Freecycle rant

I'm seriously peeved at the moderator of the local Freecycle group. I submitted no less than five offers yesterday morning for various and sundry household items we've had lying about for ages, and not one of them has been passed through to post on the site as of this moment, more than 24 hours later.

See, the moderator insists on reviewing every single submission for "appropriateness" before passing them along to be posted on the group bulletin board. Now, if she reviewed her inbox a couple of times a day, this wouldn't be a problem. But apparently it's a "whenever I get time, oh maybe tomorrow" thing, which annoys me to no end. It creates unnecessary delay, and often results in a large number of submissions being posted on the site at once, whenever the mod finally gets around to reviewing her e-mail. There have been times when I've gotten a dozen or more e-mails for new posts in an evening, and the time stamp on those posts ranges anywhere from 12 to 48 hours apart.

This sort of moderation isn't necessary. If anything "inappropriate" is submitted, the mod can always delete the post and ban the poster. (I've moderated a Yahoo! group myself and done it. I know it's possible.)

For crying out loud, I just want somebody to take these surplus shower curtains off my hands!

Okay. There. Rant over.

Kite flying season

I sat on the covered porch in the back yard today, warmed by the sun and sheltered from the breeze, and thought about flying a kite.

One of the harbingers of springtime in California is the March wind. When the winter rains stop and the beautiful spring days begin, the breezes blow swift and strong for several weeks. When I was a child, the first blue sky day of the year, a breezy day such as today, would prompt a visit to the local toy store, where my parents would allow my sister and me to choose our springtime kites.

I loved choosing a kite each year, and each year I tried something different. One year I would fly a traditional diamond; one year a bat-shaped flying wing; one year I even tried a box kite. Some years we would make our own kites with balsa wood and kraft paper, painted with watercolors or tempera, trailed by elaborate tails of string and rag bows. Some kites were more successful fliers than others: some soared high into the blue blue sky, others circled and dived and crashed into the ground.

We had a couple of places where we flew. One was the football field of the local junior high, but our favorite was the flat open space next to the lake that gave our subdivision its name. My sister and I would tromp through the reeds and the cattails, sometimes alone, sometimes accompanied by a parent, carrying our kites and string and wearing warm sweaters with scarves wrapped around our heads. The sky above may have been blue, but the wind was sharp and hurt our ears.

My sister and I competed to see who get her kite up faster. We ran and played and shouted with pleasure at each successful launch, and sometimes sobbed in despair when all the effort in the world failed to send our beloved toy soaring heavenward. Sometimes, especially if Daddy were with us, we brought our fishing poles. After launching our kites, we'd anchor them to the bank, and fish and fly together.

Kite flying taught us resilience and patience and persistence. We learned determination and dexterity, and the simple joy of a job well done. And after an afternoon of running and playing and shouting and fishing, we'd reel our kites in and trudge home, exhausted and windburned and happy as larks.

Kite flying season arrived today. And today I wished for a child I could take kite flying.