for lunch at his house. (I could have made lunch, but he wanted to make tomato bisque and cheese sandwiches on his homemade bread.) After all that, and handling some day to day demands, he only had a short time to rest and get ready for the meeting.

This time, I was going along to watch and be supportive, even though, legally I live in the township, not the city and have no say in the issue officially. We entered the court room where the work session was going on, and JS put his name in to speak.

Once they got to the topic we were interested in, the council members discussed the options on the table - 1) Do nothing, leave things as they were, 2) Do the pilot project (which was not well defined), or 3) study these issues as part of the update to the Comprehensive Plan which was already in progress. After a few minutes, the Mayor started calling the people who had applied to speak.

There were several others who spoke strongly against rushing things without more input from the community - essentially suggesting adoption of option 3. Two of the strongest speakers were neighbors who had been in the area for over 30 years. They would not have come to make their case without the calls that my husband made.

Then it was his turn. JS walked up and announced that he had questions to ask first. The council members all looked stricken and the mayor explained that the format did not allow for debate, just a statement. So he carefully turned those issues around and made a strong case for allowng the market to adjust naturally instead of letting the landlords change longstanding rules designed to promote harmony in the neighborhoods. He spoke as a landlord and a resident and seemed to make points with the council.

After a few more speakers, including one landlord, the council went back into discussion mode. One by one the council members expressed their thoughts. It became clear that they did not want the public to think they rushed through the changes, even though several wanted to find ways to incent the landlords to continue to invest in the city.

When it was over, we were surprised to find that the battle was done. Nothing is going to happen in the immediate future. But the war is still on the horizon.

I wonder how this reluctant warrior will face that challenge. I have faith he will do the right thing. No matter how crazy it makes him. I like his kind of crazy.