newyorker--2020-03-05--Freeman Dyson’s Letters Offer Another Glimpse of Genius

“ Here is a scientist who can really write , ” the physicist Hans Bethe observed in his review of Freeman Dyson ’ s first book , “ Disturbing the Universe , ” in 1979 .
Dyson , who died on Friday , at the age of ninety-six , was a mathematician and theoretical physicist by training , but became best known to most Americans as a writer .
The book , a poignant collection of essays , some of which appeared in The New Yorker , was a finalist for the National Book Award ; he went on to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , he was a regular contributor to The New York Review of Books , writing on a dazzling range of authors and topics—from Daniel Kahneman to Michael Crichton , the history of the Galápagos to the concept of infinity .
His last piece , on “ the outcast genius ” and physicist Fritz Zwicky , appeared six weeks before his death .
Even by physicists ’ standards , Dyson ’ s thinking was strikingly unconstrained by the here and now .
One moment , he was delving into the esoterica of quantum theory @ @ @ @ @ @ @ was speculating about the logistics of alien civilizations .
In the nineteen-fifties , he led the team developing a new type of nuclear reactor , which included several novel safety features ; soon after , he was designing an interstellar spacecraft propelled by nuclear bombs .
( His plans were scuttled by the 1963 Limited Test Ban Treaty . )
Many of his views were penetrating , a few—like his insistence that fears about rising CO levels were overblown—more than a little eccentric .
To the end , he was a mental adventurer @ @ @ @ @ @ @ fearless and relentlessly curious .
I first met Dyson in January , 2001 .
He greeted me at the Institute for Advanced Study ( I.A.S . )
, in Princeton , New Jersey , where he had worked , by then , for nearly a half century .
Though he was in his late seventies , Dyson was elfish and spry , bounding up stairs two at a time .
I was there to interview him for a book I was writing , about how physicists had learned to calculate subtle effects among @ @ @ @ @ @ @ quantum electrodynamics , or Q.E.D .
Dyson had played a pivotal role in those developments during the late nineteen-forties , consolidating and pushing forward the insights of three other physicists—Richard Feynman , Julian Schwinger , and Sin-Itiro Tomonaga .
These three later shared the Nobel Prize for the work , but it was Dyson ’ s contribution that made Q.E.D .
a workable theory .
Building directly on Dyson ’ s work , physicists have been able to make theoretical predictions about the behavior of particles like electrons with unprecedented accuracy .
When @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , their answers agree to one part in a trillion .
That ’ s like estimating the distance from a bench in Central Park to a particular crater on the moon , and getting the answer right within the width of a human hair .
That January afternoon , Dyson graciously sat with me for a two-hour interview , fielding my questions about the origins of Q.E.D.—how the theory had evolved in collaboration with students and colleagues .
As we were wrapping up , I sheepishly asked about something more personal .
I @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s correspondence quoted in a colleague ’ s book : letters he had written to his parents and his sister during some of the most exciting periods of his work .
Could I see them ?
The moment I spoke the question aloud , I was overcome by awkwardness .
It felt like asking to read his childhood diary .
But , without hesitating , Dyson hopped out of his chair , pulled open some file cabinets , and produced several thick folders , bulging with letters .
Even more remarkably , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ machine and a spare key to his office , so I could make copies of the entire collection .
The letters I looked at began in September , 1947 , Dyson ’ s first month living in the United States .
Born in Berkshire , England , Dyson had been a mathematical prodigy , and went on to study at the University of Cambridge .
Interrupted by the war , he plied his quantitative skills as an analyst in the Operational Research Section of the Royal Air Force Bomber Command—a sobering experience he @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” Back at Cambridge , he switched from mathematics to physics but quickly grew restless .
The real excitement in the field , he thought , had shifted to the United States , and so , with the aid of a Commonwealth Fellowship , he set off to pursue graduate study at Cornell .
From Ithaca , he immediately began sending letters home .
“ Yesterday I came up here by train , ” he wrote to his “ dear family ” that fall .
“ A lovely trip over the mountains and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ reported that his new room was “ very comfortable and suitable for working in .
It is not designed for social life , in fact the rules are ‘ No cooking , No alcohol , and No women.
’ ” The student cafeteria was “ simply stacked with the most delicious food , and I shall have no difficulty in growing fat on $ 2 a day.
” Sometimes Dyson wrote out the letters by hand , but most often he used an inexpensive , portable typewriter .
The originals give an impression @ @ @ @ @ @ @ often stray letters appear above or below a given line , the typewriter ’ s strained mechanisms no match for the speed of Dyson ’ s thinking .
