newyorker--2020-05-15--How We Became Infected by Chain E-Mail

How We Became Infected by Chain E-Mail

God only knows when it began , but I can tell you this : it is never going to end .
I don ’ t mean the pandemic , the origins of which are more or less clear , temporally if not yet biologically , and I don ’ t mean our great national hunkering-down , which hadn ’ t even started back on the Groundhog Day it now so resembles .
I mean a minor , unexpected , and vexing byproduct of them both : the feel-good chain e-mail , some version of which you have almost certainly received @ @ @ @ @ @ @ home .
Friends !
I know these are trying times , so , in the interest of bringing a little joy into all of our lives , I ’ m inviting you to join in sharing a beloved poem/recipe/Bible verse/inspiring quote/home workout/elephant joke/photo of yourself in your favorite Renaissance Faire outfit/drawing of a cat in a litter box .
This is meant to be FUN !
, so please don ’ t spend too much time on it .
It shouldn ’ t take more than fifty hours of wondering how to graciously @ @ @ @ @ @ @ hours of ignoring it followed by six hours of obsessively refining your recipe for microwave chocolate-chip cheesecake in a mug .
When you ’ re done , simply add your name to the seventh empty slot below , copy and paste this note into a new e-mail , move my name to the third slot above your own , hit “ reply all ” to send your response to the non-blind-carbon-copied strangers on this note , then forward it to twenty friends you never want to speak to again .
I am being @ @ @ @ @ @ @ are trying times , and , assuming you steer clear of pyramid schemes , I can think of no good reason , if it makes you feel even the slightest bit better , to discourage you from sending Joyce Kilmer or Psalm 91 or Chicken Surprise winging around the Internet .
I can , however , think of a very good reason to discourage you from sending any of those things to me , which is that your Great Chain of Being E-mailed will promptly rupture .
In every one of these that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ are numerous , I am the weak link , by which I mean I am the intransigent link .
The issue is not that I am an introvert , liable to feel invaded by what one astute commentator called , in describing these e-mails , “ social homework.
” Nor am I temporarily running a third- , fifth- , and eighth-grade classroom out of my kitchen while simultaneously running a legal-aid office out of my bedroom .
As a childless magazine writer whose peaceful rural home makes a quarantine look basically indistinguishable from @ @ @ @ @ @ @ excuse of being too overburdened to rummage through my cookbooks .
But am I going to send you my favorite soufflé recipe ?
I am not .
There is a scene in “ The Sopranos ” ( I can tell you this because , in a rare welcome side effect of stay-at-home orders , I finally got around to watching it ) in which , following the death of Tony Soprano ’ s mother , his sister tries to convince everyone gathered for the memorial service to share a special memory of the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of organized emoting is that it is wildly at odds with the funerary traditions of Italian-Catholic mobsters .
Another is that the late Mrs .
Soprano was so manipulative , embittered , narcissistic , and homicidal as to render her entirely eulogy-proof .
But the chief problem is that Tony ’ s sister , being similarly manipulative and murderous , is incapable of proposing the idea without coming across as equal parts deranged , disingenuous , and smarmy , like Madame Defarge doing a turn as a camp counsellor .
Watching the scene @ @ @ @ @ @ @ studiously examine their freshly shined loafers , I felt a combination of vicarious horror and dismayed recognition .
This was a month or so ago , and already it felt strikingly familiar : a bunch of people who don ’ t want to participate in something but also don ’ t want to express their real feelings about it , given the prevailing atmosphere of solemnity , solidarity , and grief .
All this is to say that there are few things in life more irritating than coerced participation in an allegedly uplifting @ @ @ @ @ @ @ between that and just being a good sport can be a fine one , and it is drawn in different places by different people .
The family dinner where , guest or not , everyone at the table is expected to join hands in prayer before tucking into the pot roast ?
To my mind , perfectly acceptable .
The corporate retreat where everyone is expected to take part in restorative breathing exercises before the budget meeting ?
Unforgivable .
You may have the opposite feeling .
Because of these differences in opinion @ @ @ @ @ @ @ about feel-good chain e-mails—to claim that whether they are a wholesome stress-reliever or a demanding intrusion is simply a matter of taste .
But that is not quite true .
I love taste .
It is infinitely branching , endlessly interesting , and , all told , one of the most delightful and comic realms of human existence .
But the thing about taste is that , although we all absorb some of it from outside influences , it is , by definition , a private matter—which is exactly what it ceases to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ someone else .
That is the problem with the chain e-mail .
Other people ’ s vinyl recliners do not show up in your living room and require you to sit on them .
The defining feature of chain e-mails , in other words , is that , unlike taste , everybody is obliged to share them , in every sense : endorse them , participate in them , send them along to others .
For those of us who are disinclined to do so , that makes them—beneath their banal , formulaic @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s not just that they are a pain in the neck .
It ’ s that they are designed to make you seem like a pain in the neck , a feat they achieve by falling somewhat short of being actually horrible : because they are basically well-intentioned and , in the scheme of things , basically inoffensive , it is impossible to criticize them without seeming mean-spirited , especially in these dire times .
Which is a problem , because it is precisely in these dire times that the feel-good chain letter @ @ @ @ @ @ @ only before the coronavirus but before SARS and before MERS and before a quarter of the world ’ s current population was even born , has suddenly come back to haunt us .
When the chain e-mail itself was born is , as I said , a matter of some mystery .
To an unimpressed recipient , it may seem like the regrettable offspring of multilevel marketing and the four-page family holiday letter , but in fact its roots are much older than both of those .
One person who has tried to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ W. VanArsdale , the curator of an archive of more than nine hundred chain letters and author of a digital publication called Chain Letter Evolution .
VanArsdale traces the form back more than a thousand years , to early religious texts that include demands for their own reproduction and promises of good fortune or eternal salvation to those who comply .
But it took many centuries , plus the rise of printing technologies , widespread literacy , and international mail , for the chain letter to assume its modern form .

God only knows when it began, but I can tell you this: it is never going to end. I don’t mean the pandemic, the origins of which are more or less clear, temporally if not yet biologically, and I don’t mean our great national hunkering-down, which hadn’t even started back on the Groundhog Day it now so resembles. I mean a minor, unexpected, and vexing byproduct of them both: the feel-good chain e-mail, some version of which you have almost certainly received since you’ve been stuck at home. Friends! I know these are trying times, so, in the interest of bringing a little joy into all of our lives, I’m inviting you to join in sharing a beloved poem/recipe/Bible verse/inspiring quote/home workout/elephant joke/photo of yourself in your favorite Renaissance Faire outfit/drawing of a cat in a litter box. This is meant to be FUN!, so please don’t spend too much time on it. It shouldn’t take more than fifty hours of wondering how to graciously decline this request followed by another thirty hours of ignoring it followed by six hours of obsessively refining your recipe for microwave chocolate-chip cheesecake in a mug. When you’re done, simply add your name to the seventh empty slot below, copy and paste this note into a new e-mail, move my name to the third slot above your own, hit “reply all” to send your response to the non-blind-carbon-copied strangers on this note, then forward it to twenty friends you never want to speak to again.
I am being, perhaps, overly harsh. These are trying times, and, assuming you steer clear of pyramid schemes, I can think of no good reason, if it makes you feel even the slightest bit better, to discourage you from sending Joyce Kilmer or Psalm 91 or Chicken Surprise winging around the Internet. I can, however, think of a very good reason to discourage you from sending any of those things to me, which is that your Great Chain of Being E-mailed will promptly rupture. In every one of these that I have ever received, and they are numerous, I am the weak link, by which I mean I am the intransigent link. The issue is not that I am an introvert, liable to feel invaded by what one astute commentator called, in describing these e-mails, “social homework.” Nor am I temporarily running a third-, fifth-, and eighth-grade classroom out of my kitchen while simultaneously running a legal-aid office out of my bedroom. As a childless magazine writer whose peaceful rural home makes a quarantine look basically indistinguishable from Yaddo, I do not have the excuse of being too overburdened to rummage through my cookbooks.
But am I going to send you my favorite soufflé recipe? I am not. There is a scene in “The Sopranos” (I can tell you this because, in a rare welcome side effect of stay-at-home orders, I finally got around to watching it) in which, following the death of Tony Soprano’s mother, his sister tries to convince everyone gathered for the memorial service to share a special memory of the deceased. One problem with this kind of organized emoting is that it is wildly at odds with the funerary traditions of Italian-Catholic mobsters. Another is that the late Mrs. Soprano was so manipulative, embittered, narcissistic, and homicidal as to render her entirely eulogy-proof. But the chief problem is that Tony’s sister, being similarly manipulative and murderous, is incapable of proposing the idea without coming across as equal parts deranged, disingenuous, and smarmy, like Madame Defarge doing a turn as a camp counsellor. Watching the scene, in which all the other mourners studiously examine their freshly shined loafers, I felt a combination of vicarious horror and dismayed recognition. This was a month or so ago, and already it felt strikingly familiar: a bunch of people who don’t want to participate in something but also don’t want to express their real feelings about it, given the prevailing atmosphere of solemnity, solidarity, and grief.
All this is to say that there are few things in life more irritating than coerced participation in an allegedly uplifting group activity. Granted, the line between that and just being a good sport can be a fine one, and it is drawn in different places by different people. The family dinner where, guest or not, everyone at the table is expected to join hands in prayer before tucking into the pot roast? To my mind, perfectly acceptable. The corporate retreat where everyone is expected to take part in restorative breathing exercises before the budget meeting? Unforgivable. You may have the opposite feeling. Because of these differences in opinion, it is possible to play neutral about feel-good chain e-mails—to claim that whether they are a wholesome stress-reliever or a demanding intrusion is simply a matter of taste. But that is not quite true. I love taste. It is infinitely branching, endlessly interesting, and, all told, one of the most delightful and comic realms of human existence. But the thing about taste is that, although we all absorb some of it from outside influences, it is, by definition, a private matter—which is exactly what it ceases to be the moment you foist it on someone else. That is the problem with the chain e-mail. Other people’s vinyl recliners do not show up in your living room and require you to sit on them.
The defining feature of chain e-mails, in other words, is that, unlike taste, everybody is obliged to share them, in every sense: endorse them, participate in them, send them along to others. For those of us who are disinclined to do so, that makes them—beneath their banal, formulaic, exclamation-mark-heavy prose—precision-engineered traps. It’s not just that they are a pain in the neck. It’s that they are designed to make you seem like a pain in the neck, a feat they achieve by falling somewhat short of being actually horrible: because they are basically well-intentioned and, in the scheme of things, basically inoffensive, it is impossible to criticize them without seeming mean-spirited, especially in these dire times. Which is a problem, because it is precisely in these dire times that the feel-good chain letter, which had its last recrudesce not only before the coronavirus but before SARS and before MERS and before a quarter of the world’s current population was even born, has suddenly come back to haunt us.
When the chain e-mail itself was born is, as I said, a matter of some mystery. To an unimpressed recipient, it may seem like the regrettable offspring of multilevel marketing and the four-page family holiday letter, but in fact its roots are much older than both of those. One person who has tried to unearth those origins is the folklorist Daniel W. VanArsdale, the curator of an archive of more than nine hundred chain letters and author of a digital publication called Chain Letter Evolution. VanArsdale traces the form back more than a thousand years, to early religious texts that include demands for their own reproduction and promises of good fortune or eternal salvation to those who comply. But it took many centuries, plus the rise of printing technologies, widespread literacy, and international mail, for the chain letter to assume its modern form.
Here is a representative specimen, also in the religious vein, that appears to have originated in Massachusetts in 1951:
We are making a novena to Our Lady of Fatima. It is not much and requires little time. Just one Our Father each day for nine days. It is the first one started and is going around the world. . . . Make nine copies of this letter and send them to nine different persons before the fourth day after receiving this letter. . . . The fourth day after sending this, a favor will come to you.
That is the contemporary chain letter distilled down to its mathematical essence: do x thing (it’s easy and won’t take much time), make y number of copies, send them out within z days, and something good will befall you within n period of time. (With its fanatical emphasis on numbers, protocols, and timing, the chain letter has more in common with astrology, witchcraft, and voodoo than with any mainline religion.) This particular example departs in only two ways from the standard formula. First, it is more modest than the majority of its kin, in that it merely proposes to circumnavigate the world, while most others claim to have already done so, often multiple times. Second, it lacks a threat, even though chain letters traditionally menace their recipients: not only will good luck come to you if you send it along but terrible things await you if you do not. From one such letter that began sometime around 1939:
Mrs. Gay Field received $5000, five hours after mailing.
Mrs. Ambrose received $4000, four hours after mailing.
Mr. Nevin broke the chain and lost everything he had.
That reads like the juvenilia of Edward Gorey (who was, as it happens, fourteen years old at the time), and it is representative: almost all the threats in chain letters operate in this vein of comic gloom. Mr. Wilcox failed to take the enclosed request seriously and his house was destroyed; Antonio Martinez had his secretary type it up but forgot to mail the copies and promptly lost his job; Detective Segundo B. Villanueva laughed at this note and “met instantaneous death in an accident.”
Threat, testimonial, quota, deadline: within these broadly shared constraints, chain letters vary widely and have changed considerably over time. VanArsdale’s own view of them is para-biological; not by accident is his treatise called Chain Letter Evolution. By his count, there are more than four thousand known generations of chain letters, which collectively contain a great many “mutations” that have caused certain prototypes to thrive while others fade away. Thus, the addition of “Send no money” at the bottom of one might increase its circulation, as might swapping a more ominous threat for a more imploring one: in place of instant death, “Please, I beg of you, for your soul and mine, don’t take the risk. If you have the slightest doubt, obey the instructions.” Other changes are effectively spandrels, variations that are neither beneficial nor advantageous but that can still be fascinating: a man who declined to answer a chain letter starts out losing his life and ends up losing his wife. (That kind of change all but vanished with the advent of e-mail chains, which eradicated the need for hand-copying and the inevitable errors that came with it.)
Subject to the evolutionary forces of mutation and competition, the chain e-mail, like beetles and finches, gradually evolved over time, until its basic template diversified into a wide range of sub-varieties. Some remained essentially religious. Some offered a secularized promise of protection from bad luck. Some claimed to raise funds for charitable causes, while others, less altruistic, promised a large sum of money in exchange for a small one upfront. Some claimed to be trying to set a new world record for the longest unbroken chain. Some advocated for one or another political cause (the end of Prohibition, the election of Wendell Willkie, nuclear disarmament). Others—the most direct antecedent of today’s feel-good chain e-mail—asked participants to send along an easily shared object: stamps, aprons, postcards, quilt squares, handkerchiefs, tea towels, T-shirts, earrings, paperback books, children’s books, dog toys, grocery coupons, “new panties.” Still others, perennially popular among schoolgirls, promised romantic fulfillment:


newyorker--2020-05-16--I Got Another “Failed Delivery Attempt” from the Stork Delivering My Baby

I am expecting a delivery , and even though I know I should be patient I can ’ t help but fume .
The stork that was supposed to drop off my baby left another  “ Sorry we missed you !
 ” slip on my front door , and now I have to stay home again tomorrow to wait for it !
This happens truly every time the stork tries to deliver a baby to my Brooklyn brownstone .
For instance , my last child , Julia , the light of my life , was almost sent back @ @ @ @ @ @ @ many failed drop-off attempts .
I remember the third time the stork came , I left a note on my door with unmistakably clear instructions .
I provided my work and cell numbers .
I even drew a picture of the stork using the building intercom , in case he couldn ’ t read .
But guess what ?
The stork ignored all of that .
At 5:18 P.M. , despite having sat around waiting the whole day , I get this text message : Are you kidding me ?
I was waiting @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , I know it ’ s not easy being the lone bird responsible for delivering all of the world ’ s babies wrapped in little cloth bundles , but , my God , is he not accountable to anyone ?
The stork has my newborn and yesterday he apparently flew by my building but “ could not find a secure location ” to deposit it .
Instead , the stork left a message to “ go online to www.UnitedStorkService.com/redelivery to request a redelivery.
” Of course , after an hour of dealing with @ @ @ @ @ @ @ calling the support line , and it was the worst experience of my life .
You wait for hours on hold , and then the employee that finally answers you is totally unhelpful : “ Hi !
I was supposed to get a baby today but it didn ’ t come.
” “ Says here there was an attempted delivery at 2:04 P.M. ” “ What ?
!
I was home at 2:04 P.M. !
Is he still around ?
Can I catch him ?
” “ Unfortunately , Sir , because the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ has a giant wingspan , and is already in another state.
” You may think I ’ m exaggerating , but seriously .
Take a look at this tracking information and tell me it ’ s not confusing : I know what you ’ re going to say : “ Why don ’ t you just have your child delivered to your office , or to a friend ’ s place ?
” But it ’ s the principle of the thing !
My wife wants a home birth ( we don ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the subway ) , and honestly we shouldn ’ t have to compromise on that if we paid for expedited shipping .
At the end of the day , I don ’ t even know why I ’ m writing this customer-support e-mail since the stork is never going to read it .
But I want you all to know—one more botched attempt and I ’ m switching to Amazon .
I hate myself for saying it , but Jeff Bezos would fly my baby here , same-day , with a ton of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ me cancel my order , stork .
Just buzz Apartment 3 and deliver my damn baby !

I am expecting a delivery, and even though I know I should be patient I can’t help but fume. The stork that was supposed to drop off my baby left another “Sorry we missed you!” slip on my front door, and now I have to stay home again tomorrow to wait for it!
This happens truly every time the stork tries to deliver a baby to my Brooklyn brownstone. For instance, my last child, Julia, the light of my life, was almost sent back to the warehouse because there were so many failed drop-off attempts. I remember the third time the stork came, I left a note on my door with unmistakably clear instructions. I provided my work and cell numbers. I even drew a picture of the stork using the building intercom, in case he couldn’t read. But guess what? The stork ignored all of that. At 5:18 P.M., despite having sat around waiting the whole day, I get this text message:
“STORK LE001494316CA, Notice Left—SIGNATURE REQUIRED 05/13/2020”
Are you kidding me? I was waiting! I could have signed! Look, I know it’s not easy being the lone bird responsible for delivering all of the world’s babies wrapped in little cloth bundles, but, my God, is he not accountable to anyone? The stork has my newborn and yesterday he apparently flew by my building but “could not find a secure location” to deposit it. Instead, the stork left a message to “go online to www.UnitedStorkService.com/redelivery to request a redelivery.” Of course, after an hour of dealing with their excruciatingly clunky home page I tried calling the support line, and it was the worst experience of my life. You wait for hours on hold, and then the employee that finally answers you is totally unhelpful:
“Hi! I was supposed to get a baby today but it didn’t come.”
“Says here there was an attempted delivery at 2:04 P.M.”
“What?! I was home at 2:04 P.M.! Is he still around? Can I catch him?”
“Unfortunately, Sir, because the stork is a large bird, he has a giant wingspan, and is already in another state.”
Freaking typical.
You may think I’m exaggerating, but seriously. Take a look at this tracking information and tell me it’s not confusing:
Tuesday, May 12, 2020, 12:00 P.M., BROOKLYN, NY, Redelivery Scheduled
Monday, May 11, 2020, 6:03 P.M., BROOKLYN, NY, Notice Left (No Secure Location Available)
Monday, May 11, 2020, 5:08 P.M., BROOKLYN, NY, Out for Delivery
Monday, May 11, 2020, 6:10 A.M., BROOKLYN, NY, Baby Placed in Delivery Bassinet
Saturday, May 9, 2020, 4:37 P.M., BROOKLYN, NY, DISTRIBUTION CENTER, Arrived at Stork Regional Destination Facility
SQUAWK, 1:12 P.M., SQUAWK, SQUAWK, SQUAWK
Friday, May 8, 2020, 8:31 A.M., Stork Nest, Child Born
I know what you’re going to say: “Why don’t you just have your child delivered to your office, or to a friend’s place?” But it’s the principle of the thing! My wife wants a home birth (we don’t want to lug the baby on the subway), and honestly we shouldn’t have to compromise on that if we paid for expedited shipping.
At the end of the day, I don’t even know why I’m writing this customer-support e-mail since the stork is never going to read it. But I want you all to know—one more botched attempt and I’m switching to Amazon. I hate myself for saying it, but Jeff Bezos would fly my baby here, same-day, with a ton of diaper padding.
Don’t make me cancel my order, stork. Just buzz Apartment 3 and deliver my damn baby!


