#Clotheslines

[semioticapocalypse]

Ralph Steiner. Untitled (Clotheslines. Manhattan, New York. 1925

I Am Collective Memories   •    Follow me, — says Visual Ratatosk

[newyorkthegoldenage]

Clotheslines, 1925.

Photo: Ralph Steiner via Sotheby's

[huariqueje]

The Sea    -   Monica Rohan ,  2022.

Australian, b.1971 -

Oil on canvas, framed, 120 x 183 cm.

[nickdewolfarchive]

hong kong, 1972

corner of caine lane and po hing fong

photograph by nick dewolf https://www.flickr.com/photos/dboo/3064910420

[oldfarmhouse]

𝐧𝐚𝐭𝐮𝐫𝐚𝐥🌾𝐭𝐞𝐱𝐭𝐢𝐥𝐞𝐬

https://www.pinterest.com/

[popculturelib]

Do you ever encounter a book that changes the way you look at the world, just a little bit?

Folklife, studied alongside folklore, involve the customs and traditions of people in their everyday lives. One may not think that there could be much significance in something as mundane as clotheslines, but the washing of clothes -- especially without an electric washer and dryer -- is intrinsically full of meaning as part of a cultural practice passed on from one person to another.

As Helen Mather, the author of Clotheslines U.S.A. (1969), writes in the introduction:

One day it occurred to me that clotheslines of America, like the American buffalo, might one day become extinct. A lot of people talked about clotheslines, but nobody did anything about them. It was up to me. "It's too late already," said my friends in New York. "The big machines have eaten them up, and besides, everything's plastic." Nevertheless, I drove out across the country to see for myself. There are plenty of clotheslines left. American is still hung and strung with them. I went from the Atlantic to the Pacific and back again, twelve thousand miles, doing nothing but looking at clotheslines and talking to Americans who have their feet on the ground, their eyes squinting into the sun, and their clothes on the line.

Keep reading below for a selection of excerpts from Clotheslines U.S.A.

The Browne Popular Culture Library (BPCL), founded in 1969, is the most comprehensive archive of its kind in the United States.  Our focus and mission is to acquire and preserve research materials on American Popular Culture (post 1876) for curricular and research use. Visit our website at https://www.bgsu.edu/library/pcl.html.

[pinkblanc]

Ralph Steiner

Clotheslines, Manhattan, New York 1925

[noistheanswear]

[cozy-in-my-head-my-bed]

[philgennuso]

Clotheslines ! #NatureWednesday #Haiku/#Haiga

Photo by Phil Gennuso Arts beautiful leavesoutstretched branchesa clothesline of autumn blossoms

[thegenderienvy]

My dryer is broken so today I get to make a clothesline. It’s been ages since I’ve line-dried clothes and it takes FOREVER in florida, but I’m going to make it work!

[xe-5aj1700155-024]

im scared the sun is setting

trapped in the circle of sin

am i forever dreaming

this kind of feeling that ive started to miss

I think I saw something sick

im sleeping under the grass

i saw you in a dream and started to cry

forever distant in a place i moved by

[newyorkthegoldenage]

Around 1939 or '40 there was this lovely, ample-bosomed blonde girl who was my older brother's girlfriend. Her name was Natalie. She lived across the little side street on which we played stickball. The room that held my piano, my studio, if you will, faced her windows. We were up on the fifth floor, and Natalie was across the street on the second floor. There were a number of times in the summer when Ray, my brother, threw open the window, sat on the sill with his leg up, and Natalie would be like Juliet, except she was below, not above, at her window. The two would gaze and gesture to one another. It was quite a distance from the fifth floor to the second floor across the street, and, you know, with kids in between playing stickball, it wasn't quite the situation where they could converse. So they developed a kind of sign language. One afternoon, Ray must've been in the throes of some great wave of passion. He sat me down, literally grabbed me by the arm, and put me on the piano bench. He knew that I could play the piano version of Tchaikovsky's Romeo and Juliet. He pointed to the music and said, "Play!" Then he went and sat on the sill while I played as loudly as I could, with the appropriate feeling. I played this love music while my brother sat on the sill making these great swooping gestures as if he were sending the music out the window down across the street to Natalie's window. I was twelve or thirteen and Ray was close to eighteen at the time. I felt like Cyrano de Bergerac. A musical Cyrano de Bergerac.

     —Leon Fleisher, in Just Kids from the Bronx by Arlene Alda (ed.)

Photo: The Bronx, 1939, by Sid Grossman via MCNY

[huariqueje]

Interference   -   Monica Rohan ,  2023.

Australian, b.1971 -

oil on board ,   150 x 180 cm.  framed

[nickdewolfarchive]

hong kong, 1972

city life

photograph by nick dewolf https://www.flickr.com/photos/dboo/3064078307

[slow-burn-sally]

Growing up lower middle class in America in the late 70s to mid 90s, our dryer broke early on, and so we hung our clothes on the line all the time. It was great! We'd sometimes use our neighbor's dryer in the winter.

When I moved out of my mom's house in the early 00s, there were no places to put up a clothes line at the apartments I rented. I can't even find clothesline rope for sale anywhere. It's an old fashioned practice, and yes, common to people with less money in this country.

Ok, so something I've noticed that is utterly baffling to me is that all the Americans I know primarily dry their clothes using a machine called a dryer. I don't even own a dryer. So, I need to know: