newyorker--2020-04-15--Artistic Strategies for Co-Working in Tight Quarters

“ To bathe in passionate intimacy on a daily basis , while living together in the same house and often in the same bedroom with the loved one , has always seemed to me the most certain way to lose someone , ” the American-born writer , longtime Paris salonnière , and avowed enemy of cohabitation Natalie Clifford Barney once wrote .
To which I would like to reply : Yes , but have you tried living together and working together in the same house and often in the same bedroom with the loved one ?
That is the bind @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in , thanks to stay-at-home orders in response to the coronavirus pandemic , and I suspect that more than a few are finding this particular intimacy bath a bit too snug .
For relief , we can look to the example of a number of artistic and literary couples throughout history who have managed this same arrangement .
Artists are , of course , notoriously difficult people to live with , requiring vast stretches of solitude to do work that tends to make them moody and distracted when they ’ re away from @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to pursue this vocation under the same roof and stay together—well , surely there are some lessons here for us all .
Let ’ s start in England , which , as Elizabeth Hardwick noted in a 1955 essay , has long specialized in partnered writers .
“ The Brownings , the Webbs , the Garnetts , the Carlyles , Leonard and Virginia Woolf , [ John ] Middleton Murry and Katherine Mansfield—the literary couple is a peculiar English domestic manufacture , useful no doubt in a country with difficult winters , ” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ fire at tea-time , we can see these high-strung men and women clinging together , their inky fingers touching.
” For Hardwick , the most “ fantastic ” of these partnerships was between George Eliot and George Henry Lewes , whose twenty-four years together do seem uncommonly contented .
Eliot found writing extremely painful , and needed constant encouragement to stick with it .
Lewes was happy to provide that encouragement , and was able to do so without sacrificing his own work .
In her book “ Parallel Lives , ” Phyllis @ @ @ @ @ @ @ : “ They walked together , wrote together , read Homer , and learned languages together .
.
.
.
they even raised tadpoles together .
Every night after dinner they read aloud to each other , for as much as three hours.
” But even this most companionable of couples ran into some difficulties working in close quarters .
In the first home they shared , Eliot and Lewes worked side by side in the same small sitting room , and , according to the biographer Gordon S. Haight , “ Though @ @ @ @ @ @ @ it at the time , many years later she confessed that the scratching of George ’ s pen used to drive her nearly wild.
” When the couple eventually settled in the Priory , their principal residence for the remainder of their lives , they were sure to claim their own individual studies .
The married poets Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning were another literary couple who lived and worked under the same roof , in their case an apartment in Florence .
According to the biographer Margaret Forster , the Brownings worked @ @ @ @ @ @ @ with the dining room in between , doors firmly closed .
In addition , they would not show each other their day ’ s work nor discuss it ; she felt strongly that their personal intimacy should not extend to their literary work .
“ An artist must , I fancy , either find or make a solitude to work in , if it is to be good work at all , ” she wrote in a letter to a friend .
Making a solitude where one does not naturally exist is a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ closed door works wonders for this , but not all artists enjoyed even that small luxury .
In 1946 , after being evicted from their twenty-five-hundred-square-foot loft on Twenty-second Street ( they were months behind on the rent ) , the married painters Elaine and Willem de Kooning moved to a much smaller space on Carmine Street , a one-and-a-half-room apartment with the bathtub in the kitchen .
The historian Mary Gabriel , in her book “ Ninth Street Women , ” explains that , because there wasn ’ t enough space to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Koonings set up their “ studios ” in corners of the apartment and “ established privacy by facing in opposite directions.
” Not surprisingly , this proved a very flimsy solitude .
Willem—whom everyone called Bill—quickly became annoyed by Elaine ’ s rushed working style .
Elaine had her own complaints .
She said , “ Bill whistled while he worked .
You know , Mozart and Stravinsky .
Bill could whistle these fantastic melodies .
But I found it just a little , tiny bit irritating.
” Fortunately for them both , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ though the combined rent ended up being more than the loft they had been evicted from .
In the era of the coronavirus pandemic , obtaining a separate space outside the house is not really an option .
A more actionable case study can be found in the artist Judy Chicago ’ s autobiography “ Through the Flower , ” where she described the challenges of trying to work in the same Los Angeles house as her second husband , the sculptor Lloyd Hamrol .
Their problem was clashing schedules .
Chicago wrote @ @ @ @ @ @ @ couple “ worked out a system in which we could both have the psychic privacy we needed to do our work , ” Chicago wrote .
“ We established ‘ silent days , ’ where we would pass each other and not speak .
This allowed us to be in the house together without feeling that we had to be accessible to the other person ’ s needs all the time.
” The key to the arrangement , Chicago continued , was to be “ very straightforward with one another.
” If one @ @ @ @ @ @ @ was simply a matter of verbalizing that need—then the other person would say “ Sure ” and make separate plans .
What a simple yet ingenious arrangement !
Indeed , it sounds so wonderful that we should not draw any conclusions from the fact that , within a year of this description , Chicago and Hamrol had split up .
Not all partnered creators found co-working inimical .
Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre typically spent the mornings working apart , but in the afternoon they were content to write together in Sartre @ @ @ @ @ @ @ worth noting , however , that Beauvoir never had trouble concentrating on her work .
As she wrote , “ Sometimes I would sit at my worktable in either place for four hours at a stretch without once lifting my head .
”

“To bathe in passionate intimacy on a daily basis, while living together in the same house and often in the same bedroom with the loved one, has always seemed to me the most certain way to lose someone,” the American-born writer, longtime Paris salonnière, and avowed enemy of cohabitation Natalie Clifford Barney once wrote. To which I would like to reply: Yes, but have you tried living together and working together in the same house and often in the same bedroom with the loved one?
That is the bind that many couples are now finding themselves in, thanks to stay-at-home orders in response to the coronavirus pandemic, and I suspect that more than a few are finding this particular intimacy bath a bit too snug. For relief, we can look to the example of a number of artistic and literary couples throughout history who have managed this same arrangement. Artists are, of course, notoriously difficult people to live with, requiring vast stretches of solitude to do work that tends to make them moody and distracted when they’re away from it. For two such finicky creatures to pursue this vocation under the same roof and stay together—well, surely there are some lessons here for us all.
Let’s start in England, which, as Elizabeth Hardwick noted in a 1955 essay, has long specialized in partnered writers. “The Brownings, the Webbs, the Garnetts, the Carlyles, Leonard and Virginia Woolf, [John] Middleton Murry and Katherine Mansfield—the literary couple is a peculiar English domestic manufacture, useful no doubt in a country with difficult winters,” Hardwick wrote. “Before the bright fire at tea-time, we can see these high-strung men and women clinging together, their inky fingers touching.”
For Hardwick, the most “fantastic” of these partnerships was between George Eliot and George Henry Lewes, whose twenty-four years together do seem uncommonly contented. Eliot found writing extremely painful, and needed constant encouragement to stick with it. Lewes was happy to provide that encouragement, and was able to do so without sacrificing his own work. In her book “Parallel Lives,” Phyllis Rose described the couple’s days: “They walked together, wrote together, read Homer, and learned languages together. . . . they even raised tadpoles together. Every night after dinner they read aloud to each other, for as much as three hours.”
But even this most companionable of couples ran into some difficulties working in close quarters. In the first home they shared, Eliot and Lewes worked side by side in the same small sitting room, and, according to the biographer Gordon S. Haight, “Though [Eliot] did not complain of it at the time, many years later she confessed that the scratching of George’s pen used to drive her nearly wild.” When the couple eventually settled in the Priory, their principal residence for the remainder of their lives, they were sure to claim their own individual studies.
The married poets Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning were another literary couple who lived and worked under the same roof, in their case an apartment in Florence. According to the biographer Margaret Forster, the Brownings worked at opposite ends of the apartment, with the dining room in between, doors firmly closed. In addition, they would not show each other their day’s work nor discuss it; she felt strongly that their personal intimacy should not extend to their literary work. “An artist must, I fancy, either find or make a solitude to work in, if it is to be good work at all,” she wrote in a letter to a friend.
Making a solitude where one does not naturally exist is a common theme in these partnerships. A closed door works wonders for this, but not all artists enjoyed even that small luxury. In 1946, after being evicted from their twenty-five-hundred-square-foot loft on Twenty-second Street (they were months behind on the rent), the married painters Elaine and Willem de Kooning moved to a much smaller space on Carmine Street, a one-and-a-half-room apartment with the bathtub in the kitchen. The historian Mary Gabriel, in her book “Ninth Street Women,” explains that, because there wasn’t enough space to work in separate rooms, the de Koonings set up their “studios” in corners of the apartment and “established privacy by facing in opposite directions.”
Not surprisingly, this proved a very flimsy solitude. Willem—whom everyone called Bill—quickly became annoyed by Elaine’s rushed working style. Elaine had her own complaints. She said, “Bill whistled while he worked. You know, Mozart and Stravinsky. Bill could whistle these fantastic melodies. But I found it just a little, tiny bit irritating.” Fortunately for them both, Bill soon found a separate studio, though the combined rent ended up being more than the loft they had been evicted from.
In the era of the coronavirus pandemic, obtaining a separate space outside the house is not really an option. A more actionable case study can be found in the artist Judy Chicago’s autobiography “Through the Flower,” where she described the challenges of trying to work in the same Los Angeles house as her second husband, the sculptor Lloyd Hamrol. Their problem was clashing schedules. Chicago wrote:
I liked to get up in the morning and go directly about my business, going into my studio without talking to anyone. Then I liked to work all day and go out at night. Lloyd, on the other hand, preferred to work at night, sleep later than I, and he loved to talk in the morning.
To manage the conflict, the couple “worked out a system in which we could both have the psychic privacy we needed to do our work,” Chicago wrote. “We established ‘silent days,’ where we would pass each other and not speak. This allowed us to be in the house together without feeling that we had to be accessible to the other person’s needs all the time.” The key to the arrangement, Chicago continued, was to be “very straightforward with one another.” If one person needed some alone time, it was simply a matter of verbalizing that need—then the other person would say “Sure” and make separate plans.
What a simple yet ingenious arrangement! Indeed, it sounds so wonderful that we should not draw any conclusions from the fact that, within a year of this description, Chicago and Hamrol had split up.
Not all partnered creators found co-working inimical. Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre typically spent the mornings working apart, but in the afternoon they were content to write together in Sartre’s apartment. It’s worth noting, however, that Beauvoir never had trouble concentrating on her work. As she wrote, “Sometimes I would sit at my worktable in either place for four hours at a stretch without once lifting my head.”


