The other day, I needed something, and without even knowing it @28lesbian on tumblr delivered. I wasn’t even on tumblr when I saw it, in fact. I saw it how I saw a lot of stuff I see online - in my feed on Instagram. Now, I am happy to give credit where credit is due as far as algorithms are concerned. They bring likeminded people together sometimes. Other times, they go from a helpful parent (“Go over and play with that kid, you may like them!”) to controlling monster (“You will ONLY see what I think is best for you and you WILL LIKE IT!”) My algorithm has brought me collectors. It’s what I like apparently. People who pull together memes, jokes, or screenshots from various sources and put them into a carousel for me to peruse. I can’t help it. I like them. And I’d venture a guess that the gatherers like what they’re doing or else they wouldn’t keep doing it. And that’s the key for me - the real human alive people who are laughing at memes then gathering them into a collection and posting them for me to like and share. The gatherers, of course, would have nothing to gather were it not for the creators. So I am likewise appreciative of them, even when, like @28lesbian, I don’t think they were even trying to create a specific *something* but merely were letting words they had out of their head. I saw the post in question on my mutual, Jackie’s page. Jackie shares excellent memes, yes, but also relatable life advice, parenting advice, and useful progressive content. Follow her at @kindminds_smarthearts. The thing in particular was a screenshot of a triple exchange between users on the microblogging site, Tumblr. From the early 2010s to now, Tumblr developed into its own unique community. It’s kind of like reddit in the way that it has attracted a certain crowd that would probably proudly identify themselves as “tumblr people” and who share certain similar characteristics. This is from my own interpretation and experience, but I’d say generally they’re kind, collaborative, clever, creative, ascerbic when needed, at times cynical but always with a twinkle in their eye, wholesome, supportive, feral, combative to hypocrisy and hate, and weird. I almost always stop on a tumblr screenshot, no matter the username, because so often the posts are some asynchronous form of internet improv, joined in by complete strangers, semi-anonymously, performed for people they cannot even imagine or fathom, for nothing more than the kick one gets out of engaging in something like that. So when I, laid back on the sofa in a functional freeze, state scrolling through ye olde IG feed, saw what 28lesbian wrote, it felt, well, kinda personal? sometimes i get a little stressed out because i'm living in a part of history that'll one day be talked about and discussed and papers written and what am i doing? what have i done? laundry, barelyWay to sum up just EXACTLY what I’ve been thinking. It’s hard to just do laundry when the world is going on in genreal, not to mention when it’s also in more chaos than usual. The way it’s currently going on gives me a case of what I like to call the ol’ squirrely tum. That’s putting it mildly. 28lesbian was apparently not alone. Beneath that post, @flouryhedgehog chimed in: Sometimes I used to wonder what regular folks were doing during eventful periods in history. Now I'm living in one and yeah, it turns out the answer is laundry, barely.I have been putting off writing because of all the horrible events in the world. Then I got this book about Walt Whitman in New Orleans in 1848. To be clear, I was in New Orleans in 2025 when I bought the book about Walt Whitman. But I did get it in New Orleans and that’s where he wrote it. It’s a collection of his newspaper pieces from his brief time in the Crescent City the spring of that year. Many are so-called “peeps” or day-to-day observations Whitman made while walking about the city. Before “Leaves of Grass,” Walt was writing about some pretty mundane and, at times, hilarious shit. One piece is a listicle of all the stereotypical folks getting Daguerreotypes made of themselves. Another was a spotlight on how auction houses work, complete with observations about the auctioneer and various personas he would adopt depending on the occasion and customer. Haha look at how these dorks utilize new technology! Look at how silly people are when they get frenzied about spending money! Let me tell you, though, it’s actually quite riveting. So fascinating. I had no idea how someone traveled via steamboat. By that, I mean literally the mechanics, logistics, cargo, and smells. It is so important to me, and a lot of other people as well, that WW took the time to write all that out. Simultaneous with the minutiae and frivolity at the time, New Orleans was the largest slave market in