newyorker--2020-06-26--The Coronavirus Surge That Texas Could Have Seen Coming

In late April , a patient came into my hospital , in Houston , from the county jail .
He ’ d been sitting and talking with some of the other inmates when he ’ d felt heavy cramping in his thighs ; the cramps had spread quickly to his belly , and then to the rest of his body .
He knew what this meant—he ’ d experienced sickle crises his whole life .
People with sickle-cell disease , a congenital illness , lack an enzyme that helps the hemoglobin molecules in their blood maintain shape .
Ordinarily , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in a sickle crisis , they fold in half , becoming crescents .
The misshapen cells can ’ t properly transport oxygen , and they jam together and form clots , blocking the flow of healthy cells that can .
The cramps are signs of oxygen starvation in the muscles .
During the ten months that he ’ d been held in jail , awaiting trial , my patient had been hospitalized for sickle crises four times .
My partner on the overnight shift had started him on Dilaudid , for the pain @ @ @ @ @ @ @ fluids , which would help reshape his blood cells .
He ’ d also administered a coronavirus test .
At that time , there was little consensus about how the coronavirus would affect Texas ; some doctors and politicians , practicing a new form of Texan exceptionalism , were predicting that our state would never see a major surge .
Still , everyone who came to the hospital was concerned .
When I saw my patient in the morning , he was lying motionless .
He had no fever or shortness of breath @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ Honestly , I don ’ t think you have the coronavirus , ” I told him .
I wanted to ease his worries while we waited for the test results , but it wasn ’ t just that ; although we knew that detention centers made social distancing impossible , we hadn ’ t yet seen spikes in cases there .
As I left , I flapped my P.P.E .
gown in his direction .
“ Sorry I ’ m wearing this , ” I said .
I watched as he shifted @ @ @ @ @ @ @ his ankle , which the sheriff had cuffed to the bed .
The coronavirus had drifted into Houston like a gentle rain—floating over the city , collecting here and there .
The first cases appeared in early March , but hospitals didn ’ t start to see a spike in admissions until early April .
Infections mounted , but our considerable medical capacity was never overwhelmed .
( Houston is a world-class medical city , home to more than eighty-five hospitals ; mine , the Ben Taub Hospital , is situated in the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ complex in the world . )
As ever , we compared ourselves with New York—a city with three and a half times our population that was experiencing more than sixty times as many coronavirus deaths .
Why was the course of the pandemic so different in Houston ?
Perhaps our cars were protecting us , or maybe the sprawling layout of our city created social distancing by default .
Our distancing measures , which had begun in March , seemed to have successfully kept the pandemic at bay .
That success may have @ @ @ @ @ @ @ testing : although the governor , Greg Abbott , had promised drive-through swabbing , it never meaningfully materialized .
Today , Texas ranks forty-third in the country in coronavirus testing per capita .
In May , businesses started to reopen .
On the first of the month , movie theatres , restaurants , and malls returned to twenty-five-per-cent capacity , or fifty-per-cent capacity in rural areas with few confirmed cases ; hair salons followed , then gyms , without the use of locker rooms and showers .
Houstonians were confused and divided on @ @ @ @ @ @ @ guidance was contradictory .
Lina Hidalgo , a Democrat and the Harris County executive , ordered the wearing of masks in public on April 22nd ; five days later , Abbott , a Republican , issued his own order , contradicting hers .
On April 24th , county officials announced that they were closing a pop-up medical shelter at the city ’ s NRG Stadium ; it had cost seventeen million dollars to build and had gone completely unused .
The uncertainty extended into the medical profession .
Throughout the spring , even @ @ @ @ @ @ @ on its COVID-19 curve , and about what the shape of that curve would ultimately be .
Physicians were divided into two camps : those who thought that we had somehow bypassed the first surge , and those who believed that the storm was still gathering and would strengthen when we began reopening .
I belonged to the latter camp , struck by the fact that , even though coronavirus hospitalizations in April hadn ’ t reached crisis levels , there was a long stretch during which Houston , despite its lockdown , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in case counts .
We could and did argue over the meaning of the data .
In the absence of widespread testing , who could say whether the numbers we were seeing—six hundred new cases statewide on April 1st , eight hundred on April 15th—were signs of a crisis averted or indications that the virus was spreading despite lockdown and waiting to pounce ?
Now we know what those signs were forecasting .
It doesn ’ t take long for a virus as contagious as this one to spread ; Governor Abbott let @ @ @ @ @ @ @ May , and on June 16th Texas saw its first true spike—forty-two hundred new cases in one day .
Before a virus makes itself plainly visible , it hides ; you have to look for it .
In the case of the coronavirus , which often travels asymptomatically , looking for it means testing .
Just a few hours before my sickle-cell patient arrived , the hospital had announced that it was closing down a combined medical-surgical unit because twelve employees there had tested positive .
An infection-control team determined that the localized @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a failure of hygiene or P.P.E .
: the nurses had followed protocols .
Apparently , even with precautions in place , the virus had found a way to spread .
In April , the journal Emerging Infectious Diseases published a paper written by researchers at Huoshenshan Hospital , in Wuhan—one of the emergency facilities focussed on COVID-19 that the Chinese government had constructed in a matter of days .
The authors of the study had swabbed different objects in wards that had housed COVID-19 patients—doorknobs , trash cans—to find out which surfaces @ @ @ @ @ @ @ learned , among other things , that twenty per cent of computer mouses in the general wards had traces of the virus .
In the hospital that they studied , no staff members were infected—a testament , the researchers concluded , to the effectiveness of hand-washing and P.P.E .
This was reassuring news .
Still , I kept thinking about those computers .
Many years ago , before our hospital made the switch to electronic records , I wrote out my histories and physicals by hand , using my own pen—fine-tipped , so @ @ @ @ @ @ @ single page .
Now I input my orders using a keyboard and mouse shared with several other doctors and nurses .
What other kinds of centralized infrastructure could provide an opening for the virus ?
At our hospital , the blind spot turned out to be not computers but break rooms .
The infection-control team believes that the virus spread in the rooms where nurses and techs take a load off , and where they tend not to wear P.P.E .
The city of Houston has its own blind spots .
The county @ @ @ @ @ @ @ been held , is one .
At the end of April , three hundred and eight inmates and a hundred and eighty staff members had tested positive for the virus .
At the hospital , my patient ’ s red blood cells had stopped sickling and his cramping had abated ; his movement got easier , and I weaned him off the Dilaudid .
Still , I had to deliver the bad news .

In late April, a patient came into my hospital, in Houston, from the county jail. He’d been sitting and talking with some of the other inmates when he’d felt heavy cramping in his thighs; the cramps had spread quickly to his belly, and then to the rest of his body. He knew what this meant—he’d experienced sickle crises his whole life. People with sickle-cell disease, a congenital illness, lack an enzyme that helps the hemoglobin molecules in their blood maintain shape. Ordinarily, red blood cells look like disks; in a sickle crisis, they fold in half, becoming crescents. The misshapen cells can’t properly transport oxygen, and they jam together and form clots, blocking the flow of healthy cells that can. The cramps are signs of oxygen starvation in the muscles. During the ten months that he’d been held in jail, awaiting trial, my patient had been hospitalized for sickle crises four times.
My partner on the overnight shift had started him on Dilaudid, for the pain, and on oxygen and I.V. fluids, which would help reshape his blood cells. He’d also administered a coronavirus test. At that time, there was little consensus about how the coronavirus would affect Texas; some doctors and politicians, practicing a new form of Texan exceptionalism, were predicting that our state would never see a major surge. Still, everyone who came to the hospital was concerned. When I saw my patient in the morning, he was lying motionless. He had no fever or shortness of breath, but was worried about COVID-19.
“Honestly, I don’t think you have the coronavirus,” I told him. I wanted to ease his worries while we waited for the test results, but it wasn’t just that; although we knew that detention centers made social distancing impossible, we hadn’t yet seen spikes in cases there. As I left, I flapped my P.P.E. gown in his direction. “Sorry I’m wearing this,” I said. I watched as he shifted his right leg to relieve pressure on his ankle, which the sheriff had cuffed to the bed.
The coronavirus had drifted into Houston like a gentle rain—floating over the city, collecting here and there. The first cases appeared in early March, but hospitals didn’t start to see a spike in admissions until early April. Infections mounted, but our considerable medical capacity was never overwhelmed. (Houston is a world-class medical city, home to more than eighty-five hospitals; mine, the Ben Taub Hospital, is situated in the Texas Medical Center, the largest medical complex in the world.) As ever, we compared ourselves with New York—a city with three and a half times our population that was experiencing more than sixty times as many coronavirus deaths. Why was the course of the pandemic so different in Houston? Perhaps our cars were protecting us, or maybe the sprawling layout of our city created social distancing by default. Our distancing measures, which had begun in March, seemed to have successfully kept the pandemic at bay. That success may have contributed to an overly relaxed attitude toward testing: although the governor, Greg Abbott, had promised drive-through swabbing, it never meaningfully materialized. Today, Texas ranks forty-third in the country in coronavirus testing per capita.
In May, businesses started to reopen. On the first of the month, movie theatres, restaurants, and malls returned to twenty-five-per-cent capacity, or fifty-per-cent capacity in rural areas with few confirmed cases; hair salons followed, then gyms, without the use of locker rooms and showers. Houstonians were confused and divided on the subject of reopening, and government guidance was contradictory. Lina Hidalgo, a Democrat and the Harris County executive, ordered the wearing of masks in public on April 22nd; five days later, Abbott, a Republican, issued his own order, contradicting hers. On April 24th, county officials announced that they were closing a pop-up medical shelter at the city’s NRG Stadium; it had cost seventeen million dollars to build and had gone completely unused.
The uncertainty extended into the medical profession. Throughout the spring, even doctors argued about where the city sat on its COVID-19 curve, and about what the shape of that curve would ultimately be. Physicians were divided into two camps: those who thought that we had somehow bypassed the first surge, and those who believed that the storm was still gathering and would strengthen when we began reopening. I belonged to the latter camp, struck by the fact that, even though coronavirus hospitalizations in April hadn’t reached crisis levels, there was a long stretch during which Houston, despite its lockdown, never saw two consecutive days of decline in case counts.
We could and did argue over the meaning of the data. In the absence of widespread testing, who could say whether the numbers we were seeing—six hundred new cases statewide on April 1st, eight hundred on April 15th—were signs of a crisis averted or indications that the virus was spreading despite lockdown and waiting to pounce? Now we know what those signs were forecasting. It doesn’t take long for a virus as contagious as this one to spread; Governor Abbott let phased reopening start at the beginning of May, and on June 16th Texas saw its first true spike—forty-two hundred new cases in one day.
Before a virus makes itself plainly visible, it hides; you have to look for it. In the case of the coronavirus, which often travels asymptomatically, looking for it means testing. Just a few hours before my sickle-cell patient arrived, the hospital had announced that it was closing down a combined medical-surgical unit because twelve employees there had tested positive. An infection-control team determined that the localized outbreak hadn’t been caused by a failure of hygiene or P.P.E.: the nurses had followed protocols. Apparently, even with precautions in place, the virus had found a way to spread.
In April, the journal Emerging Infectious Diseases published a paper written by researchers at Huoshenshan Hospital, in Wuhan—one of the emergency facilities focussed on COVID-19 that the Chinese government had constructed in a matter of days. The authors of the study had swabbed different objects in wards that had housed COVID-19 patients—doorknobs, trash cans—to find out which surfaces might be acting as vectors. They learned, among other things, that twenty per cent of computer mouses in the general wards had traces of the virus. In the hospital that they studied, no staff members were infected—a testament, the researchers concluded, to the effectiveness of hand-washing and P.P.E. This was reassuring news. Still, I kept thinking about those computers. Many years ago, before our hospital made the switch to electronic records, I wrote out my histories and physicals by hand, using my own pen—fine-tipped, so that I could fit everything onto a single page. Now I input my orders using a keyboard and mouse shared with several other doctors and nurses. What other kinds of centralized infrastructure could provide an opening for the virus? At our hospital, the blind spot turned out to be not computers but break rooms. The infection-control team believes that the virus spread in the rooms where nurses and techs take a load off, and where they tend not to wear P.P.E.
The city of Houston has its own blind spots. The county jail, where my sickle-cell patient had been held, is one. At the end of April, three hundred and eight inmates and a hundred and eighty staff members had tested positive for the virus. At the hospital, my patient’s red blood cells had stopped sickling and his cramping had abated; his movement got easier, and I weaned him off the Dilaudid. Still, I had to deliver the bad news.
“I’m sorry, sir, but your test came back positive,” I said.
He looked up at the ceiling, his body still. I hadn’t thought to connect his sickle crisis to COVID-19, but the disease, which is still not fully understood, does affect the circulatory system. I kept him a few extra nights, to monitor his blood counts, then he was discharged back to the jail. Not long afterward, a doctor I know who works there told me more about the conditions inside, which sounded dire. For a long time, nurses at the jail had been given two N95 masks and eight surgical masks, meant to last for two weeks; coronavirus tests were taking days to turn around; positive patients were being moved to isolation, but space there was limited. (A spokesperson for the jail said that, thanks to an improved supply of masks, nurses are now provided with N95s whenever they need them.) A few weeks after my patient went back, seven hundred and eighteen inmates and more than two hundred staff members had tested positive, and three people had died. The blind spot had become a hot spot. Every night that week, I saw inmate after inmate brought into the E.R., each in a bright-orange jumpsuit, an ankle cuffed.
In its own way, my hospital—a “safety net” institution where undocumented immigrants and people without insurance often come—has been a blind spot, too. Early in the spring, when many private hospitals in Houston were seeing decreasing numbers of COVID-19 patients, our numbers continued to rise, slowly but steadily. Houston is home to more than half a million undocumented immigrants, and some doctors speculated that our numbers were rising because the undocumented were afraid to go to other hospitals; it was easy to imagine that, without outreach and testing, many had been weighing the risk of deportation against the need to seek treatment for shortness of breath.
The rising numbers at our hospital may lag behind the rise in cases. I’ve long marvelled at the necessary tolerance of the uninsured. Nearly twenty per cent of Houstonians lack insurance—the highest proportion in any large American city. Some uninsured patients, who can’t receive regular dialysis at a clinic, visit our emergency room three times a week; beforehand, they eat bunches of bananas or slurp the sludge of canned tomatoes to push their potassium levels to dangerous heights—a nutritional hack that guarantees that they will receive dialysis immediately. I’m finding that some of my patients are exhibiting the same level of tolerance with COVID-19. Many say that they have suffered from fever and shortness of breath for a week, maybe two, before coming in for care.
Now, even with our low levels of testing, the surge in Texas is impossible to miss. Since Memorial Day, Texas Medical Center hospitals have seen a thirty-six-per-cent increase in admitted COVID-19 patients; the number of infections citywide has grown by a hundred and fifty per cent. Texas Medical Center’s I.C.U.s were at ninety-eight-per-cent capacity this week; three weeks from now, if these trends continue, the city’s I.C.U.s will be overwhelmed.
At the beginning of June, Texas entered Phase 3 of Governor Abbott’s reopening plan, in which restaurants, bars, offices, salons, and many other businesses could open their doors to varying degrees. According to the plan, even carnivals and fairs were soon to resume at half capacity. The state had been telling employers and residents to “take action based on common sense,” but the definition of common sense seemed to be up for debate: even as the state struggled to meet its own benchmarks for reopening, it pressed ahead. At a press conference on Monday, Abbott acknowledged that the current spike was unacceptable, and said that additional measures might be necessary. On Thursday, he issued an executive order postponing elective surgeries; on Friday, he began to roll back the reopening, reinstating some restrictions on bars, restaurants, and other businesses.
At Ben Taub, we are already confronting the realities of completely full I.C.U.s. In Hail Mary fashion, we are bringing to bear all of the resources that the regular, medical-surgical floor has to offer while we wait for I.C.U. beds to open. On a night shift last week, I added a spray of saline to a patient’s high-flow oxygen, delivered via nasal cannula, in the hope that the slightest bit of moisture could help stave off the need to intubate. Whenever I hear a Code Blue called over the P.A. system, my reaction is split: I lament what’s happening to a patient in cardiopulmonary arrest, and I think immediately of a patient in waiting, wondering whether this announcement means that an I.C.U. bed will soon become available.
Around the world, successful reopenings have been enabled by robust testing, contact tracing, isolation, and treatment programs. Some states, such as Massachusetts, are investing heavily in those systems. In Texas, testing efforts remain confusing and stunted. (My mother recently had to drive thirty miles for a test.) The state has fallen short of its contact-tracing goals, which disease modelling has shown to be too modest by half. In any case, even the best public-health program would be stymied by the large group events that our hasty reopening is making possible. The storm has arrived in Houston. Harris County’s COVID-19 Threat Level System is on orange—the second-highest level; Hidalgo has said that the city is “on the precipice of disaster.” Meanwhile, the Texas G.O.P. convention is set to go forward downtown, in July.
This piece has been updated to include developments in Texas’s reopening policy.
More Medical Dispatches


newyorker--2020-06-25--“The 11th Green,” Reviewed: A Wild Fantasy of U.S. History, Conspiracy, and U.F.O.s

The extraordinarily imaginative new feature by Christopher Munch , “ The 11th Green , ” stakes out a genre unto itself : poli-sci-fi , a fusion of science fiction and the history-rooted political thriller .
Yet the film , which comes out Friday in a virtual-cinema release by the Portland-based production company Joma Films , is also the latest entry in another genre , one I ’ ll call the pisser , which is a story based on an astonishing disproportion of scale—one in which absurdly vast results stem from minor actions , leading to a colossal comedy that doesn @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 11th Green ” is a U.F.O .
tale that ’ s built from the connection of two events .
In Palm Desert , California , Laurie Larkspur ( Agnes Bruckner ) , the assistant to an elderly retired Air Force general named Nelson Rudd , finds him dead on the floor of his home ; she calls the general ’ s estranged middle-aged son , Jeremy Rudd ( Campbell Scott ) , an investigative journalist in Washington , D.C. , and summons him to Palm Desert to dispose of his late father ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of interest ( and source of estrangement from his father ) is the military-industrial complex , happens to be reporting on a possible leak of classified aerospace technology—an antigravity device that , Jeremy suspects , may have been developed and brought by aliens from outer space .
( Jeremy ’ s partner , a TV anchor named Lila Parnell , who is played by April Grace , is also involved in the investigation . )
Munch ’ s first feature , “ The Hours and Times , ” from 1991 , was a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ John Lennon and Brian Epstein took to Barcelona , in 1963 .
His most recent feature , “ Letters from the Big Man , ” from 2011 , involves the search for Bigfoot .
In “ The 11th Green , ” Munch fuses his interest in the imaginary and the historical .
He anchors the general ’ s lifelong military service , and Jeremy ’ s investigations , in tangled intricacies extrapolated from actual American politics ( as well as from rumors and speculations about Area 51 ) .
General Judd , in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of President Dwight D. Eisenhower , who turns up , in flashbacks , as a major character ( played by George Gerdes ) .
Munch combines faux-archival sequences and straightforward dramatizations , as when , in 1967 , the retired Eisenhower arrives by train at Palm Desert with his wife , Mamie ( Kathryn Leigh Scott ) .
As the couple settle into their home—the same one where General Judd would eventually live and die—Eisenhower gets a call from a high official in Washington who ’ s seeking help with the same technological @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
The action in “ The 11th Green ” stems from the premise that high-ranking military and intelligence circles have known about alien visitations and have covered them up , at least since the end of the Second World War—not least because of the Cold War and the urge to keep the alien technology out of the hands of the Soviet Union .
Eisenhower ’ s real-life efforts to resist the military-industrial complex ( a term that he popularized ) are dramatized here in his wariness of the conspirators in the coverup ( @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ backroom boys.
” ) The cast of real-life characters whose destinies play into the conspiracy also includes Eisenhower ’ s Cabinet member and former C.I.A .
director Walter Bedell Smith ( Christopher Kriesa ) ; James V. Forrestal , the first Secretary of Defense ( played by Ian Hart , Munch ’ s John Lennon in “ The Hours and Times ” ) , who fell to his death in 1949 from a sixteenth-floor hospital window ; and John F. Kennedy ( Tom Connolly ) , a first-term congressman from Massachusetts whom @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in 1947 , with ulterior motives relating to a secret wartime file .
It also includes another , unnamed President ( played by Leith M. Burke ) , who resembles Barack Obama physically and in oratorical style , and is derided , by another retired general , as a “ colored socialist.
” This Obama-like President is also a lifelong friend of Jeremy ’ s—they were classmates at a private school in Hawaii—and , on the occasion of General Judd ’ s death , he writes Jeremy a long , handwritten letter in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ intellectual yet warmly compassionate style .
Yet Munch plays these elaborate games of historical impersonation and speculation with a restrained , poker-faced delight .
His wry , sophisticated , and tight-lipped mimicry captures , in tone , style , and detail , a world of brute power masked by byzantine diplomatic ruses and military discipline , the crude threats and psychological maneuvers of cloak-and-dagger operatives , and the range of manners—from reserved to chipper , from beefy to brassy—that go with it .
( There ’ s also a wry movie-centric twist involving @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ) Such oddball details as Eisenhower ’ s hobby of painting and Jeremy ’ s taste for starched sheets , Eisenhower ’ s favorite party drink and the retired general ’ s collection of baseball caps , reverberate through the action with the muffled comedy of the uncanny .
The dialogue alone is a whirligig of cruel wonder , with the tones and the vocabulary of the country club deployed in the service of a Mob-like conspiracy—and Jeremy himself , raised in this milieu , is both a product of it and therefore @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , he ’ s also rationally paranoid—he routinely sweeps his car for hidden bombs , and he does all of his writing on a manual typewriter , keeping his work on his person and in deep storage .
A terrifying scene shows the physical menace that the forces behind the U.F.O .
conspiracy are all too ready to wield against him .
Yet the greater terror that underlies the drama is the one that has been looming for generations : the threat of nuclear war .
( In this regard , the movie @ @ @ @ @ @ @ resembles is Martin Scorsese ’ s “ Shutter Island.
” ) Munch has the daring to yoke this world-menacing science fiction and world-historical politics to peculiarly intimate settings .
The drama is filmed , in images of tightly restrained giddy delight , as high-stakes face-offs of duos and scrums of trios and quartets , and even a set of solo scenes in which private calculation resonates with mighty implications .
The results never seem trivial or petty , however , because the characters are fittingly grand and forceful , and the vast views @ @ @ @ @ @ @ mighty natural setting for supernatural wonders .
What ’ s more , the intergalactic forces that Munch marshals have a metaphysical dimension , which bends time to bring about a remarkable series of intergenerational meetings of the minds .
These revelatory sequences explore inaccessible recesses of psychic experience while , nonetheless , exposing seventy-five years of political verities as reckless shams—and questioning the very nature of life on Earth .