newyorker--2020-05-16--The Riddle of Solitude in the Age of the Coronavirus

For six weeks during the late winter of 1989 , I had a cabin in the woods to call my own .
It stood in a small clearing just off a muddy road : one room that contained almost all a writer needed then—a scratched table in front of a window , a rocking chair beside a fireplace , a bookcase , a dictionary , a thesaurus , a teakettle .
I ’ d arrived at the MacDowell Colony , an artists ’ residency in Peterborough , New Hampshire , which had been supporting writers , composers , painters , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , there were about fifteen of us in cabins scattered through the woods .
We could visit each other—the kettle came with two cups—but not without an expressed invitation .
Solitude had its rules .
Most days , I kept to myself .
Each evening , I walked half a mile to our communal dinner , the quiet magnifying every sound : the door shutting behind me , my footfalls crunching on the frozen road .
One of the things I loved was the sense of safety I felt in the darkening woods @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
I scanned the sky for Venus and the first glimmerings of Orion .
Often , my work still filled my head and , as I emerged from the pines into the open field and saw the bright lights of the dining room in the distance , I felt as if I had to break through a pane of glass to join in .
Even so , I loved the intimacy of that meal with others .
I ’ d quickly learned to identify one novelist ’ s laugh , and to expect @ @ @ @ @ @ @ woodsmoke .
We gossiped and swapped stories , etching rumor into myth : the woman who had chained herself to her desk in a desperate attempt to stay , a man who fled the quiet—or maybe the trees ?
Looking back now , I marvel at how quickly a feeling of community took hold , abetted , I ’ m guessing , by our common purpose , our separateness from our usual lives , and the solitude of our days .
Residencies like MacDowell are often described as “ retreats , ” which @ @ @ @ @ @ @ or a withdrawal .
But those six weeks meant far more to me .
I was in my early thirties , and just beginning my serious attempts at writing , working in snatched time in the hours before my day jobs in bookstores and commercial kitchens .
The quiet and solitude of my time at MacDowell was an inquiry into a life I wanted to lead , and a challenge .
What was I going to do with all that time and space ?
Since then , in many ways , I ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the possibilities I discovered in that cabin , to carve out a world for thought , spending most of each day working in a quiet I built for myself .
I came to feel at home in my solitude , having made peace with the way it isn ’ t predictably stable—with how I ’ d sometimes slip into it easily , at other times pacing in it , stalked by a restlessness that took effort to shake .
I could anticipate its changing textures : the welcome intensity of it after coming @ @ @ @ @ @ @ its starkness after the departure of a friend .
I live in a modest-sized Maine town and , when our library closed , back in mid-March , I began to isolate myself in earnest .
At first , daily life didn ’ t feel all that different to me .
The outside world was just a little quieter , muffled as though it were a Sunday in deep winter .
I settled into work as usual , and even welcomed the greater stillness , which seemed to enlarge the sense of spaciousness in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ unfolded , and the days became more and more freighted with the unknown , the solitude I ’ d worked so long to establish began to feel threatened by something I can ’ t quite name .
I began to realize just how much my solitude had existed within a larger web that I could see and hear and feel .
Now , as I go through the familiar motions of routine in an altered world , I find myself conscious of absences , especially of the sounds that filtered in behind me @ @ @ @ @ @ @ their dogs , children chattering on their way to the school at the end of the street—which marked the patterns of other people ’ s days , and defined my life , too .
This new solitude feels lean and hard .
As I move deeper into it , I worry that it will replace all the subtle textures of the solitude into which I ’ ve grown over the last thirty years .
And , hard as it is , I ’ m not sure where its borders lie .
What is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ must be endured , what can ’ t be endured .
When it might end .
Back in late March , once the snow melted away , I put out two lawn chairs , six feet apart , thinking that I ’ d have a friend over now and again ; they could bring their own tea in a thermos , I thought , or a beer .
But after a few weeks , as the daffodils began to show a little color , that didn ’ t seem like such a good @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the gap in the chairs , just to look out on something resembling the normal spring in my yard .
Several days ago , dreaming of change , I spaced them apart again .
Before I went to MacDowell , my hopes about writing felt like a secret .
I ’ d published a handful of poems in literary journals ; if I ’ d stopped writing , few would have cared , and my parents would have been relieved .
I was living outside of Boston with housemates , I was scrambling @ @ @ @ @ @ @ dream of solitude was a simple one , naïve : I just wanted to be left alone to write .
To have the time .
In the quiet and space of that cabin in the woods , I got a glimpse of what a writing life would ask of me .
As the days went on , I began feeling more ambitious for my work .
I had time to try new ideas , to make mistakes and muddle things up .
I spent untold hours nosing around , guessing , reading , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ with waste and second thoughts .
I ’ m not sure anymore how much I actually accomplished—it would take another four or five years for me to finish my first book—but I still remember the tenor of those hours , all my own .
The spare space grew increasingly intimate and personal , even though I had brought so little with me : a bag of clothes , a box of books , a radio , my typewriter .
I can still hear the tapping , and feel the pressure of my fingers @ @ @ @ @ @ @ with restlessness , I walked in the woods or turned on the radio and let unfamiliar voices in .
That world quickly came to feel like my real life , and on the last day of my residency , as I slowly packed up my things , returning the studio to its blank possibility , I was stunned by how quickly all sense of my presence dissipated .
Driving home , spring advanced as I made my way south .
Winter trees reddened ; moss was bright on the stone walls .
It @ @ @ @ @ @ @ two hours , I had travelled through an entire season , and the world I returned to seemed cluttered with what I ’ d left behind .
I certainly wasn ’ t much good in the kitchen on my first days back at work , and I knew the few hours I had to write were no longer going to be enough .