In response to his mother ’ s questions about his daily routine , he replied , “ I am living a highly professionalized existence , without any private life to speak of , and wake up in the mornings thinking about mesons and photons , and there is not much one can say about that.
” Rather than dwelling on his studies , Dyson played @ @ @ @ @ @ @ university life .
His purview soon included political life , too .
Thomas Dewey , the Republican governor of New York and Presidential candidate , struck Dyson as “ very greasy ” during a visit to campus , while “ the notorious Henry Wallace ” delivered an electrifying speech to Dyson ’ s fellow-students and teachers .
Roaming beyond Ithaca , Dyson hitchhiked to New York City with friends and took long bus rides up and down the East Coast and into the Midwest .
He sent thoughtful observations of race relations in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , Michigan , and described the “ endless succession of rich well-tended farms and rich ill-tended industrial cities ” on a long ride back East .
His letters also record his deepening friendship—and budding collaboration—with Feynman , who was then a young physics professor at Cornell .
The famously charismatic physicist struck Dyson as “ half genius and half buffoon , who keeps all physicists and their children amused with his effervescent vitality.
” Feynman was still working out a new diagram-based approach to Q.E.D .
but had not yet written any detailed @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of how to use the diagrams struck Dyson as scattered and imprecise .
Dyson learned more about Feynman ’ s new approach when the two drove across the country together , in June , 1948—Feynman to visit a girlfriend in Albuquerque , and Dyson to take in the sights en route to a physics conference at the University of Michigan .
Dyson had sixteen hundred miles to pick Feynman ’ s brain .
But their talk of electrons was interrupted near Oklahoma City , where flooding had closed parts of Route 66 , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ small town .
Other stranded travellers had already booked up all the hotel rooms in the area , and Dyson began to get nervous .

Dyson’s typewritten letters give an impression of his quick mind at work; often stray letters appear above or below a given line, the typewriter’s strained mechanisms no match for the speed of Dyson’s thinking. Photograph by Imke Lass / Redux
“Here is a scientist who can really write,” the physicist Hans Bethe observed in his review of Freeman Dyson’s first book, “Disturbing the Universe,” in 1979. Dyson, who died on Friday, at the age of ninety-six, was a mathematician and theoretical physicist by training, but became best known to most Americans as a writer. The book, a poignant collection of essays, some of which appeared in The New Yorker, was a finalist for the National Book Award; he went on to publish ten more. For twenty-five years, he was a regular contributor to The New York Review of Books, writing on a dazzling range of authors and topics—from Daniel Kahneman to Michael Crichton, the history of the Galápagos to the concept of infinity. His last piece, on “the outcast genius” and physicist Fritz Zwicky, appeared six weeks before his death.
Even by physicists’ standards, Dyson’s thinking was strikingly unconstrained by the here and now. One moment, he was delving into the esoterica of quantum theory, and, the next, he was speculating about the logistics of alien civilizations. In the nineteen-fifties, he led the team developing a new type of nuclear reactor, which included several novel safety features; soon after, he was designing an interstellar spacecraft propelled by nuclear bombs. (His plans were scuttled by the 1963 Limited Test Ban Treaty.) Many of his views were penetrating, a few—like his insistence that fears about rising CO 2 levels were overblown—more than a little eccentric. To the end, he was a mental adventurer, not so much iconoclastic as intellectually fearless and relentlessly curious.
I first met Dyson in January, 2001. He greeted me at the Institute for Advanced Study (I.A.S.), in Princeton, New Jersey, where he had worked, by then, for nearly a half century. Though he was in his late seventies, Dyson was elfish and spry, bounding up stairs two at a time. I was there to interview him for a book I was writing, about how physicists had learned to calculate subtle effects among elementary particles using a theory known as quantum electrodynamics, or Q.E.D. Dyson had played a pivotal role in those developments during the late nineteen-forties, consolidating and pushing forward the insights of three other physicists—Richard Feynman, Julian Schwinger, and Sin-Itiro Tomonaga. These three later shared the Nobel Prize for the work, but it was Dyson’s contribution that made Q.E.D. a workable theory. Building directly on Dyson’s work, physicists have been able to make theoretical predictions about the behavior of particles like electrons with unprecedented accuracy. When compared with the results of ultra-sensitive experiments, their answers agree to one part in a trillion. That’s like estimating the distance from a bench in Central Park to a particular crater on the moon, and getting the answer right within the width of a human hair.