The extraordinarily imaginative new feature by Christopher Munch, “The 11th Green,” stakes out a genre unto itself: poli-sci-fi, a fusion of science fiction and the history-rooted political thriller. Yet the film, which comes out Friday in a virtual-cinema release by the Portland-based production company Joma Films, is also the latest entry in another genre, one I’ll call the pisser, which is a story based on an astonishing disproportion of scale—one in which absurdly vast results stem from minor actions, leading to a colossal comedy that doesn’t spark laughter.
“The 11th Green” is a U.F.O. tale that’s built from the connection of two events. In Palm Desert, California, Laurie Larkspur (Agnes Bruckner), the assistant to an elderly retired Air Force general named Nelson Rudd, finds him dead on the floor of his home; she calls the general’s estranged middle-aged son, Jeremy Rudd (Campbell Scott), an investigative journalist in Washington, D.C., and summons him to Palm Desert to dispose of his late father’s estate. Jeremy, whose subject of interest (and source of estrangement from his father) is the military-industrial complex, happens to be reporting on a possible leak of classified aerospace technology—an antigravity device that, Jeremy suspects, may have been developed and brought by aliens from outer space. (Jeremy’s partner, a TV anchor named Lila Parnell, who is played by April Grace, is also involved in the investigation.)
Munch’s first feature, “The Hours and Times,” from 1991, was a historical dramatization of the four-day trip that John Lennon and Brian Epstein took to Barcelona, in 1963. His most recent feature, “Letters from the Big Man,” from 2011, involves the search for Bigfoot. In “The 11th Green,” Munch fuses his interest in the imaginary and the historical. He anchors the general’s lifelong military service, and Jeremy’s investigations, in tangled intricacies extrapolated from actual American politics (as well as from rumors and speculations about Area 51). General Judd, in his prime, was on the staff of President Dwight D. Eisenhower, who turns up, in flashbacks, as a major character (played by George Gerdes). Munch combines faux-archival sequences and straightforward dramatizations, as when, in 1967, the retired Eisenhower arrives by train at Palm Desert with his wife, Mamie (Kathryn Leigh Scott). As the couple settle into their home—the same one where General Judd would eventually live and die—Eisenhower gets a call from a high official in Washington who’s seeking help with the same technological matter that Jeremy has long been investigating.
The action in “The 11th Green” stems from the premise that high-ranking military and intelligence circles have known about alien visitations and have covered them up, at least since the end of the Second World War—not least because of the Cold War and the urge to keep the alien technology out of the hands of the Soviet Union. Eisenhower’s real-life efforts to resist the military-industrial complex (a term that he popularized) are dramatized here in his wariness of the conspirators in the coverup (a group that he sardonically calls the “backroom boys.”) The cast of real-life characters whose destinies play into the conspiracy also includes Eisenhower’s Cabinet member and former C.I.A. director Walter Bedell Smith (Christopher Kriesa); James V. Forrestal, the first Secretary of Defense (played by Ian Hart, Munch’s John Lennon in “The Hours and Times”), who fell to his death in 1949 from a sixteenth-floor hospital window; and John F. Kennedy (Tom Connolly), a first-term congressman from Massachusetts whom Forrestal invited for a game of golf in 1947, with ulterior motives relating to a secret wartime file. It also includes another, unnamed President (played by Leith M. Burke), who resembles Barack Obama physically and in oratorical style, and is derided, by another retired general, as a “colored socialist.” This Obama-like President is also a lifelong friend of Jeremy’s—they were classmates at a private school in Hawaii—and, on the occasion of General Judd’s death, he writes Jeremy a long, handwritten letter in a persuasive imitation of Obama’s intellectual yet warmly compassionate style.
Yet Munch plays these elaborate games of historical impersonation and speculation with a restrained, poker-faced delight. His wry, sophisticated, and tight-lipped mimicry captures, in tone, style, and detail, a world of brute power masked by byzantine diplomatic ruses and military discipline, the crude threats and psychological maneuvers of cloak-and-dagger operatives, and the range of manners—from reserved to chipper, from beefy to brassy—that go with it. (There’s also a wry movie-centric twist involving long-concealed reels of archival military footage.) Such oddball details as Eisenhower’s hobby of painting and Jeremy’s taste for starched sheets, Eisenhower’s favorite party drink and the retired general’s collection of baseball caps, reverberate through the action with the muffled comedy of the uncanny. The dialogue alone is a whirligig of cruel wonder, with the tones and the vocabulary of the country club deployed in the service of a Mob-like conspiracy—and Jeremy himself, raised in this milieu, is both a product of it and therefore its perfect antagonist. As a result, he’s also rationally paranoid—he routinely sweeps his car for hidden bombs, and he does all of his writing on a manual typewriter, keeping his work on his person and in deep storage. A terrifying scene shows the physical menace that the forces behind the U.F.O. conspiracy are all too ready to wield against him. Yet the greater terror that underlies the drama is the one that has been looming for generations: the threat of nuclear war. (In this regard, the movie that “The 11th Green” most resembles is Martin Scorsese’s “Shutter Island.”)
Munch has the daring to yoke this world-menacing science fiction and world-historical politics to peculiarly intimate settings. The drama is filmed, in images of tightly restrained giddy delight, as high-stakes face-offs of duos and scrums of trios and quartets, and even a set of solo scenes in which private calculation resonates with mighty implications. The results never seem trivial or petty, however, because the characters are fittingly grand and forceful, and the vast views of empty deserts and skies provide a mighty natural setting for supernatural wonders. What’s more, the intergalactic forces that Munch marshals have a metaphysical dimension, which bends time to bring about a remarkable series of intergenerational meetings of the minds. These revelatory sequences explore inaccessible recesses of psychic experience while, nonetheless, exposing seventy-five years of political verities as reckless shams—and questioning the very nature of life on Earth.


newyorker--2020-06-25--At the Supreme Court: A Big Day for DACA, and a Bad Day for Trump

Last week , in a 5–4 decision , the Supreme Court ruled unlawful the Trump Administration ’ s decision to @ @ @ @ @ DACA protects from deportation some seven hundred thousand undocumented immigrants who were brought to the @ @ @ @ @ Though DACA and the Dreamers that it protects have widespread public support , the Trump @ @ @ @ @ program .
Jonathan Blitzer joins Dorothy Wickenden to discuss DACA ’ s big day in @ @ @ @ @ Administration ’ s next moves on immigration policy .

Download a transcript.|||
Photograph by Michael Brochstein / Sipa USA / AP
Last week, in a 5–4 decision, the Supreme Court ruled unlawful the Trump Administration’s decision to cancel the DACA program. DACA protects from deportation some seven hundred thousand undocumented immigrants who were brought to the United States as children. Though DACA and the Dreamers that it protects have widespread public support, the Trump Administration remains hostile to the program. Jonathan Blitzer joins Dorothy Wickenden to discuss DACA’s big day in court, and the Trump Administration’s next moves on immigration policy.


newyorker--2020-06-25--Giuliani No Longer Worst Lawyer in Country

WASHINGTON ( The Borowitz Report ) —In an unexpected turn of events for the former New York mayor , a poll of legal experts has determined that Rudolph Giuliani is no longer the worst lawyer in America .
According to the law professor who supervised the poll , Davis Logsdon , of the University of Minnesota Law School , Giuliani ’ s dethronement from the worst-lawyer championship was all the more shocking because his claim to that title had remained unchallenged for so long .
“ Giuliani had faced worthy competition from the likes of Michael D. Cohen and Michael @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” Logsdon said .
“ But this new challenger left Rudy in the dust.
” The new titleholder as the nation ’ s worst lawyer , who won in a nearly unanimous vote , is so egregious that he may cause some legal experts to reassess Giuliani ’ s career as an attorney .
“ Compared to our country ’ s new worst lawyer , Rudy demonstrated the utmost respect for the Constitution and the rule of law , ” Logsdon argued .
Reached in the makeup room at Fox News , where @ @ @ @ @ @ @ appearance , Giuliani took the news of his ouster philosophically .
“ I had a good run , ” he said .

WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—In an unexpected turn of events for the former New York mayor, a poll of legal experts has determined that Rudolph Giuliani is no longer the worst lawyer in America.
According to the law professor who supervised the poll, Davis Logsdon, of the University of Minnesota Law School, Giuliani’s dethronement from the worst-lawyer championship was all the more shocking because his claim to that title had remained unchallenged for so long.
“Giuliani had faced worthy competition from the likes of Michael D. Cohen and Michael Avenatti and dispatched them with ease,” Logsdon said. “But this new challenger left Rudy in the dust.”
The new titleholder as the nation’s worst lawyer, who won in a nearly unanimous vote, is so egregious that he may cause some legal experts to reassess Giuliani’s career as an attorney. “Compared to our country’s new worst lawyer, Rudy demonstrated the utmost respect for the Constitution and the rule of law,” Logsdon argued.
Reached in the makeup room at Fox News, where he was about to make an on-air appearance, Giuliani took the news of his ouster philosophically. “I had a good run,” he said.


newyorker--2020-06-25--Daily Cartoon: Thursday, June 25th

Daily Cartoon: Thursday, June 25th

© 2020 Condé Nast .
All rights reserved .
Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our User Agreement ( @ @ @ @ @ Policy and Cookie Statement ( updated 1/1/20 ) and Your California Privacy Rights .
Do @ @ @ @ @ may earn a portion of sales from products that are purchased through our site as @ @ @ @ @ with retailers .
The material on this site may not be reproduced , distributed , @ @ @ @ @ used , except with the prior written permission of Condé Nast .
Ad Choices

“It’s new. We place them in an endless video conference with everyone they couldn’t stand in life.”


newyorker--2020-06-25--A Radical Challenger to New York City’s Pride March

What ’ s so bad about a rainbow burrito ?
If you ’ ve been following the rift in the L.G.B.T.Q .
movement over the corporate embrace of Pride , the question may have crossed your mind .
Last June , the West Village was a labyrinth of rainbows , with every bank branch and Shake Shack festooned with messaging for Pride Month .
Chipotle sold limited-edition Pride merch , including tank tops with a rainbow burrito and the slogan “ ¿Homo Estas ?
” The hoopla—always big , but this time bigger—marked the fiftieth anniversary of the Stonewall uprising @ @ @ @ @ @ @ March , which drew some five million revellers and boasted sponsors including MasterCard , Macy ’ s , Uber , and Diet Coke .
Amid the festivities , a group of activists staged an alternative : the inaugural Queer Liberation March—a smaller , rawer , more radical cousin to the established parade .
In spirit it was closer to the roots of the Pride March , which was originally called the Christopher Street Liberation Day March , and began , in 1970 , to mark the one-year anniversary of the Stonewall riots .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ route , from Greenwich Village up to Central Park .
There were no branded floats , no police contingent , no corporate funding .
“ One of our mottoes was ‘ We ’ re here for queer liberation , not rainbow capitalism , ’ ” one of the organizers , Natalie James , said recently .
The group is now planning a second annual march , which will take place Sunday , while the main Pride March has been cancelled because of the coronavirus pandemic—meaning that , by happenstance , the upstart march @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of a year , just in time to draw on a renewed spirit of spontaneous protest .
The critique that Pride marches have become corporatized and depoliticized has been building for years , part of a perennial tension in the L.G.B.T.Q .
movement between assimilation and radicalism .
“ A lot of longtime activists had just stopped going to Pride , ” another organizer , Jay W. Walker , said .
“ They were kind of sickened by it.
” He brought up the concept of pinkwashing , in which “ corporate bad @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to buy good will while distracting from less savory practices .
For instance , Walker mentioned Wells Fargo , which has had floats in Pride marches for years while maintaining ( until recently ) financial ties with the National Rifle Association , which opposed gun-control measures after the Pulse night-club shooting , in 2016 .
“ A big part of our issue with the corporations is they ’ re not consistent in their support for us throughout the year , ” Francesca Barjon , the group ’ s twenty-four-year-old social-media organizer , said @ @ @ @ @ @ @ able to profit off of us in June.
” Cathy Renna , a NYC Pride spokesperson , countered , “ We ’ re so far past that with these corporations .
They know they got ta do better than that .
This is not about waving a rainbow flag in June in your window.
” The Chipotle merch , for example , benefitted the Trevor Project , which provides services to queer youth .
“ It ’ s really easy for Pride to be a target , because Pride is something that everybody @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” Renna said , adding , of the breakout march , “ If we ’ re going to continue to make the kind of progress that we want to make , I think it ’ s important that we not—I ’ m trying to think of a way to say this that ’ s family-friendly—crap on each other , because some people like to do things differently.
” The Queer Liberation March had its roots in the 2017 Pride March , which featured the disruptive début of the Resistance Contingent , a consortium @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to the Trump Administration .
It included groups such as Gays Against Guns , which staged a die-in , and Hoods4Justice , which formed a blockade to prevent the N.Y.P.D .
marching band from joining the parade , with banners reading “ There are no queer friendly cops ” and “ Decolonize pride.
” A dozen people were arrested .
During the planning for the Pride March in 2018 , Heritage of Pride , the organization that produces New York ’ s Pride events , tried “ dissolving ” the Resistance Contingent , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , but the activists were disillusioned with what the march had become .
“ We realized we all were very dissatisfied with the event itself , the degree of corporate floats , the corporatization , the bank sponsorship , as well as having a fully uniformed police contingent given a place of honor right at the front of the march , ” James said .
The N.Y.P.D .
presence struck the activists as particularly ironic , since the Stonewall riots had been provoked by a police raid .
After delivering a set of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and the police commissioner and getting brushed off , the group , calling itself the Reclaim Pride Coalition , took on the “ colossal task ” of organizing its own march .
James , who is an organizer for the queer caucus of the Democratic Socialists of America , helped arrange the first meetings at the caucus ’ s space at the L.G.B.T .
Center , in the West Village .
One point of contention was whether to allow the Gay Officers Action League , or GOAL , to participate .
“ Eventually @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the fact that the N.Y.P.D .
as an institution , as a whole , is a racist one , and therefore having any representation of it wasn ’ t proper , ” James said , though police officers were welcome to march as individuals , out of uniform .
( Renna defended the presence of GOAL at the main march , saying , “ It ’ s a free-speech march .
If you ’ re going to let the Communists march , you ’ re going to let the police who are queer.
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ rid of the barricades , and we wanted certain police-free zones within the area , ” James said .
A subgroup negotiated with the N.Y.P.D .
“ We didn ’ t get a formal permit , ” she said .
“ But we did get an assurance that they would not interfere with our march.
” The start time was set for 9:30 A.M. That morning , things did not start off promisingly .
“ We were there at the intersection , and there was just us , ” Jon Carter , one @ @ @ @ @ @ @ We looked around and we could see empty streets , and there was a real question about what the day would look like.
” Then , after thirty-five minutes , there was an “ If you build it , they will come ” moment , as marchers materialized .
( The group estimates that forty-five thousand people attended . )
“ We were very intentional about having trans people in the front , ” Barjon said .
It ended with a rally on the Great Lawn , with speakers who included the ACT @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , “ Larry did his normal thing that he always does , which is to scream at queer people and go , ‘ You ’ re not doing enough !
’ ” The group was busy planning a 2020 edition of the march when COVID-19 struck .
After New York ’ s governor , Andrew Cuomo , temporarily banned large gatherings , the Pride March and its rambunctious challenger both cancelled .
The Reclaim Pride Coalition decided to hold a virtual event , called Livestream for Queer Liberation .
( The group also @ @ @ @ @ @ @ set up in Central Park by Franklin Graham ’ s organization Samaritan ’ s Purse , which asked volunteers to sign a statement opposing same-sex marriage . )
But the calculation changed in early June , after the killings of George Floyd and other black Americans by the police sparked a wave of mass protests .
“ There was unanimity that we needed to have a march , ” Walker said .
“ And we needed to have it centered on the movement for black lives.
” With only weeks to plan , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
quality worked in its favor .
“ The simplicity of our approach to organizing marches and actions makes things very fluid and flexible , and we ’ re able to pivot in a way that a more complex plan wouldn ’ t allow us to , ” Carter said .
The main Pride March , which Carter called a “ polished spectacle , ” is still not happening this year .
It ’ s as if the COVID-19 meteor killed off a twelve-million-dollar dinosaur , and a smaller , more resourceful organism @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Nevertheless , the group has adapted to the new circumstances : it ’ s gathering masks and hand sanitizer and will still put material online for people who can ’ t take the health risk of attending in person .
It isn ’ t seeking any type of police blessing , advertising only the starting point ( Foley Square ) .
Also , James said , “ We have voted on a start time , 1 P.M. , so for the queers that utterly took umbrage at our 9:30 start time last year @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ll be relieved.
” The group ’ s timing is apt .
Outside Stonewall , there ’ s now a sign reading “ PRIDE IS A RIOT !
”