For six weeks during the late winter of 1989, I had a cabin in the woods to call my own. It stood in a small clearing just off a muddy road: one room that contained almost all a writer needed then—a scratched table in front of a window, a rocking chair beside a fireplace, a bookcase, a dictionary, a thesaurus, a teakettle. I’d arrived at the MacDowell Colony, an artists’ residency in Peterborough, New Hampshire, which had been supporting writers, composers, painters, and sculptors since 1906. That winter, there were about fifteen of us in cabins scattered through the woods. We could visit each other—the kettle came with two cups—but not without an expressed invitation. Solitude had its rules. Most days, I kept to myself.
Each evening, I walked half a mile to our communal dinner, the quiet magnifying every sound: the door shutting behind me, my footfalls crunching on the frozen road. One of the things I loved was the sense of safety I felt in the darkening woods. I kept track of the moon. I scanned the sky for Venus and the first glimmerings of Orion. Often, my work still filled my head and, as I emerged from the pines into the open field and saw the bright lights of the dining room in the distance, I felt as if I had to break through a pane of glass to join in. Even so, I loved the intimacy of that meal with others. I’d quickly learned to identify one novelist’s laugh, and to expect a certain painter’s smell of woodsmoke. We gossiped and swapped stories, etching rumor into myth: the woman who had chained herself to her desk in a desperate attempt to stay, a man who fled the quiet—or maybe the trees? Looking back now, I marvel at how quickly a feeling of community took hold, abetted, I’m guessing, by our common purpose, our separateness from our usual lives, and the solitude of our days.
Residencies like MacDowell are often described as “retreats,” which implies a welcome escape from life, or a withdrawal. But those six weeks meant far more to me. I was in my early thirties, and just beginning my serious attempts at writing, working in snatched time in the hours before my day jobs in bookstores and commercial kitchens. The quiet and solitude of my time at MacDowell was an inquiry into a life I wanted to lead, and a challenge. What was I going to do with all that time and space? Since then, in many ways, I’ve sought to build my life around the possibilities I discovered in that cabin, to carve out a world for thought, spending most of each day working in a quiet I built for myself. I came to feel at home in my solitude, having made peace with the way it isn’t predictably stable—with how I’d sometimes slip into it easily, at other times pacing in it, stalked by a restlessness that took effort to shake. I could anticipate its changing textures: the welcome intensity of it after coming home from a day of obligations, its starkness after the departure of a friend.
I live in a modest-sized Maine town and, when our library closed, back in mid-March, I began to isolate myself in earnest. At first, daily life didn’t feel all that different to me. The outside world was just a little quieter, muffled as though it were a Sunday in deep winter. I settled into work as usual, and even welcomed the greater stillness, which seemed to enlarge the sense of spaciousness in my home. But as the pandemic unfolded, and the days became more and more freighted with the unknown, the solitude I’d worked so long to establish began to feel threatened by something I can’t quite name. I began to realize just how much my solitude had existed within a larger web that I could see and hear and feel. Now, as I go through the familiar motions of routine in an altered world, I find myself conscious of absences, especially of the sounds that filtered in behind me as I worked—morning traffic, neighbors walking their dogs, children chattering on their way to the school at the end of the street—which marked the patterns of other people’s days, and defined my life, too.
This new solitude feels lean and hard. As I move deeper into it, I worry that it will replace all the subtle textures of the solitude into which I’ve grown over the last thirty years. And, hard as it is, I’m not sure where its borders lie. What is prudent and what is foolish. What must be endured, what can’t be endured. When it might end. Back in late March, once the snow melted away, I put out two lawn chairs, six feet apart, thinking that I’d have a friend over now and again; they could bring their own tea in a thermos, I thought, or a beer. But after a few weeks, as the daffodils began to show a little color, that didn’t seem like such a good idea. So, I closed up the gap in the chairs, just to look out on something resembling the normal spring in my yard. Several days ago, dreaming of change, I spaced them apart again.
Before I went to MacDowell, my hopes about writing felt like a secret. I’d published a handful of poems in literary journals; if I’d stopped writing, few would have cared, and my parents would have been relieved. I was living outside of Boston with housemates, I was scrambling just to pay the rent. My dream of solitude was a simple one, naïve: I just wanted to be left alone to write. To have the time. In the quiet and space of that cabin in the woods, I got a glimpse of what a writing life would ask of me. As the days went on, I began feeling more ambitious for my work. I had time to try new ideas, to make mistakes and muddle things up. I spent untold hours nosing around, guessing, reading, trying to discern shape, making peace with waste and second thoughts. I’m not sure anymore how much I actually accomplished—it would take another four or five years for me to finish my first book—but I still remember the tenor of those hours, all my own. The spare space grew increasingly intimate and personal, even though I had brought so little with me: a bag of clothes, a box of books, a radio, my typewriter. I can still hear the tapping, and feel the pressure of my fingers on its keys. When I struggled with restlessness, I walked in the woods or turned on the radio and let unfamiliar voices in.
That world quickly came to feel like my real life, and on the last day of my residency, as I slowly packed up my things, returning the studio to its blank possibility, I was stunned by how quickly all sense of my presence dissipated. Driving home, spring advanced as I made my way south. Winter trees reddened; moss was bright on the stone walls. It was as though, in less than two hours, I had travelled through an entire season, and the world I returned to seemed cluttered with what I’d left behind. I certainly wasn’t much good in the kitchen on my first days back at work, and I knew the few hours I had to write were no longer going to be enough.
In all the years since, as I have moved from the city back to my family’s farm in the Merrimack Valley of Massachusetts, and then to the coast of Maine, that search for the time and solitude to work has been a major consideration in each decision I’ve made about where and how to live. Early on, I sometimes cloaked that even from those close to me. When I returned to the farm, I told people that I needed to help my father keep things going; he was getting old. But, really, it was just as much about having the quiet winters to write. We grew tomatoes, corn, squash, apples, beans, and the first hard frost pretty much ended our season. I had a small house of my own, with a wooden desk at a window, first overlooking one old Baldwin tree, and then an entire orchard. In time, years after my father’s death, I moved north, to new desks and new views: a narrow cove, a tidal river, and now my back yard in the heart of town. At times, I’ve questioned whether my search has also been an attempt at an escape. Or if my desire has limited my life.
This is an old worry when it comes to solitude. In the twelfth century, William of Saint-Thierry, an abbot and theologian at the monastery of Mont-Dieu, in France, wrote a letter to his novices: “You have one cell outwardly, another within you. The outward cell is the house in which your soul dwells together with your body; the inner cell is your conscience.” He urged the novices, “Love your inner cell then, love your outward cell too, and give to each of them the care which belongs to it. Let the outward cell shelter you, not hide you away.”
How do you determine the border between hiding and shelter? What does it look like? Is it ever stable? I used to feel I needed a dedicated room to work in, but now I write at a table just off my kitchen, the same table where I share tea or dinner or lunch with friends. I take particular pleasure in clearing off the stacks of books and setting it for dinner, and then, after the last glasses are washed, bringing the books back again.
I’ve always loved walking in the woods. These days, though, I prefer to stay close to home, to wander through the neighborhood among our old clapboard houses, sturdy on their own lots—the place I’ve taken for granted for fifteen years. Maybe I’m hoping to understand more about all the changes the pandemic has brought, both expected and strange. Some days I head to the nearly shuttered downtown, and walk among the red brick and plate glass of other centuries. I peer into darkened restaurants, where some of the tables are set. I cross the railroad tracks where the Boston train no longer runs, past the library with its books locked away. In the abeyance of the human, I notice where turkey vultures roost, the layers of birdsong in the dawn, the fox’s tracks in the mud. Sometimes I swear there’s salt on the wind coming in from the bay.
Even as our lives have retreated, I take solace in the new intimacy that has arisen on my street. This is true in many places: almost everyone acknowledges one another in passing, even at great distances. I’ve talked through doors, across yards of asphalt, over a maple limb downed by a storm. Every day, as always, after I finish breakfast and the cats settle in their beds, I tap on my computer. I’m grateful when my old life can carry on—for those days when, after a quick gloss of the news, I can will myself to turn to my writing. Yet this solitude feels more like hiding than shelter. I can’t remember the last time someone walked through my door. And recently I learned that the MacDowell Colony has shuttered its residency program for the time being, while we wait for the mysteries of these days to unfold.
It may be that we will always live with a vestige of mystery. My father was eight years old in 1918, and all his life he held one crystalline memory of the flu epidemic, which struck the Merrimack Valley at the end of that summer. On the farm of his childhood, nights were lit at best with kerosene, and his entire horizon would have been darker than the night sky. But one evening, when he looked eastward, across five miles of dairy holdings toward the mill city of Lawrence, he saw the horizon blazing with light. Lawrence then was known as “the Immigrant City,” dense with tenements, crammed with people speaking dozens of languages, women sharing ladles and wooden spoons through their windows. The flu raged right through. My father was seeing the night flare with the lights of the tent hospital that the city had erected on its highest hill, and to which ambulances were bringing the suffering. Many were cared for in a language they didn’t understand. Day and night, hearses carried the dead away. “We knew it was serious,” he told me, “but we didn’t know how serious.”
A Guide to the Coronavirus


newyorker--2020-05-16--Taking My Place at My Father’s Grocery Store During the Coronavirus Pandemic