That January afternoon, Dyson graciously sat with me for a two-hour interview, fielding my questions about the origins of Q.E.D.—how the theory had evolved in collaboration with students and colleagues. As we were wrapping up, I sheepishly asked about something more personal. I’d recently seen some of Dyson’s correspondence quoted in a colleague’s book: letters he had written to his parents and his sister during some of the most exciting periods of his work. Could I see them?
The moment I spoke the question aloud, I was overcome by awkwardness. It felt like asking to read his childhood diary. But, without hesitating, Dyson hopped out of his chair, pulled open some file cabinets, and produced several thick folders, bulging with letters. Even more remarkably, he set me up with a photocopy machine and a spare key to his office, so I could make copies of the entire collection.
The letters I looked at began in September, 1947, Dyson’s first month living in the United States. Born in Berkshire, England, Dyson had been a mathematical prodigy, and went on to study at the University of Cambridge. Interrupted by the war, he plied his quantitative skills as an analyst in the Operational Research Section of the Royal Air Force Bomber Command—a sobering experience he later recounted in “Disturbing the Universe.” Back at Cambridge, he switched from mathematics to physics but quickly grew restless. The real excitement in the field, he thought, had shifted to the United States, and so, with the aid of a Commonwealth Fellowship, he set off to pursue graduate study at Cornell.
From Ithaca, he immediately began sending letters home. “Yesterday I came up here by train,” he wrote to his “dear family” that fall. “A lovely trip over the mountains and up the spectacular Lehigh valley.” He reported that his new room was “very comfortable and suitable for working in. It is not designed for social life, in fact the rules are ‘No cooking, No alcohol, and No women.’ ” The student cafeteria was “simply stacked with the most delicious food, and I shall have no difficulty in growing fat on $2 a day.” Sometimes Dyson wrote out the letters by hand, but most often he used an inexpensive, portable typewriter. The originals give an impression of his quick mind at work; often stray letters appear above or below a given line, the typewriter’s strained mechanisms no match for the speed of Dyson’s thinking.
In response to his mother’s questions about his daily routine, he replied, “I am living a highly professionalized existence, without any private life to speak of, and wake up in the mornings thinking about mesons and photons, and there is not much one can say about that.” Rather than dwelling on his studies, Dyson played amateur anthropologist, sending detailed reports about university life. His purview soon included political life, too. Thomas Dewey, the Republican governor of New York and Presidential candidate, struck Dyson as “very greasy” during a visit to campus, while “the notorious Henry Wallace” delivered an electrifying speech to Dyson’s fellow-students and teachers. Roaming beyond Ithaca, Dyson hitchhiked to New York City with friends and took long bus rides up and down the East Coast and into the Midwest. He sent thoughtful observations of race relations in Chicago, St. Louis, and Ypsilanti, Michigan, and described the “endless succession of rich well-tended farms and rich ill-tended industrial cities” on a long ride back East.
His letters also record his deepening friendship—and budding collaboration—with Feynman, who was then a young physics professor at Cornell. The famously charismatic physicist struck Dyson as “half genius and half buffoon, who keeps all physicists and their children amused with his effervescent vitality.” Feynman was still working out a new diagram-based approach to Q.E.D. but had not yet written any detailed account of his thinking. His descriptions of how to use the diagrams struck Dyson as scattered and imprecise.
Dyson learned more about Feynman’s new approach when the two drove across the country together, in June, 1948—Feynman to visit a girlfriend in Albuquerque, and Dyson to take in the sights en route to a physics conference at the University of Michigan. Dyson had sixteen hundred miles to pick Feynman’s brain. But their talk of electrons was interrupted near Oklahoma City, where flooding had closed parts of Route 66, forcing them off the road in a small town. Other stranded travellers had already booked up all the hotel rooms in the area, and Dyson began to get nervous.
In a handwritten letter to his parents later that summer, Dyson described what happened next. “We ended up in what Feynman called a ‘dive,’ a hotel of the cheapest and most disreputable character, with a notice posted in the corridor saying ‘This hotel is under new management, so if you’re drunk you’ve come to the wrong place.’” (In Feynman’s later retelling, it was a brothel; Feynman made much of how Dyson, a “quiet and dignified English fellow,” had been too self-conscious to relieve himself in the sink, since the room had no toilet.) To Dyson, the entire adventure had been an “Odyssey,” equal to any ancient tale.
After parting from Feynman in New Mexico, Dyson made his way by bus to Ann Arbor, where he took in a series of lectures by Schwinger on a rival approach to Q.E.D. Riding back East a few weeks later, Dyson fell into “a sort of semistupor as one does after forty-eight hours of busriding.” He began to “think very hard about physics,” letting Schwinger and Feynman’s competing approaches swirl in his head. “Gradually my thoughts grew more coherent, and before I knew where I was I had solved the problem that had been in the back of my mind all this year, which was to prove the equivalence of the two theories.”


