land of the free, home of the brave

The Boston Globe is trying really hard to say the convention traffic and pseudo-security aren't really bothering the locals. They've been asking for positive comments about the convention for months, and trying to adjust the accounting to show how it could be profitable...or at least how it wouldn't bankrupt the city. My favorite line is attributed to Anna Buckingham of Somerville (I don't know if she sent it in as a positive comment, or if a reporter caught her for one of their person-on-the-street interviews):
"Everyone's really on their toes, and very suspicious of everyone else, which is great and all..." Yikes.

I was sitting here, reading the Globe online, trying to figure out if the noise outside was distant fireworks, thunder, or a firefight. It's nerve-wracking. Anna Buckingham finished her sentence with "...but it makes me more nervous." Sure! It's making me nervous, too. I just don't want to buy into the idea that this is supposed to be great and all, no matter how hard the government and the media are trying to sell it to us. Being afraid of our neighbors, that's what this country is all about. Now, anyhow.

Sunday, I was coming home from a weekend away, and discovered Greyhound's concept of "security" for the bus going to Boston (from NYC.) At Port Authority, they herded everyone who wanted to go to Boston over to a couple of desks where the searchers were working. It's a very crowded area, and all the thousands of people taking dozens of buses to other cities didn't need to be searched. They tried to keep track of who (and what bags) had been searched already by giving stickers, but they weren't doing it very well. If you said you were going to check a bag under the bus, they didn't search it (that's how I avoided having them open my suitcase with all the embarassing toys in it.) I saw some people searched, who didn't get the sticker, who had to go back and get their sticker after almost getting on the bus. And some who weren't searched at all, who were just sent back from the gate to get their stickers at the last minute. There was so much administrative confusion it was easy to believe every missing "safety" indicator was just due to administrative confusion.

They gave carry-on bags the most cursory search imaginable, kind of stirring the contents with a stick. People were frisked more thoroughly, patting us down and using metal detectors - they fussed over the tube of toothpaste in my jacket pocket! They didn't make anyone take off their shoes when the metal detector beeped, and they just beeped right on past jeans-rivets. They expressed concern at the little bit of metal in my felt-tip pen. Technically, there's no rule against carrying a pocketknife on the bus. If you want to put it in your carryon, or put it in the official basket with your wallet and keys, I don't think Greyhound has the authority to take a little swiss army knife away. But they're willing to go to a LOT of trouble to make sure nobody carries one aboard in a pocket, undetected.

They were suspicious of my little metal pill case, though they didn't ask about the pills inside (which is just as well, because they came from a number of different prescription bottles.) They were very suspicious of my little tin of herbal scrape-and-bruise ointment (from Burt's Bees, now in a container that's more accessible to hands that don't work very well, still very useful after play. Janet, Babalon, perhaps others may be interested.)

laundry

Can anyone recommend a laundry detergent? If I were looking for something realistic, I suspect I would have found it already, and I hate shopping, so I turn to the accumulated experience of the group (such as it is).

1) No horrible smells. I don't have skin-sensitive allergies or asthma, but some perfumes are migraine triggers, so I'm looking for a minimally-perfumed product. It doesn't need to be completely perfume-free, but stronger scents to tend to be more of a risk. The kind with extra strong fragrance, or encapsulated fragrances, that advertise how their odor will persist for days, even weeks, are worst.

2) It needs to dissolve in an old front-loading washing machine. I like to have a big economy-size box of detergent in my apartment, and carry a small bag of powder down to the washing machine in the basement. This becomes a waste of time if the powder never dissolves. Or if the only way to make the powder dissolve is to fill the washing machine with such hot water that the clothes shrink (and then the cold rinse water makes the detergent powder precipitate out on the clothes, anyhow.)

3) It needs to get clothes clean. This is embarrassingly relevent. In the last week alone, I've gotten ink, grass, mud, blood, tomato sauce, mortar, oil, and rust on the (relatively) nice clothes I wear to work. That's not counting the shirt I'm considering a total loss because of a cellulosic dye spill. Why do so many laundry pre-treatments say not to use them on khaki, anyhow?

4) I need to be able to get the container open. This is not trivial, if we're talking about liquids. I was in a local store recently, trying to investigate scents, and trying to talk myself around to the possibility that a liquid detergent might be the only way to find something soluble enough.
I found a frightening number of containers that I simply could not open. I don't know if it's spill-proofing or child-proofing, but it's daunting even with tools. So I'm back to looking for a soluble powder, if I can find something effective.