When I come home from work each night , my husband greets me with a bottle of isopropyl alcohol .
Holding me at arm ’ s length , he sprays me down with a solution .
Then I remove my work clothes and shove them in the closet .
I scrub my hands in the sink for twenty seconds with soap .
I gargle a disposable cup ’ s worth of warm salt water , trying not to think of the pathogens that might be lingering in my tonsils and my throat .
I don ’ t know whether gargling @ @ @ @ @ @ @ do it anyway .
While I step into a scalding shower , my husband sprays my bag , keys , watch , phone , thermos , and wedding ring .
Romantic gestures in these times take all forms .
I ’ m not a doctor or nurse ; I ’ m a novelist and creative-writing professor whose parents own a grocery store in New York City .
For the past two months , I ’ ve gone back to the summertime job that I ’ d had growing up—cashiering , bagging groceries , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ essential worker ” during the Covid-19 pandemic .
Our mom-and-pop store , which is in a residential part of Brooklyn , is a full-service supermarket with a meat department and deli .
When my parents started the business , almost forty years ago , the neighborhood was blue-collar , near a housing project .
The projects remain , but , like much of Brooklyn , the whole area has gentrified immensely .
Bags of Goya Spanish rice nestle beside Manischewitz matzo meal and free-range organic chicken-bone broth .
Customers pay with everything @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to Apple Pay .
On the day that the coronavirus was declared a global pandemic , I was a writer-in-residence at the Mount , Edith Wharton ’ s home in the Berkshires .
( When Wharton wrote about social distancing a century ago—poor Countess Olenska !
—I hardly think our present reality is what she had in mind . )
Before leaving for my residency , my main fear of the coronavirus had been the racist attacks that my friends , family , and I received as Asian-Americans .
In early March , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , motherfucker !
” at me as I descended into the subway .
During my inadvertent quasi-quarantine in Massachusetts , I was oblivious to the needs at home .
My father reassured me that things were fine , and that I should finish out my residency .
Viewed from this safe remove , New York ’ s shelter-in-place order seemed to be an Insta-blur of funfetti-cupcake breakfasts , back-yard barbecues , and before-and-after pics of sourdough-bread starters .
On the drive back to New York , the staticky news stations came into crisper @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , the world had changed .
Governor Andrew Cuomo was restricting all nonessential businesses and imploring everyone to stay home .
Under the new state order , grocery stores were deemed one of the few essential businesses allowed to remain open .
Our neighborhood would depend on us—I think I can say this without exaggeration—to stay alive .
The next day , I went to work .
My father is high-risk : he is in his mid-seventies , and almost died of undetected Lyme disease a few years ago .
He reluctantly switched @ @ @ @ @ @ @ be busier than ever .
After a fitful night of sleep , I set the kettle to boil and popped two thousand milligrams of Vitamin C , praying that the bottle would last us through however long this crisis will go on .
Spring was breaking in New York , but I put on long johns and jeans , and an undershirt , T-shirt , wool sweater , scarf , fleece jacket , and knee-length wool coat : this is my uniform at the store .
I tried to forget the literature that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ pathogens thriving in cold , dry spaces .
Our store is a very cold , very dry place .
I brewed a tea of fresh ginger , cinnamon sticks , lemon wedges , and honey , and filled my thermos .
Then I laced up my running sneakers and walked forty minutes to the store .
It would be faster to take the subway , but riskier , as well .
My first day back was daunting .
Grocery work is very different from the “ soft hands ” work I ’ ve @ @ @ @ @ @ @ professor .
Delivery trucks arrived late and with missing items .
Customers asked for unsalted almond butter ( Aisle 7 ) , charcoal and lighter fluid ( how I envied their barbecues ! )
, and price adjustments on Raisin Bran , because they had forgotten to scan their club cards during checkout and only realized after they got home that they did not get the week ’ s sale price ( a dollar off a box ) .
The cash registers froze up at times , because of all the disinfectant we @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Some of the stress of the day was inherent to retail—it ’ s the cost of doing business—but now everything was made more fraught owing to the coronavirus .
Brooklynites , true to stereotype , are close talkers .
People came flying at me , waving circulars and receipts and likely droplets of spittle .
I backed up to put distance between us , assuming by this point that everyone had got the memo .
But some kept drawing closer until , finally , I put my hands out to force space .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ my actions read not as social distancing but as personal affront .
That day , I was exposed , in a confined space , to at least a thousand customers , as I have been every day since .
People have to eat .
The rhythms of the grocery store are erratic : a bout of slowness will suddenly be punctuated by a fast , fast , fast surge of customers , like an unrelenting jazz riff .
As soon as an employee is assigned to monitor the flow of traffic—a luxury now @ @ @ @ @ @ @ increased disinfection efforts and restocking bare shelves—they get pulled away to help a customer find flour , and the whole system breaks down .
In my first week back , one of our employees put up a handwritten sign : “ Customers no socializing buy your items go home we are trying our best.
” As I was sanitizing carts outside , I noticed people smirking and taking pictures of the sign with their phones , like it was some ironic joke .
I took the sign down .
Early on , some @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and their families did not think that working was worth the risk .
But most of our employees remain unfazed , despite the crisis—not that there is much time to dwell .
Each day is business as usual , especially for those who have been with our store since I was a kid .
These longtime staffers have weathered it all : blizzards , blackouts , 9/11 , the Great Recession , Hurricane Sandy .
The facts remain : there are shelves to stock and orders to place and customers to serve .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ color ; most all of us are immigrants or children of immigrants .
Each day , we communicate in a jumble of English , Korean , and Spanish—like when one of our Mexican workers says , “ Bap mukja !
, ” which is Korean for “ Let ’ s eat !
, ” when he ’ s going to lunch , or when the delivery guys and I exchange regalitos ( “ little gifts ” ) of empty shopping carts to put away .
None of us are quite fluent in one @ @ @ @ @ @ @ still we try to cobble together meaning with the handful of words that we do know .
Or maybe I have it wrong—maybe these little , light-hearted moments are a way of forgetting that we are putting ourselves at risk every day when we show up to work .

When I come home from work each night, my husband greets me with a bottle of isopropyl alcohol. Holding me at arm’s length, he sprays me down with a solution. Then I remove my work clothes and shove them in the closet. I scrub my hands in the sink for twenty seconds with soap. I gargle a disposable cup’s worth of warm salt water, trying not to think of the pathogens that might be lingering in my tonsils and my throat. I don’t know whether gargling is effective or placebic, but I do it anyway. While I step into a scalding shower, my husband sprays my bag, keys, watch, phone, thermos, and wedding ring. Romantic gestures in these times take all forms.
I’m not a doctor or nurse; I’m a novelist and creative-writing professor whose parents own a grocery store in New York City. For the past two months, I’ve gone back to the summertime job that I’d had growing up—cashiering, bagging groceries, restocking shelves—and have unwittingly become a front-line “essential worker” during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Our mom-and-pop store, which is in a residential part of Brooklyn, is a full-service supermarket with a meat department and deli. When my parents started the business, almost forty years ago, the neighborhood was blue-collar, near a housing project. The projects remain, but, like much of Brooklyn, the whole area has gentrified immensely. Bags of Goya Spanish rice nestle beside Manischewitz matzo meal and free-range organic chicken-bone broth. Customers pay with everything from food stamps to weathered hundred-dollar bills to Apple Pay.
On the day that the coronavirus was declared a global pandemic, I was a writer-in-residence at the Mount, Edith Wharton’s home in the Berkshires. (When Wharton wrote about social distancing a century ago—poor Countess Olenska!—I hardly think our present reality is what she had in mind.) Before leaving for my residency, my main fear of the coronavirus had been the racist attacks that my friends, family, and I received as Asian-Americans. In early March, a man had shouted, “Die, motherfucker!” at me as I descended into the subway. During my inadvertent quasi-quarantine in Massachusetts, I was oblivious to the needs at home. My father reassured me that things were fine, and that I should finish out my residency. Viewed from this safe remove, New York’s shelter-in-place order seemed to be an Insta-blur of funfetti-cupcake breakfasts, back-yard barbecues, and before-and-after pics of sourdough-bread starters.
On the drive back to New York, the staticky news stations came into crisper focus. In my two weeks away, the world had changed. Governor Andrew Cuomo was restricting all nonessential businesses and imploring everyone to stay home. Under the new state order, grocery stores were deemed one of the few essential businesses allowed to remain open. Our neighborhood would depend on us—I think I can say this without exaggeration—to stay alive.
The next day, I went to work. My father is high-risk: he is in his mid-seventies, and almost died of undetected Lyme disease a few years ago. He reluctantly switched places with me. Our store would be busier than ever. After a fitful night of sleep, I set the kettle to boil and popped two thousand milligrams of Vitamin C, praying that the bottle would last us through however long this crisis will go on. Spring was breaking in New York, but I put on long johns and jeans, and an undershirt, T-shirt, wool sweater, scarf, fleece jacket, and knee-length wool coat: this is my uniform at the store. I tried to forget the literature that I’d read somewhere about virus pathogens thriving in cold, dry spaces. Our store is a very cold, very dry place. I brewed a tea of fresh ginger, cinnamon sticks, lemon wedges, and honey, and filled my thermos. Then I laced up my running sneakers and walked forty minutes to the store. It would be faster to take the subway, but riskier as well.
My first day back was daunting. Grocery work is very different from the “soft hands” work I’ve grown accustomed to as a writer and professor. Delivery trucks arrived late and with missing items. Customers asked for unsalted almond butter (Aisle 7), charcoal and lighter fluid (how I envied their barbecues!), and price adjustments on Raisin Bran, because they had forgotten to scan their club cards during checkout and only realized after they got home that they did not get the week’s sale price (a dollar off per box). The cash registers froze up at times because of all the disinfectant we were continually wiping them down with. Some of the stress of the day was inherent to retail—it’s the cost of doing business—but now everything was made more fraught owing to the coronavirus.
Brooklynites, true to stereotype, are close talkers. People came flying at me, waving circulars and receipts and likely droplets of spittle. I backed up to put distance between us, assuming by this point that everyone had got the memo. But some kept drawing closer until, finally, I put my hands out to force space. By the looks on their faces, my actions read not as social distancing but as personal affront. That day, I was exposed, in a confined space, to at least a thousand customers, as I have been every day since. People have to eat.
The rhythms of the grocery store are erratic: a bout of slowness will suddenly be punctuated by a fast, fast, fast surge of customers, like an unrelenting jazz riff. As soon as an employee is assigned to monitor the flow of traffic—a luxury now that every spare moment is allocated to increased disinfection efforts and restocking bare shelves—she gets pulled away to help a customer find flour, and the whole system breaks down. In my first week back, one of our employees put up a handwritten sign: “Customers no socializing buy your items go home we are trying our best.” As I was sanitizing carts outside, I noticed people smirking and taking pictures of the sign with their phones, like it was some ironic joke. I took the sign down.
Early on, some of our part-time cashiers quit. They and their families did not think that working was worth the risk. But most of our employees remain unfazed, despite the crisis—not that there is much time to dwell. Each day is business as usual, especially for those who have been with our store since I was a kid. These longtime staffers have weathered it all: blizzards, blackouts, 9/11, the Great Recession, Hurricane Sandy. The facts remain: there are shelves to stock and orders to place and customers to serve. Most all of us are people of color; most all of us are immigrants or children of immigrants. Each day, we communicate in a jumble of English, Korean, and Spanish—like when one of our Mexican workers says, “Bap mukja!,” which is Korean for “Let’s eat!,” when he’s going to lunch, or when the delivery guys and I exchange regalitos (“little gifts”) of empty shopping carts to put away. None of us are quite fluent in one another’s native tongue, but still we try to cobble together meaning with the handful of words that we do know. Or maybe I have it wrong—maybe these little, light-hearted moments are a way of forgetting that we are putting ourselves at risk every day when we show up to work.
One customer tried to buy a whole case of paper towels; he got to the case before we had a chance to unpack it and restock the shelves. When I told him that paper towels were limited to one package per customer, he threw a fit. Later, he came up close to me and said, “Hey, don’t worry about it. I didn’t even need the rolls. I just wanted to stock up.” Then he clamped his hand on my shoulder, by way of apology. Moments like this are a continual negotiation: Do I risk the exchange of respiratory vapor to tell him that he’s violating the six-feet-of-distance mandate, or do I just let him say his piece so I can quickly get on with cashiering, and packing, and directing the growing swell of customers, and spraying down the baskets and wagons and everything else? I got on with it.


newyorker--2020-05-16--How Concerning Are the Trump Administration’s New Title IX Regulations?

