I’ve encouraged many of my political and non-profit activist friends to participate in Wordless Wednesday. I’m tired of all the activists that spend all their time talking amongst themselves and never interacting with the rest of the blogosphere, or the rest of the world. It seems to me that WW provides a great opportunity to make small comments that help promote specific ideas and actions.

One group that I like is Project Laundry List. They are focusing on the small simple things in our lives where we can make small changes, that if enough of us do it, can have a great effect, such as hanging clothes out to dry instead of relying on electric clothes driers. In the United States, electric clothes driers account for five to ten percent of residential electricity usage. Kim and I hadn’t though about that, until talking with folks at Project Laundry List, and for the past few months, we’ve dried almost all of our clothes the old fashioned way and watched our electric bill plummet.

Today, one of the Wordless Wednesday posts was a picture of laundry hung out to dry in Imperia Italy. I added a comment there about Project Laundry List and I hope it will get a few people to check out their site and think about using solar powered clothes driers.

Also, one year ago, today, a gunman shot and killed thirty-two people at Virginia Tech. At 10:30 this morning, there will be a commemoration on the drill field, and tonight at 8:15 there will be a candlelight vigil. As my own part of this day of remembrance, I have changed the colors of my website to Hokie colors, Chicago Maroon and Burnt Orange and will stop at the Memorial Park in Second Life. These actions won’t stop gun violence on college campuses, just as my drying clothes outside won’t end global warming, but it is a little bit that I can do.

And that is what is important, to me about Wordless Wednesdays, the photographs of peoples lives can all be little reminders about how we can work together to help one another out and make our world a little bit better place.