newyorker--2020-04-15--“Chronicle of a Plague, Revisited” and the Inner Life of Catastrophe

In 1980 , the novelist Andrew Holleran began writing a column , New York Notebook , for the gay monthly Christopher Street .
Holleran ’ s first novel , “ Dancer from the Dance , ” had appeared in 1978 .
It remains a staple of queer literature courses , a vivid portrait of gay New York that turns an alternately romantic and skeptical eye on the hedonism and pathos of circuit parties and bathhouses in the nineteen-seventies .
His topics for the column were of a piece with the novel : dance music , art exhibitions , “ other @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Holleran ’ s writing combines sensual excess with sociological scrutiny and philosophical reserve ; one feels at once subsumed in the dancing crowd and always , somehow , at a singular remove from it .
He seemed almost miraculously calibrated to serve as an observer of post-Stonewall gay male life in New York , a moment fuelled by penicillin and liberation .
He was poised for a career as a chronicler of the manners and mores of an unprecedented world .
And then that world fell apart .
In 1982 , with the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , ” the character of Holleran ’ s column changed ; by 1986 , he later wrote , he had been reduced to two subjects— “ descriptions of New York-as-a-cemetery and elegies for friends.
” In 1988 , he collected a number of these columns in a book titled “ Ground Zero.
” The book was reissued twenty years later , with a new title : “ Chronicle of a Plague , Revisited.
” The essays combine journalistic reportage in real time with an extraordinarily refined literary sensibility , and the conjunction is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the rest of gay New York , slowly realizes the scope of the catastrophe , the effect is something like reading F. Scott Fitzgerald ’ s notes on the apocalypse .
Today , the collection is only available as an e-book , and seems to be little read .
This may be an accident of timing : the reissue came out a little too soon to be part of what is sometimes called “ the AIDS revisitation , ” which has included revivals and adaptations of Larry Kramer ’ s “ The Normal @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ Angels in America ” ; new novels by Kramer , Tim Murphy , and Rebecca Makkai , among others ; and works of history by David France and , soon , Sarah Schulman .
But Holleran ’ s book is eminently worth revisiting , and has lately become even more so .
There has been debate among queer people , in recent weeks , over the extent to which anything useful might be made of a comparison of our current pandemic with the one that devastated and reshaped queer life in America @ @ @ @ @ @ @ political and scientific grounds , the differences are vast .
But I have felt an eerie affective familiarity during the past several weeks , in my anger at governmental failings and in the uncertainty I ’ ve felt in the face of contradictory information about who is at risk and to what degree , about where risk lies and how we should protect ourselves , about how many are likely to die .
As the obituaries mount in the Times and elsewhere , as the names of actors and musicians and writers drift @ @ @ @ @ @ @ has felt familiar , too .
Affect was Holleran ’ s subject in his New York Notebook , and his feeling for the inner life in catastrophe—or of the vertiginous way inner life and external circumstance become porous—is what has sent me back to it .
Holleran documents a particular queer sociality , a community stitched together by bonds that are often adjacent to or sparked by desire but seldom reducible to sex .
Of one friend he writes , “ The fact that our attempts at sex failed in no way affected @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” The men in Holleran ’ s chronicles make the libidinal rounds of dance clubs , bathhouses and porn theatres , but they also work out and watch movies together , they have dinner , they go to Atlantic City and lie on the beach and comment on passing men .
More than anything else , they joke with one another ; they crack one another up .
Holleran has a genius for portraiture , a gift for using a single figure to give life to a whole world , to a whole @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for all the things I still , at bottom , loved more than any others , ” he writes about one dead friend .
“ Books , wit , the body , a beach in summer , a friend to laugh with and sit beside on the train going back to the city—tired , spent , completely happy—as the big red sun winked between the buildings of Queens.
” Much of the pathos in Holleran ’ s essays comes from watching this social world dissolve , his friendships cut off not just by @ @ @ @ @ @ @ by the strain of feeling oneself menaced by them .
“ The plague fragmented , Balkanized , gay people , ” he writes .
Gay life broke into distinct tribes : “ the abstinent , the sex junkie , and the worried sick.
” Once testing was available , there developed what he considers a schism between Positives and Negatives ( the capitalization is his ) .
And then there was “ the final Balkanization of gay life , ” irreparable : “ some of us lived , others died.
” Holleran movingly @ @ @ @ @ @ @ frays other bonds : how the loss of a friend means the loss of acquaintances , the undoing of knots of affection .
New forms of social life develop , too—one essay takes as its subject a discussion group , Gaytalk , which invites members to deliver book reports or history lessons—but Holleran seems unconvinced by them .
While he can say of a new acquaintance that “ I feel a bond with this man simply because he has lived through all of this , ” he still perceives , by the end @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of homosexual Americans into millions of individual fates , different positions in relation to AIDS , and a sense that everyone has made his little bargain with fate.
” If forming new friendships seems impossible for Holleran , it ’ s in part because the medium in which they flourished is gone .
Laughter is the currency of the world that Holleran loves , and one of the great privations of AIDS is that it seemed , at least for a time , to make laughter impossible .
One of the book ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Charles Ludlam , a “ smoldering anarchist of kitsch , ” who produced extravagant drag epics with his Ridiculous Theatrical Company until his death , of AIDS-related pneumonia , in 1987 .
Holleran ’ s essay is the most concise and profound discussion of camp aesthetics I know ; it is also a lament for laughter .
“ Not only is Charles Ludlam gone , it seems , so is humor , ” Holleran writes .
“ One no longer can make jokes about death .
One can no longer make jokes at @ @ @ @ @ @ @ The air in which laughter thrives , ” he writes in another essay , “ seemed to have dried up.
” Holleran writes that “ Ludlam in mascara , headdress , faux pearls , and breasts , was a High Camp answer to a situation so horrifying one did not know whether to make fun of it or to be very , very serious.
” This is Holleran ’ s sole acknowledgment that there might be an adequate aesthetic response to AIDS ; otherwise , even once major works addressing the crisis appear @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
“ Yes , the arts absorbed the new subject matter , ” he writes , “ but so what ?
” Whether there is any point to art is a question at the heart of many of the essays , and one senses a young writer wondering if he has any contribution to make , if there is anything for him to do .
A year before the reissue was published , Holleran reviewed a book about Henry James , who hovers as a tutelary spirit over much of his work .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ the raising of a woman ’ s eyebrow across the dinner table was more dramatic to him than the fall of Rome.
” The question of many of Holleran ’ s columns in the eighties was what such a writer can do when Rome actually falls .