This spring , the coronavirus pandemic has upended college and university life , as campus classes , dormitories , and social activities have been abruptly displaced by online instruction .
As exams and graduation ceremonies proceed virtually this month , some schools are announcing plans to cancel or delay the fall semester or to run it partly or entirely online .
On May 6th , amid this chaos and uncertainty , Betsy DeVos ’ s Department of Education issued its regulations on Title IX , which impose new legal requirements on how schools must conduct their discipline processes for sexual @ @ @ @ @ @ @ civil-rights attorneys expressed outrage .
Catherine Lhamon , the chair of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights and the assistant secretary for civil rights in Obama ’ s Education Department , tweeted that DeVos is “ taking us back to the bad old days .
.
.
when it was permissible to rape and sexually harass students with impunity.
” Fatima Goss Graves , the president and C.E.O .
of the National Women ’ s Law Center , wrote , “ We refuse to go back to the days when rape and harassment @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the rug.
” In a statement , Nancy Pelosi called the new regulations “ callous , cruel and dangerous , threatening to silence survivors and endanger vulnerable students in the middle of a public health crisis.
” It was unclear , however , precisely what aspects of the regulations were so extreme and alarming .
Uncharacteristically for the Trump Administration , the Education Department , in crafting the regulations , engaged with a large range of public comments and concerns—from schools , advocates for survivors , and advocates of due process—and the regulations @ @ @ @ @ @ @ exactly as I would wish , but they clarify the rights of both victims and the accused in a way that is likely to lead to improvements in basic fairness .
The suggestion that even the most controversial provisions of the regulations allow rape with impunity speaks to a disturbingly large gap between reality and rhetoric on the topic—one that is particularly important to address , so students do not get the false sense that they should not bother to report assaults .
Title IX , passed in 1972 , prohibits sex discrimination @ @ @ @ @ @ @ In past decades , the Education Department has established , in a series of guidance documents , that sex discrimination includes sexual harassment , which in turn includes sexual assault , and that schools must address those offenses as a matter of sex equality .
In 2011 , the Obama Administration issued what is known as a “ Dear Colleague Letter ” to the nation ’ s colleges and universities , amid troubling reports of a prevalence of sexual assault on campuses and growing activism by students , who decried their schools ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ told schools to “ take immediate action to eliminate the harassment , prevent its recurrence , and address its effects.
” One of its concrete instructions was that schools must use the “ preponderance of the evidence ” standard ( that is , a greater-than-fifty-per-cent chance that a claim is true ) rather than a higher standard , such as “ clear and convincing evidence , ” to determine whether an incident of sexual harassment or assault occurred .
More than any specific commands , the government ’ s threat to withdraw federal @ @ @ @ @ @ @ with its Title IX guidance caused schools to attempt to please the government , by devising new practices , policies , and procedures that aimed to make it easier for victims to report assaults and to prevail in campus complaints .
Soon , some advocates of fair process , among them law professors at Harvard ( myself included ) , the University of Pennsylvania , and Cornell , raised concerns that the pressure to protect victims had led to an overcorrection : accused students were facing expulsion or suspension without fair procedures to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ cases , accused students were not being given the complaint or identities of witnesses , and not being shown the evidence or the investigative report .
Since 2011 , hundreds of accused students have sued their schools for using unfair disciplinary procedures , and have won court judgments or received settlements .
Courts have held that , just as it is sex discrimination under Title IX for schools to treat female victims of sexual assault unfairly , it can also be sex discrimination under Title IX to treat males accused of sexual misconduct @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the launch of a rule-making process on Title IX and withdrew the Obama-era guidance on sexual violence .
The following year , the agency issued a proposed rule , which emphasized procedural fairness .
Then , over the past two and a half years , it considered more than a hundred and twenty thousand comments from the public on the rule before releasing its final regulations—and also two thousand pages of careful explanations for the choices the agency made .
The regulations will become legally binding on August 14th , in time for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ regulations free schools to do some things that previously were prohibited or understood to be disfavored .
The Obama Administration clearly stated its belief that compliance with Title IX required the use of the preponderance standard for sexual-harassment cases , because any higher standard would , by design , tilt toward the accused .
The new regulations allow schools to choose between the preponderance standard or the higher “ clear and convincing evidence ” standard , which would demand heavier proof to find that the accused is responsible .
But , because schools @ @ @ @ @ @ @ their current use of the preponderance standard , it will be surprising if many do .
Prior guidance had discouraged schools from using informal resolution , such as mediation , for sexual-assault allegations , but the new regulations allow schools to offer the option , as long as the accused is not an employee , both parties voluntarily agree to it , and the process is led by a trained facilitator .
There is a legitimate worry that schools could pressure victims into informal processes , which cost less than formal ones .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ sexual misconduct , owing to a reluctance to unleash a lengthy investigation or a harsh penalty , may be more willing to seek the school ’ s help because of the availability of an informal option .
And many accused students , who might fight the acceptance of responsibility in an adversarial or punitive framework , may be more willing to give a desired apology and make amends .
The permission to use informal methods poses something of a counterbalance to the over-all increase in procedural formality that the regulations prescribe .
Though @ @ @ @ @ @ @ generally known for deregulatory impulses , the Education Department has in some ways taken the opposite tack here , imposing more elaborate obligations than before .
The most basic is that schools must employ a presumption of innocence , on which the Obama-era guidance was silent .
Many schools have adopted the principle that they “ start by believing ” the alleged victim .
That assumption may now be illegal .
Many schools have also been using a streamlined “ investigator-only ” process , in which one person , often a Title IX @ @ @ @ @ @ @ decision-maker : that person interviews witnesses , examines evidence , and decides whether the accused is responsible for the alleged misconduct .
The new regulations prohibit that , on the view that it is fairer to separate the roles of investigation and adjudication .
Many schools have not used a live hearing in front of the decision-maker as part of their disciplinary process , possibly because of its costliness and a desire to avoid stressful confrontation , but the new rules require colleges and universities to provide a live hearing , and to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ if they wish .

