newyorker--2020-05-11--The Secret Lives of Fungi

The Secret Lives of Fungi

In 1957 , a man from New York named R. Gordon Wasson published an article in Life about two trips he had taken , three decades apart .
The first was to the Catskills , in New York , where his wife , Valentina , took a rambling walk in the woods and became enamored of some wild mushrooms .
“ She caressed the toadstools , ” Wasson recalled , “ savored their earthy perfume.
” She brought them home to cook , and soon he , too , was enchanted .
They spent the next thirty years studying and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and artistic works about mushrooms .
According to Wasson , the world is divided into mycophiles and mycophobes .
Reverence might take a variety of forms—think of Eastern Europe or Russia , where foraging is a pastime .
There ’ s a famous scene in “ Anna Karenina , ” in which a budding romance withers during a mushroom hunt .
Wasson was particularly interested in societies that venerated the fungus for spiritual reasons .
In Mexico , wild mushrooms were thought to possess “ a supernatural aura.
” There are any number @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Some people are put off by mushrooms ’ taste or texture—supple , with a fleshy resistance—and the fact that they somehow resemble both plant and animal .
Others are creeped out by the way they pop up overnight , hypersensitive to atmospheric changes .
As fungi , they feed on organic matter , and can be seen as vehicles of decay .
In Wasson ’ s view , Americans , and Anglo-Saxons as a whole , were mycophobic , and “ ignorant of the fungal world.
” In his forays against this @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ divine mushroom ” consumed in remote corners of the world .
In 1955 , he finally found one of these communities , a small town in the mountains of southern Mexico .
At the house of a local shaman , Wasson drank chocolate , then spent thirty minutes chewing “ acrid ” mushrooms .
“ I could not have been happier : this was the culmination of years of pursuit , ” Wasson wrote .
For the next few hours , he experienced visions—resplendent motifs and patterns , mythical beasts and grand @ @ @ @ @ @ @ constantly morphing and oozing , whether his eyes were open or closed—and he felt connected to everything he saw .
“ It was as though the walls of our house had dissolved , ” he wrote , and his spirit were soaring through the mountains .
The fact that Wasson was an otherwise straitlaced , politically conservative bank executive at J. P. Morgan lent this adventure a serious and respectable air .
He began to wonder if he had unlocked a mystery uniting all of humanity : “ Was it not probable that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ beginnings of written history , our ancestors had worshipped a divine mushroom ?
” Wasson ’ s discovery turned , briefly , into a movement .
Timothy Leary read about the Wassons and went to experience the mushroom himself , starting the Harvard Psilocybin Project .
Spurred on by evangelists like Leary , young Americans turned to drugs ( LSD , too , is derived from a fungus ) , along with alternative approaches to agriculture , diet , and sustainable living .
Within a few years , the backlash against psychedelic drugs @ @ @ @ @ @ @ was relegated to the fringes , and it seemed that America had returned to its generally mycophobic ways .
But our attitudes toward the fungal kingdom may be evolving , with respect both to pharmacology and to food .
In November , the residents of Oregon are scheduled to vote on whether to legalize psilocybin , the psychoactive compound found in so-called magic mushrooms , for use in controlled settings .
The effort has been backed by researchers and scientists , and passionately supported by David Bronner , the C.E.O.—in this case , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Magic Soaps .
The ballot initiative follows clinical trials conducted at Johns Hopkins , New York University , and U.C.L.A .
in the use of mushrooms to treat addiction and depression .
Psilocybin has already been decriminalized in Santa Cruz , Oakland , and Denver .
Meanwhile , the American diet includes more mushrooms than it used to—about four pounds per person a year , a gradual increase from just one in the sixties .
The hefty portobello burger is ubiquitous , and , even before the current pandemic , there was a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ fungi play in our lives on a microbial level : “ home fermentation ” ( whether for sourdough , kombucha , kimchee , or harder stuff ) has become a mainstream hobby .
Amateur mycology has flourished on the Internet .
There are videos about foraging , and how to induce any mushroom to release its spores onto a sheet of paper , leaving a beautiful print of its gills .
I recently found a Web page devoted to pictures of mushrooms that convincingly resembled human butts .
Fungus , as Merlin Sheldrake @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Fungi Make Our Worlds , Change Our Minds , and Shape Our Futures ” ( Random House ) , is everywhere , yet easy to miss .
Mushrooms are the most glamorous but possibly least interesting members of this kingdom .
Most fungi take the form of tiny cylindrical threads , from which hyphal tips branch in all directions , creating a meandering , gossamer-like network known as mycelium .
Fungus has been breaking down organic matter for millions of years , transforming it into soil .
A handful of healthy soil might @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the human eye .
It ’ s estimated that there are a million and a half species of fungus , though nearly ninety per cent of them remain undocumented .
Before any plants were taller than three feet , and before any animal with a backbone had made it out of the water , the earth was dotted with two-story-tall , silo-like fungi called prototaxites .
The largest living organism on earth today is a fungus in Oregon just beneath the ground , covering about 3.7 square miles and estimated to weigh as @ @ @ @ @ @ @ fungus can inspire awe , it can also be a nuisance or worse , from athlete ’ s foot to the stem rust that afflicts wheat and is considered a major threat to global food security .
Last year , the C.D.C .
identified the Candida auris as an emerging public-health concern ; it ’ s a sometimes fatal , drug-resistant pathogen that has emerged in hospitals and nursing homes around the world .
The more we learn about fungi , Sheldrake observes , the less the natural world makes sense without them @ @ @ @ @ @ @ they are humble yet astonishingly versatile organisms , “ eating rock , making soil , digesting pollutants , nourishing and killing plants , surviving in space , inducing visions , producing food , making medicines , manipulating animal behavior , and influencing the composition of the earth ’ s atmosphere.
” Plants make their own food , converting the world around them into nutrients .
Animals must find their food .
But fungi essentially acquire theirs by secreting digestive enzymes into their environment , and absorbing whatever is nearby : a rotten apple @ @ @ @ @ @ @ animal carcass .
If you ’ ve ever looked closely at a moldy piece of bread—mold , like yeast , being a type of fungus—what appears to be a layer of fuzz is actually millions of minuscule hyphal tips , busily breaking down matter into nutrients .
The fungus kingdom spreads by way of spores .
This is where mushrooms , the part of fungus that makes it above ground , show their prowess .
The shaggy inkcap mushroom—soft and tender when cooked—can break through asphalt and concrete pavement .
Each year , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ spores .
Some mushrooms are capable of onetime exertions in which spores are catapulted through the air at speeds of fifty-five miles an hour .
But the contribution that fungi make to the larger ecology is fundamental : by turning biomass into soil , they recycle dead organic matter back into organic life .
Sheldrake is in his early thirties , a biologist who holds a Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge .
But his evangelical zeal for the fungal world makes it plain that he ’ s drawn to the weirdness of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Rupert , is a former research biologist who became known for his belief in “ morphic resonance , ” which posits a kind of shared consciousness within nature . )
His book recounts the requisite tales of champion truffle hunters , psychedelic adventurers , his own love of home-brewing beer .
One of the heroes of “ Entangled Life ” is Paul Stamets , a logger turned mycologist and entrepreneur who lives in Washington State .
( Stamets also steals the show in “ Fantastic Fungi , ” a 2019 documentary directed by @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , by the actress Brie Larson . )
In 2005 , Stamets published “ Mycelium Running : How Mushrooms Can Save the World , ” an influential work that was taken up by fellow fungal enthusiasts as a kind of manifesto .
A TED talk drawn from the book has been viewed millions of times .