What’s so bad about a rainbow burrito? If you’ve been following the rift in the L.G.B.T.Q. movement over the corporate embrace of Pride, the question may have crossed your mind. Last June, the West Village was a labyrinth of rainbows, with every bank branch and Shake Shack festooned with messaging for Pride Month. Chipotle sold limited-edition Pride merch, including tank tops with a rainbow burrito and the slogan “¿Homo Estas?” The hoopla—always big, but this time bigger—marked the fiftieth anniversary of the Stonewall uprising and culminated in the annual NYC Pride March, which drew some five million revellers and boasted sponsors including MasterCard, Macy’s, Uber, and Diet Coke.
Amid the festivities, a group of activists staged an alternative: the inaugural Queer Liberation March—a smaller, rawer, more radical cousin to the established parade. In spirit it was closer to the roots of the Pride March, which was originally called the Christopher Street Liberation Day March, and began, in 1970, to mark the one-year anniversary of the Stonewall riots. The new march even re-created the original route, from Greenwich Village up to Central Park. There were no branded floats, no police contingent, no corporate funding. “One of our mottoes was ‘We’re here for queer liberation, not rainbow capitalism,’ ” one of the organizers, Natalie James, said recently. The group is now planning a second annual march, which will take place Sunday, while the main Pride March has been cancelled because of the coronavirus pandemic—meaning that, by happenstance, the upstart march has usurped the Goliath in the space of a year, just in time to draw on a renewed spirit of spontaneous protest.
The critique that Pride marches have become corporatized and depoliticized has been building for years, part of a perennial tension in the L.G.B.T.Q. movement between assimilation and radicalism. “A lot of longtime activists had just stopped going to Pride,” another organizer, Jay W. Walker, said. “They were kind of sickened by it.” He brought up the concept of pinkwashing, in which “corporate bad actors” use a show of acceptance to buy good will while distracting from less savory practices. For instance, Walker mentioned Wells Fargo, which has had floats in Pride marches for years while maintaining (until recently) financial ties with the National Rifle Association, which opposed gun-control measures after the Pulse night-club shooting, in 2016. “A big part of our issue with the corporations is they’re not consistent in their support for us throughout the year,” Francesca Barjon, the group’s twenty-four-year-old social-media organizer, said. “It’s about being able to profit off of us in June.”
Cathy Renna, a NYC Pride spokesperson, countered, “We’re so far past that with these corporations. They know they gotta do better than that. This is not about waving a rainbow flag in June in your window.” The Chipotle merch, for example, benefitted the Trevor Project, which provides services to queer youth. “It’s really easy for Pride to be a target, because Pride is something that everybody has some sense of ownership in,” Renna said, adding, of the breakout march, “If we’re going to continue to make the kind of progress that we want to make, I think it’s important that we not—I’m trying to think of a way to say this that’s family-friendly—crap on each other, because some people like to do things differently.”
The Queer Liberation March had its roots in the 2017 Pride March, which featured the disruptive début of the Resistance Contingent, a consortium of activist groups that formed in response to the Trump Administration. It included groups such as Gays Against Guns, which staged a die-in, and Hoods4Justice, which formed a blockade to prevent the N.Y.P.D. marching band from joining the parade, with banners reading “There are no queer friendly cops” and “Decolonize pride.” A dozen people were arrested. During the planning for the Pride March in 2018, Heritage of Pride, the organization that produces New York’s Pride events, tried “dissolving” the Resistance Contingent, James said. It was eventually reinstated, but the activists were disillusioned with what the march had become. “We realized we all were very dissatisfied with the event itself, the degree of corporate floats, the corporatization, the bank sponsorship, as well as having a fully uniformed police contingent given a place of honor right at the front of the march,” James said. The N.Y.P.D. presence struck the activists as particularly ironic, since the Stonewall riots had been provoked by a police raid. After delivering a set of demands to H.O.P., the mayor, and the police commissioner and getting brushed off, the group, calling itself the Reclaim Pride Coalition, took on the “colossal task” of organizing its own march.
James, who is an organizer for the queer caucus of the Democratic Socialists of America, helped arrange the first meetings at the caucus’s space at the L.G.B.T. Center, in the West Village. One point of contention was whether to allow the Gay Officers Action League, or GOAL, to participate. “Eventually we came out on the side of the fact that the N.Y.P.D. as an institution, as a whole, is a racist one, and therefore having any representation of it wasn’t proper,” James said, though police officers were welcome to march as individuals, out of uniform. (Renna defended the presence of GOAL at the main march, saying, “It’s a free-speech march. If you’re going to let the Communists march, you’re going to let the police who are queer.”) “We wanted to get rid of the barricades, and we wanted certain police-free zones within the area,” James said. A subgroup negotiated with the N.Y.P.D. “We didn’t get a formal permit,” she said. “But we did get an assurance that they would not interfere with our march.”
The start time was set for 9:30 A.M. That morning, things did not start off promisingly. “We were there at the intersection, and there was just us,” Jon Carter, one of the marshals, recalled. “We looked around and we could see empty streets, and there was a real question about what the day would look like.” Then, after thirty-five minutes, there was an “If you build it, they will come” moment, as marchers materialized. (The group estimates that forty-five thousand people attended.) “We were very intentional about having trans people in the front,” Barjon said. It ended with a rally on the Great Lawn, with speakers who included the ACT UP veteran Larry Kramer. Walker recalled, “Larry did his normal thing that he always does, which is to scream at queer people and go, ‘You’re not doing enough!’ ”
The group was busy planning a 2020 edition of the march when COVID-19 struck. After New York’s governor, Andrew Cuomo, temporarily banned large gatherings, the Pride March and its rambunctious challenger both cancelled. The Reclaim Pride Coalition decided to hold a virtual event, called Livestream for Queer Liberation. (The group also protested the controversial field hospital that was set up in Central Park by Franklin Graham’s organization Samaritan’s Purse, which asked volunteers to sign a statement opposing same-sex marriage.) But the calculation changed in early June, after the killings of George Floyd and other black Americans by the police sparked a wave of mass protests. “There was unanimity that we needed to have a march,” Walker said. “And we needed to have it centered on the movement for black lives.”
With only weeks to plan, the march’s scrappy, D.I.Y. quality worked in its favor. “The simplicity of our approach to organizing marches and actions makes things very fluid and flexible, and we’re able to pivot in a way that a more complex plan wouldn’t allow us to,” Carter said. The main Pride March, which Carter called a “polished spectacle,” is still not happening this year. It’s as if the COVID-19 meteor killed off a twelve-million-dollar dinosaur, and a smaller, more resourceful organism survived to fill the parade-size void. Nevertheless, the group has adapted to the new circumstances: it’s gathering masks and hand sanitizer and will still put material online for people who can’t take the health risk of attending in person. It isn’t seeking any type of police blessing, advertising only the starting point (Foley Square). Also, James said, “We have voted on a start time, 1 P.M., so for the queers that utterly took umbrage at our 9:30 start time last year, I’m sure they’ll be relieved.”
The group’s timing is apt. Outside Stonewall, there’s now a sign reading “PRIDE IS A RIOT!”


newyorker--2020-06-25--The Purpose of a House

The Purpose of a House

My friend Maurice Berger , a writer , art curator , and social-justice advocate , died in the first stages of the pandemic , just as stay-at-home orders spread , like the virus itself , throughout the United States .
I was already in an active struggle—not quite a losing battle but certainly not a winning one—with fear and anxiety .
Maurice ’ s death knocked me over .
I took to the darkness , like a drug , sleeping with the shades drawn .
“ I have no fight in me , ” I told my husband when I @ @ @ @ @ @ @ half to death .
One morning , when I was trying to summon the will to rise and meet the day in some fashion , I was , simultaneously , working on an image that had been tugging at me .
Early in the COVID-19 crisis , I had started composing an essay that I intended as a sort of homage to nonessential touching .
I was in the flow before Maurice died , and phrases and even sentences were coming and fitting together in one of those rare , prime moments when @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to an image that morning , as I lay on my side , facing the wall .
I was remembering a moment from the before , a mundane encounter with a barista at my favorite coffee shop , thinking of its value , unappreciated by me at the time .
I was remembering receiving a cup of coffee from this stranger , a tattooed , sprightly , dark-haired , bespectacled young white woman .
It was an unseasonably warm March day , and the young woman and I seemed to be volleying good @ @ @ @ @ @ @ we felt like it .
Our fingers touched as she presented me with my coffee .
They touched again when we traded cash for coins ( how dirty money is , another new awareness ) .
In that moment with the barista , I thought about the pleasure I received every Sunday during the Eucharist , looking into the eyes of the chalice bearer , usually a friend , reciting the traditional phrases we were both taught long ago to exchange at that sacred moment .
I wanted to capture what both of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the before .
Polite and intimate , I thought .
Safe .
Legal , tender .
The phrase rumbled through me steadily , gaining force , suffusing me with light .
Legal , tender .
Maybe this was Maurice reaching me , telling me to get up and write .
And I did get up , arrived at my big wooden desk , and sat down to set out and see how far that phrase would take me .
Ahmaud Arbery was gunned down on February 23rd .
Maurice died one month later @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Arbery ’ s death until May , when most of the world was treated to the video of his murder .
I was working .
But Ahmaud Arbery was dead .
I was aware of it in the manner , I believe , that most black people who live in this country are aware of such events .
I make mental notes—which state ?
which town ?
which road ?
which corner ?
—gleaning all of this information while knowing that nowhere , really , is safe .
Danger can spring at any @ @ @ @ @ @ @ described this experience .
W. E. B .
Du Bois called it double consciousness , the psychological dissonance caused by living both black and human in the world .
Perhaps we are only beginning to understand the cost of living with such a soundtrack in the back of your mind , the refrain of black death .
I was trying to keep everything under control inside the walls that surround me .
When my twin daughters ’ school went remote , there was some relief in having them at home all the time @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of eighth grade .
Born in Ethiopia , they became U.S. citizens when we adopted them as infants .
Middle school was difficult for both of my girls .
Let ’ s just say that they have emerged from these years with a keen appreciation of the way that racism works in subtle ( and not so subtle ) ways in liberal communities .
Over the past three years , I became one of those parents .
I had the time and the resources , the autonomy at my job , to meet @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and I agreed that such meetings were necessary .
My background , as an academic and a child of professionals , makes me bold when it comes to most encounters with authority figures , particularly at school , so I was not intimidated when I had to intervene on my children ’ s behalf on several occasions .
This was something my mother had to do for me and my brothers , for some of the same reasons , forty years ago , in the slowly desegregating South .
I shook my head @ @ @ @ @ @ @ between our experiences , but we soldiered on , as black people do , and I was glad for the lessons in perseverance and valuing yourself no matter what others ( white people ) thought—lessons that my mother gave me that I could now pass on to my children .
I could see a noticeable difference in my daughters ’ demeanor after the first couple of weeks at home .
I read an article about how other black children were thriving in remote learning , not having to deal with the race-related struggles @ @ @ @ @ @ @ thought this applied to my girls .
So there was some sort of silver lining , after all .
“ The purpose of a house is to keep the outside world out , ” our contractor told us , when we moved into our home three years ago .
If it weren ’ t for the need to walk my dog , I would spend most of every day inside , not only because of lockdown .
Three years in , and I am still constantly aware of my dark skin in this @ @ @ @ @ @ @ though most of my neighbors have been nothing but outwardly welcoming to me and my family .
When I wrote , on social media , about living and working as a black person in white spaces , particularly during the lockdown and the international uprising against racism and police violence , neighbors I hardly know liked the post , expressed compassion , and pledged a new awareness .
When I walk my dog these days , I am most often alone on the roads of my neighborhood .
I like it that way @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , free from the fear of contagion .
And I wonder about the neighbors who expressed those sentiments of welcome .
From behind all of these closed doors and shut windows , can they see me now ?
I was glad to be able to keep my children safe from more demoralizing experiences at school .
Still , memories crept in .
It was as if , not having to deal with it in the day to day , my daughters were suddenly free to experience their wounds in a deep way for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ being one of very few black children in her classrooms had left Isabella feeling both hyper-visible and invisible , a jarring and alienating experience many black people know well .
Now that she was at home with her parents , she told me , even her guidance counsellor ’ s good wishes felt like an intrusion .
I asked Isabella ’ s teachers to leave her be .
For Giulia , I arranged a restorative-justice session with a teacher who , after some education , had acknowledged the ways in which he had @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of her hair , he blamed her .
When a group of boys mocked her for wearing a T-shirt that read “ The Future is Female , ” she felt that her teacher did not effectively stand up for her .
Giulia had thrived in spite of him , emerging as a leader and guiding discussions in his classroom about racism and sexism .

