"I'm an IRS attorney...don't hang up yet!"
Listening to Beth*, Jackie, and Tommy Tomlinson
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This week in your Death, Sex & Money feed, you’ll hear from Americans who are disoriented and rethinking their relationships with government and public service. Many of the stories were sent in by fellow Death, Sex & Money listeners. Some people are federal workers or whose work relies on federal money. Like the listener we call Beth, who started her voice memo to us this way: “I’m an IRS attorney. Don’t hang up yet!”
We also hear from Jackie, a trans Army sergeant who works in IT. She was learning new information in real time about the future of her current job, her health care, and her plans to re-up for another four years.
I realize this episode is dropping into your feeds when there’s **too much** political news coming at you already. What you’ll hear, though, is different from the firehose of new headlines. We hope it’ll feel like you’re getting to overhear your fellow Americans talking over dinner with someone who isn’t afraid to ask nosy questions. (Yes, I am always a nosy dinner companion.)
My self-soothing comforts this week.
There’s a reason I try to follow narrative threads for a living. I find comfort in plotting the beginning, middle, and end of things. When I can’t see what’s coming or start to feel like data is changing too quickly for me to metabolize it all, I can get frantic.
That’s when I reach for familiar comforts. And this week, I came up with two:
1. and 2. a favorite t-shirt.
First, Tommy.
Sometimes, when I get a particular itchy feeling, I pull up old pieces of writing that have become part of my subconscious’s best-of list. Usually, they are funny/sad in tone and cut to the core of what I think life’s about. Heather Harvilesky’s essay on Zoom singing lessons is one. Another is Tommy Tomlinson’s remembrance of his brother-in-law Ed from last April, which I’ve reread many times since.
Tommy hosts the great interview podcast Southbound. I got to know Tommy’s family when I read his memoir The Elephant in the Room, and when I first read what Tommy wrote after Ed’s death, it hit me hard. Ed worked for the local public works department in his Georgia town, and even when he was off the clock, he was someone you’d call for help. He was “country strong,” Tommy writes, and also followed the plotlines of The Young and the Restless.
I really appreciated all the details Tommy shared, their extraordinary everydayness. As Tommy told me:
The kind of life he lived doesn’t get captured and told about a whole lot. Cause he wasn’t a celebrity, although he was well known in his little town. He wasn’t famous, he wasn’t rich, he wasn’t notorious. He was just a good dude.
Tommy and I talked about Ed on the Slate Plus feed this week. And, in a turn I wasn’t expecting ahead of time, we also discussed how the shock for government workers right now compares to what Tommy and other newspaper reporters of his generation faced when the essential-ness of local journalism started instead to be viewed as wasteful, unsustainable spending.
I felt buoyed by Tommy's company and the context he provided. Plus, he always makes me laugh. You can listen to our conversation here. We called it “An Ode to Public Service.”
Tommy’s very funny and deeply researched book Dogland is out now. The paperback comes in April. Look at its cover!
Second clutch comfort of the week: my favorite t-shirt.
When there’s too much shifting under my feet, I also reach for old t-shirts. I have some buried deep in the back of my drawer, including one from the summer I graduated high school.
The other day, I pulled out this one, which I bought at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum in early 2014 when I was in Nashville to record our early episode with Jason Isbell and Amanda Shires. A lot has changed since then. I discovered a few new moth holes, but the ol’ girl on the front with her lasso still makes me smile.
In other news….
I’m a local baseball fan now.
Too $hort and Green Day’s Billie Joe Armstrong have joined with other local baseball fans as investors in the new Oakland Ballers’ team, KQED reported. It’s a happy, soulful turn of events after the owner of the Oakland A’s moved the team to Las Vegas. “After the A’s left, the town was heartbroken. The Ballers are going to bring good vibes back to Oakland and the broader East Bay,” Armstrong told The Hollywood Reporter.
And our living rooms can be more adventurously decorated!
Bay Area artist Ruth Asawa’s work will be featured in a retrospective at SFMOMA starting next month. You’re probably familiar with her bulbous, organic-shaped metal sculptures, and I loved this picture of her San Francisco living room that I first saw in the SFMOMA member magazine.
I also learned that Ruth Asawa made her art while raising six kids and that she decorated the exterior of their Noe Valley home with ceramic masks made of the faces of loved ones.
Until next week,
Anna
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I loved all the bits of delight in this. Thank you.