In 1957, a man from New York named R. Gordon Wasson published an article in Life about two trips he had taken, three decades apart. The first was to the Catskills, in New York, where his wife, Valentina, took a rambling walk in the woods and became enamored of some wild mushrooms. “She caressed the toadstools,” Wasson recalled, “savored their earthy perfume.” She brought them home to cook, and soon he, too, was enchanted. They spent the next thirty years studying and cataloguing various species, searching out literary and artistic works about mushrooms.
According to Wasson, the world is divided into mycophiles and mycophobes. Reverence might take a variety of forms—think of Eastern Europe or Russia, where foraging is a pastime. There’s a famous scene in “Anna Karenina,” in which a budding romance withers during a mushroom hunt. Wasson was particularly interested in societies that venerated the fungus for spiritual reasons. In Mexico, wild mushrooms were thought to possess “a supernatural aura.”
There are any number of reasons that one might be mycophobic. Some people are put off by mushrooms’ taste or texture—supple, with a fleshy resistance—and the fact that they somehow resemble both plant and animal. Others are creeped out by the way they pop up overnight, hypersensitive to atmospheric changes. As fungi, they feed on organic matter, and can be seen as vehicles of decay. In Wasson’s view, Americans, and Anglo-Saxons as a whole, were mycophobic, and “ignorant of the fungal world.”
In his forays against this ignorance, Wasson learned of a so-called “divine mushroom” consumed in remote corners of the world. In 1955, he finally found one of these communities, a small town in the mountains of southern Mexico. At the house of a local shaman, Wasson drank chocolate, then spent thirty minutes chewing “acrid” mushrooms. “I could not have been happier: this was the culmination of years of pursuit,” Wasson wrote. For the next few hours, he experienced visions—resplendent motifs and patterns, mythical beasts and grand vistas, streams of brilliant color, constantly morphing and oozing, whether his eyes were open or closed—and he felt connected to everything he saw. “It was as though the walls of our house had dissolved,” he wrote, and his spirit were soaring through the mountains.
The fact that Wasson was an otherwise straitlaced, politically conservative bank executive at J. P. Morgan lent this adventure a serious and respectable air. He began to wonder if he had unlocked a mystery uniting all of humanity: “Was it not probable that, long ago, long before the beginnings of written history, our ancestors had worshipped a divine mushroom?” Wasson’s discovery turned, briefly, into a movement. Timothy Leary read about the Wassons and went to experience the mushroom himself, starting the Harvard Psilocybin Project. Spurred on by evangelists like Leary, young Americans turned to drugs (LSD, too, is derived from a fungus), along with alternative approaches to agriculture, diet, and sustainable living. Within a few years, the backlash against psychedelic drugs was in full swing, macrobiotic eating was relegated to the fringes, and it seemed that America had returned to its generally mycophobic ways.
But our attitudes toward the fungal kingdom may be evolving, with respect both to pharmacology and to food. In November, the residents of Oregon could be voting on whether to legalize psilocybin, the psychoactive compound found in so-called magic mushrooms, for use in controlled settings. The effort has been backed by researchers and scientists, and passionately supported by David Bronner, the C.E.O.—in this case, cosmic engagement officer—of Dr. Bronner’s Magic Soaps. The ballot initiative follows clinical trials conducted at Johns Hopkins, New York University, and U.C.L.A. in the use of mushrooms to treat addiction and depression. Psilocybin has already been decriminalized in Santa Cruz, Oakland, and Denver.
Meanwhile, the American diet includes more mushrooms than it used to—about four pounds per person a year, a gradual increase from just one in the sixties. The hefty portobello burger is ubiquitous, and, even before the current pandemic, there was a growing interest in the everyday role that fungi play in our lives on a microbial level: “home fermentation” (whether for sourdough, kombucha, kimchee, or harder stuff) has become a mainstream hobby. Amateur mycology has flourished on the Internet. There are videos about foraging, and how to induce any mushroom to release its spores onto a sheet of paper, leaving a beautiful print of its gills. I recently found a Web page devoted to pictures of mushrooms that convincingly resembled human butts.
Fungus, as Merlin Sheldrake writes in “Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds, and Shape Our Futures” (Random House), is everywhere, yet easy to miss. Mushrooms are the most glamorous but possibly least interesting members of this kingdom. Most fungi take the form of tiny cylindrical threads, from which hyphal tips branch in all directions, creating a meandering, gossamer-like network known as mycelium. Fungus has been breaking down organic matter for millions of years, transforming it into soil. A handful of healthy soil might contain miles of mycelia, invisible to the human eye. It’s estimated that there are a million and a half species of fungus, though nearly ninety per cent of them remain undocumented. Before any plants were taller than three feet, and before any animal with a backbone had made it out of the water, the earth was dotted with two-story-tall, silo-like fungi called prototaxites. The largest living organism on earth today is a fungus in Oregon just beneath the ground, covering about 3.7 square miles and estimated to weigh as much as thirty-five thousand tons. If fungus can inspire awe, it can also be a nuisance or worse, from athlete’s foot to the stem rust that afflicts wheat and is considered a major threat to global food security. Last year, the C.D.C. identified the Candida auris as an emerging public-health concern; it’s a sometimes fatal, drug-resistant pathogen that has emerged in hospitals and nursing homes around the world. The more we learn about fungi, Sheldrake observes, the less the natural world makes sense without them.
Sheldrake was drawn to fungi because they are humble yet astonishingly versatile organisms, “eating rock, making soil, digesting pollutants, nourishing and killing plants, surviving in space, inducing visions, producing food, making medicines, manipulating animal behavior, and influencing the composition of the earth’s atmosphere.” Plants make their own food, converting the world around them into nutrients. Animals must find their food. But fungi essentially acquire theirs by secreting digestive enzymes into their environment, and absorbing whatever is nearby: a rotten apple, an old tree trunk, an animal carcass. If you’ve ever looked closely at a moldy piece of bread—mold, like yeast, being a type of fungus—what appears to be a layer of fuzz is actually millions of minuscule hyphal tips, busily breaking down matter into nutrients.
The fungus kingdom spreads by way of spores. This is where mushrooms, the part of fungus that makes it above ground, show their prowess. The shaggy inkcap mushroom—soft and tender when cooked—can break through asphalt and concrete pavement. Each year, fungi produce more than fifty megatons of spores. Some mushrooms are capable of onetime exertions in which spores are catapulted through the air at speeds of fifty-five miles an hour. But the contribution that fungi make to the larger ecology is fundamental: by turning biomass into soil, they recycle dead organic matter back into organic life.
Sheldrake is in his early thirties, a biologist who holds a Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge. But his evangelical zeal for the fungal world makes it plain that he’s drawn to the weirdness of it all. (His father, Rupert, is a former research biologist who became known for his belief in “morphic resonance,” which posits a kind of shared consciousness within nature.) His book recounts the requisite tales of champion truffle hunters, psychedelic adventurers, his own love of home-brewing beer. One of the heroes of “Entangled Life” is Paul Stamets, a logger turned mycologist and entrepreneur who lives in Washington State. (Stamets also steals the show in “Fantastic Fungi,” a 2019 documentary directed by Louie Schwartzberg and narrated, somewhat creepily, by the actress Brie Larson.) In 2005, Stamets published “Mycelium Running: How Mushrooms Can Save the World,” an influential work that was taken up by fellow fungal enthusiasts as a kind of manifesto. A TED talk drawn from the book has been viewed millions of times.
Stamets’s fascination with fungus began with a world-changing moment of his own: a psilocybin trip cured him of a lifelong stutter. Convinced of the mushroom’s special power—he could talk to girls now!—he began harvesting exotic varieties, building a profitable mail-order business that sells grow kits, extracts, cultivation gear, even fungal dog treats (Mutt-rooms). He briefly worked with the Department of Defense to study the antibacterial and antiviral compounds that fungus had developed to protect itself in the course of millions of years. Penicillin had famously been isolated by accident, in 1928, when Alexander Fleming noticed that his petri-dish colony of staphylococcus had been ravaged by an incidental growth of mold. Perhaps our old-growth forests, filled with mycelia that had adapted in order to ward off invasive bacteria, held the key to preventing future pandemics. Their preservation, Stamets believed, was a matter of national security.
Stamets is an advocate of what he calls mycoremediation—the use of fungi to remove toxic substances from the environment. Fungi have helped clean up diesel-contaminated soil; they’ve broken down pesticide residues, crude oil, and plastics. Disposable diapers can linger in a landfill for hundreds of years, but in 2014 scientists reported that they had grown oyster mushrooms on a substance made from used diapers, reducing their weight and volume by eighty per cent. (And the mushrooms were safe to eat.) Mycelium is even capable of filtering E. coli or heavy metals from polluted water. Sheldrake describes a company in Finland that has adopted these mycofiltration techniques to reclaim gold from electronic waste. The firm Ecovative Designs has developed mycelium-based packaging that resembles Styrofoam but biodegrades within thirty days. It also helped devise a mycelium-based alternative to leather, which was used in a prototype of a Stella McCartney handbag.
Stamets’s ardent advocacy inspired a man named Peter McCoy to help start an organization called Radical Mycology. McCoy, who is also an anarchist and a hip-hop artist, has devoted his life to a radically decentered, fungus-inspired method of sharing information. He founded an online mycology school and preaches “Liberation Mycology.” “Where one Radical Mycologist trains ten,” McCoy says, “those ten can train a hundred, and from them a thousand—so it is that mycelium spreads.”
For Wasson, fungus was related to the transcendent, the realm of worship, of reverence; for Stamets, fungus was an instrument for environmental resilience and restoration. But can fungus, finally, provide a political vision? What might we learn, Sheldrake asks, from the “mutualism” and coöperation of a seemingly brainless organism?
Sheldrake notes that the hyphal tips of mycelium seem to communicate with one another, making decisions without a real center. He describes an experiment conducted a couple of years ago by a British computer scientist, Andrew Adamatzky, who detected waves of electrical activity in oyster mushrooms, which spiked sharply when the mushrooms were exposed to a flame. Adamatzky posited that the mushroom might be a kind of “living circuit board.” The point isn’t that mushrooms would replace silicon chips. But if fungi already function as sensors, processing and transmitting information through their networks, then what could they potentially tell (or warn) us about the state of our ecosystem, were we able to interpret their signals?
Sheldrake also tells us about Toby Kiers, an evolutionary biologist who was taken with Thomas Piketty’s “Capital in the Twenty-First Century” and its insights on inequality. She wondered how mycorrhizal networks, the symbiotic intertwining of plant systems and mycelium, deal with their own, natural encounters with inequity. Kiers exposed a single fungus to an unequally distributed supply of phosphorus. Somehow the fungus “coordinated its trading behavior across the network,” Sheldrake writes, essentially shuttling phosphorus to parts of the mycelial network for trade with the plant system according to a “buy low, sell high” logic.
The anthropologist Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing has explored the story of global capitalism through mushrooms. In 2015, she published “The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins,” which followed the trade in the prized matsutake mushroom from a community of Southeast Asian refugees who are among the top foragers in the Pacific Northwest to the auction markets of Japan, where matsutake fetch a thousand dollars a kilogram, and on to chefs and discriminating diners in the world’s most cosmopolitan cities.
There’s a double meaning to Tsing’s title. The mushroom is at the end of the known world because it’s hard to find, a secret tucked deep in the forest. But she’s also hinting at the end of the world as we know it, given our instinct for extracting as much from the earth as we can. Humanity has never seemed so finely calibrated and rationalized: the seamless journey of a very expensive mushroom from nature to a dinner plate tells this story. But things have never seemed so precarious, either. During the current pandemic, images have circulated which suggest that the earth is better off with many of us staying at home. There have been fantastical stories of dolphins in the canals of Venice, penguins sauntering through an empty aquarium. And, as industry idled and vehicles went undriven, there was the rare sight of clear skies in Beijing and Los Angeles. Following the nuclear blast at Chernobyl, the industrious, resilient fungi were among the earliest living things to appear. They seemed to grow on the reactor walls, attracted to radioactive “hot” particles. In fact, they appeared capable of harnessing radiation as a source of energy, as plants do with sunlight. The first thing to grow from the soil after the atomic bomb decimated Hiroshima was, reportedly, a matsutake mushroom.


newyorker--2020-05-11--“Men Waiting for a Train,” by David Biespiel

At first they stand , orphaned , like a line of birds , First on one foot , then the other , in unison , Like any other unnamed someones , as if poised For a firing line , until someone thinks he knows A train is coming in the sparrow-morning light , And someone else taps a pack of cigarettes Against his gloved hand , not exotic , But it ’ s as if he ’ s slipped into captivity .
One Of those corner-of-the-eye , white-sky Days , late winter a hammer against the Platform , and gathered @ @ @ @ @ @ @ enough snow To consider the blue clouds floating , Like forgiveness , above us all .
Only two Are cresting at this moment , one a show Of hands , an explosion of clapping , the Other a mask of a baptismal face Failing behind the city ’ s blood-brown Skyline .
Whoever screamed just then , Then quieted , then shouted , high , like a crow , Leaves me filled with absence , listening For silences , cupping my ears .
For A moment , nothing is being celebrated , Nothing @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , or rings , in the air , and in the next Moment sirens are continually dying in The distance .
In the time it takes the train ’ s Doors to open , and close , and for the train To swirl us all off , half in , half out , of Our own wills , underground , something Like joy pours out of the cloudburst heart , And whatever feelings each one of us has had Goes off into the daylight without us .