My friend Maurice Berger, a writer, art curator, and social-justice advocate, died in the first stages of the pandemic, just as stay-at-home orders spread, like the virus itself, throughout the United States. I was already in an active struggle—not quite a losing battle but certainly not a winning one—with fear and anxiety. Maurice’s death knocked me over. I took to the darkness, like a drug, sleeping with the shades drawn. “I have no fight in me,” I told my husband when I was awake and upright, scaring him half to death.
One morning, when I was trying to summon the will to rise and meet the day in some fashion, I was, simultaneously, working on an image that had been tugging at me. Early in the COVID-19 crisis, I had started composing an essay that I intended as a sort of homage to nonessential touching. I was in the flow before Maurice died, and phrases and even sentences were coming and fitting together in one of those rare, prime moments when everything works.
Something led me back to an image that morning, as I lay on my side, facing the wall. I was remembering a moment from the before, a mundane encounter with a barista at my favorite coffee shop, thinking of its value, unappreciated by me at the time. I was remembering receiving a cup of coffee from this stranger, a tattooed, sprightly, dark-haired, bespectacled young white woman. It was an unseasonably warm March day, and the young woman and I seemed to be volleying good cheer back and forth, just because we felt like it. Our fingers touched as she presented me with my coffee. They touched again when we traded cash for coins (how dirty money is, another new awareness). In that moment with the barista, I thought about the pleasure I received every Sunday during the Eucharist, looking into the eyes of the chalice bearer, usually a friend, reciting the traditional phrases we were both taught long ago to exchange at that sacred moment. I wanted to capture what both of those moments felt like, back in the before. Polite and intimate, I thought. Safe. Legal, tender.
The phrase rumbled through me steadily, gaining force, suffusing me with light. Legal, tender. Maybe this was Maurice reaching me, telling me to get up and write. And I did get up, arrived at my big wooden desk, and sat down to set out and see how far that phrase would take me.
Ahmaud Arbery was gunned down on February 23rd. Maurice died one month later.
I didn’t know about Arbery’s death until May, when most of the world was treated to the video of his murder. I was working. But Ahmaud Arbery was dead. I was aware of it in the manner, I believe, that most black people who live in this country are aware of such events. I make mental notes—which state? which town? which road? which corner?—gleaning all of this information while knowing that nowhere, really, is safe. Danger can spring at any moment.
Generations of black writers have described this experience. W. E. B. Du Bois called it double consciousness, the psychological dissonance caused by living both black and human in the world. Perhaps we are only beginning to understand the cost of living with such a soundtrack in the back of your mind, the refrain of black death.
I was trying to keep everything under control inside the walls that surround me.
When my twin daughters’ school went remote, there was some relief in having them at home all the time. They are fourteen, recent graduates of eighth grade. Born in Ethiopia, they became U.S. citizens when we adopted them as infants. Middle school was difficult for both of my girls. Let’s just say that they have emerged from these years with a keen appreciation of the way that racism works in subtle (and not so subtle) ways in liberal communities.
Over the past three years, I became one of those parents. I had the time and the resources, the autonomy at my job, to meet with teachers and administrators when my daughters and I agreed that such meetings were necessary. My background, as an academic and a child of professionals, makes me bold when it comes to most encounters with authority figures, particularly at school, so I was not intimidated when I had to intervene on my children’s behalf on several occasions. This was something my mother had to do for me and my brothers, for some of the same reasons, forty years ago, in the slowly desegregating South. I shook my head grimly when I noted the enduring similarities between our experiences, but we soldiered on, as black people do, and I was glad for the lessons in perseverance and valuing yourself no matter what others (white people) thought—lessons that my mother gave me that I could now pass on to my children.
I could see a noticeable difference in my daughters’ demeanor after the first couple of weeks at home. I read an article about how other black children were thriving in remote learning, not having to deal with the race-related struggles that they endured in school. I thought this applied to my girls. So there was some sort of silver lining, after all.
“The purpose of a house is to keep the outside world out,” our contractor told us, when we moved into our home three years ago. If it weren’t for the need to walk my dog, I would spend most of every day inside, not only because of lockdown. Three years in, and I am still constantly aware of my dark skin in this affluent, predominantly white neighborhood, even though most of my neighbors have been nothing but outwardly welcoming to me and my family. When I wrote, on social media, about living and working as a black person in white spaces, particularly during the lockdown and the international uprising against racism and police violence, neighbors I hardly know liked the post, expressed compassion, and pledged a new awareness.
When I walk my dog these days, I am most often alone on the roads of my neighborhood. I like it that way. I can walk without my mask, free from the fear of contagion. And I wonder about the neighbors who expressed those sentiments of welcome. From behind all of these closed doors and shut windows, can they see me now?
I was glad to be able to keep my children safe from more demoralizing experiences at school. Still, memories crept in. It was as if, not having to deal with it in the day to day, my daughters were suddenly free to experience their wounds in a deep way for the first time. Three years of being one of very few black children in her classrooms had left Isabella feeling both hyper-visible and invisible, a jarring and alienating experience many black people know well. Now that she was at home with her parents, she told me, even her guidance counsellor’s good wishes felt like an intrusion. I asked Isabella’s teachers to leave her be. For Giulia, I arranged a restorative-justice session with a teacher who, after some education, had acknowledged the ways in which he had harmed her. When students made fun of her hair, he blamed her. When a group of boys mocked her for wearing a T-shirt that read “The Future is Female,” she felt that her teacher did not effectively stand up for her. Giulia had thrived in spite of him, emerging as a leader and guiding discussions in his classroom about racism and sexism.
My daughters were suffering from the echoes of their three years in middle school. Their days inside were still and peaceful; the memories were dynamic and vivid. Communication as a road to healing was something that I believed in—something I knew I needed to model if I wanted them to believe in it, too. Human connection. Making meaning out of suffering. Breaking down barriers and insisting on a common humanity through truth-telling.
And then George Floyd died, and the world was, once again, invited to watch the destruction of a black human being. The video was made by a courageous teen-age black girl. It was a triumphant, essential act, and one that will likely cost her for the rest of her life.
I knew there were videos. I was glad there were videos. I did not, and would never, watch a video of anyone’s murder. We are all indebted to the courageous witnesses among us. Yet no one should have been able to watch George Floyd die, except people who loved him, and God.
To know of the murders, to know of all the murders, to know that there are more than you even know about (so many kept hidden, so many human beings disappeared), to feel them, to let them in. And then the need to protect my children, not only for their sake but for the sake of their family in Ethiopia, who entrusted them to us. To keep the badness of the outside world out, and cultivate goodness inside these walls, decorated with a gallery of images meant to uphold and reinforce our family bond. To teach my girls compassion. To model for my community, to represent my people, to honor my ancestors. The prongs of faith and duty: two sides of a bridle.
One of my oldest friends called me just before a scheduled phone meeting. The screen lit up with her name—not her given name, but one of my pet names for her. I pressed a button, and we were suddenly face to face, though hundreds of miles apart. We looked at each other and sighed at the world. We are more than thirty-five years into an intimate relationship that is rich with all kinds of shorthand. She mentioned having watched a video. “Not the murder video,” I said, referring to footage of the death of George Floyd. We’re close enough; she knew what I meant. I was shuffling the notes I needed for the meeting, my eyes diverted from the screen.
She was still, frozen not by a glitch but by a truth she knew I didn’t want to hear. I could feel it. I stopped shuffling and looked up. “Yes,” she said. She is white.
A current of panic, dread, and anguish flamed up my arm and into the hand that was holding my phone.
“How could you?”
I thought of the girl who took the video. I thought of my girls and all I was trying to protect them from.
“I think I just needed . . . to see,” she said.
“No,” I said, alarmed by the note of terror in my own voice.
No, I told my daughters. “You may not watch those videos. It’s not good for your soul.”
I shook my finger at their teen-age faces, in a clichéd gesture of top-down parenting that would otherwise count as a joke among us. They agreed. Still, it wasn’t purely an act of defiance that my daughter Isabella eventually watched both videos when they appeared on her social-media feed. I asked her what it felt like to watch the men die. The George Floyd video saddened her. “I thought of Nonni,” she said, referring to her Italian grandmother. “When she died, she was surrounded by people who loved her. George Floyd had no one.” It was like, if she didn’t watch it, she would be letting him die alone all over again, she said.
The Ahmaud Arbery video terrified her. When she cried, her body shook.
“I don’t like to be touched,” Isabella likes to remind me. Not wanting to be touched by her mother is an essential part of the teen-age persona I have been watching her shape over the past couple of years. Textbook. It amuses me and it pains me. I miss her body. But I knew trying to hug her in that moment would only make it worse.
I watched her shoulders shudder and terror travel though her narrow frame like electricity. I stood there, less than ten feet away, my hands clasped in front of me.
He wanted his mother.
We held the restorative-justice session for Giulia over Zoom. She cried several times during the session, confessing her feelings to her teacher, who had allowed her to be teased and harangued in moments he now describes as racist and misogynistic. He confessed his ignorance and apologized sincerely for the harm he caused. I could see, even through a screen, how my daughter’s pain entered him, corrected him, educated him. This happened because he let it be so. But as small as he must have felt during the session, he still had all the power. He had to show up for Giulia to heal. And show up he did.
The first time my daughter broke down, I reached out my hand to stroke her arm. We were sitting side by side at my desk, our shoulders less than five inches apart. She shrugged me off harshly. “I’m sorry for babying you,” I wrote her on a piece of paper. She dropped her eyes momentarily from the screen to read it. “It’s O.K.,” she wrote back.
For the rest of the session, I visualized sitting on my hands while Giulia cried and cried, and her teacher watched her, tears in his own eyes. She put her head down and sobbed; while her head was down, her teacher quickly and discreetly wiped away his tears. I was touched by his determination not to make a show of his sadness. Everyone in that space, real and virtual, tiny and vast, our trinity, united through Giulia’s misery, was broken, then restored, then broken again.
My daughter lifted her head and powered on, describing episodes that took place in his classroom, a testimony that hurt her all over again. She chose to speak instead of being silent.
We are inside, all of us, my husband, daughters, and me. We are a team, 24/7. Ride or die. We are bound, not by blood, or even a common last name, racial identity, or country of origin. We are connected through idiom, humor, and sensibility. By our beloved dog, who gets us out into the world and then brings us back inside. By food. By talk: inside jokes, running debates, and a shared pleasure in language itself.
My daughters are growing like hothouse flowers. They stare at their bodies in the mirror. They touch their faces, indoors, in our home, which I am constantly trying to disinfect. I steal glances at them as they watch themselves in the mirror in my bedroom. I sit perfectly still on the bed, quieted by admiration and longing. I know that if I say anything I will break the spell, our silent agreement. They need to be near me; they need to act as if they don’t want anything to do with me. “Our daughters have been practicing social distancing with us for a while,” my husband and I joke.
I miss them. They are rarely more than twenty feet away. When I move to a different floor in our house, they often move to the same floor, in a different room, out of sight.
There were long moments in the conversation between Giulia and her teacher when she couldn’t look at him. She could only look at me, her mother, whose touch she rebuffs. But I knew I was feeding her, that she was looking to me for some kind of nourishment, that I must keep my face still and open, be her mirror, her port, her light. I knew this in my bones, throughout my body. I kept my hands to myself and fed her. My husband, who is white, was at home, present as always, but I felt this was a black mother’s fight.
“It’s not fair,” Giulia said, staring at me.
“It’s not fair,” I repeated, holding her gaze.
It was only when she got what she needed from my eyes that she turned back to look her teacher in the face, their images mere inches apart.
My house is sturdy, for the most part. I dream of more renovations, of making it better, stronger, safer, and more beautiful, for my children, for my team. But I can’t keep them safe. I can’t keep the outside world out. All of my efforts are violated by phones and screens and the truth of black American life itself. A few days after she told me she watched the murders, Isabella showed me a video of a black girl with braids and deep brown skin, just like hers, telling her father that she might be killed for the color of her skin. “I’m sorry,” her father says, taking her into his arms.
“See?” my daughter said. “He couldn’t say no.” She kept the screen facing me, daring me to contradict the girl or the father.
“Yes,” I said.
All I could think was, Lucky father. At least his daughter lets him hold her.
“How did I do, Mommy?” Giulia asked quietly after the session with her teacher.
“You did great,” I told her.
“What did I do?” So quietly, she breathed the words more than spoke them.
“You told the truth. You didn’t lie. You didn’t pretend those experiences didn’t bother you,” I said. “That way? Those kinds of lies? They’ll kill you.”
I still want to write an essay about intimacy, a stranger’s touch. A quiet celebration of life, not death, not yet. A story about meaningful human transactions, absent of violence, brimming only with love. Love of self, of other, of life. Legal, tender.
Race, Policing, and Black Lives Matter Protests