newyorker--2020-03-05--Why Alaskans Are Trying to Recall Their Governor

A pro-life Catholic , one of Dunleavy ’ s signature issues in the legislature was a failed amendment to the state constitution that would have allowed public-school funding to go to private and religious schools .
As governor , his religious views have continued to influence his decisions .
Last February , the Alaska Supreme Court blocked an effort to restrict the use of state Medicaid funds for abortions .
Federal Medicaid funds can only be used for abortions that end pregnancies that are the result of rape or incest , or for those that threaten the life of the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ rules , however , and the legislature wanted to limit the use of Medicaid funds to cases deemed “ medically necessary.
” One of the most controversial vetoes that Dunleavy issued last summer cut the Alaska Court System budget by $ 334,700 , the amount the government paid for what he called “ elective ” abortions .
Dunleavy said that the amount was chosen in direct response to the court ’ s abortion rulings .
The decision contributed to growing anger over Dunleavy ’ s conduct and the harshness of his budget cuts @ @ @ @ @ @ @ effort to remove him from the governor ’ s office was formally launched .
Alaska ’ s recall law , while onerous , allows for the removal of government officials on certain grounds : lack of fitness , incompetence , neglect of duties , or corruption .
Two legal justifications for the recall effort were Dunleavy ’ s abortion-related spending cut to the state ’ s court system and the Facebook campaign targeting state legislators .
Dunleavy had also failed to appoint a judge within forty-five days to the Palmer Superior Court and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in Medicaid funds .
The recall ’ s proponents were first required to gather signatures from ten per cent of the voters in the last general election , or 28,051 people , which would be submitted to the state ’ s director of elections for certification .
Within a day of the certification launch , they had gathered more than ten thousand signatures , and by early September they had submitted nearly fifty thousand .
( By contrast , it took a group of citizens trying to recall Governor Wally Hickel , in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ thousand signatures . )
In early November , the director of elections , following the legal advice of the attorney general , Kevin Clarkson , a Dunleavy appointee , rejected the petition .
Clarkson ’ s twenty-five-page opinion asserted that none of the four main justifications reached the statutory requirements : the failure to appoint a judge in Palmer was “ merely procedural rather than substantive ” ; the Facebook campaign paid for by the governor was not proved to be partisan ; the Medicaid-funding mistake ( which , counting federal matching requirements @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of millions of dollars more ) was a “ typographical error ” ; the abortion-related veto was a “ dispute over policy ” and within the governor ’ s constitutional rights .
Recall Dunleavy , the group leading the effort to remove the governor , appealed the decision in Alaska ’ s Superior Court , which ruled in January that the recall could proceed .
“ The recall process is fundamentally a political process , ” the judge said .
“ This is not an issue for the judicial branch to decide whether @ @ @ @ @ @ @ not.
” The Department of Law , under Clarkson ’ s leadership , appealed the ruling to the Alaska Supreme Court .
Craig Richards , a former Alaska Attorney General and a leader of the legal team for Stand Tall with Mike , a group formed to oppose the recall , told me , “ This is completely political .
They ’ re trying to basically overturn the election so that they can get the solution they want.
” A significant number of the recall proponents , however , had been Dunleavy supporters @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the chairman of Alaska ’ s largest coal-mining company .
“ From a company viewpoint , at the time , it sure seemed the right way to go , ” he said , explaining his vote for Dunleavy .
“ But you ’ ve got to look at the bigger picture .
Ideology is not a good way to set policy.
” For Usibelli , who is one of Recall Dunleavy ’ s co-chairs , the movement to remove the governor is a chance to reclaim the state ’ s tradition of political @ @ @ @ @ @ @ identify themselves simply as Alaskans , ” he said .
“ The recall has brought together people you would never find in the same room , let alone agreeing on something.
” For Dunleavy ’ s strongest supporters , such opposition within the governor ’ s own party amounts to an unforgivable act of betrayal .
“ There is a serious problem when some do not back the governor , ” Carol Carman , a local Republican Party chair , wrote last year , in an e-mail to Dunleavy ’ s legislative allies @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and replaced or the ship will sink.
” A few weeks after his election , Dunleavy named Donna Arduin , a consultant based in Florida , as the director of the Office of Management and Budget .
Arduin is a partner in Arduin , Laffer & Moore Econometrics , a consulting firm that specializes in advising governors and legislators on state budgets .