Audio: Read by the author.
At first they stand, orphaned, like a line of birds,
First on one foot, then the other, in unison,
Like any other unnamed someones, as if poised
For a firing line, until someone thinks he knows
A train is coming in the sparrow-morning light,
And someone else taps a pack of cigarettes
Against his gloved hand, not exotic,
But it’s as if he’s slipped into captivity. One
Of those corner-of-the-eye, white-sky
Days, late winter a hammer against the
Platform, and gathered above the grave-
Line of the gap enough snow
To consider the blue clouds floating,
Like forgiveness, above us all. Only two
Are cresting at this moment, one a show
Of hands, an explosion of clapping, the
Other a mask of a baptismal face
Failing behind the city’s blood-brown
Skyline. Whoever screamed just then,
Then quieted, then shouted, high, like a crow,
Leaves me filled with absence, listening
For silences, cupping my ears. For
A moment, nothing is being celebrated,
Nothing undone, or measured, nothing
Moves, or rings, in the air, and in the next
Moment sirens are continually dying in
The distance. In the time it takes the train’s
Doors to open, and close, and for the train
To swirl us all off, half in, half out, of
Our own wills, underground, something
Like joy pours out of the cloudburst heart,
And whatever feelings each one of us has had
Goes off into the daylight without us.


newyorker--2020-05-11--Anita Kunz’s “Class of 2020”

Anita Kunz’s “Class of 2020”

For the cover of this year ’ s Innovators Issue , Anita Kunz chose to depict the graduates who will leave school—and enter a limping economy—in one of the strangest , most difficult times in memory .
We recently caught up with the artist , who lives in Toronto , Canada .
The students you ’ ve depicted have such distinct personalities .
How did you choose whom to draw ?
Do you find inspiration from people you see in real life or photos ?
I conduct illustration workshops and do a fair bit of teaching .
The students I @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ethnicities , cultures , and backgrounds , so I wanted to honor their similarities and also their differences .
It ’ s been a long time since I ’ ve been a student , and I ’ m always amazed at how bright they are !
They seem much more intellectually advanced than I was at their age .
And I feel compassion for them graduating at a time when there is so much uncertainty .
It can ’ t be easy for them .
What was your own graduation like ?
Did @ @ @ @ @ @ @ No , I graduated from an art college—it was quite casual !
What do you miss most about New York City ?
Do you expect to be back once it reopens ?
I lived in New York for a number of years , and only gave up my apartment in the West Village a few years ago .
I do miss the city a lot .
There ’ s no city like New York .
I ’ ll be back as soon and as often as I can when this is all over @ @ @ @ @ @ @ popped up in your other work during this time ?
It ’ s impossible not to be profoundly affected by it .
But I ’ m using this downtime in my teaching to work on a personal project .
For more covers celebrating graduation , see below :

For the cover of this year’s Innovators Issue, Anita Kunz chose to depict the graduates who will leave school—and enter a limping economy—in one of the strangest, most difficult times in memory. We recently caught up with the artist, who lives in Toronto, Canada.
The students you’ve depicted have such distinct personalities. How did you choose whom to draw? Do you find inspiration from people you see in real life or photos?
I conduct illustration workshops and do a fair bit of teaching. The students I teach come from a wide range of ethnicities, cultures, and backgrounds, so I wanted to honor their similarities and also their differences. It’s been a long time since I’ve been a student, and I’m always amazed at how bright they are! They seem much more intellectually advanced than I was at their age. And I feel compassion for them graduating at a time when there is so much uncertainty. It can’t be easy for them.
What was your own graduation like? Did you wear a cap and gown?
No, I graduated from an art college—it was quite casual!
What do you miss most about New York City? Do you expect to be back once it reopens?
I lived in New York for a number of years, and only gave up my apartment in the West Village a few years ago. I do miss the city a lot. There’s no city like New York. I’ll be back as soon and as often as I can when this is all over.
Has the theme of the pandemic popped up in your other work during this time?
It’s impossible not to be profoundly affected by it. But I’m using this downtime in my teaching to work on a personal project.
For more covers celebrating graduation, see below:


newyorker--2020-05-11--Igor Levit Is Like No Other Pianist

Igor Levit Is Like No Other Pianist

On March 10th , the German pianist Igor Levit played Beethoven ’ s Third and Fifth Piano Concertos at the Elbphilharmonie , the hulking concert complex in Hamburg .
It was his thirty-third birthday and , it turned out , his last public concert for many weeks .
The next day , Angela Merkel , the German Chancellor , delivered a dire warning about the scope of the looming coronavirus pandemic , and performance spaces began closing across the country .
At the time , Levit had a full schedule before him .
He had recently issued a boxed-set recording @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , and was playing Beethoven cycles in several European cities .
He was also preparing to tackle an arcane colossus of the piano literature—the seventy-minute Piano Concerto by the early-twentieth-century composer-virtuoso Ferruccio Busoni , a hero of his .
“ That next day , the eleventh , was kind of a shock day , ” Levit told me recently , in a video call from his apartment , in Berlin .
“ On the twelfth , I was shopping in a grocery store , and I had this thought : What if I @ @ @ @ @ @ @ into his phone with a grin .
He is a trim young man with sharp features , a high Mahlerian hairline , and a thin growth of beard .
He was wearing a T-shirt that read “ Love Music Hate Racism.
” He speaks rapidly and incisively , his English nearly as good as his German .
Sometimes he seems more mature than his years , poised and oracular ; at others , he comes across as an antic , restless member of his digital-native generation .
Levit went on , “ When @ @ @ @ @ @ @ I usually do , which is to throw a thought into the public arena without thinking about any consequences .
I went on Twitter and said , ‘ O.K.
, I ’ m going to play for you guys tonight at my place.
’ After having tweeted that , I realized , Hang on—I ’ ve never streamed anything , I know shit about streaming , I don ’ t even know if Twitter allows thirty minutes of streaming , I have no camera stand .
I had a total panic .
I @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Do you know how streaming works ?
’ And this tweet was already out there .
It was a catastrophe .
I ran to the last electronics store that was still open , and got some stuff for twenty-four euros.
” I saw Levit ’ s tweet and tuned in .
The setting was familiar , because I had met with him there the previous summer .
He lives in a spacious , airy , sparely decorated apartment in the Mitte neighborhood of Berlin , with plate-glass windows overlooking a park .
His @ @ @ @ @ @ @ once belonged to the great Swiss pianist Edwin Fischer .
At 7 p.m. , Levit pressed the Record button on his smartphone and trotted in front of his newly acquired home-Webcasting equipment , dressed casually in a black-and-gray pullover shirt and black pants .
He gave a brief introduction , in German and English : “ It ’ s a sad time , it ’ s a weird time , but acting is better than doing nothing .
Let ’ s bring the house concert into the twenty-first century.
” He then tore @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Sonata , in a fashion typical of him—precipitate , purposeful , intricately nuanced .
It was an imposing structure aglow with feeling .
Other pianists of Levit ’ s generation may have achieved wider mass-market fame—Lang Lang and Yuja Wang come first to mind—but none have comparable stature as a cultural or even a political figure .
In German-speaking countries , Levit is a familiar face not only to classical-music fans but also to a broader population that shares his leftist , internationalist world view .
He has appeared on mainstream German TV @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ; and attended the annual gathering of the Green Party , playing Beethoven ’ s “ Ode to Joy , ” the anthem of the European Union .
It was no surprise that Levit ’ s inaugural live stream attracted attention , though I was taken aback when the number of viewers climbed into the tens of thousands .
In the following weeks , as Levit kept Webcasting each night , a convivial online community formed around him on Twitter and its Periscope app—a self-described “ Igor Familie.
” Periscope includes a chat-room @ @ @ @ @ @ @ screen like bubbles .
Most comments were in German , but there were salutations from Nairobi , Tokyo , and Montevideo .
Some viewers made musicological points— “ New harmonic structures become transparent , ” one person wrote when Levit tackled Brahms ’ s arrangement of the Bach Chaconne in D Minor—while others discussed the pianist ’ s facial hair , T-shirts , and footwear .
“ Hard rock fan from Düsseldorf is thrilled , ” one commenter said .
Levit delivered short talks , usually focussed on the music at hand .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ though emotion sometimes surfaced .
Once , halfway through Schubert ’ s sublime Sonata in B-flat , he buried his head in his hands , hiding tears ; he did the same after Morton Feldman ’ s solitary , unearthly “ Palais de Mari.
” Levit ’ s Hauskonzerte drew notice in high places .
For the twenty-second night of the series , he was invited to perform in the concert room at Schloss Bellevue , the German Presidential residence .
Frank-Walter Steinmeier , who holds the largely ceremonial office of President , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ just for giving comfort but also for highlighting the fact that “ many artists are in crisis—no performance opportunities , no concerts , no productions—and , because they are in crisis , they need our support.
” Levit , this time wearing a black jacket and dress shoes , again played the “ Waldstein ” —the only time in the series that he repeated a piece .
When I asked Steinmeier ’ s office for a comment about Levit , I received a statement extolling the pianist ’ s “ acute sense of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and solidarity.
” At a recent press conference , Steffen Seibert , the chief spokesperson for the Merkel government , made mention of “ a pianist ’ s famous house concerts ” —undoubtedly meaning Levit , even if the name went unsaid .
On May 4th , Levit streamed his fifty-second concert—his last , for the time being .
“ I need to take a break and recalibrate , ” he told me .
“ I mean , I haven ’ t read a book in four weeks.
” This phase of his @ @ @ @ @ @ @ gained even greater visibility , yet he was isolated in his apartment , fearful of what an extended shutdown will mean for cultural life .
( He has had several girlfriends , but is currently unattached . )
Levit went on , “ I mean , one journalist said that I was creating ‘ fireplace moments for the nation.
’ For God ’ s sake !
All I wanted to do was to share something , do something , instead of just sitting in my apartment and watching everything crumble.
” One day @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , “ Maybe for the first time do I understand what it means to speak of music as something life-keeping .
It really keeps me alive .
.
.
.
I don ’ t care if it ’ s wrong or right , whatever B.S .
that means , just as long as I can actually press down the black and white keys .
I ’ ve never , never been freer than now .
Never .
And I am in tears half the day .
Very , very dark .
And yet @ @ @ @ @ @ @ becomes bigger and bigger by the minute.
” Concert pianists are often stereotyped as remote souls , apt to lose themselves in the palaces of sound they summon at the keyboard .
Levit is emphatically not a loner .
He has a global network of friends , and transmits countless e-mails , texts , emojis , and GIFs every day .
He is a cultural omnivore who is as likely to quote from Kendrick Lamar or “ Simpsons ” episodes as from Kafka or James Baldwin .
Outfitted in a hoodie , a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in easily with other guys on the streets of Berlin .
His moderately hip image arouses suspicion in conservative corners of the classical-music world .
“ Just shut up and play , ” he has heard people say , in several languages .
From a more radical perch , the Berlin-based online magazine VAN has suggested that Levit is excessively self-dramatizing : “ In the race for attention , Levit is a bit like Usain Bolt : he always seems effortlessly ahead .
”