This spring, the coronavirus pandemic has upended college and university life, as campus classes, dormitories, and social activities have been abruptly displaced by online instruction. As exams and graduation ceremonies proceed virtually this month, some schools are announcing plans to cancel or delay the fall semester or to run it partly or entirely online. On May 6th, amid this chaos and uncertainty, Betsy DeVos’s Department of Education issued its regulations on Title IX, which impose new legal requirements on how schools must conduct their discipline processes for sexual harassment and assault.
Immediately, prominent civil-rights attorneys expressed outrage. Catherine Lhamon, the chair of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights and the assistant secretary for civil rights in Obama’s Education Department, tweeted that DeVos is “taking us back to the bad old days . . . when it was permissible to rape and sexually harass students with impunity.” Fatima Goss Graves, the president and C.E.O. of the National Women’s Law Center, wrote, “We refuse to go back to the days when rape and harassment in schools were ignored and swept under the rug.” In a statement, Nancy Pelosi called the new regulations “callous, cruel and dangerous, threatening to silence survivors and endanger vulnerable students in the middle of a public health crisis.”
It was unclear, however, precisely what aspects of the regulations were so extreme and alarming. Uncharacteristically for the Trump Administration, the Education Department, in crafting the regulations, engaged with a large range of public comments and concerns—from schools, advocates for survivors, and advocates of due process—and the regulations reflect that engagement. They are not exactly as I would wish, but they clarify the rights of both victims and the accused in a way that is likely to lead to improvements in basic fairness. The suggestion that even the most controversial provisions of the regulations allow rape with impunity speaks to a disturbingly large gap between reality and rhetoric on the topic—one that is particularly important to address, so students do not get the false sense that they should not bother to report assaults.
Title IX, passed in 1972, prohibits sex discrimination by schools that receive federal funding. In past decades, the Education Department has established, in a series of guidance documents, that sex discrimination includes sexual harassment, which in turn includes sexual assault, and that schools must address those offenses as a matter of sex equality. In 2011, the Obama Administration issued what is known as a “Dear Colleague Letter” to the nation’s colleges and universities, amid troubling reports of a prevalence of sexual assault on campuses and growing activism by students, who decried their schools’ neglect of the problem. The letter told schools to “take immediate action to eliminate the harassment, prevent its recurrence, and address its effects.” One of its concrete instructions was that schools must use the “preponderance of the evidence” standard (that is, a greater-than-fifty-per-cent chance that a claim is true) rather than a higher standard, such as “clear and convincing evidence,” to determine whether an incident of sexual harassment or assault occurred.
More than any specific commands, the government’s threat to withdraw federal funding from schools that did not comply with its Title IX guidance caused schools to attempt to please the government, by devising new practices, policies, and procedures that aimed to make it easier for victims to report assaults and to prevail in campus complaints. Soon, some advocates of fair process, among them law professors at Harvard (myself included), the University of Pennsylvania, and Cornell, raised concerns that the pressure to protect victims had led to an overcorrection: accused students were facing expulsion or suspension without fair procedures to defend against disciplinary charges. In many cases, accused students were not being given the complaint or identities of witnesses, and not being shown the evidence or the investigative report. Since 2011, hundreds of accused students have sued their schools for using unfair disciplinary procedures, and have won court judgments or received settlements. Courts have held that, just as it is sex discrimination under Title IX for schools to treat female victims of sexual assault unfairly, it can also be sex discrimination under Title IX to treat males accused of sexual misconduct unfairly.
In 2017, DeVos announced the launch of a rule-making process on Title IX and withdrew the Obama-era guidance on sexual violence. The following year, the agency issued a proposed rule, which emphasized procedural fairness. Then, over the past two and a half years, it considered more than a hundred and twenty thousand comments from the public on the rule before releasing its final regulations—and also two thousand pages of careful explanations for the choices the agency made. The regulations will become legally binding on August 14th, in time for the new school year.
The new regulations free schools to do some things that previously were prohibited or understood to be disfavored. The Obama Administration clearly stated its belief that compliance with Title IX required the use of the preponderance standard for sexual-harassment cases, because any higher standard would, by design, tilt toward the accused. The new regulations allow schools to choose between the preponderance standard or the higher “clear and convincing evidence” standard, which would demand heavier proof to find that the accused is responsible. But, because schools are not required to shift away from their current use of the preponderance standard, it will be surprising if many do. Prior guidance had discouraged schools from using informal resolution, such as mediation, for sexual-assault allegations, but the new regulations allow schools to offer the option, as long as the accused is not an employee, both parties voluntarily agree to it, and the process is led by a trained facilitator. There is a legitimate worry that schools could pressure victims into informal processes, which cost less than formal ones. But many victims who might not report sexual misconduct, owing to a reluctance to unleash a lengthy investigation or a harsh penalty, may be more willing to seek the school’s help because of the availability of an informal option. And many accused students, who might fight the acceptance of responsibility in an adversarial or punitive framework, may be more willing to give a desired apology and make amends.
The permission to use informal methods poses something of a counterbalance to the over-all increase in procedural formality that the regulations prescribe. Though the Trump Administration’s agencies are generally known for deregulatory impulses, the Education Department has in some ways taken the opposite tack here, imposing more elaborate obligations than before. The most basic is that schools must employ a presumption of innocence, on which the Obama-era guidance was silent. Many schools have adopted the principle that they “start by believing” the alleged victim. That assumption may now be illegal. Many schools have also been using a streamlined “investigator-only” process, in which one person, often a Title IX administrator, acts as both investigator and decision-maker: that person interviews witnesses, examines evidence, and decides whether the accused is responsible for the alleged misconduct. The new regulations prohibit that, on the view that it is fairer to separate the roles of investigation and adjudication. Many schools have not used a live hearing in front of the decision-maker as part of their disciplinary process, possibly because of its costliness and a desire to avoid stressful confrontation, but the new rules require colleges and universities to provide a live hearing, and to allow parties and witnesses to participate virtually if they wish.
Among the more controversial questions about Title IX procedures has been whether a live hearing should include an opportunity for cross-examination. In the years since DeVos’s rule-making process began, multiple federal and state courts have held that universities must allow cross-examination in disciplinary cases for sexual misconduct as a matter of either constitutional due process or contractual basic fairness, particularly because decisions often hinge on evaluations of credibility. The Obama-era guidance specifically discouraged allowing parties to personally cross-examine each other, out of concern that “allowing an alleged perpetrator to question an alleged victim directly may be traumatic or intimidating.” The new regulations acknowledge that concern, and forbid the parties questioning each other, but they require schools to allow each party’s “advisor”—who may be an attorney—to pose questions to the opposing party, reasoning that “the truth-seeking function of cross-examination can be achieved while mitigating any re-traumatization of complainants.” To minimize the risks, the person running the hearing must exclude any questions that are not “relevant”; parties must be allowed to participate from separate rooms, using technology; and schools must “oversee cross-examination in a manner that avoids aggressive, abusive questioning.”
There is no simple resolution to the matter of how, if at all, students in a sexual-assault disciplinary case can be fairly and sensitively cross-examined. On the one hand, allowing a party to question the other side’s story to try to expose its flaws seems essential to being heard and revealing the truth. On the other hand, cross-examination is very difficult to pull off productively outside a courtroom, without judges and trial lawyers trained in rules of evidence. It seems to me that a compromise, such as having each side submit questions in writing for the decision-maker to ask aloud at the hearing, would have been a less fraught way to accomplish the goal of using questions to test credibility.


newyorker--2020-05-16--Frederick Law Olmsted’s War on Disease and Disunity

In October of 1862 , with the country still reeling from the Second Battle of Bull Run and the Battle of Antietam , Frederick Law Olmsted , the landscape architect and a chronicler of the Southern slave economy , published a pamphlet that called for a nationwide effort to assemble provisions to care for sick and wounded soldiers .
“ The recent battles East and West have completely exhausted the reserved stock , ” he wrote , “ and it is found now not only impracticable to accumulate supplies , but impossible to meet even urgent demands daily made by @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of the Capitol.
” His plea has a familiar ring today , as does the title of the publication , “ What They Have to Do Who Stay at Home.
” Olmsted is most beloved for his work on New York City ’ s Central Park and Prospect Park , which he designed and built with Calvert Vaux before and after , respectively , the War Between the States .
In recent weeks , New Yorkers have ventured out for strolls and sits among the blossoming landscapes that Olmsted wrought from unscenic acreage @ @ @ @ @ @ @ But Olmsted ’ s service to the country during the Civil War is what makes him especially relevant just now .
In 1861 , Olmsted gave up oversight of Central Park to run the newly created and privately funded U.S. Sanitary Commission , a predecessor to the American Red Cross .
The Civil War was a public-health emergency—more soldiers died of disease than of battlefield wounds , owing partly to the miserable condition of the Army ’ s medical apparatus .
Olmsted oversaw the creation and operation of medical boats and field hospitals @ @ @ @ @ @ @ quarantine procedures for infectious patients .
The emergency tent hospital in Central Park and the U.S.N.S .
Comfort parked on the Hudson were probably the Olmsted-iest things we ’ ve seen in a while .
The United States had a relatively small standing army at the start of the Civil War , one that was further divided , in two , by secession .
Volunteer regiments were raised and equipped in an enthusiastic but ad-hoc manner , and , when the first test of the new Union forces came in July of 1861 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ was a disorganized melee .
Olmsted , wanting to document and cure the deadly lack of discipline , morale , and medical preparation that he and his front-line responders had witnessed , deployed a team of Sanitary Commission inspectors to conduct a meticulous seventy-five-question survey of the soldiers .
Armed with those insights , Olmsted compiled a “ Report on the Demoralization of the Volunteers , ” a document the commission ’ s board scuttled for fear that it would have hurt recruiting efforts .
The Sanitary Commission was generally a thorn in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the leaders of which did not immediately appreciate the meddling of wealthy New York élites , or the implication that the war was not under control .
Lincoln himself referred to it as “ a fifth wheel.
” So , that October , Olmsted went straight to the people , specifically to the “ Loyal Women of America , ” with a direct plea for badly needed supplies for the winter , asking that every woman in the country knit or buy a pair of woollen stockings .
Existing sewing societies and reading @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , drawers , splints , and pillows to support wounded limbs .
Seeing morale as key to health , Olmsted called for jelly , booze , and backgammon boards .
“ Books , for desultory reading and magazines especially if illustrated will be useful , ” he wrote .
( Side note for desultory readers : the Internet Archive ’ s National Emergency Library currently offers two very worthwhile biographies of Olmsted : Witold Rybczynski ’ s “ A Clearing in the Distance ” and Lee Hall ’ s “ Olmsted ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ was printed in newspapers across America , and carried a pithy endorsement from President Abraham Lincoln , who said , lukewarmly , that “ there is no agency through which voluntary offerings of patriotism can be more effectively made.
” The White House itself wasn ’ t much help , as Olmsted pointed out a few paragraphs later : “ For the means of administering to the needs of the sick and wounded , the Commission , ” he wrote , “ receives not one dollar from Government.
” The welfare of the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and to the states , many of which launched their own robust supply drives aimed at equipping native sons .
This deeply frustrated Olmsted , who complained , a year later , “ What real patriot can wish or be willing , even , to have soldiers from his State , or from his town , or his kindred , enjoying extra comforts and luxuries , while wounded men by their side , or on the distant battle-field , are , perhaps , in actual stress of life for want of the very @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to them ?
” Olmsted was a big fan of democracy doing big things for everyone , including future generations .
Whether scenic beauty or war , hospital or park , Olmsted believed that we were all in this together , like it or not .
Incompetence wouldn ’ t do .
Short-term thinking wouldn ’ t do .
It seemed to Olmsted that the entire point of the war was for the states to come together as a country .
“ In union is strength .
In disunion is weakness and waste @ @ @ @ @ @ @ trial of our nation , learn to wholly lay aside that poor disguise of narrowness of purpose and self-conceit , which takes the name of local interest and public spirit , but whose fruit is manifest in secession ?
” he wrote .
He was out with the Army as often as he was in Washington—a Fauci and a front-line worker .
After the Battle of Seven Pines , in June , 1862 , Katharine Prescott Wormeley , one of the Sanitary Commission ’ s top nurses , wrote a letter to her @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Olmsted is everything , —wise , authoritative , untiring ; but he must break down .
.
.
.
To think or speak of the things we see would be fatal .
No one must come here who can not put away all feeling .
Do all you can , and be a machine , —that ’ s the way to act ; the only way.
” Closing the letter , she noted that she was sitting on the floor with Olmsted , resting , with a pitcher of lemonade between them .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ bloodiest single day of the Civil War , some twenty-three thousand Americans—from the North and South—were killed , wounded , or missing .
The Sanitary Commission agents arrived three days after the battle , and , according to Olmsted , within a week the commission had delivered to the hospitals “ ten thousand shirts and drawers , five hundred bottles of stimulants ” —booze— “ two thousand sponges , several tons of soup , and other nice articles of nutriment.
” That list suggests the current contents of a restaurant called Olmsted , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ this magazine called “ an urban sanctuary ” back in 2016 .
It ’ s truly one now .
The chef , Greg Baxtrom , and his co-owner , Max Katzenberg , had to furlough their staff after the stay-at-home order , but decided to turn their kitchen into a food bank for neighborhood restaurant workers .
Soon they started feeding hospital workers , too , and then whomever needed a meal .
And now , having received donations of baby formula , diapers , bras , and toothbrushes , Baxtrom is giving @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ re basically a bodega now , ” he said by phone the other day , in the midst of opening boxes .
He was converting the restaurant ’ s private dining room into the Olmsted Trading Post , selling bread , organic vegetables , bottled cocktails , and wine , to help fund their food-bank efforts and rehire some of his furloughed employees .
To ward off demoralization , flower boxes and a rainbow pennant banner frame the front window , on which the Trading Post logo is nicely painted , as @ @ @ @ @ @ @ while .