The firm ’ s other principals , Arthur Laffer and Stephen Moore , have devoted their careers to the economic theory that lowering taxes will inevitably lead to economic growth @ @ @ @ @ @ @ economics , and he worked in the Administrations of Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan ; Moore , the founder of the anti-tax advocacy group Club for Growth , was nearly nominated to the Federal Reserve Board by President Donald Trump , but Moore withdrew his name from consideration after he was widely criticized for his history of sexist remarks .
In a profile in the Duke alumni magazine , Arduin , a self-described libertarian , said that she had “ joined government to shrink it.
” “ I have no sympathy for people @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” she said .
The article noted that , when she saw a man on the street holding a sign that read “ Anything helps—Smile—God Bless , ” she said , under her breath , “ Get a job.
” ( Arduin denied making the remark . )
For three decades , Arduin has been helping design austerity budgets for Republican governors .
In 2003 , she was the chief budget adviser for Jeb Bush , in Florida , when , as part of an effort to cut taxes , the state put @ @ @ @ @ @ @ lists and eliminated funding for eyeglasses , hearing aids , and dentures for seniors .
Later that year , Arduin began advising Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger , of California , who ultimately reopened two shuttered private prisons , one of which was owned by a spinoff of the GEO Group , which is now the largest prison corporation in the country .
As the Los Angeles Times reported , ten days after Arduin left her job , in 2005 , the spinoff company , Correctional Properties , named her as a trustee .
( @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s decision . )
While working for another Florida governor , Rick Scott , Arduin designed a budget that called for the elimination of nearly nine thousand state jobs and for “ utilizing inmate labor to grow prison food , and competitively bidding health care contracts resulting in public prison costs that are as low as private prisons.
” ( Scott eventually tried , unsuccessfully , to privatize twenty-seven prisons in the state . )
A major victory for anti-labor advocates originated in the office of Arduin ’ s previous employer , Governor @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 2015 , Rauner , a Republican , filed a federal lawsuit to bar AFSCME , a public-employee union , from requiring the payment of agency fees , which fund its nonpolitical activities , such as collective bargaining and grievance representation .
A court ruled that Rauner did not have standing to file the suit , but three state employees , including Mark Janus , a child-support specialist , replaced him on the case .
In 2018 , the U.S. Supreme Court issued its decision in Janus v. AFSCME .
The ruling—a break with @ @ @ @ @ @ @ opt out of paying agency fees , which , over time , is almost certain to erode the unions ’ bargaining power .
Though Arduin was not directly involved in the Janus case , she served as a senior fellow at the Illinois Policy Institute , a conservative think tank that helped fund the suit .
( Mark Janus is now a senior fellow at the Institute . )

Though Alaska is traditionally a Republican state, it also has the fifth-highest union density in the country. One pro-labor Republican businessman who helped launch the recall was incredulous about the Dunleavy administration’s legal battle over its Janus interpretation, for which it recently allotted as much as six hundred thousand dollars. “Why are they doing this?” he said. “It’s Alaska. We should never be at the forefront of a legal case like this.”
Clarkson’s opinion on Janus has fuelled a central narrative of the recall movement: that Alaska’s politics are being outsourced to national interests. Dunleavy has also tied his fate to Trump, whom he has taken to emulating, using slogans like “Make Alaska Great Again.” “What we’re trying to do up here is to work on behalf of the average American, average Alaskan—not necessarily the special interests,” Dunleavy said, in an interview with Breitbart, in October. “It’s those special interests that want to redo the elections here in Alaska and are looking to try impeach the President now nationally.” Trump has been unwavering in his support of Dunleavy, inviting him onto Air Force One during stopovers in Anchorage. After a recent meeting, Trump tweeted, “My friend Mike @GovDunleavy of the Great State of Alaska, is being treated very unfairly by the Democrats because he is doing an unbelievable job and fulfilling every one of his promises.”
A sign for the recall effort at a home in Cordova.
Dunleavy’s former Senate district, in Wasilla, is in the Matanuska-Susitna Valley, known as the Mat-Su. The valley, which begins about forty-five miles north of Anchorage, contains roughly a hundred thousand people in an area almost as large as West Virginia. Ironically, the valley was first developed, in 1935, as part of a New Deal resettlement program. The program offered two hundred and three destitute farming families from Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Michigan the opportunity to homestead in the valley, which had rich soil and only about a hundred families spread out over a quarter of a million acres. The government poured five million dollars into the project, paying for the families to relocate and giving each one a forty-acre plot. Although the farmers initially struggled, the colony soon became successful, and, by 1948, it was producing half the produce grown in Alaska. The colony is long gone, but its elegant, simple barns still dot the landscape, and the nineteen hours of sunlight during the summer routinely produce hundred-pound cabbages and thousand-pound pumpkins.