He fell silent for a moment. “Oh, and let me show you this,” he said, browsing on his iPad again. “Here!” It was a scene from “The Simpsons,” in which Homer says, “I have three kids and no money. Why can’t I have no kids and three money?”
I looked puzzled, and he laughed. “O.K., yes, that has nothing do with the ‘Hammerklavier.’ I just think it’s funny. ‘Three money’!”
When I next saw Levit, in early December, his mood had changed. He was in Hamburg, at the outset of a brief tour with the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen, playing Brahms’s two piano concertos on separate nights. His manner was uncharacteristically furtive. “Things are strange,” he told me, backstage at the Elbphilharmonie, where the concert was taking place. “These last couple of weeks, they have been very strange.” I waited expectantly. “Very, very strange. We will discuss later.”
Levit went into his dressing room to take a phone call while the orchestra gathered onstage to rehearse. Paavo Järvi, the Kammerphilharmonie’s longtime music director, stepped to the podium and looked around. “Where is Igor?” he asked. He shrugged, smiled, and gave the downbeat for the grandly ominous orchestral introduction of Brahms’s Concerto in D Minor: a fortissimo D in the horns, double-basses, violas, and timpani. I sent a text to Levit: “Your concerto is starting.” After a minute or two, he appeared through the side door and bounded toward the piano, waving his arms in a birdlike motion, as if riding the waves of the music. He arrived on the bench twenty or so seconds before the piano’s stealthy, pensive entrance. The orchestra, apparently accustomed to such behavior, took no notice.
After the rehearsal, in Levit’s dressing room, he told me what had been going on. A few weeks earlier, he had appeared on a political talk show hosted by the German journalist Maybrit Illner, and participated in a discussion of hate speech. The panel also included Ralf Schuler, an editor from the right-wing tabloid Bild. Schuler, attempting to show that hate could inflame the left as well as the right, brought up a tweet that the pianist had posted in 2015, at the time of the refugee crisis in Germany. Levit had written that members of the right-wing Alternative für Deutschland Party, who had waged hate campaigns against the refugees, had “forfeited their humanity”—their Menschsein. Wasn’t the tweet itself dehumanizing? Levit responded by saying that he had been brought up to understand the word Mensch in its Yiddish sense: “A Mensch is a person of honor.” On that basis, he remained secure in his belief that the extremists lacked humanity, and he took nothing back.
Schuler’s remarks brought Levit to the attention of people on the far right, who began attacking him publicly and privately. He was called Judensau, a Jewish pig, and within a couple of weeks he had received three death threats—two on e-mail, one on Instagram. The messages, which Levit shared with the police, mentioned two forthcoming events on his schedule: a concert in early December and one in January. The first of these dates was in Wiesbaden—the night after the concert I was about to see at the Elbphilharmonie. But some ambiguous wording in the threat made it seem possible that tonight could be the target.
Levit paced his dressing room and made himself an espresso. “To hell with these people,” he said. “It doesn’t produce fear, it produces a certain kind of anger, like, a real anger. And it produces a very energizing feeling of ‘O.K., you try me, you will get more.’ I don’t want to overprize myself: other people, especially women, receive this kind of thing on a daily basis. But it does make me very intensely consider who I want to be—what kind of, let’s say, citoyen I want to be. I am a musician, but I am who I am. I think about becoming not only louder but deepening my actions. I don’t know yet what that would be. It’s a very interesting time.” Levit told me that he has no interest in entering politics, although it is obvious that the field fascinates him.
I went to my seat in the hall while Levit put on his concert dress. Thirty minutes later, he was launching into the Brahms. I felt an unease I had never experienced before in a concert hall. Looking around, I wondered whether an attack was actually possible, and whether Levit’s performance had acquired some extra edge of anger and defiance. It was difficult to say, since the first movement of the D-Minor Concerto is angry and defiant from the start. In the second movement, though, dire thoughts receded. The piano part of the Adagio begins with a passage marked “molto dolce espressivo,” or “very sweet and expressive.” It is music of almost vertiginous loveliness and loneliness—a lullaby remembered in grief. Levit is never more impressive than when he loses himself in such lyric idylls.
Afterward, I asked Levit what he had felt onstage. He said, “Honestly? Once the music started, I did not think about it. For me, the stage becomes the one place of freedom, absolute freedom. Nobody is bothering me, there are no phone calls, no interruptions. The worst thing that can happen, the worst thing possible, is a wrong note. Also, to hell with those people.”
The police had asked Levit to avoid talking about the threats until after the Hamburg and Wiesbaden concerts. In late December, he published an essay on the subject, which appeared in the Berlin newspaper Der Tagesspiegel. “Was I afraid?” he wrote. “Yes, but not for myself.” He linked his experiences to more serious instances of physical and verbal violence in Germany: a 2017 knife attack on Andreas Hollstein, the mayor of Altena; the 2019 assassination of the Hessian politician Walter Lübcke, who supported Merkel’s open-door policy toward refugees; the 2019 resignation of Martina Angermann, the mayor of Arnsdorf, in the wake of incessant online harassment. This trend of violence could be connected to the spread of hate speech online: “First the speech, then the deed.”
Levit defended his stance as an engaged musician—his refusal to “shut up and play.” Music has astonishing powers of communication, he wrote, but it cannot name things: “To be free requires employing your own senses. To hear, to see, to feel, to smell. Music allows us to feel this kind of freedom. But music is not a substitute, it cannot be a substitute. Not for truth, not for politics, not for human understanding and sympathy. It cannot be a substitute for calling racism racism. It cannot be a substitute for calling misogyny misogyny. It can never be a substitute for being a wakeful, critical, loving, living, and active citizen.”
“He’s anxious to resume perpetrating his usual activities.” Cartoon by Frank Cotham Copy link to cartoon Copy link to cartoon Shop Shop
Smoldering beneath this essay was an undiminished fury over the odious remark that had been made to Levit at that dinner years ago—the insinuation that, as a Jew, he could never overcome his outsider status. He likes to quote James Baldwin: “I love America more than any other country in the world, and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually.” For Levit, America is Germany.
The main event of Levit’s spring season was to have been a string of performances of Busoni’s immense, immoderate Piano Concerto, which requires not only a hypervirtuosic pianist but also a male chorus. The work is at once a transcendent example of the Romantic concerto and a diabolically entertaining satire of the genre—a self-conscious exhibition of excess. Levit played it once when he was eighteen, with the Göttingen Symphony. For years, he had been plotting his way back to it, and, with the assistance of the English-Italian conductor Antonio Pappano, had finally conquered the logistical obstacles. The first performance had been slated for April 2nd, in Rome, with the Orchestra and Chorus of the Academy of Santa Cecilia. It was cancelled as coronavirus deaths in Italy escalated into the thousands.
I had planned to attend the Rome performance; there is no concerto in or outside the repertory that I love more. During a video call in April, I asked Levit to talk about the piece, mainly because I wanted to hear it. After placing a pair of aubergines in the oven, he propped his phone on the piano and launched into the second movement, “Pezzo giocoso.” The piano begins with rapid-fire runs and scalar patterns that are all the more fiendishly difficult for being muted in dynamics and delicate in articulation. The orchestra bursts in with a galumphing passage marked “giovanescamente”—“youthfully.” Levit mimed it by chanting the dotted rhythm and waving his fists in the air. “Some passages in this movement are difficult to the point of total insanity,” he said, plunging into a finger-entangling run of thirds and sixths. “Once you get past those, you are in the clear. The piece gets wilder and wilder, but also easier, more pianistic. The ending is bananas.”
He attacked the keyboard again, bobbing his head like a hard-rock guitarist. Then he broke off and looked down. “It kills me not to be playing it,” he said. “Six months of work—gone.” He retrieved the aubergines from the oven and took a bite. A moment later, he was grinning again. “Oh, I have to show you this.” He paged through his score, found a passage in the second movement, and held it up to the phone. It was a swirl of scalar runs, next to which the word “SEX” had been scrawled, underlined twice. “That is me at age eighteen. I can’t explain it. There is nothing at all sexy on this page. Maybe it was some other kind of memo to myself.”


