Chandra Clarke

It’s time for the August 2022 edition of 5 Interesting Things. It’s a short round up of things I’ve found that are: potentially actionable, inspiring, thought-provoking.

Self Driving… Ships? Self-driving cars get a lot of press, probably because cars are more likely to be part of the average reader’s experience. However, sea-going vessels are getting in on the action, with talk of Maritime Autonomous Surface Ships (MASS). With more than 80% of international trade conducted over the water, and with human errors being very, very costly (we’re looking at you, Ever Given), MASS makes a lot of sense.

Mini-forests We all know it’s a good idea to plant a tree, but how about pushing for mini-forests? A new book by Hannah Lewis advocates for transforming empty lots, backyards, and degraded land into mini-forests. Sound like a project for you? Don’t forget to buy the book from an independent bookstore.

Architecture Matters. I’m a technophile and I always appreciate a labour saving device. However, sometimes we rush to new things without consideration of why we did the old things a certain way. That’s the case in India these days. Always a hot country, citizens have been suffering more brutal heat wavers earlier and more often lately. Modern building styles, which use a lot of heat trapping and radiating concrete, are not helping.

Take Out Still Bad There are a lot of reasons why you should avoid take out (or if British, take away) food: It’s usually heavy on the calories, sugar, salt, and fat, you probably went through the drive-through to get it, and… the packaging. A new study shows that takeaway packaging dominates ocean litter. Treat yourself to a dine-in restaurant experience instead.

Modular Buildings Are you a Lego(R) fan? Then you’ll love the idea of modular buildings. Construction generates tons of waste, both in the original building process, and later, in the demolition process. Buildings can age out beyond repair, and purpose built buildings can be hard to, you know, repurpose. (Props to my local microbrewery, which found a way to reuse an old six-screen movie theatre to brew delicious beer.) Modular buildings solve some of these problems.

Earlier this morning, I was reading an article about irons. It said that if I really wanted to splurge, I could buy a Miele Rotary Iron, for $3295. So naturally, my first question was: what’s an iron?

I am, you see, somewhat ‘clothing care challenged.’ When the soap commercial comes on TV and asks, ‘What is your biggest laundry problem?’ my family does not say ‘ring around the collar.’ They say: ‘Chandra.’

Let’s start with laundry collection. It was only later in my adult life that I managed to acquire anything as fancy as a ‘sock drawer.’ My old dresser only had two drawers; since I could never decide whether to file socks under ‘unmentionables’ or ‘mentionables,’ I usually just tossed them at the nearest piece of chair-like furniture. As the dresser was also quite small, many other stray bits also had to be, um, filed, the same way.

These days, of course, since I have children, One Must Set an Example. So I don’t have my laundry all over the floor in my room anymore. I shove it under the bed.

But I digress. Once I have gathered enough laundry to make up a load, I’ll take it to the washing machine, throw in some soap and … promptly forget about it. Indeed, laundry is one of the reasons why I got a PhD. This is so that a) I can really be an absent-minded professor and Eccentric rather than merely Lazy and b) so that I can study the strange, bluish life forms that appear on wet clothes after about a week.

After a second, and sometimes third wash (depending on how forgetful I am), I will actually manage to get the load into the dryer, where it will sit for another week. The advantage is that I never have to use fabric softener: after a half dozen consecutive washes and sitting for several days in a crush of heavy clothes, my unmentionables are as soft as can be.

It should be no surprise then, to realize that ironing is just not in my vocabulary. My approach to wrinkle management varies depending on the day:

• Working in the home office: wrinkles, schminkles.
• Going out in public: Set six timers to remind myself to grab the clothes when they get out of the dryer and hope there’s enough random things to make up an outfit.

This way, I use far less energy with the dryer than I would with an iron, which I would forget and leave on for a week. (By which point, it would have burned its way through two floors to the basement.)

Which brings me to my second question about the $3,295 iron. Who the heck pays that kind of money for an appliance that you still have to operate manually? Plus, if you look at what a ‘rotary iron’ is, it looks like an exceptionally efficient device for catching and squashing hands. I had enough of that back in the bad old days when I had to run an ancient printing press for my job.

No, if I am going to spend that sort of money on anything to do with laundry, it’ll be for a robot. And it will be one that picks up my clothes, washes, dries, irons and puts them away.

And meanwhile, I could get on with… less pressing concerns.

A while ago, at great personal risk (there was the potential for really deep paper cuts), I brought you a story about a shadowy, underground revolutionary group called the Gnome Liberation Front (GLF). Their purpose: to free garden Gnomes around the world from captivity, and end years of exploitation and “statuarial tyranny.”

Originally a European movement, I have now uncovered evidence that shows the GLF has operatives in North America. According to a Calgary Sun story, homeowners Tara and Keith Zalischuk reported that one of their garden Gnomes, “David” disappeared for several weeks last summer. They assumed he had been stolen by local vandals until one day he reappeared, a photo album of holiday memories at his side.

Now I suppose it’s possible that David’s trip really was a “holiday” and that there are many things a Gnome would like to see. If he were a gastrognome, for example, he might go to France for the food. Perhaps he’s a religious sort, an avid reader of Deuterognomy, and he wanted to see the Gnome of St. Peter in Italy.

Or perhaps David is a wild and crazy kind of Gnome who would visit the red light districts of Amsterdam, looking for both female and male action – making him bi-gnomial. He could even be into the group thing, making him poly-gnomial.

Of course I’m assuming David’s an urban kind of guy, you know, a metrognome. He might prefer a more rural holiday, and be something of an agrognomist.

But let’s not kid ourselves: do we really believe that David’s trip was an innocent little getaway? That he went to, say, Ireland, that tax haven for writers, to scout out a nice little cottage where he could spend his retirement writing under a gnome de plume? No! I think he is a revolutionary agent for the GLF operating under a gnome de guerre.

I suspect our gnomadic friend actually went overseas to recruit more agents for the North American wing and do some fund-raising (GLF members have to pay a yearly, gnominal fee). While he was there, he probably campaigned for official Gnome recognition and entry into the European Ecognomic Union (where they would be, owing to their size, in charge of microecognomics). And I would bet money that, while in England, he made a pilgrimage to that haunting site symbolizing the human exploitation of garden rockery, gnome henge.

Want proof? Just ask David as to why he keeps calling it the Human Gegnome Project, or why he spent so much time convincing the Zalischuks to make their home office ergognomic. Yes, when it comes to spreading propaganda, David is a real gnomepareil amongst his brethren.

Or if you really want to wind him up, ask him how he feels about the fact that Camille Sansnom, the gnome with the starring role in the movie Amelie, wasn’t gnominated for an Oscar or a Golden Globe.

I know what you’re thinking: that my concerns are unfounded and alarmist. That I’m just another journalist who’s into muckraking and sensationalism by appealing to the lowest common degnominator: fear.

If you don’t believe me, fine. Just don’t come crying when your neighbourhood turns into a gnome man’s land.