| View in browserSoap MusingAnd The Tempest is comingREBECCASEP 15∙PAID READ IN APP Hello, and happy Friday. To the paying subscriber some news- today I will start the play reading and discussion premium. It is my plan to post on Friday along with opening new information or discussion prompts. I hope you will join and invite others. I was excited to see many of the fall’s coming theatrical attractions. It seems a good time to exercise our thoughts and observations of theatre. ( Paid subscribers only, because you have earned all my mind can bring to amuse you!)Thank you and have a wonderful weekend.RebeccaPhoto by Cristian Palmer on UnsplashSoap MusingI like bathrooms. This has always been true. In a bathroom you can lock the door and be alone without raising questions. The bathroom generally has water, also a salubrious thing. An encounter can be had with water at any time of day. It can be the morning shower. Or it can be a midday hand wash. On a long work day, a quick splash of cold water can be reviving. At the end of the day a long hot bath can help to unwind. I like these things.In the pandemic we took more trips to the WC to hand wash. We had been taught at a young age to wash our hands. Perhaps that habit had slipped somewhat. But facing an unknown pathogen causing a planet wide pandemic, we started washing things – hands, groceries, door knobs and more. We even took to carrying hand sanitizer, a concoction of alcohol that smelled sometimes like a used martini glass. And we carried disposable wipes, once the province of the mothers of small children now ubiquitous. I often found myself gazing at my masked face, while washing my hands, and wondered at all that had come to pass.This led to the proliferation of liquid hand soap. True liquid hand soap had graced our sinks before, but now its presence was more significant. Once, where there were a couple of varieties, now there were a multitude. Newly aware of the need for more hand washing, and possible blocked supply chains, we bought huge jugs to refill our sink-side pumps. Sometimes this backfired. Say for instance the “linen” scented soap proved to make you sneeze or gag. Or the “anti-bacterial” ingredient made your hands break out. Then you found yourself trying to give away huge jugs of soap to your friends and neighbors. Or with a larger stockpile because delivery mistakes left you holding the jug. For the record. all soap is anti-bacterial. And nothing works better than a good hand wash with soap to stop the spread of disease. Also hand soap is a unique PH and so not recommended for the shower. Information gathered in my pandemic soapy wanderings.I prefer a bar of soap for the bath and shower. I find liquid shower soap inconvenient. The dispenser is often placed somewhere challenging: can be under the shower head itself so the soap washes out of your hand while you are dispensing, or behind you and requiring awkward reaching about. I prefer the act of rolling the soap bar in my hands to make a lather, or scrubbing the bar onto a face cloth for suds. Lather can be very pleasant to the touch and smell. A rich lather is the marker of a great bar of soap.I have a “Proust-ian” experience with soap. My southern family always bought bundled bars of Dove soap. Visiting meant finding a new bar of soap, for the guest, in the shower. Family tradition says that, without fail, you put a clean towel and washcloth on the bed of your incoming guest. Many of us abscond with hotel soaps, and leave these little luxuries balanced on the proffered towels. Hotel soaps became hard to find during the locked in years. So, I might arrive to see a new “giant” bar of soap on my towels for a three day visit. This was a bit confounding. Nevertheless the the smell of Dove soap always takes me to my grandmother’s house.I spent most of the pandemic locked in a big Milwaukee loft with my dog. Situated above the tree line and in a quiet area, it felt like a stranded space ship. A symptom of my (space)cabin fever was a craving for sandalwood scented soap. This earthy smell felt like travel. And it complimented my perfume named “Radio Bombay.” At that time I had a fun conversation with the creator of that perfume, learning all about Sandalwood, now in short supply. They no longer make the perfume . Since then, the company has grown quite large. I am sure the perfumer no longer has time to discuss scents with individual customers. So being shut in did provide me a chance for unique encounters like this.I just recently learned that you can wash your dishes with bar soap. I hand wash all my dishes here in Kingston. It gets to be a real bore. Not too long ago, I needed a walk, and some retail therapy. So, Annie and I walked up the hill to Clove and Creek, my favorite store in the immediate neighborhood. When I go shopping there, the lovely salesperson is patient with me and my nosing about, touching (and sniffing) the merchandise. I ask many questions. I try to do this on rainy days, when store is often empty. I don’t want to wear out my welcome.On this trip, near the excellent washing brush display, was a large cube of green soap. I learned that this is dish soap made in Marseille over outdoor fires in big iron kettles. I worked in Provence and the faint smell of this soap takes me right back to those long, starry, opera filled nights. In that climate rosemary grows like a weed. The ever-present Mistral blows the scent of olive wood fires and the pungent herb into every corner. This bar of soap was the perfect small purchase to pick up my day. It was an olfactory trip to France. And the soap works great! Nothing cleans glass better than this smoky green cube of soap.More recently, a friend brought me a more floral scented bar of dish soap from Scotland. She recounted that she carried it around one night, late, wandering the smelly alleys of Edinburgh, sniffing it as one might sniff a pomander. A pomander was an orange stuck all around with cloves, perhaps carried about by the like of “bonnie Prince Charlie” to combat the overwhelming stink of towns before the advent of indoor plumbing. They were, along with nosegays, thought to prevent the transmission of the plague. So the wheel of history turns: plagues, scents and soap.Currently this sweet smelling soap resides on my towels in the linen closet. It is friendly greeting on laundry day, or when I seek a clean towel for my guest.Photo by Yosuke Ota on Unsplash LIKECOMMENTRESTACK |