Before it became a state, in 1959, and during the decade after, Alaska was predominantly progressive. During the nineteen-seventies, the construction of the eight-hundred-mile Trans-Alaska pipeline attracted white workers from the Deep South, many of whom were conservative, accelerating a rightward shift in the state that had begun with the arrival of large numbers of military personnel during the Cold War. As the pipeline neared completion, Governor Jay Hammond, a Republican, pushed for the establishment of a sovereign wealth fund—a savings account—to benefit future generations of Alaskans. In 1976, voters approved an amendment to the state’s constitution creating the Permanent Fund. By 1980, after an oil shock the year before, the price of crude had reached a hundred and twenty dollars a barrel, in inflation-adjusted dollars. “We were giving away money,” Mike Bradner, a former Democratic speaker of Alaska’s State House, told me. “People didn’t even know what they were appropriating for.”
That year, Hammond signed legislation to give every resident of Alaska a yearly dividend from the Permanent Fund’s earnings. Two years later, the first checks, for a thousand dollars, were mailed out. The dividend is the closest any state has come to providing a universal basic income, and its creation was supported by both progressives, who favored a redistribution of collective wealth, and libertarians, including Milton Friedman, who believed that it was the best way to alleviate poverty and could also be used to dismantle the welfare state. In Alaska’s rural areas, particularly in the state’s Native villages, some of which are among the poorest communities in the country, the dividend helps offset the high cost of electricity and staples like milk, which can cost more than thirty dollars a gallon.
The same year it passed the dividend, the legislature repealed Alaska’s income tax. Though Hammond opposed the repeal, he did not veto it. Since then, several legislative attempts to reinstate the income tax have failed. In 2004, at a conference on the fiscal dilemma posed by Alaska’s reliance on oil revenue, Hammond said that his biggest regret as governor was not vetoing the income-tax repeal. Three years later, Governor Sarah Palin signed legislation to tax oil production in Alaska at twenty-five per cent of net profits, and higher if profits exceeded thirty dollars a barrel. (In Norway, the rate is seventy-eight per cent, which helps fund the country’s extensive social-welfare system.) In 2008, the price of oil reached a hundred and forty-five dollars a barrel, and the state sent out checks for thirty-two hundred dollars.
In 2013, Palin’s successor, the Republican Sean Parnell, a former executive for ConocoPhillips, repealed Palin’s oil-company tax increase, a move that cost the state two billion dollars in revenue in the first year alone. By then, oil prices had plummeted, which created a gaping financial deficit. The dilemma over what the cash-strapped state should do about the dividend has persisted ever since.
Von Imhof, the Republican state senator from Anchorage, supports reducing the dividend, which she equates with socialism, to address the state’s financial crisis. In December, at a Chamber of Commerce meeting at a brewpub in Eagle River, halfway between Anchorage and the Mat-Su, she gave a detailed presentation in which she argued that, for the state to afford essential services like Medicaid, the dividend must be reduced. The attendees, who included a representative from Dunleavy’s office and many legislators and citizens from the Mat-Su, offered pointed critiques. “Why is it that the people are having their P.F.D. taken by the politicians?” a gray-bearded man asked. “Your point: Should the dividend dictate the framework of the budget? That should be true. It’s not the politicians’ P.F.D.—it’s the people’s P.F.D.”
The following day, I went to see Bill Wielechowski, a Democratic state senator, at his home, in east Anchorage. Wielechowski’s airy kitchen is filled with barrels of fermenting beers and homemade meads made with local honey and wild fruit. In 2016, he had unsuccessfully sued the state when Governor Walker reduced the dividend. “Democrats are supposed to be the party of the people,” he explained, “the party of the working class.” But Wielechowski is also dismayed at how Dunleavy has used the full P.F.D. as a cudgel—and a cover—to dismantle the safety net. “It’s been weaponized,” he said. “I used to have these conversations with Dunleavy when we were both in the Senate. We both predicted this moment: he wanted to push the state in the direction where you were faced with making cuts or giving up the Permanent Fund, and he thought cuts would prevail. I wanted to push the state in the direction of increasing oil taxes, keeping the services, and keeping the full P.F.D.”