newyorker--2020-05-11--What Mutual Aid Can Do During a Pandemic

We are not accustomed to destruction looking , at first , like emptiness .
The coronavirus pandemic is disorienting in part because it defies our normal cause-and-effect shortcuts to understanding the world .
The source of danger is invisible ; the most effective solution involves willing paralysis ; we won ’ t know the consequences of today ’ s actions until two weeks have passed .
Everything circles a bewildering paradox : other people are both a threat and a lifeline .
Physical connection could kill us , but civic connection is the only way to survive .
In March @ @ @ @ @ @ @ self-isolation , people throughout the country began establishing informal networks to meet the new needs of those around them .
In Aurora , Colorado , a group of librarians started assembling kits of essentials for the elderly and for children who wouldn ’ t be getting their usual meals at school .
Disabled people in the Bay Area organized assistance for one another ; a large collective in Seattle set out explicitly to help “ Undocumented , LGBTQI , Black , Indigenous , People of Color , Elderly , and Disabled , folxs @ @ @ @ @ @ @ social crisis.
” Undergrads helped other undergrads who had been barred from dorms and cut off from meal plans .
Prison abolitionists raised money so that incarcerated people could purchase commissary soap .
And , in New York City , dozens of groups across all five boroughs signed up volunteers to provide child care and pet care , deliver medicine and groceries , and raise money for food and rent .
Relief funds were organized for movie-theatre employees , sex workers , and street venders .
Shortly before the city ’ s restaurants @ @ @ @ @ @ @ nearly a quarter of a million people out of work , three restaurant employees started the Service Workers Coalition , quickly raising more than twenty-five thousand dollars to distribute as weekly stipends .
Similar groups , some of which were organized by restaurant owners , are now active nationwide .
As the press reported on this immediate outpouring of self-organized voluntarism , the term applied to these efforts , again and again , was “ mutual aid , ” which has entered the lexicon of the coronavirus era alongside “ social distancing ” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s not a new term , or a new idea , but it has generally existed outside the mainstream .
Informal child-care collectives , transgender support groups , and other ad-hoc organizations operate without the top-down leadership or philanthropic funding that most charities depend on .
There is no comprehensive directory of such groups , most of which do not seek or receive much attention .
But , suddenly , they seemed to be everywhere .
On March 17th , I signed up for a new mutual-aid network in my neighborhood , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ called Leveler to make micropayments to out-of-work freelancers .
Then I trekked to the thirty-five-thousand-square-foot Fairway in Harlem to meet Liam Elkind , a founder of Invisible Hands , which was providing free grocery delivery to the elderly , the ill , and the immunocompromised in New York .
Elkind , a junior at Yale , had been at his family ’ s place , in Morningside Heights , for spring break when the crisis began .
Working with his friends Simone Policano , an artist , and Healy Chait , a business @ @ @ @ @ @ @ group ’ s sleek Web site in a day .
During the next ninety-six hours , twelve hundred people volunteered ; some of them helped to translate the organization ’ s flyer into more than a dozen languages and distributed copies of it to buildings around the city .
By the time I met him , Elkind and his co-founders had spoken to people hoping to create Invisible Hands chapters in San Francisco , Los Angeles , Boston , and Chicago .
The group was featured on “ Fox & Friends , ” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ up in the pandemic ; the co-host Brian Kilmeade encouraged viewers to send in more “ inspirational stories and photos of people doing great things.
” At the Fairway , Elkind , who has dark hair and a chipper student-body-president demeanor , put on a pair of latex gloves and grabbed a shopping basket , which he sanitized with a wipe .
He was getting groceries for an immunocompromised woman in Harlem .
“ Scallions are the onion things , right ?
” he said , as we wound through the still robust @ @ @ @ @ @ @ those who signed up to volunteer for Invisible Hands joined a group text ; when requests for help came in , texts went out , and volunteers claimed them on a first-come-first-served basis .
They called the recipients to ask what they needed , then dropped the grocery bags at their doorsteps ; the recipients left money under their mats or in mailboxes .
The group was planning to raise funds to buy groceries for those who couldn ’ t afford them , Elkind told me .
While we stood in the dairy @ @ @ @ @ @ @ yogurt and nonfat regular—the store was out of nonfat Greek—a reporter from “ Inside Edition ” materialized and began snapping photographs .
Elkind apologized ; he hadn ’ t meant to double-book media engagements .
“ Not to be trite , but I feel like this is spreading faster than the virus , ” he said .
The next day , Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez held a public conference call with the organizer Mariame Kaba about how to build a mutual-aid network .
Kaba is the founder of Project Nia , a prison-abolitionist organization @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Illinois minors to have their arrest records expunged when they turn eighteen .
“ There are two ways that this can go for us , ” Ocasio-Cortez said on the call .
“ We can buy into the old frameworks of , when a disaster hits , it ’ s every person for themselves .
Or we can affirmatively choose a different path .
And we can build a different world , even if it ’ s just on our building floor , even if it ’ s just in our neighborhood , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ our block.
” She pointed out that those in a position to help didn ’ t have to wait “ for Congress to pass a bill , or the President to do something.
” The following week , the Times ran a column headlined “ Feeling Powerless About Coronavirus ?
Join a Mutual-Aid Network.
” Vox , Teen Vogue , and other outlets also ran explainers and how-tos .
Mutual-aid work thrives on sustained personal relationships , but the coronavirus has necessitated that relationships be built online .
After meeting Elkind , I @ @ @ @ @ @ @ at the University of Minnesota Medical School who had been pulled from their classes or clinical rotations .
Their mentors and teachers were putting in fifteen-hour hospital shifts , then waiting in long lines to buy diapers before going home to their kids .
The students had rapidly assembled a group called the Minnesota COVIDSitters , which matched nearly three hundred volunteers with a hundred and fifty or so hospital workers—including custodians , cooks , and other essential employees .
The students insured that volunteers had immunizations and background checks ; they established @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for each family in need .
On the Zoom call , everyone was focussed and eager , crisis adrenaline masking their fatigue .
One student held a mellow , pink-cheeked infant on his shoulder .
Just a few days before , on Twitter , I had seen a photograph of a handwritten flyer that a thirty-three-year-old woman named Maggie Connolly had posted in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Carroll Gardens , asking elderly neighbors to get in touch if they needed groceries or other help .
Connolly , a hair-and-makeup artist , was newly @ @ @ @ @ @ @ many older people might not see aid efforts that were being organized online .
The picture of the sign got attention on the Internet , and Connolly ended up on the “ Today ” show ; soon afterward , she began arranging pharmacy runs and wellness checks for her neighbors and getting e-mails from people around the world who ’ d been inspired to put up flyers of their own .
“ My mom ’ s always told me that if I feel anxious and depressed I should think of how I can @ @ @ @ @ @ @ she told me .
“ Hopefully , when we control the virus a little bit more and get back to regular life , this will have been a wake-up call .
I think people aren ’ t used to being able to ask for help , and people aren ’ t used to offering .
”