Can the current pandemic usefully be compared with the AIDS crisis? Photograph by Monica Almeida / New York Daily News / Getty
In 1980, the novelist Andrew Holleran began writing a column, New York Notebook, for the gay monthly Christopher Street. Holleran’s first novel, “Dancer from the Dance,” had appeared in 1978. It remains a staple of queer literature courses, a vivid portrait of gay New York that turns an alternately romantic and skeptical eye on the hedonism and pathos of circuit parties and bathhouses in the nineteen-seventies. His topics for the column were of a piece with the novel: dance music, art exhibitions, “other minor issues of urban gay life.” Holleran’s writing combines sensual excess with sociological scrutiny and philosophical reserve; one feels at once subsumed in the dancing crowd and always, somehow, at a singular remove from it. He seemed almost miraculously calibrated to serve as an observer of post-Stonewall gay male life in New York, a moment fuelled by penicillin and liberation. He was poised for a career as a chronicler of the manners and mores of an unprecedented world.
And then that world fell apart. In 1982, with the first reports of a “gay cancer,” the character of Holleran’s column changed; by 1986, he later wrote, he had been reduced to two subjects—“descriptions of New York-as-a-cemetery and elegies for friends.” In 1988, he collected a number of these columns in a book titled “Ground Zero.” The book was reissued twenty years later, with a new title: “Chronicle of a Plague, Revisited.” The essays combine journalistic reportage in real time with an extraordinarily refined literary sensibility, and the conjunction is startling. As Holleran, along with the rest of gay New York, slowly realizes the scope of the catastrophe, the effect is something like reading F. Scott Fitzgerald’s notes on the apocalypse.
Today, the collection is only available as an e-book, and seems to be little read. This may be an accident of timing: the reissue came out a little too soon to be part of what is sometimes called “the AIDS revisitation,” which has included revivals and adaptations of Larry Kramer’s “The Normal Heart” and Tony Kushner’s “Angels in America”; new novels by Kramer, Tim Murphy, and Rebecca Makkai, among others; and works of history by David France and, soon, Sarah Schulman. But Holleran’s book is eminently worth revisiting, and has lately become even more so. There has been debate among queer people, in recent weeks, over the extent to which anything useful might be made of a comparison of our current pandemic with the one that devastated and reshaped queer life in America in the eighties and nineties. On political and scientific grounds, the differences are vast. But I have felt an eerie affective familiarity during the past several weeks, in my anger at governmental failings and in the uncertainty I’ve felt in the face of contradictory information about who is at risk and to what degree, about where risk lies and how we should protect ourselves, about how many are likely to die. As the obituaries mount in the Times and elsewhere, as the names of actors and musicians and writers drift down my social-media feeds, the grief has felt familiar, too.
Affect was Holleran’s subject in his New York Notebook, and his feeling for the inner life in catastrophe—or of the vertiginous way inner life and external circumstance become porous—is what has sent me back to it. Holleran documents a particular queer sociality, a community stitched together by bonds that are often adjacent to or sparked by desire but seldom reducible to sex. Of one friend he writes, “The fact that our attempts at sex failed in no way affected the affection we felt for each other.” The men in Holleran’s chronicles make the libidinal rounds of dance clubs, bathhouses and porn theatres, but they also work out and watch movies together, they have dinner, they go to Atlantic City and lie on the beach and comment on passing men. More than anything else, they joke with one another; they crack one another up. Holleran has a genius for portraiture, a gift for using a single figure to give life to a whole world, to a whole philosophy of living. “He stood for all the things I still, at bottom, loved more than any others,” he writes about one dead friend. “Books, wit, the body, a beach in summer, a friend to laugh with and sit beside on the train going back to the city—tired, spent, completely happy—as the big red sun winked between the buildings of Queens.”
Much of the pathos in Holleran’s essays comes from watching this social world dissolve, his friendships cut off not just by the fact of sickness and death but by the strain of feeling oneself menaced by them. “The plague fragmented, Balkanized, gay people,” he writes. Gay life broke into distinct tribes: “the abstinent, the sex junkie, and the worried sick.” Once testing was available, there developed what he considers a schism between Positives and Negatives (the capitalization is his). And then there was “the final Balkanization of gay life,” irreparable: “some of us lived, others died.” Holleran movingly documents how the death of any individual frays other bonds: how the loss of a friend means the loss of acquaintances, the undoing of knots of affection.
New forms of social life develop, too—one essay takes as its subject a discussion group, Gaytalk, which invites members to deliver book reports or history lessons—but Holleran seems unconvinced by them. While he can say of a new acquaintance that “I feel a bond with this man simply because he has lived through all of this,” he still perceives, by the end of the decade, “a splintering of homosexual Americans into millions of individual fates, different positions in relation to AIDS, and a sense that everyone has made his little bargain with fate.”
If forming new friendships seems impossible for Holleran, it’s in part because the medium in which they flourished is gone. Laughter is the currency of the world that Holleran loves, and one of the great privations of AIDS is that it seemed, at least for a time, to make laughter impossible. One of the book’s extraordinary essays addresses the theatre artist Charles Ludlam, a “smoldering anarchist of kitsch,” who produced extravagant drag epics with his Ridiculous Theatrical Company until his death, of AIDS-related pneumonia, in 1987. Holleran’s essay is the most concise and profound discussion of camp aesthetics I know; it is also a lament for laughter. “Not only is Charles Ludlam gone, it seems, so is humor,” Holleran writes. “One no longer can make jokes about death. One can no longer make jokes at all—the curtain’s down.” “The air in which laughter thrives,” he writes in another essay, “seemed to have dried up.”
Holleran writes that “Ludlam in mascara, headdress, faux pearls, and breasts, was a High Camp answer to a situation so horrifying one did not know whether to make fun of it or to be very, very serious.” This is Holleran’s sole acknowledgment that there might be an adequate aesthetic response to AIDS; otherwise, even once major works addressing the crisis appear, he is dismissive of their relevance. “Yes, the arts absorbed the new subject matter,” he writes, “but so what?” Whether there is any point to art is a question at the heart of many of the essays, and one senses a young writer wondering if he has any contribution to make, if there is anything for him to do. A year before the reissue was published, Holleran reviewed a book about Henry James, who hovers as a tutelary spirit over much of his work. James, Holleran writes, “claimed the raising of a woman’s eyebrow across the dinner table was more dramatic to him than the fall of Rome.” The question of many of Holleran’s columns in the eighties was what such a writer can do when Rome actually falls.
The answer that he repeatedly gives, anxiously or resignedly, is nothing. (Holleran published a second novel, “Nights in Aruba,” which is set in the pre-AIDS world, in 1983; it would be thirteen years before he published a third.) “There is one thing and one thing only everyone wants to read,” he writes in one column, “and that is the headline CURE FOUND.” Since only a scientist could supply a cure, “all the rest of us could do was stand by friends.” Holleran rejects the idea that any moral might be drawn from the experience of watching his friends die, that he could be left “edified, or superior, or enlightened.” There isn’t any meaningful way art can be relevant to the crisis, Holleran argues, and then goes further: its only possible justification in the age of AIDS is irrelevance. “The only moral thing to write now was comedy—anything to amuse, to distract, to bring a laugh, an escape from this dreary, relentless, surreal reality.”
So the novelist, despairing of novels, turns to these chronicles. And yet Holleran’s essays seem to me something like a vindication of the possibilities of art, and especially of those qualities that distinguish art from activism. Any art produced from the AIDS crisis would be judged, Holleran believed, “as writing published in wartime is: by its effect on the people fighting—in other words, as propaganda”; and this would mean a sacrifice of “certain values on which literature depends, like candor.” In Holleran’s monthly dispatches, with their apparent slightness and off-handedness, their lack of pretension, he can afford the indulgence of candor; he can entertain the ambivalence and doubt that the life-or-death stakes of activism forbid. “The fact that some virus has insinuated itself into the collective bloodstream through the promiscuity that homosexual life evolved is a medical, not a moral, fact,” he asserts, accurately, responsibly. And then he continues, with politically inconvenient, psychologically compelling candor: “Or was it? I wasn’t sure.”
Narratives of the early AIDS crisis are almost always, finally, narratives of heroism, offering catharsis either through a brave, doomed confrontation with untimely death or, in accounts of ACT UP and the development of successful therapies, like David France’s “How to Survive a Plague,” determination and eventual triumph. One of the achievements of Holleran’s essays is their utter rejection of the satisfactions of catharsis. “I sit, slack-jawed, bouche bée, at history’s unfolding,” he writes. “The names of the dead, the shock at their number and improbability, the forecasts for the future, the dismal withdrawal and isolation, left one, in the end, speechless. Impotent.” Holleran berates himself for not being more invested in politics, for not being angrier, for what he repeatedly characterizes as his uselessness. In the introduction to the 2008 reissue, he writes, “In the end, I see now, I was one of those people who were frozen. . . . I did not join Act Up; I did not write a play or memoir, or demonstrate; I moldered in a subset of gay men called ‘the worried well.’ ” Looking back on the columns, he accuses himself of “ ‘morose delectation’—an addiction to melancholy.” (Holleran, who was raised Catholic, attributes this concept to the Jesuits.) But precisely the characteristics that disappoint him, and that may blunt effectiveness in crisis—coolness, self-doubt, a penchant for sadness and near imperviousness to outrage, an allergy to self-righteousness—are what make him such a powerful observer.


newyorker--2020-04-15--Instead of Challenging Joe Biden, Maybe the Green Party Could Help Change Our Democracy