For Wielechowski, the recall, which he supports, is complicated because he also believes that the bipartisan effort to reduce the dividend is orchestrated by the oil companies. “Reducing the dividend is all about getting rid of the Permanent Fund so that the oil companies don’t have to pay more taxes,” Wielechowski said. “It’s all about oil.” Wielechowski believed that Palin, by raising oil taxes, had made a truly populist move, and he noted that her approval rating rose to ninety per cent, the highest of any Alaska governor. But he sees Dunleavy, who voted to repeal the oil-company taxes as a state senator and now refuses to consider any tax increases on the oil companies, in a different light. “His populism is a total façade,” Wielechowski said. “When push comes to shove, his populism takes a back seat to corporatism.”
Last September, the final ferry departed Cordova, one of the largest commercial fishing ports in the country. Its two ferries, the older, slower Aurora and the faster Chenega, are currently docked in Ketchikan—the Aurora is in need of repair, and the state intends to sell the Chenega. Service is not expected to return until late April, and is currently scheduled only for the duration of the summer salmon-fishing season. At the town’s holiday bazaar, in December, there was an undercurrent of gloom and anger owing to the abrupt seven-month suspension of Cordova’s ferry service. Brian Wildrick, the owner of Harborside Pizza, used to pack a month’s worth of supplies in his cargo van. Now he worries that he may have to close several days a week, since he can’t afford the expensive commercial freight-shipping rates. Stacie Chappell told me that her sister, Jamie, went to Anchorage to have her baby—Cordova has no obstetrician—and had to have her labor induced early so that she could return to Cordova before the ferry service ended.
No one was more devastated by the loss of the ferry than Janet Johnson and her twenty-year-old daughter, Wilde Rose. Two years ago, the town of Cordova bought Janet a used wheelchair van so that she could more easily transport Wilde Rose, who has cerebral palsy, to medical appointments in Anchorage. Janet now says that they may have to leave the town. “It’s hard to go, because if you are someone with disabilities there are so many good things about it here,” Janet said. “You can fish twenty feet off the road, you can see bears right outside your van window.” But, without the ferry service, Janet wondered if they would be able to leave at all. “We’re kind of trapped here,” she said. Wilde Rose leaned forward, struggling to speak. “It’s because of Dunleavy,” she said.


newyorker--2020-03-05--Washington, D.C., Man Linked to Community Spread of Coronavirus Misinformation

WASHINGTON ( The Borowitz Report ) —A resident of Washington , D.C. , has been identified as the source of the community spread of coronavirus misinformation throughout the United States .
Officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said on Thursday that the man had ignored the advice of public-health experts and spewed a toxic strain of ignorance , potentially infecting millions .
The man , believed to be a fact-resistant organism , travelled last week to South Carolina , where he came in contact with thousands of people who , as a result of community spread , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
The epidemic of cluelessness expanded last night , when the man called in to a Fox News television program to encourage people with coronavirus to go to work rather than stay at home , as scientists have urged .
A C.D.C .
spokesperson in Atlanta said there are steps that the public can take to avoid becoming infected by the man ’ s noxious contagion of falsehoods .
“ According to the data we have , the most virulent misinformation is transmitted via this man ’ s oral cavity , ” the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ on your TV and see him open his mouth , move as far away as possible .
”

WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—A resident of Washington, D.C., has been identified as the source of the community spread of coronavirus misinformation throughout the United States.
Officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said on Thursday that the man had ignored the advice of public-health experts and spewed a toxic strain of ignorance, potentially infecting millions.
The man, believed to be a fact-resistant organism, travelled last week to South Carolina, where he came in contact with thousands of people who, as a result of community spread, now believe that coronavirus is a hoax.
The epidemic of cluelessness expanded last night, when the man called in to a Fox News television program to encourage people with coronavirus to go to work rather than stay at home, as scientists have urged.
A C.D.C. spokesperson in Atlanta said there are steps that the public can take to avoid becoming infected by the man’s noxious contagion of falsehoods.
“According to the data we have, the most virulent misinformation is transmitted via this man’s oral cavity,” the spokesperson said. “If you turn on your TV and see him open his mouth, move as far away as possible.”


newyorker--2020-03-05--The End of Michael Bloomberg’s Rushed, Costly Political Experiment

The mood at Michael Bloomberg ’ s final campaign stop , held on Tuesday evening , was celebratory .
The campaign had characterized it as an “ organizing event , ” but inside the Palm Beach County Convention Center , in Florida , it felt more like a rock concert , with indigo lighting , a stadium-worthy sound system , and hundreds of enthusiastic attendees crowded up against the stage , cheering and waving American flags .