In October of 1862, with the country still reeling from the Second Battle of Bull Run and the Battle of Antietam, Frederick Law Olmsted, the landscape architect and a chronicler of the Southern slave economy, published a pamphlet that called for a nationwide effort to assemble provisions to care for sick and wounded soldiers. “The recent battles East and West have completely exhausted the reserved stock,” he wrote, “and it is found now not only impracticable to accumulate supplies, but impossible to meet even urgent demands daily made by hospitals within sight of the very dome of the Capitol.” His plea has a familiar ring today, as does the title of the publication, “What They Have to Do Who Stay at Home.”
Olmsted is most beloved for his work on New York City’s Central Park and Prospect Park, which he designed and built with Calvert Vaux before and after, respectively, the War Between the States. In recent weeks, New Yorkers have ventured out for strolls and sits among the blossoming landscapes that Olmsted wrought from unscenic acreage a century and a half ago. But Olmsted’s service to the country during the Civil War is what makes him especially relevant just now. In 1861, Olmsted gave up oversight of Central Park to run the newly created and privately funded U.S. Sanitary Commission, a predecessor to the American Red Cross. The Civil War was a public-health emergency—more soldiers died of disease than of battlefield wounds, owing partly to the miserable condition of the Army’s medical apparatus. Olmsted oversaw the creation and operation of medical boats and field hospitals, and set up new triage and quarantine procedures for infectious patients. The emergency tent hospital in Central Park and the U.S.N.S. Comfort parked on the Hudson were probably the Olmsted-iest things we’ve seen in a while.
The United States had a relatively small standing army at the start of the Civil War, one that was further divided, in two, by secession. Volunteer regiments were raised and equipped in an enthusiastic but ad-hoc manner, and, when the first test of the new Union forces came in July of 1861, at Bull Run, the result was a disorganized melee. Olmsted, wanting to document and cure the deadly lack of discipline, morale, and medical preparation that he and his front-line responders had witnessed, deployed a team of Sanitary Commission inspectors to conduct a meticulous seventy-five-question survey of the soldiers. Armed with those insights, Olmsted compiled a “Report on the Demoralization of the Volunteers,” a document the commission’s board scuttled for fear that it would have hurt recruiting efforts. The Sanitary Commission was generally a thorn in the side of the federal government, the leaders of which did not immediately appreciate the meddling of wealthy New York élites, or the implication that the war was not under control. Lincoln himself referred to it as “a fifth wheel.”
So, that October, Olmsted went straight to the people, specifically to the “Loyal Women of America,” with a direct plea for badly needed supplies for the winter, asking that every woman in the country knit or buy a pair of woollen stockings. Existing sewing societies and reading clubs were prevailed upon to gather blankets, drawers, splints, and pillows to support wounded limbs. Seeing morale as key to health, Olmsted called for jelly, booze, and backgammon boards. “Books, for desultory reading and magazines especially if illustrated will be useful,” he wrote. (Side note for desultory readers: the Internet Archive’s National Emergency Library currently offers two very worthwhile biographies of Olmsted: Witold Rybczynski’s “A Clearing in the Distance” and Lee Hall’s “Olmsted’s America.”)
Olmsted’s appeal was printed in newspapers across America, and carried a pithy endorsement from President Abraham Lincoln, who said, lukewarmly, that “there is no agency through which voluntary offerings of patriotism can be more effectively made.” The White House itself wasn’t much help, as Olmsted pointed out a few paragraphs later: “For the means of administering to the needs of the sick and wounded, the Commission,” he wrote, “receives not one dollar from Government.”
The welfare of the casualties would be up to the people and to the states, many of which launched their own robust supply drives aimed at equipping native sons. This deeply frustrated Olmsted, who complained, a year later, “What real patriot can wish or be willing, even, to have soldiers from his State, or from his town, or his kindred, enjoying extra comforts and luxuries, while wounded men by their side, or on the distant battle-field, are, perhaps, in actual stress of life for want of the very supplies which a better distribution would secure to them?” Olmsted was a big fan of democracy doing big things for everyone, including future generations. Whether scenic beauty or war, hospital or park, Olmsted believed that we were all in this together, like it or not. Incompetence wouldn’t do. Short-term thinking wouldn’t do. It seemed to Olmsted that the entire point of the war was for the states to come together as a country. “In union is strength. In disunion is weakness and waste. Can we not, in this trial of our nation, learn to wholly lay aside that poor disguise of narrowness of purpose and self-conceit, which takes the name of local interest and public spirit, but whose fruit is manifest in secession?” he wrote.
He was out with the Army as often as he was in Washington—a Fauci and a front-line worker. After the Battle of Seven Pines, in June, 1862, Katharine Prescott Wormeley, one of the Sanitary Commission’s top nurses, wrote a letter to her mother, saying, “Mr. Olmsted is everything,—wise, authoritative, untiring; but he must break down. . . . To think or speak of the things we see would be fatal. No one must come here who cannot put away all feeling. Do all you can, and be a machine,—that’s the way to act; the only way.” Closing the letter, she noted that she was sitting on the floor with Olmsted, resting, with a pitcher of lemonade between them.
At the Battle of Antietam, the bloodiest single day of the Civil War, some twenty-three thousand Americans—from the North and South—were killed, wounded, or missing. The Sanitary Commission agents arrived three days after the battle, and, according to Olmsted, within a week the commission had delivered to the hospitals “ten thousand shirts and drawers, five hundred bottles of stimulants”—booze—“two thousand sponges, several tons of soup, and other nice articles of nutriment.”
That list suggests the current contents of a restaurant called Olmsted, on Vanderbilt Avenue in Brooklyn, which this magazine called “an urban sanctuary” back in 2016. It’s truly one now. The chef, Greg Baxtrom, and his co-owner, Max Katzenberg, had to furlough their staff after the stay-at-home order, but decided to turn their kitchen into a food bank for neighborhood restaurant workers. Soon they started feeding hospital workers, too, and then whoever needed a meal. And now, having received donations of baby formula, diapers, bras, and toothbrushes, Baxtrom is giving away more than food. “We’re basically a bodega now,” he said by phone the other day, in the midst of opening boxes. He was converting the restaurant’s private dining room into the Olmsted Trading Post, selling bread, organic vegetables, bottled cocktails, and wine, to help fund their food-bank efforts and rehire some of his furloughed employees. To ward off demoralization, flower boxes and a rainbow pennant banner frame the front window, on which the Trading Post logo is nicely painted, as though the pop-up may stay for a while.


newyorker--2020-05-16--Trump Says Nation Will Have Vaccine Before It Sees His Taxes

WASHINGTON ( The Borowitz Report ) —Making a solemn promise to the American people , Donald Trump vowed that the nation will have a coronavirus vaccine before it sees his tax returns .
“ People are saying that it takes a long time to see a vaccine , ” Trump said .
“ I say , not compared to how long it will take to see my taxes.
” Trump said that while there was a chance that Americans could have an effective coronavirus vaccine by the end of the year , the chance of their having a glimpse of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ zero .
“ Those are fantastic odds in favor of a vaccine , ” he beamed .
To insure that the nation gets a vaccine before it gets his taxes , Trump said he was launching an ambitious initiative called Operation Infinite Delay , to slow the disclosure of his taxes to a dead halt .
“ Eventually , my taxes will just go away , ” he predicted .
At the National Institutes of Health , Anthony Fauci was asked for his assessment of Trump ’ s forecast that a vaccine would @ @ @ @ @ @ @ This might be the first scientifically accurate thing he ’ s said , ” Fauci commented .

WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—Making a solemn promise to the American people, Donald Trump vowed that the nation will have a coronavirus vaccine before it sees his tax returns.
“People are saying that it takes a long time to see a vaccine,” Trump said. “I say, not compared to how long it will take to see my taxes.”
Trump said that while there was a chance that Americans could have an effective coronavirus vaccine by the end of the year, the chance of their having a glimpse of his tax returns by then sits at zero. “Those are fantastic odds in favor of a vaccine,” he beamed.
To insure that the nation gets a vaccine before it gets his taxes, Trump said he was launching an ambitious initiative called Operation Infinite Delay, to slow the disclosure of his taxes to a dead halt.
“Eventually, my taxes will just go away,” he predicted.
At the National Institutes of Health, Anthony Fauci was asked for his assessment of Trump’s forecast that a vaccine would be released before his taxes. “This might be the first scientifically accurate thing he’s said,” Fauci commented.