To distract myself from wondering if my chest is tightening , I sometimes think about other things that could go really wrong this year .
The list is long , but somewhere near the very top is the thought that the President could somehow eke out a close election victory , despite—well , despite everything .
There ’ s no guarantee it won ’ t happen .
The Democrats didn ’ t find a perfect candidate , and there ’ s going to be an endless blizzard of Facebook lies , and team Trump is topnotch at voter suppression .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ odds a little , and a good one would be to not have a third-party challenge from the left this year , at least in the six or seven battleground states that are going to make the difference .
That means asking the Green Party to stand down in those places .
People with impressive left credentials—Noam Chomsky , Barbara Ehrenreich , Ron Daniels—did this already , in January , in a well-argued open letter .
But it didn ’ t seem to work : the Party ’ s most likely Presidential candidate @ @ @ @ @ @ @ would run even if the Democrats nominated Bernie Sanders , who , Hawkins told an interviewer , had been “ a little slow ” in his plans for reform .
Hawkins has run many times for governor of New York , and also for the House and the Senate from that state , while never getting more than five per cent of the vote .
( He did come in a respectable second in a Fourth District city-council race in his home town of Syracuse , in 2013 . )
“ Recognizing the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ electing any damned Democrat should trump all other considerations , ” Hawkins said .
So I probably won ’ t be able to persuade him , either , but let me at least offer the suggestion that there ’ s a particularly useful reform that Greens—and others interested in a more vibrant politics—could be working on , instead , this autumn .
To understand why this reform—ranked-choice voting—seems so important to me , let me say that , by ideology , I ’ m pretty much a Green .
One of my favorite @ @ @ @ @ @ @ former member of the Australian Senate , who , in 1972 , helped found what was arguably the first Green Party ( and also saved a large portion of Tasmania ’ s classic wilderness ) .
I ’ ve given speeches on behalf of German Greens and European Union Greens and local Green parties in many states and cities , and , whenever Canada holds an election , I stay up to watch the returns from the island district in the Pacific , off Vancouver , just to make sure that Elizabeth May @ @ @ @ @ @ @ nation ’ s Green Party , has retained her seat .
So I ’ m about as small- “ g ” green as green gets , having spent my adult life working on the greatest environmental crisis in the history of our civilization , the rapid heating of our planet .
But I haven ’ t supported the Green Party in national elections in this country , and that ’ s because of the way our electoral laws work .
The obvious difference between the United States on the one hand and most @ @ @ @ @ @ @ we have a de-facto plurality-winner-take-all two-party system that makes it all but impossible for a small party to make a non-perverse difference , while European countries have parliamentary systems with electoral mechanisms that encourage small parties to play constructively pivotal roles .
Time and again , by winning five or ten or twenty per cent of the vote , and a like share of seats , the Greens who operate in parliamentary democracies have ended up with enough representatives to give them bargaining power when it came time to form coalition governments .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ having the Greens in a power-sharing government was a major reason that Germany pioneered renewable energy ; currently , in British Columbia , a Green-Liberal coalition has bolstered opposition to giant pipelines .
In the United States , winning a few percentage points of the vote gets you nothing , except a chance to argue about whether you were the spoiler .
Ralph Nader , in 2000 , and Jill Stein , in 2016 , have roundly insisted that they weren ’ t , arguing that the Democrats who were defeated in crucial @ @ @ @ @ @ @ totals there did not run skillful enough campaigns .
Relitigating that history seems less essential than looking ahead : the last poll I saw for Wisconsin showed that the race between a Democrat and Trump , for the state that many analysts predict will sway the election , was currently within three percentage points .
So , if a Green Party candidate is on the ballot and attracts even a smidgen of support—well , it could end very badly indeed .
And why would you take that chance this year ?
That ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ t be better off with more electoral alternatives .
We clearly would .
And to get them we needn ’ t wait for some unlikely constitutional change that might produce a parliamentary system .
Instead , we can work to get more states to follow the lead of Maine , which last year introduced a ranked-choice voting system for most elections .
Here ’ s how it works : if there are ten candidates on your ballot , you list your choices from one to ten .
You can proudly vote for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 1 choice for Congress , and , if she comes in last , you haven ’ t lost your vote or spoiled someone else ’ s chances .
That ’ s because that vote would then be eliminated and your second-ranked vote would be counted instead , and so on , until someone has won a majority .
This is not some impossible dream of a reform—pundits used to say “ as Maine goes so goes the nation , ” and , indeed , last year , after Maine adopted the plan , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the support of seventy-three per cent of its voters .
“ Before the pandemic , R.C.V .
was gaining momentum , with efforts teed up in several states to advance it via ballot initiative or legislative lobbying , ” Josh Silver , the director of the electoral-reform campaign RepresentUs , said .
“ A ballot initiative for R.C.V .
is likely in Alaska this year , and possibly in North Dakota and Massachusetts .
There is a huge opportunity for legislative lobbying efforts in many other states , blue and red , as @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s vote to allow their cities to enact R.C.V.
” That is to say , Green enthusiasts in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania could skip Presidential campaigning and , instead , push their legislatures hard to put R.C.V .
on the agenda .
The pandemic has only increased the urgency , because the one drawback of a now necessary vote-by-mail system is that candidates sometimes drop out of elections after you ’ ve mailed in your ballot .
Silver again : “ This happened to millions of voters in this year ’ s primary , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ must lean in hard to this opportunity.
” If we managed to enact this reform , the result would be a much better system in many ways .
One is that you could really build small progressive parties without potential supporters worrying that they ’ d inadvertently elect Trumpish figures ; if the Greens , or any third party , are ever going to have a real breakthrough on a national level , it will be because people can vote for them without fear , real or imagined , of being a spoiler @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , too , which I got to see close up while covering elections as a young city-hall reporter in Cambridge , Massachusetts , which for decades was the only major city in the country to use R.C.V .
It ’ s that these elections not only allow for more ideological diversity but also tend to reduce the truly hateful divisiveness that ’ s become such a feature of our elections .
If you ’ re a candidate in a ranked-choice election , you have a strong incentive not to be a sneering jerk @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of behavior reduces your chances of getting crucial No .
2 votes .
You have to make your case , and you have to at least understand someone else ’ s .

To distract myself from wondering if my chest is tightening, I sometimes think about other things that could go really wrong this year. The list is long, but somewhere near the very top is the thought that the President could somehow eke out a close election victory, despite—well, despite everything.
There’s no guarantee it won’t happen. The Democrats didn’t find a perfect candidate, and there’s going to be an endless blizzard of Facebook lies, and team Trump is topnotch at voter suppression. But there are ways to lessen the odds a little, and a good one would be to not have a third-party challenge from the left this year, at least in the six or seven battleground states that are going to make the difference. That means asking the Green Party to stand down in those places. People with impressive left credentials—Noam Chomsky, Barbara Ehrenreich, Ron Daniels—did this already, in January, in a well-argued open letter. But it didn’t seem to work: the Party’s most likely Presidential candidate, Howie Hawkins, declared that he would run even if the Democrats nominated Bernie Sanders, who, Hawkins told an interviewer, had been “a little slow” in his plans for reform. Hawkins has run many times for governor of New York, and also for the House and the Senate from that state, while never getting more than five per cent of the vote. (He did come in a respectable second in a Fourth District city-council race in his home town of Syracuse, in 2013.) “Recognizing the danger of Trump does not mean that electing any damned Democrat should trump all other considerations,” Hawkins said. So I probably won’t be able to persuade him, either, but let me at least offer the suggestion that there’s a particularly useful reform that Greens—and others interested in a more vibrant politics—could be working on, instead, this autumn.
To understand why this reform—ranked-choice voting—seems so important to me, let me say that, by ideology, I’m pretty much a Green. One of my favorite politicians anywhere is Bob Brown, a former member of the Australian Senate, who, in 1972, helped found what was arguably the first Green Party (and also saved a large portion of Tasmania’s classic wilderness). I’ve given speeches on behalf of German Greens and European Union Greens and local Green parties in many states and cities, and, whenever Canada holds an election, I stay up to watch the returns from the island district in the Pacific, off Vancouver, just to make sure that Elizabeth May, who for many years led the nation’s Green Party, has retained her seat. So I’m about as small-“g” green as green gets, having spent my adult life working on the greatest environmental crisis in the history of our civilization, the rapid heating of our planet.
But I haven’t supported the Green Party in national elections in this country, and that’s because of the way our electoral laws work. The obvious difference between the United States on the one hand and most of Europe on the other is that we have a de-facto plurality-winner-take-all two-party system that makes it all but impossible for a small party to make a non-perverse difference, while European countries have parliamentary systems with electoral mechanisms that encourage small parties to play constructively pivotal roles. Time and again, by winning five or ten or twenty per cent of the vote, and a like share of seats, the Greens who operate in parliamentary democracies have ended up with enough representatives to give them bargaining power when it came time to form coalition governments. And those bargains make big differences: having the Greens in a power-sharing government was a major reason that Germany pioneered renewable energy; currently, in British Columbia, a Green-Liberal coalition has bolstered opposition to giant pipelines.
In the United States, winning a few percentage points of the vote gets you nothing, except a chance to argue about whether you were the spoiler. Ralph Nader, in 2000, and Jill Stein, in 2016, have roundly insisted that they weren’t, arguing that the Democrats who were defeated in crucial states by margins smaller than their vote totals there did not run skillful enough campaigns. Relitigating that history seems less essential than looking ahead: the last poll I saw for Wisconsin showed that the race between a Democrat and Trump, for the state that many analysts predict will sway the election, was currently within three percentage points. So, if a Green Party candidate is on the ballot and attracts even a smidgen of support—well, it could end very badly indeed. And why would you take that chance this year?
That’s not to say that America wouldn’t be better off with more electoral alternatives. We clearly would. And to get them we needn’t wait for some unlikely constitutional change that might produce a parliamentary system. Instead, we can work to get more states to follow the lead of Maine, which last year introduced a ranked-choice voting system for most elections. Here’s how it works: if there are ten candidates on your ballot, you list your choices from one to ten. You can proudly vote for the Green candidate as your No. 1 choice for Congress, and, if she comes in last, you haven’t lost your vote or spoiled someone else’s chances. That’s because that vote would then be eliminated and your second-ranked vote would be counted instead, and so on, until someone has won a majority.
This is not some impossible dream of a reform—pundits used to say “as Maine goes so goes the nation,” and, indeed, last year, after Maine adopted the plan, so did New York City, with the support of seventy-three per cent of its voters. “Before the pandemic, R.C.V. was gaining momentum, with efforts teed up in several states to advance it via ballot initiative or legislative lobbying,” Josh Silver, the director of the electoral-reform campaign RepresentUs, said. “A ballot initiative for R.C.V. is likely in Alaska this year, and possibly in North Dakota and Massachusetts. There is a huge opportunity for legislative lobbying efforts in many other states, blue and red, as evidenced by the deep-red Utah legislature’s vote to allow their cities to enact R.C.V.” That is to say, Green enthusiasts in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania could skip Presidential campaigning and, instead, push their legislatures hard to put R.C.V. on the agenda. The pandemic has only increased the urgency, because the one drawback of a now necessary vote-by-mail system is that candidates sometimes drop out of elections after you’ve mailed in your ballot. Silver again: “This happened to millions of voters in this year’s primary, and R.C.V. fixes it. We must lean in hard to this opportunity.”
If we managed to enact this reform, the result would be a much better system in many ways. One is that you could really build small progressive parties without potential supporters worrying that they’d inadvertently elect Trumpish figures; if the Greens, or any third party, are ever going to have a real breakthrough on a national level, it will be because people can vote for them without fear, real or imagined, of being a spoiler. But there’s another reason, too, which I got to see close up while covering elections as a young city-hall reporter in Cambridge, Massachusetts, which for decades was the only major city in the country to use R.C.V. It’s that these elections not only allow for more ideological diversity but also tend to reduce the truly hateful divisiveness that’s become such a feature of our elections. If you’re a candidate in a ranked-choice election, you have a strong incentive not to be a sneering jerk to your competitors, because that kind of behavior reduces your chances of getting crucial No. 2 votes. You have to make your case, and you have to at least understand someone else’s.