Mutual-aid work thrives on sustained personal relationships, but the coronavirus has necessitated that relationships be built online. After meeting Elkind, I joined a Zoom call with thirteen students at the University of Minnesota Medical School who had been pulled from their classes or clinical rotations. Their mentors and teachers were putting in fifteen-hour hospital shifts, then waiting in long lines to buy diapers before going home to their kids. The students had rapidly assembled a group called the Minnesota COVIDSitters, which matched nearly three hundred volunteers with a hundred and fifty or so hospital workers—including custodians, cooks, and other essential employees. The students insured that volunteers had immunizations and background checks; they established closed rotations of three to five volunteers for each family in need. On the Zoom call, everyone was focussed and eager, crisis adrenaline masking their fatigue. One student held a mellow, pink-cheeked infant on his shoulder.
Just a few days before, on Twitter, I had seen a photograph of a handwritten flyer that a thirty-three-year-old woman named Maggie Connolly had posted in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Carroll Gardens, asking elderly neighbors to get in touch if they needed groceries or other help. Connolly, a hair-and-makeup artist, was newly out of work, and figured that many older people might not see aid efforts that were being organized online. The picture of the sign got attention on the Internet, and Connolly ended up on the “Today” show; soon afterward, she began arranging pharmacy runs and wellness checks for her neighbors and getting e-mails from people around the world who’d been inspired to put up flyers of their own. “My mom’s always told me that if I feel anxious and depressed I should think of how I can be of service to somebody,” she told me. “Hopefully, when we control the virus a little bit more and get back to regular life, this will have been a wake-up call. I think people aren’t used to being able to ask for help, and people aren’t used to offering.”
There’s a certain kind of news story that is presented as heartwarming but actually evinces the ravages of American inequality under capitalism: the account of an eighth grader who raised money to eliminate his classmates’ lunch debt, or the report on a FedEx employee who walked twelve miles to and from work each day until her co-workers took up a collection to buy her a car. We can be so moved by the way people come together to overcome hardship that we lose sight of the fact that many of these hardships should not exist at all. In a recent article for the journal Social Text, the lawyer and activist Dean Spade cites news reports about volunteer boat rescues during Hurricane Harvey which did not mention the mismanagement of government relief efforts, or identify the possible climatological causes of worsening hurricanes, or point out who suffers most in the wake of brutal storms. Conservative politicians can point to such stories, which ignore the social forces that determine the shape of our disasters, and insist that voluntarism is preferable to government programs.
A decade ago, the writer Rebecca Solnit published the book “A Paradise Built in Hell,” which argues that during collective disasters the “suspension of the usual order and the failure of most systems” spur widespread acts of altruism—and these improvisations, Solnit suggests, can lead to lasting civic change. Among the examples Solnit cites are tenant groups that formed in Mexico City after a devastating earthquake, in 1985, and later played a role in the city’s transition to a democratic government. Radicalizing moments accumulate; organizing and activism beget more organizing and activism. As I called individuals around the country who were setting up coronavirus-relief efforts, I kept encountering people who had participated in anti-globalization protests in the early two-thousands, or joined the Occupy movement, or organized grassroots campaigns in the aftermath of the 2016 Presidential election. In 2017, as wildfires ravaged Northern California, a collective of primarily disabled queer and trans people, who called themselves Mask Oakland, began giving out N95 masks to the homeless; in March and April, they donated thousands of masks that they had in reserve to local emergency rooms and clinics.
Radicalism has been at the heart of mutual aid since it was introduced as a political idea. In 1902, the Russian naturalist and anarcho-communist Peter Kropotkin—who was born a prince in 1842, got sent to prison in his early thirties for belonging to a banned intellectual society, and spent the next forty years as a writer in Europe—published the book “Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution.” Kropotkin identifies solidarity as an essential practice in the lives of swallows and marmots and primitive hunter-gatherers; coöperation, he argues, was what allowed people in medieval villages and nineteenth-century farming syndicates to survive. That inborn solidarity has been undermined, in his view, by the principle of private property and the work of state institutions. Even so, he maintains, mutual aid is “the necessary foundation of everyday life” in downtrodden communities, and “the best guarantee of a still loftier evolution of our race.”
Charitable organizations are typically governed hierarchically, with decisions informed by donors and board members. Mutual-aid projects tend to be shaped by volunteers and the recipients of services. Both mutual aid and charity address the effects of inequality, but mutual aid is aimed at root causes—at the structures that created inequality in the first place. A few days after her conference call with Ocasio-Cortez, Mariame Kaba told me that mutual aid couldn’t be divorced from political education and activism. “It’s not community service—you’re not doing service for service’s sake,” she said. “You’re trying to address real material needs.” If you fail to meet those needs, she added, you also fail to “build the relationships that are needed to push back on the state.”
Kaba, a longtime Chicago activist who now lives in New York and runs the blog Prison Culture, describes herself as an abolitionist, not as an anarchist. She wants to create a world without prisons and policing, and that requires imagining other structures of accountability—and also of assistance. “I want us to act as if the state is not a protector, and to be keenly aware of the damage it can do,” she told me. People who are deeply committed to mutual aid think of it as a crucial, everyday practice, she said, not as a “program to pull off the shelf when shit gets bad.”
Historically, in the United States, mutual-aid networks have proliferated mostly in communities that the state has chosen not to help. The peak of such organizing may have come in the late sixties and early seventies, when Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries opened a shelter for homeless trans youth, in New York, and the Black Panther Party started a free-breakfast program, which within its first year was feeding twenty thousand children in nineteen cities across the country. J. Edgar Hoover worried that the program would threaten “efforts by authorities to neutralize the BPP and destroy what it stands for”; a few years later, the federal government formalized its own breakfast program for public schools.
“It sure looks like spring, but I’ll check my hibernation app.” Cartoon by Michael Maslin Copy link to cartoon Copy link to cartoon Shop Shop
Crises can intensify the antagonism between the government and mutual-aid workers. Dozens of cities restrict community efforts to feed the homeless; in 2019, activists with No More Deaths, a group that leaves water and supplies in border-crossing corridors, were tried on federal charges, including driving in a wilderness area and “abandoning property.” But disasters can also force otherwise opposing sides to work together. During Hurricane Sandy, the National Guard, in the face of government failure, relied on the help of an Occupy Wall Street offshoot, Occupy Sandy, to distribute supplies.
“Anarchists are not absolutist,” Spade, the lawyer and activist, told me. “We can believe in a diversity of tactics. I spend my life fighting for people to get welfare benefits, for trans people to get health-care coverage.” Kaba isn’t doctrinaire, either; she had, after all, partnered with Ocasio-Cortez, a member of the federal government, to help people learn how to help one another. (Ocasio-Cortez, for her part, insisted, on Twitter, that organizers and activists, not politicians, are often the ones who “push society forward.”) Still, there is a real tension between statist and anarchist theories of political change, Kaba pointed out. In trying to help a community meet its needs, one group of organizers might suggest canvassing for political candidates who support Medicare for All. Another might argue that electoral politics, with its top-down structures and its uncertain results, is the wrong place to direct most of one’s energy—that we should focus instead on building community co-ops that can secure health care and opportunities for work. But sorting out the conflict between these visions is part of the larger project, Kaba suggested, and a task for multiple generations. The day-to-day practice of mutual aid is simpler. It is a matter, she said, of “prefiguring the world in which you want to live.”
By April, as the death toll rose in New York City, many people I knew in Brooklyn had begun working with a mutual-aid group called Bed-Stuy Strong, which serves the neighborhood of Bedford-Stuyvesant. Once predominantly black, the neighborhood has, in the past few decades, seen an influx of white residents. Bed-Stuy Strong was started by the writer Sarah Thankam Mathews, whose family moved to the United States from Oman when she was seventeen. Mathews organized the group on Slack, and it initially consisted of the Slack demographic: relatively privileged youngish people familiar with the digital workflows of white-collar offices. But volunteers plastered the neighborhood with flyers, and word of the group started to spread through phone calls and text messages. Hundreds of people began joining every day.
James Lipscomb, a former computer programmer in his sixties, who moved to Bed-Stuy from South Carolina when he was a teen-ager, learned about the group on Facebook—an acquaintance had called the organization’s Google Voice number, then written a post wondering if the whole thing was a scam. Lipscomb, who survived polio at age four, after spending months in an iron lung, has limited mobility, and lives alone. He had friends who were already sick with the coronavirus, and he knew that he should stay inside. Not long after he saw the Facebook post, a friend phoned him and said, “James, call this number. They’ll get your food.” He left Bed-Stuy Strong a voice mail, and someone called him back a few hours later. The next day, a volunteer arrived in his lobby with three bags of groceries. “I looked at everything and was like a kid at Christmas,” he told me. (He described himself as a “halfway decent cook,” with special skills in the chili arena.) Lipscomb is a longtime member of the Bed-Stuy chapter of Lions Club International, the first black chapter in New York State. He told the club members about his experience, and the club donated two hundred dollars to Bed-Stuy Strong. He also went back to the person who had written the skeptical Facebook post, he told me. “And I said, ‘Look, this group is the best-kept secret going now!’ ”


newyorker--2020-05-11--What Would Room Rater Say?

What Would Room Rater Say?

There was a TV commercial for Renuzit air freshener that ran half a century ago and scarred everyone who saw it .
In the ad , a housewife has invited friends over to play bridge .
But , as the ladies enter her home , they sniff , wrinkle their noses , and make mortifying comments along the lines of “ Fried fish last night ?
” and “ I thought George gave up cigars.
” The message was clear : anytime you allow people to enter your home , it—and you—will be ripped to shreds .
Such pitiless scrutiny @ @ @ @ @ @ @ forced on America ’ s media personalities : if they want to remain on our screens , they must invite us , and our judgments , into their living rooms , bedrooms , and , in some cases , bathrooms .
News shows are a special problem area , with viewers whipsawed between Trump said what ?
and Who thought those sconces were a good idea ?
Fortunately , an authoritative Twitter feed appeared in April to codify our cattier impulses .
It ’ s called Room Rater ( @ ratemyskyperoom ) , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ has earned a reputation as the pandemic ’ s Mr. Blackwell .
For instance , when Beto O ’ Rourke did an interview from what looked like the dank basement in “ The Silence of the Lambs , ” Room Rater gave him a 0 out of 10 , and commented , “ Oh , dear god .
Organizing rescue mission .
Blink twice if you can hear me.
” When Ann Coulter streamed herself positioned in front of a large black TV screen in a room painted a putrid yellow-green , she @ @ @ @ @ @ @ review— “ Pretty much what you ’ d expect .
Puke and a big TV ” —received more than ten thousand likes .
Renuzit is no help here .
Neither is sticking a ficus in the corner , although Samantha Vinograd , a national-security analyst on CNN , earned Room Rater bonus points by adding orange tulips to a handsome bookshelf .
“ She was definitely upping her game , ” said Claude Taylor , who launched the feed with his girlfriend , Jessie Bahrey .
Taylor started Room Rater from a place @ @ @ @ @ @ @ den of a scientist he saw on cable news , and also the depth of field in the scientist ’ s shot .
The ratings are freely subjective , Taylor explained , and largely unburdened by professional expertise .
He once worked as a travel photographer , so he tends to “ think in terms of lighting/perspective/composition .
Jessie has good taste .
But that ’ s all.
” The couple is quarantining apart : Bahrey manages a commercial greenhouse in British Columbia , and Taylor , who is based outside Washington , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ progressive political-action committee .
( Mad Dog sponsored a billboard in Kentucky that dubbed Mitch McConnell “ PUTIN ’ S MITCH.
” ) Taylor admits to naked partisanship—Room Rater gushed over the “ lovely ” view of some unexceptional shrubbery visible through a window in Hillary Clinton ’ s study—but , regarding bookshelves , there is one hard-and-fast rule .
“ You ’ re going to get whacked on Room Rater if you put more than one of your own books cover forward , ” he said .
“ A little self-promotion is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ it.
” Welcome advice , since members of the TV-news workforce have been setting up their laptops with no apparent guidance from their bosses .
“ It ’ s been pretty ad hoc , ” William Brangham , a correspondent for the “ PBS NewsHour , ” said .
He lives in a tidy-looking house and has a knack for using baskets as decorative accents .
A “ NewsHour ” executive asked him to send an image of what a living-room shot would look like : “ The guy said , ‘ Great @ @ @ @ @ @ @ it.
” ( Room Rater score : a coveted 10 . )
Richard Stengel , an MSNBC contributor who was an Under-Secretary of State for Barack Obama , said that he received no advice “ other than a producer telling me to have my computer higher.
” ( Low angles lead to shots that are dominated by ceilings , nostrils , and saggy chins , as any Zoom-conference participant will attest . )
Stengel ’ s main concerns : “ What books are showing ?
Where ’ s the dog at ?
” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ) Anne-Marie Green , an anchor for “ CBS Morning News ” and CBSN , set up her home studio in a bland spare bedroom .
The one eccentric note is a lamp she bought on Etsy , the base of which looks like a stack of teapots ; if you wanted to be nice , you might say it has an “ Alice in Wonderland ” vibe .
Green left it in her shot as “ a little indication that I ’ m more than just a talking head.
” ( Room @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ) Brangham has experienced the highs and the lows of viewer intimacy .
Two of his three cats , an orange tabby named Pepper and a tan-and-black tabby named Tiki , have become Internet celebrities , thanks to their appearances napping on the couch .
His curtains are another story .
A Times piece on “ décor peeping ” quoted an interior designer named Elaine Griffin berating them .
Why , she asked , “ does he have the $ 19.99 panels from Bed , Bath & Beyond ?
Grommet curtains are the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ with fries.
” Brangham stood his ground , noting that grommet curtains are especially functional when quick lighting adjustments are needed on camera .
“ I didn ’ t design my home to be on air , ” he added .
“ But then a pandemic happened.
” ♦