newyorker--2020-06-25--The Talented Tweedy Family

The Talented Tweedy Family

On the evening of March 19th , Susie Tweedy picked up her phone , opened Instagram , and started streaming live from her family ’ s Chicago home .
Normally , her account is devoted to showcasing her vast collection of retro tchotchkes .
On that night , though , she featured a new subject : her family , sheltered in place .
There they were , visible to anyone who happened to be tuning in : her husband , Jeff , best known as the singer and primary songwriter of the band Wilco , and their two sons , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ t catch that night ’ s stream , and can ’ t find an archived version online , but Internet lore holds that Jeff took questions from the bathtub .
Susie was coughing , and viewers were reassured that she did not have COVID-19 .
The broadcast wasn ’ t preplanned or advertised , so no one knew to tune in .
But , the next night , the Tweedys did it again , and then they did it again , and , soon , it was a regular thing : “ The @ @ @ @ @ @ @ week .
Recently , it ’ s gone down to four nights , with sporadic breaks as needed .
Sixty-plus episodes in , it ’ s my favorite cultural production of the pandemic , hands down .
A representative “ Tweedy Show ” goes like this : Jeff plays a handful of his own songs , plus a few covers , usually sitting on the living-room couch ( no more bathtub shots ) , often wearing normal clothes up top and pajama bottoms down below .
Spencer , who is twenty-four and has @ @ @ @ @ @ @ years , sits on the other end of the couch , sometimes using his hands to drum on his knees , sometimes playing a minimalist drum kit set up in the middle of the room .
Sammy , who is twenty and still in college , wanders in and sings a few songs , reading lyrics off the phone ; like his dad , he ’ s a technically imperfect singer with the rare gift of making whatever he ’ s singing sound like what he ’ s feeling at that very moment @ @ @ @ @ @ @ sons all sing together .
Susie stays behind the camera , keeping track of questions , comments , and requests from viewers , whom the family jokingly call “ clients.
” ( Now that word of the show has trickled out , between one and two thousand people tune in per night . )
Occasionally , Spencer ’ s girlfriend , the Chicago musician Casey Walker , who is part of the family ’ s quarantine pod , shows up and sings , too .
Casey ’ s dog , Basil , seems @ @ @ @ @ @ @ favorite recurring character .
The performances are loose and warm , the stories unpolished and meandering , the mockery gentle and loving .
In a welcome departure from a great deal of other made-at-home pandemic content , the Tweedys ’ living room actually looks like a place where people live , not a furniture showroom .
The show gives us the feeling , absent from most of our lives now , of lounging around with friends after dinner—but throws a wildly above-average amount of musical talent and experience into the mix .
For @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the years , “ The Tweedy Show ” will have an extra emotional undercurrent .
In the spring of 2004 , Tweedy publicly announced that he was entering a rehab program designed to treat panic attacks and a painkiller addiction .
I remember rewatching old Wilco performances during this period , searching uncomfortably for signs of Tweedy ’ s struggles not just in the songs but in the man himself : his eyes , his mouth , the way he stood .
A new Wilco album , “ A Ghost Is Born , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ treatment ; that summer , when it was released , lyrics about migraines , drug deals , and breakdowns jumped as if they ’ d been underlined .
In two recent solo albums , “ Warm ” and “ Warmer , ” and an accompanying memoir , “ Let ’ s Go ( So We Can Get Back ) , ” Tweedy has revisited this part of his life with a new level of detail and candor .
In one heartbreaking passage , he recalls being sure that he would die soon and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a memory ark for his children : “ I was a goner , but I didn ’ t have to lose everything .
‘ A Ghost Is Born ’ would be a gift to my kids , who could turn to it when they were older and put together the pieces of me a little bit more than I ’ d been able to put myself together for them in real life .
‘ There will be a new day someday , ’ I thought , and I wanted this record to be @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to reconstruct my worldview , to have some deeper connection to the dad they ’ d lost.
” One of the great pleasures of “ Warm ” and “ Warmer ” was looking at the liner notes and realizing that the albums feature Spencer ’ s drumming and Sammy ’ s backing vocals ; they ’ re literally supporting their dad as he delivers songs about the time in his life when he thought he would die .
A similar feeling permeates “ The Tweedy Show ” : there are songs about loss @ @ @ @ @ @ @ being performed by a family looking awfully grateful to have one another to hunker down with .
It ’ s not uncommon to hear Susie tearing up behind the camera , and I can ’ t blame her .
On the first Monday of the month , after the nation erupted in protests over racist police brutality , the show began on a sombre note .
Jeff recalled starting the show back in March as a way to help people get their bearings amid the disorientation of the pandemic .
On this night @ @ @ @ @ @ @ sure .
He didn ’ t want the show ’ s ongoing existence to function as a brief for escapism , or a cry for going “ back to the status quo.
” His conflicted feelings were visible on his face .
“ I just remind myself that joy is allowed , ” Spencer said .
“ Even in solemn moments , and also even in moments that demand concrete action and dedication.
” Many of us are more housebound than usual , improvising new modes of coexistence with family members and other @ @ @ @ @ @ @ are improvising new modes of solidarity , demanding that society at large to do the same .
( Last week , Tweedy announced that , going forward , five per cent of his songwriting revenue would be donated to racial-justice organizations , and expressed a hope that similar initiatives might become commonplace across the music industry , perhaps as a standard option on rights-management contracts . )
Good songs provide a vision of life ’ s chaos resolved—if only for a few minutes—in meaningful unity .
Out in the world , it may @ @ @ @ @ @ @ But , meanwhile , “ The Tweedy Show ” manages to function as good news of the deepest sort : a sign that things can be O.K.
, even when things aren ’ t O.K .