newyorker--2020-04-14--How Democrats Won Big in Wisconsin

How Democrats Won Big in Wisconsin

On Monday evening , Wisconsin released the results from its controversial April 7th election , which took place amid poll closures and fear for the health and safety of voters during a pandemic .
Joe Biden easily beat Bernie Sanders in the state ’ s Democratic Presidential primary .
( Sanders , as was widely expected , suspended his campaign the day after the election . )
The more surprising result was on the Wisconsin Supreme Court , where a progressive challenger , Jill Karofsky , defeated a Donald Trump-backed incumbent , Daniel Kelly , by more than ten percentage @ @ @ @ @ @ @ expected to weigh in on at least one crucial voting-rights decision this year , is now split between four conservatives and three liberals .
Karofsky ’ s win was especially significant because , just a few days earlier , the state ’ s Supreme Court had played a central role in the conflict over whether to hold the election .
On April 3rd , Wisconsin ’ s Democratic Governor , Tony Evers , called on the Republican state legislature to postpone the election .
It refused , and Evers then invoked broad emergency @ @ @ @ @ @ @ was overruled by the state Supreme Court , and the United States Supreme Court blocked efforts to extend absentee voting .
Many Democrats described Republicans ’ insistence on holding the election as an effort at voter suppression .
In Milwaukee , Wisconsin ’ s Democratic stronghold , only around three per cent of polling stations were open , owing to limited numbers of poll workers .
Across the state , voters complained that they never received absentee ballots that they had requested .
Shortly after the results were released , I spoke to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Wisconsin Democratic Party .
In the weeks leading up to the election , Wikler and the state Party had organized a massive absentee-ballot effort .
Wikler , who until last year was the Washington director of MoveOn , often stresses the importance of delivering Wisconsin to the Democrats in this fall ’ s Presidential election .
During our conversation , which has been edited for length and clarity , we discussed why Republican voter-suppression efforts may have backfired ; whether Evers , who at first resisted efforts to postpone the election , made @ @ @ @ @ @ @ needs to do in order to beat Donald Trump in the state in November .
Do you view this result as a response to Republican efforts to suppress the vote ?
I think the Republican attempts to suppress votes in Wisconsin backfired profoundly .
There is a concept in psychology called “ moral injury , ” which refers to seeing something happen—or feeling like one failed to prevent something from happening—that is so fundamentally wrong that it tears at the fabric of your moral expectations of the world .
And that describes how @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the G.O.P .
force us into an in-person election that every public-health official warned could cost lives .
It reminds me of the height of the family-separation crisis and the backlash that followed , in 2018 .
And , like in 2018 , people wanted to fight back with everything they could .
For many voters , that meant finding a way to request and return an absentee ballot .
For others , it meant braving the coronavirus and standing for hours in line , even in rain and hail , to cast @ @ @ @ @ @ @ who “ don ’ t like being suppressed , rose up.
” But I have seen you , in interviews , cite voter suppression as the reason that Democrats have had trouble in Wisconsin .
Is there any inconsistency there ?
Voter-I.D .
laws , restrictions on registering to vote , elimination of funded student governments that conduct campus outreach—all those voter-suppression tactics clearly drive down voter participation .
Forcing an in-person election during a pandemic and suing all the way to the United States Supreme Court , in a last-ditch effort to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ public health , had the kind of acute and vicious quality that invites a different kind of reaction .
Do you have some sense of how many of these absentee ballots were cast before the coronavirus really hit the state and the controversy erupted ?
There are graphs of absentee ballots requested and returned day by day .
The spike in absentee ballots absolutely took place after the coronavirus started to spread .
The sea change happened as public fear of this pandemic began to explode .
Why did it take Governor Evers @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ?
Was that an error ?
Governor Evers issued the safer-at-home order on March 24th and called for ballots to be mailed to every Wisconsin voter three days later .
By the next week , a federal judge declined to postpone the election itself , and said it was an action that had to be taken by the Governor and the state legislature , and the Governor called on the state legislature to act the following day .
This has been a fast-moving public-health emergency , and the Governor is responsible for every @ @ @ @ @ @ @ has taken heat from Republicans each time he has pushed further to protect the public health .
I am grateful he tried to do the right thing , and I am still furious that Republicans shut down efforts to protect voters , both through their power in the legislature and by suing to the highest courts in the state and country .
I understand that , but , into early April , the Governor was trying to keep the election date and said it was important to democracy that it happened .
Republicans @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , but Democrats were also divided on it for a while .
Other states only had primary elections .
In Wisconsin , our spring election included the Presidential primary but also three thousand eight hundred and thirty-one state and local elections .
Wisconsin elections are also unusually complicated in the way they are administered .
We have eighteen hundred and fifty-two municipal clerks who are responsible for sending out absentee ballots .
If there had been a safe way to conduct in-person elections , that would have been far preferable .
But it @ @ @ @ @ @ @ t the case , and poll workers were dropping out in accelerating numbers , leading to more and more election-site closures as the date drew near .
So you are saying that is why it was harder to push the vote off ?
Yes , exactly .
In some places , the Party has the authority to change a primary or caucus .
In Wisconsin , election laws are written in the statute , and the whole machinery of government revolves around them .
What are your biggest concerns about efforts to suppress @ @ @ @ @ @ @ are you planning to respond ?
Moreover , what voter issues are likely to come up before the Wisconsin Supreme Court , which now is seen to be divided between four conservatives and three liberals ?
If voter-suppression Republicans control the courts and the legislature , the most powerful method to protect the vote is organizing , and , as we approached the spring election , the Democratic Party in Wisconsin and an array of progressive groups organized with a greater volume and depth than we have ever seen in a spring election @ @ @ @ @ @ @ toward the fall , we have to fight for the right to vote with everything we have got , which means negotiating in Congress and state legislatures across the country .
It means bringing court cases wherever possible to protect the ballot , and it means exposing what Republicans are doing to the harsh light of public scrutiny .
Republicans don ’ t like to admit that so much of their electoral strategy is built around suppressing the vote of people who disagree with them , and , when it is as naked @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in Wisconsin , it can undermine itself by outraging the public conscience .

On Monday evening, Wisconsin released the results from its controversial April 7th election, which took place amid poll closures and fear for the health and safety of voters during a pandemic. Joe Biden easily beat Bernie Sanders in the state’s Democratic Presidential primary. (Sanders, as was widely expected, suspended his campaign the day after the election.) The more surprising result was on the Wisconsin Supreme Court, where a progressive challenger, Jill Karofsky, defeated a Donald Trump-backed incumbent, Daniel Kelly, by more than ten percentage points. The court, which is expected to weigh in on at least one crucial voting-rights decision this year, is now split between four conservatives and three liberals.
Karofsky’s win was especially significant because, just a few days earlier, the state’s Supreme Court had played a central role in the conflict over whether to hold the election. On April 3rd, Wisconsin’s Democratic Governor, Tony Evers, called on the Republican state legislature to postpone the election. It refused, and Evers then invoked broad emergency powers to do so, but he was overruled by the state Supreme Court, and the United States Supreme Court blocked efforts to extend absentee voting. Many Democrats described Republicans’ insistence on holding the election as an effort at voter suppression. In Milwaukee, Wisconsin’s Democratic stronghold, only around three per cent of polling stations were open, owing to limited numbers of poll workers. Across the state, voters complained that they never received absentee ballots that they had requested.
Shortly after the results were released, I spoke to Ben Wikler, the chairman of the Wisconsin Democratic Party. In the weeks leading up to the election, Wikler and the state Party had organized a massive absentee-ballot effort. Wikler, who until last year was the Washington director of MoveOn, often stresses the importance of delivering Wisconsin to the Democrats in this fall’s Presidential election. During our conversation, which has been edited for length and clarity, we discussed why Republican voter-suppression efforts may have backfired; whether Evers, who at first resisted efforts to postpone the election, made strategic errors; and what Joe Biden needs to do in order to beat Donald Trump in the state in November.
Do you view this result as a response to Republican efforts to suppress the vote?
I think the Republican attempts to suppress votes in Wisconsin backfired profoundly. There is a concept in psychology called “moral injury,” which refers to seeing something happen—or feeling like one failed to prevent something from happening—that is so fundamentally wrong that it tears at the fabric of your moral expectations of the world. And that describes how voters across Wisconsin felt as they watched the G.O.P. force us into an in-person election that every public-health official warned could cost lives. It reminds me of the height of the family-separation crisis and the backlash that followed, in 2018. And, like in 2018, people wanted to fight back with everything they could. For many voters, that meant finding a way to request and return an absentee ballot. For others, it meant braving the coronavirus and standing for hours in line, even in rain and hail, to cast a vote.
You tweeted that voters who “don’t like being suppressed, rose up.” But I have seen you, in interviews, cite voter suppression as the reason that Democrats have had trouble in Wisconsin. Is there any inconsistency there?
Voter-I.D. laws, restrictions on registering to vote, elimination of funded student governments that conduct campus outreach—all those voter-suppression tactics clearly drive down voter participation. Forcing an in-person election during a pandemic and suing all the way to the United States Supreme Court, in a last-ditch effort to prevent an obviously necessary measure to protect public health, had the kind of acute and vicious quality that invites a different kind of reaction.
Do you have some sense of how many of these absentee ballots were cast before the coronavirus really hit the state and the controversy erupted?
There are graphs of absentee ballots requested and returned day by day. The spike in absentee ballots absolutely took place after the coronavirus started to spread. The sea change happened as public fear of this pandemic began to explode.
Why did it take Governor Evers so long to call for a postponement? Was that an error?
Governor Evers issued the safer-at-home order on March 24th and called for ballots to be mailed to every Wisconsin voter three days later. By the next week, a federal judge declined to postpone the election itself, and said it was an action that had to be taken by the Governor and the state legislature, and the Governor called on the state legislature to act the following day. This has been a fast-moving public-health emergency, and the Governor is responsible for every aspect of keeping the public safe and has taken heat from Republicans each time he has pushed further to protect the public health. I am grateful he tried to do the right thing, and I am still furious that Republicans shut down efforts to protect voters, both through their power in the legislature and by suing to the highest courts in the state and country.
I understand that, but, into early April, the Governor was trying to keep the election date and said it was important to democracy that it happened. Republicans may have been unwilling to move it, but Democrats were also divided on it for a while.
Other states only had primary elections. In Wisconsin, our spring election included the Presidential primary but also three thousand eight hundred and thirty-one state and local elections. Wisconsin elections are also unusually complicated in the way they are administered. We have eighteen hundred and fifty-two municipal clerks who are responsible for sending out absentee ballots. If there had been a safe way to conduct in-person elections, that would have been far preferable. But it became increasingly clear that that wasn’t the case, and poll workers were dropping out in accelerating numbers, leading to more and more election-site closures as the date drew near.
So you are saying that is why it was harder to push the vote off?
Yes, exactly. In some places, the Party has the authority to change a primary or caucus. In Wisconsin, election laws are written in the statute, and the whole machinery of government revolves around them.
What are your biggest concerns about efforts to suppress the vote in November, and how are you planning to respond? Moreover, what voter issues are likely to come up before the Wisconsin Supreme Court, which now is seen to be divided between four conservatives and three liberals?
If voter-suppression Republicans control the courts and the legislature, the most powerful method to protect the vote is organizing, and, as we approached the spring election, the Democratic Party in Wisconsin and an array of progressive groups organized with a greater volume and depth than we have ever seen in a spring election in our state. As we go toward the fall, we have to fight for the right to vote with everything we have got, which means negotiating in Congress and state legislatures across the country. It means bringing court cases wherever possible to protect the ballot, and it means exposing what Republicans are doing to the harsh light of public scrutiny. Republicans don’t like to admit that so much of their electoral strategy is built around suppressing the vote of people who disagree with them, and, when it is as naked and raw as what they just did in Wisconsin, it can undermine itself by outraging the public conscience.