There was a TV commercial for Renuzit air freshener that ran half a century ago and scarred everyone who saw it. In the ad, a housewife has invited friends over to play bridge. But, as the ladies enter her home, they sniff, wrinkle their noses, and make mortifying comments along the lines of “Fried fish last night?” and “I thought George gave up cigars.” The message was clear: anytime you allow people to enter your home, it—and you—will be ripped to shreds.
Such pitiless scrutiny is precisely what the coronavirus lockdown has forced on America’s media personalities: if they want to remain on our screens, they must invite us, and our judgments, into their living rooms, bedrooms, and, in some cases, bathrooms. News shows are a special problem area, with viewers whipsawed between Trump said what? and Who thought those sconces were a good idea? Fortunately, an authoritative Twitter feed appeared in April to codify our cattier impulses. It’s called Room Rater (@ratemyskyperoom), and, although often generous, it has earned a reputation as the pandemic’s Mr. Blackwell.
For instance, when Beto O’Rourke did an interview from what looked like the dank basement in “The Silence of the Lambs,” Room Rater gave him a 0 out of 10, and commented, “Oh, dear god. Organizing rescue mission. Blink twice if you can hear me.” When Ann Coulter streamed herself positioned in front of a large black TV screen in a room painted a putrid yellow-green, she got a 0, too. The review—“Pretty much what you’d expect. Puke and a big TV”—received more than ten thousand likes.
Renuzit is no help here. Neither is sticking a ficus in the corner, although Samantha Vinograd, a national-security analyst on CNN, earned Room Rater bonus points by adding orange tulips to a handsome bookshelf. “She was definitely upping her game,” said Claude Taylor, who launched the feed with his girlfriend, Jessie Bahrey. Taylor started Room Rater from a place of love, after admiring the wood-panelled den of a scientist he saw on cable news, and also the depth of field in the scientist’s shot. The ratings are freely subjective, Taylor explained, and largely unburdened by professional expertise. He once worked as a travel photographer, so he tends to “think in terms of lighting/perspective/composition. Jessie has good taste. But that’s all.” The couple is quarantining apart: Bahrey manages a commercial greenhouse in British Columbia, and Taylor, who is based outside Washington, D.C., runs Mad Dog, a progressive political-action committee. (Mad Dog sponsored a billboard in Kentucky that dubbed Mitch McConnell “PUTIN’S MITCH.”) Taylor admits to naked partisanship—Room Rater gushed over the “lovely” view of some unexceptional shrubbery visible through a window in Hillary Clinton’s study—but, regarding bookshelves, there is one hard-and-fast rule. “You’re going to get whacked on Room Rater if you put more than one of your own books cover forward,” he said. “A little self-promotion is fine, but don’t push it.”
Welcome advice, since members of the TV-news workforce have been setting up their laptops with no apparent guidance from their bosses. “It’s been pretty ad hoc,” William Brangham, a correspondent for the “PBS NewsHour,” said. He lives in a tidy-looking house and has a knack for using baskets as decorative accents. A “NewsHour” executive asked him to send an image of what a living-room shot would look like: “The guy said, ‘Great,’ and that was pretty much it.” (Room Rater score: a coveted 10.) Richard Stengel, an MSNBC contributor who was an Under-Secretary of State for Barack Obama, said that he received no advice “other than a producer telling me to have my computer higher.” (Low angles lead to shots that are dominated by ceilings, nostrils, and saggy chins, as any Zoom-conference participant will attest.) Stengel’s main concerns: “What books are showing? Where’s the dog at?” (Room Rater score: 9.) Anne-Marie Green, an anchor for “CBS Morning News” and CBSN, set up her home studio in a bland spare bedroom. The one eccentric note is a lamp she bought on Etsy, the base of which looks like a stack of teapots; if you wanted to be nice, you might say it has an “Alice in Wonderland” vibe. Green left it in her shot as “a little indication that I’m more than just a talking head.” (Room Rater, please weigh in here.)
Brangham has experienced the highs and the lows of viewer intimacy. Two of his three cats, an orange tabby named Pepper and a tan-and-black tabby named Tiki, have become Internet celebrities, thanks to their appearances napping on the couch. His curtains are another story. A Times piece on “décor peeping” quoted an interior designer named Elaine Griffin berating them. Why, she asked, “does he have the $19.99 panels from Bed, Bath & Beyond? Grommet curtains are the drapery equivalent of a No. 1 with fries.” Brangham stood his ground, noting that grommet curtains are especially functional when quick lighting adjustments are needed on camera. “I didn’t design my home to be on air,” he added. “But then a pandemic happened.” ♦
A Guide to the Coronavirus


newyorker--2020-05-11--The Last Quarantine Think Piece

The Last Quarantine Think Piece

What the world needs right now is another endless musing on staying at home during the coronavirus pandemic ; the C.D.C .
has declared these pieces to be a symptom of COVID-19 that can be treated only by gentle snoring .
When I am not working at my job as an associate buyer in juniors ’ activewear , I moonlight as America ’ s most beloved film critic .
But , with so little fresh product , even the most esteemed reviewers , like me , are in a quandary , which is why you ’ re seeing so many @ @ @ @ @ @ @ from 1962 .
So , as a public service , I ’ d like to provide the only tips you really need : 1 .
Study Ivanka ’ s tweets .
So far , she ’ s advised us to build living-room forts , have fun with eighteenth-century shadow puppets , and continually praise her for using the words “ jobs , ” “ empower , ” and “ me.
” While I consider myself to be proudly useless and self-involved , Ivanka puts me to shame .
I ’ ve been monitoring @ @ @ @ @ @ @ L ’ Oréal color wheel ; her heavy Benjamin Moore-grade makeup ; and her always inappropriate wardrobe of Amish cocktail dresses .
It ’ s as if her dream were to become a society-lady panelist on “ What ’ s My Line ?
” in 1958 .
When she speaks , in her breathy Tweety Bird-at-boarding-school burble , the effect is complete .
She ’ s an American Girl doll with a trust fund and a Gucci attaché case .
2 .
Watch Dad TV .
These are the shows that your dad @ @ @ @ @ @ @ length over dinner , as if he were a consultant .
They might as well all be called “ Law & Order : Your Dad.
” Dick Wolf is your dad ’ s Hugh Hefner .
My favorites include “ FBI , ” in which a team of attractive agents solves upscale crimes in under an hour , led by Missy Peregrym , whose hair is yanked back to look professional and yet is highlighted because she ’ s on TV .
“ FBI : Most Wanted ” depicts grimmer crimes in bleak @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Bad lighting and cheap flannel shirts have been identified as the chief causes of the opioid epidemic . )
The Mom versions of these shows are medical soaps .
I enjoy “ The Resident , ” in which an attractive team of Atlanta doctors cures just about everything in forty-five minutes , led by hunky Matt Czuchry in fitted scrubs and a motorcycle jacket , coupled up with the gorgeous Emily VanCamp as ultra-nurse Nic .
When this dreamy pair saunter into the E.R.
, everyone sighs , “ Thank God !
The @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Amsterdam ” is a teensy bit grittier , because it ’ s set in New York , and it has an attractive medical team ( including a gay psychologist ) , led by Ryan Eggold , who can remove tumors just by tilting his head like an adorable puppy .
Warning : Don ’ t watch these shows with a real doctor , lawyer , or police officer , because they ’ ll start screaming .
3 .
Never watch Trump ’ s press briefings .
They ’ re unthinkably dull .
Instead @ @ @ @ @ @ @ President losing it , and then check Breitbart for the denials of everything he just said on camera .
For a drinking game , take a sip whenever Trump calls a female journalist “ nasty ” or a male journalist “ a loser.
” And , while it ’ s fun to track Dr. Deborah Birx ’ s infinite scarf collection , her masochism is voluntary and deadening .
Dr. Anthony Fauci is the only hero here , but I wish , while Trump is blathering , that Fauci would mime silently screaming @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Notice which at-home anchors have plastic orchids on their bookcases filled with paperbacks from college .
Observe , “ Oh , he lives in Westchester—that ’ s why he ’ s got a fire pit out the window , and a framed photo of his first wife and their kids.
” 5 .
When you put on your mask and gloves to go to Whole Foods , pretend you ’ re a neurosurgeon .
Ask your spouse to assist , to make the first incision , and to close up the patient @ @ @ @ @ @ @ this in the produce aisle , using a head of lettuce .
6 .
Make no attempt to rediscover the joy of family meals .
My perfect daughter , Jennifer , who ’ s home from college , just told me , “ Your generation not only decimated the planet but has made my future an economic quagmire .
So I need eleven hundred dollars for this cute top made from recycled scrunchies that I saw on Etsy , and they donate three dollars from every purchase to buy smoothies for people who @ @ @ @ @ @ @ My middle schooler , Sean , posted a TikTok , wearing my yoga pants and Chanel warmup jacket and doing a dance he calls Spin Mom on a Bender .
My husband , Josh , who ’ s home because orthodontics is considered elective medicine , is writing a novel called “ Brace Yourself , ” which he calls “ a no-holds-barred thriller about a rugged midtown orthodontist who saves the world by solving the ancient mystery of a pharaoh ’ s overbite and defeating his modern-day death cult with the help of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ we ’ ve all agreed to pretend that we ’ re by ourselves in the apartment , while I scroll through photos of Melania planting a tree on the White House lawn to commemorate Earth Day , wearing a Victoria Beckham trenchcoat and Manolos , which is her way of declaring , “ We ’ re all in this together , ” if you ask me .
♦

