dear trash club,

been a minute hasn't it... the newsletter had to thaw out to return to your inbox ❄︎ ❄︎ ❄︎

Is it spring we're smelling in the aftermath of these dramatic NYC snowfalls? Or is it the odor of cryogenically youthful street detritus beginning to ferment in a brine of chemical melting agents? Everything is relative, and 36 degrees feels like picnic weather after 5 degrees plus windchill. Either way, something is happening, and crocuses are beginning to push up from between the chip bags and juul pods.

We're returning to you all on the topic of repair ~ in spirit and in the form of an event this sunday.

Repair and maintenance so often exhaust us in their endlessness and take up time that we'd like to devote elsewhere. The clothes keep getting smelly, the dishes dirty, the doorknob loose, the floor crumby, the mail unsent. I (Sy) am always trying to learn to love maintenance more. As Kate's mother says, you'd better learn to love doing the dishes because you'll be doing them for the rest of your life...

Repair was a continuous practice of maintenance before our age of normalized disposability. Why repair your clothes if you can go out and buy new ones? Do you pick up the trash in front of your building? Would it feel more natural if you had a sense of security and longevity in your housing? I think what began to happen in the increasing gap between rich and poor is that convenience and disposability were advertised to us relentlessly as the answer to drudgery.
Convenience continues to be sold to us in the form of tech solutions; the offensively deceptive idea that increasing your usage of AI will "save you time." I don't know about you, trash clubber, but I have a less than zero expectation that using a petrochemical fueled large language model will increase my wages and give me more time "to myself." Instead, I think it will increase my time by myself, where convenience replaces connection and keeps us moving further and further apart.

Anyway... what I do know, is that doing maintenance and repair with other people makes drudgery into camaraderie, and camaraderie leads to community and action.

repair session at sunview this sunday

Alex and Sy will be hosting a sewing repairs day this Sunday March 1, from 2 - 6 Sewing machines and some tools and materials provided ~ bring projects to repair, patch, darn... or just come hang out and entertain us! Hope to see you then. Sorry for the short notice!

book nook

“At home I walked through a haze of belongings that knew, at least vaguely, who they belonged to. Grampa’s chair resented anyone else sitting on it as much as he did himself. Gramma’s shirts and jumpers adjusted themselves to hide her missing breast. My mother’s shoes positively vibrated with consciousness. Our toys looked out for us. There was a potato knife in the kitchen that Gramma couldn’t use. It was an ordinary enough brown-handled thing, but she’d cut herself with it once, and ever after it wanted more of her blood. If I rummaged through the kitchen drawer, I could feel it brooding. After she died, that faded. Then there were the coffee spoons, rarely used, tiny, a wedding present. They were made of silver, and they knew themselves superior to everything else and special."

― Jo Walton, Among Others

I (Kate) think about this book when I think about building relationships with the things around me. A scarf knit for a friend holds your relationship in its stitches. A pair of pants becomes yours once you've worn through the knees. You come to know rooms by exploring their corners, washing their walls, and laying down painters tape. So, a repair is a return, a relationship that you have decided is important enough to continue. BRING US YOUR PANTS. FIX THAT HOLE IN THE CROTCH. LEAVE WITH A NEW FRIEND.

until next time...

The Dispatch is in season again. Would you like to contribute? Send us anything at all, repairs, media, words, street pics, discarded objects you've adopted, events, queries...? Send us an email and be in the next edition!

xoxo,

trash club

this week's newsletter compiled by slammer and kate