newyorker--2020-04-14--Under Coronavirus Lockdown, a Paris Without People-Watching

Each year , tens of millions of tourists visit Paris .
Last July , my boyfriend and I were two of them .
We spent a week exploring the city on foot , walking from arrondissement to arrondissement logging cultural and historical sites and landmarks , meeting friends for dinner or a few glasses of wine and people-watching at sidewalk cafés , and lining up for fresh , late-afternoon baguettes at the boulangerie down the street from our small hotel .
In the mornings , as the city began to wake up , I ’ d often go for a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ side streets of Montmartre , ending at the Sacré-Cœur basilica overlooking the sprawling metropolis below .
With the memories of our time in Paris still fresh , it ’ s striking to see the city so transformed by the coronavirus pandemic in the new video “ Paris Ville Fermée ” ( Paris , Closed City ) , by the Belgian photographer Tomas van Houtryve .
The city ’ s storied thoroughfares , squares , and monuments , such as the Arc de Triomphe , where the Avenue des Champs-Élysées and Avenue de la @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Royale , running from L ’ Église de la Madeleine to the Place de la Concorde , stand deserted .
By the Hôtel de Ville , along the Seine in central Paris , a road is fenced off and guarded only by pacing pigeons .
The view of the Eiffel Tower from the Trocadéro esplanade is unobstructed , without the usual groups of posing tourists .
The same cobblestone streets I ran along in Montmartre are now silent .
As of Tuesday morning , the Times reported that France has the world ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ after the United States , Spain , Italy , and Germany , with more than ninety-eight thousand cases and nearly fifteen thousand deaths .
The country has been under a policy of strict confinement since March : Parisians leaving their homes , whether for a solo jog or for groceries , must sign and carry with them an official form , known as an attestation de déplacement dérogatoire , or “ exceptional travel certificate , ” giving their name , address , date of birth , and reason for being outside—or else they @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in line outside a Monoprix supermarket , van Houtryve shows empty shelves , and a sign in a window reminds shoppers to have their attestation and maintain their distance .
Parisian culture depends inherently on social interactions ; the New Yorker writer and Paris resident Lauren Collins noted last month that “ the concept of social distancing as civic duty has induced a special sort of fatigue , confusion , and even heartbreak here , where , in the wake of the terrorist attacks of 2015 and 2016 , the height of solidarity @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for a glass of wine.
” While people social-distancing elsewhere may turn to online shopping and delivery services , she writes , in Paris , “ it ’ s usually easier to just walk down the street and get the thing yourself.
” But the coronavirus lockdown hasn ’ t limited all opportunities for social contact for residents .
An opera singer serenades his homebound neighbors with “ E lucevan le stelle , ” from Puccini ’ s “ Tosca ” ; Parisians standing at their windows cheer and applaud health-care workers and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ La Marseillaise.
” The Eiffel Tower ’ s iconic light show still shines over Paris each night .
But the message it displays along with its flashing lights epitomizes the city ’ s new normal : RESTEZ CHEZ VOUS ( “ STAY HOME ” ) .

Each year, tens of millions of tourists visit Paris. Last July, my boyfriend and I were two of them. We spent a week exploring the city on foot, walking from arrondissement to arrondissement logging cultural and historical sites and landmarks, meeting friends for dinner or a few glasses of wine and people-watching at sidewalk cafés, and lining up for fresh, late-afternoon baguettes at the boulangerie down the street from our small hotel. In the mornings, as the city began to wake up, I’d often go for a solitary run through the winding, hilly side streets of Montmartre, ending at the Sacré-Cœur basilica overlooking the sprawling metropolis below.
With the memories of our time in Paris still fresh, it’s striking to see the city so transformed by the coronavirus pandemic in the new video “Paris Ville Fermée” (Paris, Closed City), by the Belgian photographer Tomas van Houtryve. The city’s storied thoroughfares, squares, and monuments, such as the Arc de Triomphe, where the Avenue des Champs-Élysées and Avenue de la Grande Armée meet, and the Rue Royale, running from L’Église de la Madeleine to the Place de la Concorde, stand deserted. By the Hôtel de Ville, along the Seine in central Paris, a road is fenced off and guarded only by pacing pigeons. The view of the Eiffel Tower from the Trocadéro esplanade is unobstructed, without the usual groups of posing tourists. The same cobblestone streets I ran along in Montmartre are now silent.
As of Tuesday morning, the Times reported that France has the world’s fifth-highest number of coronavirus cases, after the United States, Spain, Italy, and Germany, with more than ninety-eight thousand cases and nearly fifteen thousand deaths. The country has been under a policy of strict confinement since March: Parisians leaving their homes, whether for a solo jog or for groceries, must sign and carry with them an official form, known as an attestation de déplacement dérogatoire, or “exceptional travel certificate,” giving their name, address, date of birth, and reason for being outside—or else they face a fine. As residents wait in line outside a Monoprix supermarket, van Houtryve shows empty shelves, and a sign in a window reminds shoppers to have their attestation and maintain their distance.
Parisian culture depends inherently on social interactions; the New Yorker writer and Paris resident Lauren Collins noted last month that “the concept of social distancing as civic duty has induced a special sort of fatigue, confusion, and even heartbreak here, where, in the wake of the terrorist attacks of 2015 and 2016, the height of solidarity was showing up on a café terrace for a glass of wine.” While people social-distancing elsewhere may turn to online shopping and delivery services, she writes, in Paris, “it’s usually easier to just walk down the street and get the thing yourself.” But the coronavirus lockdown hasn’t limited all opportunities for social contact for residents. An opera singer serenades his homebound neighbors with “E lucevan le stelle,” from Puccini’s “Tosca”; Parisians standing at their windows cheer and applaud health-care workers and sing the French national anthem, “La Marseillaise.” The Eiffel Tower’s iconic light show still shines over Paris each night. But the message it displays along with its flashing lights epitomizes the city’s new normal: RESTEZ CHEZ VOUS (“STAY HOME”).
A Guide to the Coronavirus


newyorker--2020-04-14--Trump’s Coronavirus Response Has Single-Handedly Created a New Federalism