What the world needs right now is another endless musing on staying at home during the coronavirus pandemic; the C.D.C. has declared these pieces to be a symptom of COVID-19 that can be treated only by gentle snoring. When I am not working at my job as an associate buyer in juniors’ activewear, I moonlight as America’s most beloved film critic. But, with so little fresh product, even the most esteemed reviewers, like me, are in a quandary, which is why you’re seeing so many Top Ten lists of foreign sci-fi movies from 1962. So, as a public service, I’d like to provide the only tips you really need:
1. Study Ivanka’s tweets. So far, she’s advised us to build living-room forts, have fun with eighteenth-century shadow puppets, and continually praise her for using the words “jobs,” “empower,” and “me.” While I consider myself to be proudly useless and self-involved, Ivanka puts me to shame. I’ve been monitoring her hair, which resembles the entire L’Oréal color wheel; her heavy Benjamin Moore-grade makeup; and her always inappropriate wardrobe of Amish cocktail dresses. It’s as if her dream were to become a society-lady panelist on “What’s My Line?” in 1958. When she speaks, in her breathy Tweety Bird-at-boarding-school burble, the effect is complete. She’s an American Girl doll with a trust fund and a Gucci attaché case.
2. Watch Dad TV. These are the shows that your dad relishes from his recliner and discusses at length over dinner, as if he were a consultant. They might as well all be called “Law & Order: Your Dad.” Dick Wolf is your dad’s Hugh Hefner. My favorites include “FBI,” in which a team of attractive agents solves upscale crimes in under an hour, led by Missy Peregrym, whose hair is yanked back to look professional and yet is highlighted because she’s on TV. “FBI: Most Wanted” depicts grimmer crimes in bleak suburban neighborhoods with terrible lighting. (Bad lighting and cheap flannel shirts have been identified as the chief causes of the opioid epidemic.)
The Mom versions of these shows are medical soaps. I enjoy “The Resident,” in which an attractive team of Atlanta doctors cures just about everything in forty-five minutes, led by hunky Matt Czuchry in fitted scrubs and a motorcycle jacket, coupled up with the gorgeous Emily VanCamp as ultra-nurse Nic. When this dreamy pair saunter into the E.R., everyone sighs, “Thank God! The hot blonds are here.” “New Amsterdam” is a teensy bit grittier, because it’s set in New York, and it has an attractive medical team (including a gay psychologist), led by Ryan Eggold, who can remove tumors just by tilting his head like an adorable puppy.
Warning: Don’t watch these shows with a real doctor, lawyer, or police officer, because they’ll start screaming.
3. Never watch Trump’s press briefings. They’re unthinkably dull. Instead, catch the CNN clips of the President losing it, and then check Breitbart for the denials of everything he just said on camera. For a drinking game, take a sip whenever Trump calls a female journalist “nasty” or a male journalist “a loser.”And, while it’s fun to track Dr. Deborah Birx’s infinite scarf collection, her masochism is voluntary and deadening. Dr. Anthony Fauci is the only hero here, but I wish, while Trump is blathering, that Fauci would mime silently screaming.
4. Watch your local news. Notice which at-home anchors have plastic orchids on their bookcases filled with paperbacks from college. Observe, “Oh, he lives in Westchester—that’s why he’s got a fire pit out the window, and a framed photo of his first wife and their kids.”
5. When you put on your mask and gloves to go to Whole Foods, pretend you’re a neurosurgeon. Ask your spouse to assist, to make the first incision, and to close up the patient. It’s fun to do this in the produce aisle, using a head of lettuce.
6. Make no attempt to rediscover the joy of family meals. My perfect daughter, Jennifer, who’s home from college, just told me, “Your generation not only decimated the planet but has made my future an economic quagmire. So I need eleven hundred dollars for this cute top made from recycled scrunchies that I saw on Etsy, and they donate three dollars from every purchase to buy smoothies for people who look sad and thoughtful on Instagram.” My middle schooler, Sean, posted a TikTok, wearing my yoga pants and Chanel warmup jacket and doing a dance he calls Spin Mom on a Bender. My husband, Josh, who’s home because orthodontics is considered elective medicine, is writing a novel called “Brace Yourself,” which he calls “a no-holds-barred thriller about a rugged midtown orthodontist who saves the world by solving the ancient mystery of a pharaoh’s overbite and defeating his modern-day death cult with the help of a gorgeous French dental hygienist.” So we’ve all agreed to pretend that we’re by ourselves in the apartment, while I scroll through photos of Melania planting a tree on the White House lawn to commemorate Earth Day, wearing a Victoria Beckham trenchcoat and Manolos, which is her way of declaring, “We’re all in this together,” if you ask me. ♦
A Guide to the Coronavirus


newyorker--2020-05-11--“Our Days,” by Rae Armantrout

“Our Days,” by Rae Armantrout

In Chuck ’ s dream , a strange woman is smoking in our kitchen .
She ’ s doing her @ @ @ @ @ exhaling into the oven .
Then three military men burst in without knocking .
but @ @ @ @ @ Chuck suspects they ’ re really salesmen .
Their leader stands too close as he @ @ @ @ @ I drawn to things that make no sense ?
Or is their sense excessive ?
@ @ @ @ @ object in order to see it ,

Audio: Read by the author.
1
In Chuck’s dream, a strange woman
is smoking in our kitchen.
She’s doing her best, she says,
exhaling into the oven.
Then three military men
burst in without knocking.
They say they’ve come
to establish order,
but their uniforms are strange.
Chuck suspects they’re really salesmen.
Their leader stands too close
as he begins his pitch—
close enough to spread a virus.
2
I take a photo of a house
painted half blue, half pink.
Why am I drawn
to things that make no sense?
Or is their sense excessive?
You need to decontextualize
an object
in order to see it,
I once said.
Last sloth
in a pocket of rain forest;
exquisite scent
of hyacinth
wafted
on the wingless breeze.


Cartoon Caption Contest

Each week , we provide a cartoon in need of a caption .
You , the reader , submit your @ @ @ @ @ three finalists , and you vote for your favorite .
Anyone age thirteen or older @ @ @ @ @ To read the complete rules , click here .

Each week, we provide a cartoon in need of a caption. You, the reader, submit your caption here, we choose three finalists, and you vote for your favorite. Anyone age thirteen or older can enter or vote. To read the complete rules, click here.
Julia Suits Copy link to cartoon Copy link to cartoon Shop Shop


newyorker--2020-05-11--Obama Unworried About Trump Accusing Him of Crime Because Bill Barr Does Not Prosecute Criminals

WASHINGTON ( The Borowitz Report ) —Former President Barack Obama said on Monday that he is unconcerned about Donald Trump accusing him of “ the greatest crime in American history ” because Attorney General Bill Barr does not prosecute criminals .
“ At first , when I heard that he was accusing me of being the worst criminal ever , I have to admit I was a little rattled , ” Obama said .
“ But then I remembered Barr ’ s don ’ t-prosecute-crimes policy , and I was pretty chill about it.
” Obama said that he was @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of committing , “ but I ’ m pretty sure I never lied to the F.B.I .
or anything as serious as that—so I ’ m good.
” The former President said that , if it turns out that he did commit a crime , “ I ’ ll immediately admit that I did it , because , if history is any guide , the next thing that will happen is me not getting prosecuted.
” Reflecting on how the Department of Justice might view his illegal actions , whatever they were , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ awesome time to be a criminal .
”

WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—Former President Barack Obama said on Monday that he is unconcerned about Donald Trump accusing him of “the greatest crime in American history” because Attorney General Bill Barr does not prosecute criminals.
“At first, when I heard that he was accusing me of being the worst criminal ever, I have to admit I was a little rattled,” Obama said. “But then I remembered Barr’s don’t-prosecute-crimes policy, and I was pretty chill about it.”
Obama said that he was unsure what crime Trump was accusing him of committing, “but I’m pretty sure I never lied to the F.B.I. or anything as serious as that—so I’m good.”
The former President said that, if it turns out that he did commit a crime, “I’ll immediately admit that I did it, because, if history is any guide, the next thing that will happen is me not getting prosecuted.”
Reflecting on how the Department of Justice might view his illegal actions, whatever they were, Obama said, “This is an awesome time to be a criminal.”