the United States. Railroads were expanding. The telegraph was coming into use, sending messages across far distances. The U.S. had acquired something like 500,000 square miles of new territory from Mexico that maybe was full of gold and possibly could be full of enslaved people, depending on the resolution of the fierce debate among political leaders. Migration caused by the Great Irish Famine - which, by the way, there was no “famine” - it was actually a mass starvation caused not only by potato blight but by British colonial policy that continued exporting food from Ireland, making it an avoidable, politically driven catastrophe rather than a purely natural disaster…but I digress. The Great Irish Famine brought large numbers of poor, Catholic Irish into Protestant-majority cities. Their presence strained housing, jobs, and public health systems. When German Catholic and Lutheran immigrants arrived as a result of European revolution, they often formed tight-knit ethnic neighborhoods as a means for support. Some native-born Americans saw this as evidence that the foreigners were resistant to assimilation. Not to mention, folks here thought that the Catholics would be more loyal to the Pope than to the President. Newspaper editorials at the time warned that “foreign hordes” were diluting American democracy and values. Millions of humans held in chains being exploited for their labor. Polarizing politics. Speculative money booms. Newfangled technology. Mass migration straining resources and leading to societal fracture. Meanwhile, Walt Whitman was busting on some fools for getting their pictures made. I don’t know why I had it in my head that things had to be nice and quiet and peaceful for me to write. And I don’t mean just write about current news or political goings-on. I mean writing peeps like Walt. I want to write about joyful things. Good things. Funny things. Silly things. Sad things. All the small things, as Mark, Tom, and Travis taught us. Perhaps the louder the world gets, the more those small things deserve to be pointed out. I also have to confess that there is a critic in my head, personified by a choir standing on risers, that yells in individual voices so loud that it culminates in a cohesive cacophony. It’s the “but what about waffles” crowd. You know who I mean if you’re on the internet. They’re the ones who, if they see a post saying, “I love pancakes!” they will respond with, “Wow I guess that means you hate waffles. Really disappointing to see zero mention of oatmeal in this breakfast discussion, too. Seriously? Pancakes. I would think someone like you would know better.” It’s a deranged sort who, I really believe at their core, are repressed helpers. By that I mean, I can tell they want to help, but they’re doing it in an ineffectual form. The form is ineffectual because it pisses me off and I won’t listen. But all this is me trying to give them the benefit of the doubt and let them have space in my mind, when all I’d really like to say is “Hey, I hear you but also no thank you, not today, you can fuck right off.” It’s a hard line to walk. Underneath @flouryhedgehog, the aptly named @fail-boat offered its two cents: It's okay to exist in a time of historical change doing laundry, barely.And I am “doing laundry, barely,” as it were. Getting the show out every week. If you do, thank you for listening, by the way. Seriously, thank you. Sharing stories and jokes and rage and tears and giggles on the air with my best friend is the clock-winding I need. It’s the order and routine that I return to as a ballast in an ever tempestuous landscape. Doesn’t work if there’s not somebody on the other end of the headphones, though, so thanks for lending your ears. But there is another part of me, the yap-yap-yapping-so-much-that-there’s-still-more-to-say-even-after-a-million-hours-of-podcast-content writer part of me that loves sending out this newsletter. I was pretty disciplined for the Sunday Morning Hot Tea era, when my pre-COVID life hadn’t really gotten back in the full swing yet. Then I tried still doing that AND the podcast AND touring AND omg what was I thinking? I was thinking I have to do it. It’s like laundry, but way more fun. So here I am, writing, barely. I have been racking up word after word about all kinds of stuff - pop culture and personal and even some fiction. And I’m sending it out. This is the first. Hello. Thanks for reading (or listening). Thanks to @28lesbian and @flouryhedgehog and @fail-boat for making your comments. Thanks to Jackie @kindminds_smarthearts for gathering. Thanks to anybody who puts positive stuff out there because you never know who it’s going to find or when or how or how they’ll share it and how much the receiver may need it when it lands.
|
Laundry, Barely
06:02
0