Among all the possible consequences that were discussed after Donald Trump was elected , in 2016 , a revival of federalism didn ’ t feature prominently .
Three and a half years later , here we are .
On Monday , the governors of California , Oregon , and Washington announced a “ Western States Pact ” to work toward reopening their economies on an agreed set of principles after the coronavirus shutdowns , and the governors of seven Northeastern states said they were creating a joint working group for the same purpose .
The governors didn ’ t state @ @ @ @ @ @ @ government and Trump : they didn ’ t need to .
“ Health outcomes and science—not politics—will guide these decisions , ” Gavin Newsom , Kate Brown , and Jay Inslee , the respective governors of California , Oregon , and Washington , said in a joint statement .
“ We need to see a decline in the rate of spread of the virus before large-scale reopening , and we will be working in coordination to identify the best metrics to guide this.
” Governor Andrew Cuomo , of New York , said @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Jersey , Connecticut , Massachusetts , Delaware , Pennsylvania , and Rhode Island—would each appoint a public-health official and an economic-development expert to the new working group , which would be tasked with producing a coördinated strategy .
“ The state boundaries mean very little to this virus , ” Cuomo said .
“ Somebody could get on Amtrak or get in a car and go up the I-95 corridor .
.
.
.
doesn ’ t matter where they are from.
” The announcements from both ends of the country came just @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Twitter , that a judgment on whether to reopen the economy “ is the decision of the President , and for many good reasons.
” His tweet went on , “ A decision by me , in conjunction with the Governors and input from others , will be made shortly !
” At a White House press briefing later in the day , Trump refused to say whether he was looking to May 1st as his target date , but he again sought to assert his authority , saying , “ I ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
The President of the United States has the authority to do what the President has the authority to do .
Which is very powerful.
” That was certainly very simple , but constitutional-law experts were quick to question Trump ’ s claims .
“ The President has no formal legal authority to categorically override local or state shelter-in-place orders or to reopen schools and small businesses , ” Steve Vladeck , a law professor at the University of Texas School of Law , tweeted .
“ No statute delegates to him such @ @ @ @ @ @ @ with such authority.
” Other experts on the Constitution agreed .
When asked about the basis of his claims , Trump said that the White House could give reporters a legal brief if they wanted one .
This goes beyond a scholarly dispute , though .
As has often happened in recent weeks , we are witnessing a bifurcation of reality into two separate realms .
There is actual reality , in which the governors of the worst-hit states and many federal officials , including some in the White House , are doing @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , fortify the health-care system , and try to give households and businesses financial life support , and they look forward to the day when a combination of falling rates of infection , ubiquitous testing , and robust medical capacity will provide an opportunity to gradually reopen parts of the economy .
Then there is Trump ’ s alternative reality , wherein the mood can swing violently from day to day , but the constant and overriding concern is to preserve the myth that all is going smoothly .
Journalists have the freedom @ @ @ @ @ @ @ out the blatant contradictions between these two disparate realms .
Many of the people who are actually dealing with the virus—the governors and the members of Trump ’ s task force—have no such luxury .
To get vital things done , such as moving medical supplies to the right places at the right times , they need Trump ’ s coöperation , or , at least , his passive acquiescence .
So they perform an intricate dance in which they seek to avoid alienating him while also , on occasion , trying to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and Newsom , in their daily briefings , often thank Trump for vital assistance that the federal government has provided , such as military hospital ships and various bits of medical equipment , while also chiding him for failing to provide over-all leadership .
“ When you go to war , you don ’ t say every state has to buy its own tanks , every state has to buy its own guns , ” Cuomo commented acidly to CNN , on Monday , as he asserted New York ’ s right to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ he also called on Trump to put forward a set of principles for reopening the economy , which he and other governors could discuss .
“ The President is the President , ” Cuomo said .
“ He has to put forth a model.
” Another person who has to deal with Trump ’ s selective grasp of reality is Anthony Fauci , the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases .
At a White House briefing on Monday evening , Fauci sought to dispel the impression that he and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to recommend an economic shutdown and the imposition of social-distancing guidelines .
After Fauci told CNN on Sunday that earlier action would have saved many lives , Trump retweeted a post that featured the hashtag “ # FireFauci.
” At Monday ’ s press conference , Fauci again stated that earlier action would have been beneficial .
But he also said that , the first time he and Deborah Birx , who is the coördinator of the White House task force , made a formal recommendation to Trump to switch to a mitigation @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ the President listened to the recommendation and went to the mitigation.
” On the face of it , that statement sounded exculpatory , and giving this impression was clearly Fauci ’ s intention .
But Fauci didn ’ t linger on what happened in the vital few weeks starting in mid-February , which , according to big reconstructions that the Washington Post and the New York Times recently published , was when the Administration ’ s top health experts became convinced that a lockdown was urgently needed .
Far from embracing this @ @ @ @ @ @ @ stock market fell sharply , after Nancy Messonnier , the director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases , said publicly that tough measures , including school closures and mandatory social distancing , would be necessary .
The full story of what happened inside the Administration has yet to be told .
It seems clear , though , that it took several weeks for Fauci and Birx to get Trump to abandon his alternative reality .
As late as March 15th , the day before the White House formally came out @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ABC News ’ s “ This Week ” that he was still “ working ” on Trump to abide by social-distancing guidelines in his personal dealings .
A week later , on March 22nd , Trump tweeted , “ WE CAN NOT LET THE CURE BE WORSE THAN THE PROBLEM ITSELF , ” and seemed to imply that the restrictions would soon be lifted .
The time line demonstrates how the President of the United States has been a barrier to effective and systematic action rather than a facilitator or progenitor of such @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to rise from the grave , might be encouraged by what the states have accomplished with only intermittent help from Washington , although he surely wouldn ’ t have acceded to Trump ’ s dismissal of any criticism as “ fake news.
” Alexander Hamilton and George Washington , who believed in a strong and effective executive , would be dismayed , and for good reason .
As a consequence of Trump ’ s presence in the Oval Office , many of the most populous parts of the United States are engaged in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the Union has ever seen .
Monday ’ s announcements by the two sets of governors merely made this official .
• How to practice social distancing , from responding to a sick housemate to the pros and cons of ordering food .
• How the coronavirus behaves inside of a patient .
• Can survivors help cure the disease and rescue the economy ?
• What it means to contain and mitigate the coronavirus outbreak .
• The success of Hong Kong and Singapore in stemming the spread holds lessons for how @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
• The coronavirus is likely to spread for more than a year before a vaccine is widely available .
• With each new virus , we ’ ve scrambled for a new treatment .
Can we prepare antivirals to combat the next global crisis ?
• How pandemics have propelled public-health innovations , prefigured revolutions , and redrawn maps .
• What to read , watch , cook , and listen to under coronavirus quarantine .

Among all the possible consequences that were discussed after Donald Trump was elected, in 2016, a revival of federalism didn’t feature prominently. Three and a half years later, here we are. On Monday, the governors of California, Oregon, and Washington announced a “Western States Pact” to work toward reopening their economies on an agreed set of principles after the coronavirus shutdowns, and the governors of seven Northeastern states said they were creating a joint working group for the same purpose.
The governors didn’t state explicitly that they were sidelining the federal government and Trump: they didn’t need to. “Health outcomes and science—not politics—will guide these decisions,” Gavin Newsom, Kate Brown, and Jay Inslee, the respective governors of California, Oregon, and Washington, said in a joint statement. “We need to see a decline in the rate of spread of the virus before large-scale reopening, and we will be working in coordination to identify the best metrics to guide this.”
Governor Andrew Cuomo, of New York, said the seven Eastern states—New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Delaware, Pennsylvania, and Rhode Island—would each appoint a public-health official and an economic-development expert to the new working group, which would be tasked with producing a coördinated strategy. “The state boundaries mean very little to this virus,” Cuomo said. “Somebody could get on Amtrak or get in a car and go up the I-95 corridor. . . . doesn’t matter where they are from.”
The announcements from both ends of the country came just hours after Trump had insisted, on Twitter, that a judgment on whether to reopen the economy “is the decision of the President, and for many good reasons.” His tweet went on, “A decision by me, in conjunction with the Governors and input from others, will be made shortly!” At a White House press briefing later in the day, Trump refused to say whether he was looking to May 1st as his target date, but he again sought to assert his authority, saying, “I’m going to put it very simply. The President of the United States has the authority to do what the President has the authority to do. Which is very powerful.”
That was certainly very simple, but constitutional-law experts were quick to question Trump’s claims. “The President has no formal legal authority to categorically override local or state shelter-in-place orders or to reopen schools and small businesses,” Steve Vladeck, a law professor at the University of Texas School of Law, tweeted. “No statute delegates to him such power; no constitutional provision invests him with such authority.” Other experts on the Constitution agreed.
When asked about the basis of his claims, Trump said that the White House could give reporters a legal brief if they wanted one. This goes beyond a scholarly dispute, though. As has often happened in recent weeks, we are witnessing a bifurcation of reality into two separate realms. There is actual reality, in which the governors of the worst-hit states and many federal officials, including some in the White House, are doing all they can to contain the coronavirus, fortify the health-care system, and try to give households and businesses financial life support, and they look forward to the day when a combination of falling rates of infection, ubiquitous testing, and robust medical capacity will provide an opportunity to gradually reopen parts of the economy.
Then there is Trump’s alternative reality, wherein the mood can swing violently from day to day, but the constant and overriding concern is to preserve the myth that all is going smoothly. Journalists have the freedom, and the duty, to point out the blatant contradictions between these two disparate realms. Many of the people who are actually dealing with the virus—the governors and the members of Trump’s task force—have no such luxury. To get vital things done, such as moving medical supplies to the right places at the right times, they need Trump’s coöperation, or, at least, his passive acquiescence. So they perform an intricate dance in which they seek to avoid alienating him while also, on occasion, trying to work around him.
Thus, Cuomo and Newsom, in their daily briefings, often thank Trump for vital assistance that the federal government has provided, such as military hospital ships and various bits of medical equipment, while also chiding him for failing to provide over-all leadership. “When you go to war, you don’t say every state has to buy its own tanks, every state has to buy its own guns,” Cuomo commented acidly to CNN, on Monday, as he asserted New York’s right to follow its own course, even as he also called on Trump to put forward a set of principles for reopening the economy, which he and other governors could discuss. “The President is the President,” Cuomo said. “He has to put forth a model.”
Another person who has to deal with Trump’s selective grasp of reality is Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. At a White House briefing on Monday evening, Fauci sought to dispel the impression that he and Trump had been at loggerheads over when to recommend an economic shutdown and the imposition of social-distancing guidelines. After Fauci told CNN on Sunday that earlier action would have saved many lives, Trump retweeted a post that featured the hashtag “#FireFauci.” At Monday’s press conference, Fauci again stated that earlier action would have been beneficial. But he also said that, the first time he and Deborah Birx, who is the coördinator of the White House task force, made a formal recommendation to Trump to switch to a mitigation strategy that would involve recommending shutdowns, “the President listened to the recommendation and went to the mitigation.”
On the face of it, that statement sounded exculpatory, and giving this impression was clearly Fauci’s intention. But Fauci didn’t linger on what happened in the vital few weeks starting in mid-February, which, according to big reconstructions that the Washington Post and the New York Times recently published, was when the Administration’s top health experts became convinced that a lockdown was urgently needed. Far from embracing this idea, Trump blew up when the stock market fell sharply, after Nancy Messonnier, the director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, said publicly that tough measures, including school closures and mandatory social distancing, would be necessary.
The full story of what happened inside the Administration has yet to be told. It seems clear, though, that it took several weeks for Fauci and Birx to get Trump to abandon his alternative reality. As late as March 15th, the day before the White House formally came out in support of lockdowns, Fauci told ABC News’s “This Week” that he was still “working” on Trump to abide by social-distancing guidelines in his personal dealings. A week later, on March 22nd, Trump tweeted, “WE CANNOT LET THE CURE BE WORSE THAN THE PROBLEM ITSELF,” and seemed to imply that the restrictions would soon be lifted.