On the evening of March 19th, Susie Tweedy picked up her phone, opened Instagram, and started streaming live from her family’s Chicago home. Normally, her account is devoted to showcasing her vast collection of retro tchotchkes. On that night, though, she featured a new subject: her family, sheltered in place. There they were, visible to anyone who happened to be tuning in: her husband, Jeff, best known as the singer and primary songwriter of the band Wilco, and their two sons, Spencer and Sammy. I didn’t catch that night’s stream, and can’t find an archived version online, but Internet lore holds that Jeff took questions from the bathtub. Susie was coughing, and viewers were reassured that she did not have COVID-19. The broadcast wasn’t preplanned or advertised, so no one knew to tune in. But, the next night, the Tweedys did it again, and then they did it again, and, soon, it was a regular thing: “The Tweedy Show,” seven nights a week. Recently, it’s gone down to four nights, with sporadic breaks as needed. Sixty-plus episodes in, it’s my favorite cultural production of the pandemic, hands down.
A representative “Tweedy Show” goes like this: Jeff plays a handful of his own songs, plus a few covers, usually sitting on the living-room couch (no more bathtub shots), often wearing normal clothes up top and pajama bottoms down below. Spencer, who is twenty-four and has collaborated extensively with his father in recent years, sits on the other end of the couch, sometimes using his hands to drum on his knees, sometimes playing a minimalist drum kit set up in the middle of the room. Sammy, who is twenty and still in college, wanders in and sings a few songs, reading lyrics off the phone; like his dad, he’s a technically imperfect singer with the rare gift of making whatever he’s singing sound like what he’s feeling at that very moment. Now and then, father and sons all sing together. Susie stays behind the camera, keeping track of questions, comments, and requests from viewers, whom the family jokingly call “clients.” (Now that word of the show has trickled out, between one and two thousand people tune in per night.) Occasionally, Spencer’s girlfriend, the Chicago musician Casey Walker, who is part of the family’s quarantine pod, shows up and sings, too. Casey’s dog, Basil, seems to be a lot of viewers’ favorite recurring character.
The performances are loose and warm, the stories unpolished and meandering, the mockery gentle and loving. In a welcome departure from a great deal of other made-at-home pandemic content, the Tweedys’ living room actually looks like a place where people live, not a furniture showroom. The show gives us the feeling, absent from most of our lives now, of lounging around with friends after dinner—but throws a wildly above-average amount of musical talent and experience into the mix.
For anyone who has followed Jeff Tweedy over the years, “The Tweedy Show” will have an extra emotional undercurrent. In the spring of 2004, Tweedy publicly announced that he was entering a rehab program designed to treat panic attacks and a painkiller addiction. I remember rewatching old Wilco performances during this period, searching uncomfortably for signs of Tweedy’s struggles not just in the songs but in the man himself: his eyes, his mouth, the way he stood. A new Wilco album, “A Ghost Is Born,” had been recorded before Tweedy entered treatment; that summer, when it was released, lyrics about migraines, drug deals, and breakdowns jumped as if they’d been underlined.
In two recent solo albums, “Warm” and “Warmer,” and an accompanying memoir, “Let’s Go (So We Can Get Back),” Tweedy has revisited this part of his life with a new level of detail and candor. In one heartbreaking passage, he recalls being sure that he would die soon and wanting to leave his last album as a memory ark for his children: “I was a goner, but I didn’t have to lose everything. ‘A Ghost Is Born’ would be a gift to my kids, who could turn to it when they were older and put together the pieces of me a little bit more than I’d been able to put myself together for them in real life. ‘There will be a new day someday,’ I thought, and I wanted this record to be an elemental tool for Spencer and Sammy to reconstruct my worldview, to have some deeper connection to the dad they’d lost.”
One of the great pleasures of “Warm” and “Warmer” was looking at the liner notes and realizing that the albums feature Spencer’s drumming and Sammy’s backing vocals; they’re literally supporting their dad as he delivers songs about the time in his life when he thought he would die. A similar feeling permeates “The Tweedy Show”: there are songs about loss and pain and mortality—but they’re being performed by a family looking awfully grateful to have one another to hunker down with. It’s not uncommon to hear Susie tearing up behind the camera, and I can’t blame her.
On the first Monday of the month, after the nation erupted in protests over racist police brutality, the show began on a sombre note. Jeff recalled starting the show back in March as a way to help people get their bearings amid the disorientation of the pandemic. On this night, though, he wasn’t sure. He didn’t want the show’s ongoing existence to function as a brief for escapism, or a cry for going “back to the status quo.” His conflicted feelings were visible on his face. “I just remind myself that joy is allowed,” Spencer said. “Even in solemn moments, and also even in moments that demand concrete action and dedication.”
Many of us are more housebound than usual, improvising new modes of coexistence with family members and other companions. In the streets, protesters are improvising new modes of solidarity, demanding that society at large to do the same. (Last week, Tweedy announced that, going forward, five per cent of his songwriting revenue would be donated to racial-justice organizations, and expressed a hope that similar initiatives might become commonplace across the music industry, perhaps as a standard option on rights-management contracts.) Good songs provide a vision of life’s chaos resolved—if only for a few minutes—in meaningful unity. Out in the world, it may not be time for resolution yet. But, meanwhile, “The Tweedy Show” manages to function as good news of the deepest sort: a sign that things can be O.K., even when things aren’t O.K.


newyorker--2020-06-26--Date Ideas for a Post-Quarantine World

Date Ideas for a Post-Quarantine World

Share an order of mozzarella sticks after first sterilizing itwi in an autoclave .
Get sweet little tattoos of each other ’ s COVID-19 immunocertification bar codes .
An orgy , but within “ human hamster ” bubble balls .
Be first in line at the zoo reopening before the animals are once again traumatized by crowds .
Make uncomfortable small talk via bullhorns in an empty stadium .
A sunset champagne toast at the airport while watching C.D.C .
planes land .
Teach each other some fun words from the extinct languages you learned in isolation .
Strap on @ @ @ @ @ @ @ an abandoned Nordstrom .
Wait patiently for an hour while your date solves an escape room built for one .
Dress up as bed-sheet ghosts and scare all the squatters out of the old post office .
Do what you ’ ve always done on a date : dinner , followed by a cocktail , and then back to your apartment , to rigorously sponge each other down with white-wine vinegar .
A trip to the new Museum of Sex exhibit , “ Dry-Humping Through the Ages.
” See who can hold more @ @ @ @ @ @ @ spilling .
A fun pedal through the park on a custom-built six-foot-spaced tandem bicycle .
Pay a temp to hug hello and kiss goodbye , but you got all the middle stuff .
Sexy food-play using the five-year-old box of macaroni you recently resorted to opening .
Whatever type of sex it would take to impress these cats who have seen it all over the past six months .
Same shit as always : she watches you play video games ; you hand her a bag of chips ; she hits the hay @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a fun class in immunopathogenesis at an adult-ed center .
Have a nostalgic “ Outbreak ” viewing party , and remove an item of clothing each time a character sneezes .
Find a cozy spot to ask your date if it ’ d be O.K .
if you quickly checked in on your mother , who lives in a nursing home .
Lovingly describe to each other long-distant memories of great salad bars .
Take a paint-and-sip class together , and make a “ TRUMP LIED , PEOPLE DIED ” painting in gouache @ @ @ @ @ @ @ side of a thick slab of Plexiglas .
Role play : you are Governor Cuomo .
She is an inquisitive NY1 reporter who isn ’ t quite grasping it .
A virtual key party , hosted by the only swingers on your block who paid for Zoom Pro .
Go “ apple picking ” in an orchard that is now a makeshift graveyard .
Dab each other with seventy-per-cent isopropyl alcohol while reënacting the screamiest bits of “ Marriage Story.
” Bask in the months-long buildup of sexual tension stemming from your mutually @ @ @ @ @ @ @ death .

Scott Jacobson, Todd Levin, Jason Roeder, Mike Sacks, Ted Travelstead

Mush your sourdough starters together.
A drone tour of the Epcot Center’s Italy Pavilion.
A sensual third-date unmasking.
Share an order of mozzarella sticks after first sterilizing them in an autoclave.
Get sweet little tattoos of each other’s COVID-19 immunocertification bar codes.
An orgy, but within “human hamster” bubble balls.
Be first in line at the zoo reopening before the animals are once again traumatized by crowds.
Make uncomfortable small talk via bullhorns in an empty stadium.
A sunset champagne toast at the airport while watching C.D.C. planes land.
Seven minutes in a heavenly hyperbaric oxygen chamber.
Teach each other some fun words from the extinct languages you learned in isolation.
Strap on Rollerblades and hold hands while skating through an abandoned Nordstrom.
Wait patiently for an hour while your date solves an escape room built for one.
Dress up as bed-sheet ghosts and scare all the squatters out of the old post office.
Do what you’ve always done on a date: dinner, followed by a cocktail, and then back to your apartment, to rigorously sponge each other down with white-wine vinegar.
A trip to the new Museum of Sex exhibit, “Dry-Humping Through the Ages.”
See who can hold more jelly beans behind their face mask without spilling.
A fun pedal through the park on a custom-built six-foot-spaced tandem bicycle.
Pay a temp to hug hello and kiss goodbye, but you got all the middle stuff.
Sexy food-play using the five-year-old box of macaroni you recently resorted to opening.
Whatever type of sex it would take to impress these cats who have seen it all over the past six months.
Same shit as always: she watches you play video games; you hand her a bag of chips; she hits the hay; you rock on alone.
Coquettishly clip oximeters to each other’s erogenous zones.
Take a fun class in immunopathogenesis at an adult-ed center.
Have a nostalgic “Outbreak” viewing party, and remove an item of clothing each time a character sneezes.
Find a cozy spot to ask your date if it’d be O.K. if you quickly checked in on your mother, who lives in a nursing home.
Lovingly describe to each other long-distant memories of great salad bars.
Take a paint-and-sip class together, and make a “TRUMP LIED, PEOPLE DIED” painting in gouache.
Grind at the club against either side of a thick slab of Plexiglas.
Sit outside your favorite boarded-up bistro, eating Wawa ham hoagies.
Hold hands and watch subway rats “rewild” your back-yard conversation nook.
Role play: you are Governor Cuomo. She is an inquisitive NY1 reporter who isn’t quite grasping it.
A virtual key party, hosted by the only swingers on your block who paid for Zoom Pro.
Go “apple picking” in an orchard that is now a makeshift graveyard.
Dab each other with seventy-per-cent isopropyl alcohol while reënacting the screamiest bits of “Marriage Story.”
Bask in the months-long buildup of sexual tension stemming from your mutually unshakeable association between human contact and terrible death.