newyorker--2020-04-14--National Archives Report Someone Tried to Scrawl “Total Authority” with Sharpie on U.S. Constitution

WASHINGTON ( The Borowitz Report ) —An unknown person attempted to scrawl the words “ TOTAL AUTHORITY ” on the United States Constitution with a Sharpie , the National Archives reported on Tuesday .
A security guard spotted the attempted vandalism on Tuesday morning , when he noticed “ something weird ” on the glass case protecting the priceless historical document .
“ Someone had written the words in big block letters , ” the security guard said .
“ Plus , both ‘ total ’ and ‘ authority ’ were misspelled.
” “ It looked like the work of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ no school groups here because of the coronavirus and whatnot , ” he added .
“ So it ’ s a real mystery.
” Harland Dorrinson , a spokesperson for the National Archives , said that , even though the Constitution was unharmed , the Archives are launching a “ full investigation ” to determine what “ sick person ” attempted to deface the document .
“ Somewhere in Washington , there ’ s a person on the loose who hates the way the Constitution is actually written , ” he said .

WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—An unknown person attempted to scrawl the words “TOTAL AUTHORITY” on the United States Constitution with a Sharpie, the National Archives reported on Tuesday.
A security guard spotted the attempted vandalism on Tuesday morning, when he noticed “something weird” on the glass case protecting the priceless historical document.
“Someone had written the words in big block letters,” the security guard said. “Plus, both ‘total’ and ‘authority’ were misspelled.”
“It looked like the work of a small child, but there are no school groups here because of the coronavirus and whatnot,” he added. “So it’s a real mystery.”
Harland Dorrinson, a spokesperson for the National Archives, said that, even though the Constitution was unharmed, the Archives are launching a “full investigation” to determine what “sick person” attempted to deface the document.
“Somewhere in Washington, there’s a person on the loose who hates the way the Constitution is actually written,” he said.


newyorker--2020-04-14--A Grateful Grandfather Sheltering with His Family

Don ’ t get me wrong—I appreciate my daughter , Hilda , arranging to have me snatched from the dangerously crowded city and harboring me at her house in a semirural part of the state .
I appreciate the efforts of my son-in-law , Desmond , who drove the getaway car , and of my teen-age grandsons , Jason and Justin , whom I now refer to as my tech-support team .
So you must be wondering why I intend to give the establishment run by Hilda and her family only three stars on TripAdvisor .
It ’ s true @ @ @ @ @ @ @ support , Jason and Justin take turns accompanying me on my daily walk along a country road .
And , yes , it ’ s true that they were quick to drop the phrase “ take him out for an airing ” once I informed them that I considered it somewhat offensive .
But , after only about three weeks , I found that on these walks they were exhibiting less enthusiasm for stories of my high-school days than I would expect from , say , operators of a five-star operation .
Take @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of Joe ’ s Jungle Bar bet us that our champion beer drinker , Charlie Miller , couldn ’ t drink a shot glass full of beer every thirty seconds for fifteen minutes .
In my opinion , a story like that can ’ t be told too often .
Apparently , my grandsons think that it can .
Otherwise , why would Justin , in the middle of only my eighth or ninth rendition , pretend to fall asleep even though we were walking briskly down the road at the time ?
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ m reaching the part in the story about Charlie ’ s expression around twenty shot glasses in , shout , “ Look—a fox !
” while pointing at something that was plainly a rural mailbox ?
Desmond , who had been coming close to keeping up with his sales-rep work remotely from his home office , has been most generous in turning the office over to me for part of the day , so that I can get on with my Facebook project of matching cute animal pictures with pictures of movie @ @ @ @ @ @ @ be those animals ’ owners .
However , I find the computer cluttered with sales figures and that sort of thing , when all I need is Facebook .
Also , it ’ s a Mac , and I use a PC ( which I left in the city ) , so I ’ m forced to ask for technical assistance every few minutes—very inconvenient if , say , the boys are out in the yard and I have to wait for Hilda to finish putting my laundry in the dryer before she @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Yes , there is what amounts to same-day laundry service—one of the boys usually delivers the clean laundry to my room—but on two different occasions it has come back unfolded .
I know that this may sound like a small matter .
The wrong sort of Cheerios may sound like a small matter .
( I like Honey Nut , not the plain ; I ’ ve told Hilda that more than once . )
But enough small matters in aggregate , particularly if combined with other deficiencies , can easily cost @ @ @ @ @ @ @ t reach the guest room .
I wish I didn ’ t have to say that , but there it is : the Wi-Fi doesn ’ t reach the guest room .
So late-night Netflix browsing is out .
Yes , there is a DVD player and a library of DVDs , but I wouldn ’ t call it a five-star library .
For instance , there isn ’ t a car-chase movie in the lot .
So I found myself watching all of the episodes of the original British version of “ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ seventh time .
It ’ s one of my favorite programs , but once again I began to wonder how David Brent ( Ricky Gervais ) —an egomaniacal clown and bully who is completely lacking in self-awareness—ever got selected to be in charge of that Dunder Mifflin branch office .
Then , sitting there in a guest room not reached by Wi-Fi , I thought about who got selected to be in charge of the United States of America , and that scared the bejeezus out of me .
For that I knocked @ @ @ @

Don’t get me wrong—I appreciate my daughter, Hilda, arranging to have me snatched from the dangerously crowded city and harboring me at her house in a semirural part of the state. I appreciate the efforts of my son-in-law, Desmond, who drove the getaway car, and of my teen-age grandsons, Jason and Justin, whom I now refer to as my tech-support team. So you must be wondering why I intend to give the establishment run by Hilda and her family only three stars on TripAdvisor.
It’s true that, in addition to offering tech support, Jason and Justin take turns accompanying me on my daily walk along a country road. And, yes, it’s true that they were quick to drop the phrase “take him out for an airing” once I informed them that I considered it somewhat offensive.
But, after only about three weeks, I found that on these walks they were exhibiting less enthusiasm for stories of my high-school days than I would expect from, say, operators of a five-star operation. Take the story of the night the proprietor of Joe’s Jungle Bar bet us that our champion beer drinker, Charlie Miller, couldn’t drink a shot glass full of beer every thirty seconds for fifteen minutes. In my opinion, a story like that can’t be told too often. Apparently, my grandsons think that it can. Otherwise, why would Justin, in the middle of only my eighth or ninth rendition, pretend to fall asleep even though we were walking briskly down the road at the time? Why would Jason, just as I’m reaching the part in the story about Charlie’s expression around twenty shot glasses in, shout, “Look—a fox!” while pointing at something that was plainly a rural mailbox?
Desmond, who had been coming close to keeping up with his sales-rep work remotely from his home office, has been most generous in turning the office over to me for part of the day, so that I can get on with my Facebook project of matching cute animal pictures with pictures of movie stars who look as if they might be those animals’ owners. However, I find the computer cluttered with sales figures and that sort of thing, when all I need is Facebook. Also, it’s a Mac, and I use a PC (which I left in the city), so I’m forced to ask for technical assistance every few minutes—very inconvenient if, say, the boys are out in the yard and I have to wait for Hilda to finish putting my laundry in the dryer before she comes up from the basement to help.
Yes, there is what amounts to same-day laundry service—one of the boys usually delivers the clean laundry to my room—but on two different occasions it has come back unfolded. I know that this may sound like a small matter. The wrong sort of Cheerios may sound like a small matter. (I like Honey Nut, not the plain; I’ve told Hilda that more than once.) But enough small matters in aggregate, particularly if combined with other deficiencies, can easily cost a star.
The Wi-Fi doesn’t reach the guest room. I wish I didn’t have to say that, but there it is: the Wi-Fi doesn’t reach the guest room. So late-night Netflix browsing is out. Yes, there is a DVD player and a library of DVDs, but I wouldn’t call it a five-star library. For instance, there isn’t a car-chase movie in the lot.
So I found myself watching all of the episodes of the original British version of “The Office” for the sixth or seventh time. It’s one of my favorite programs, but once again I began to wonder how David Brent (Ricky Gervais)—an egomaniacal clown and bully who is completely lacking in self-awareness—ever got selected to be in charge of that Dunder Mifflin branch office. Then, sitting there in a guest room not reached by Wi-Fi, I thought about who got selected to be in charge of the United States of America, and that scared the bejeezus out of me.
For that I knocked off another star.