Tension had been building throughout the day , as Bloomberg raced across the state between campaign stops , and results from some of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ held on Super Tuesday started to come in .
By around eight o ’ clock in the evening , the former Vice-President Joe Biden had already been declared the winner in Alabama , North Carolina , and Virginia—a state where Bloomberg had hoped to do well .
Bloomberg ’ s decision to enter the Presidential race , back in November , had been based on a theory that Biden was failing to gain momentum , leaving the Democrats without an establishment-friendly candidate to challenge Bernie Sanders , whom some Party leaders fear can @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Donald Trump .
Suddenly , in the past thirty-six hours , everything had changed .
Biden now looked like a favorite , Sanders was not doing as well as he could have , and Bloomberg was in a position to hurt the very cause that he purported to be helping , by siphoning critical moderate votes away from Biden .
By sundown , Bloomberg risked being compared to Ralph Nader , who ran as a Green Party candidate in 2000 and was blamed by some for costing Al Gore the Presidency .
For @ @ @ @ @ @ @ all of that was put aside , and the fantasy atmosphere of a victory celebration took hold .
Bloomberg was introduced by Robert Buckhorn , the former mayor of Tampa , who spoke in soaring terms about unity ( “ It doesn ’ t matter how you got here .
It doesn ’ t matter the language that you speak .
It doesn ’ t matter the gods you love .
It doesn ’ t matter who you love .
.
.
.
We are all in this together ” ) , and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Palm Beach ( “ This is a once-in-a-lifetime , once-in-a-generation opportunity coming up !
” ) , followed by Judge Judy Sheindlin , the television personality , who arrived in a bright blue suit ( “ This is the greatest country in the world !
It doesn ’ t need a revolution .
It may need a little tweaking ” ) .
Bloomberg finally came out onstage , to the U2 song “ It ’ s A Beautiful Day , ” and took his position behind the podium .
He looked startled , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and enthusiasm of the crowd , and pivoted back and forth , taking it all in with a half smile on his face .
“ My message is simple , ” he finally said .
He was running “ to start rebuilding our country , and to start getting things done .
And I mean big important things , like stopping gun violence , and fighting climate change , and finally achieving affordable health coverage for all Americans .
This is a campaign for change , for honesty , for inclusion .
.
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
And this is a campaign to bring our country back together.
” The only hint of anything less than defiance came in a line that Bloomberg uttered , almost plaintively , partway into his prepared remarks : “ No matter how many delegates we win tonight , we have done something no one thought was possible .
In just three months , we ’ ve gone from one per cent in the polls to being a contender for the Democratic nomination for President.
” The departing supporters seemed giddy .
Three women @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the convention center , all members of the Atlantis Democratic Club , in Palm Beach County , were smiling and holding flags .
“ I ’ m tired of hearing talk .
I want to hear experience .
I want to hear somebody who can get it done , ” one of them , Thais Villanueva , told me .
She said that the most important issues to her were gun control , climate change , immigration , and reproductive rights .
When I asked whether she had contemplated the possibility that Bloomberg @ @ @ @ @ @ @ her head as if she didn ’ t want to hear of it .
“ I heard him say , ‘ Are you asking Biden that question ?
’ ” she said , referring to Bloomberg .
“ He ’ s a smart guy .
He ’ s in it for a win .
He ’ s going to wait to see the results from today.
” Later in the evening , in a statement , Bloomberg ’ s campaign manager , Kevin Sheekey , repeated Bloomberg ’ s lines about having gone @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
He added , “ Our No .
1 priority remains defeating Donald Trump.
” There was , notably , no reference to beating Trump as a Presidential opponent , only the promise , which Bloomberg had made from the beginning , that he would commit whatever resources he had to saving the country from a second Trump term .
Just after ten o ’ clock on Wednesday morning , Bloomberg officially withdrew from the race , putting an end to one of the most rushed and costly experiments in American politics .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ estimates put the price tag of his campaign at more than five hundred million dollars , all expended in around a hundred days , much of it on television ads , mailers , twenty-four hundred staff members in states across the country , and the seeding of a political-data and polling unit called Hawkfish .
The vastness and efficiency of his campaign organization is a testament not only to the fortune he had to spend but also to his effectiveness at running an organization .
The stunning collapse of the campaign before it @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , that buying one ’ s way to the Presidency isn ’ t quite as straightforward as some of his opponents and their supporters had feared .
There is clearly more to the enterprise than management skills and capital .
Despite the humbling comedown , the events of the past few days leave Bloomberg in a position to exert influence over what comes next .
He has the resources to play an important role in the campaign to unseat Trump , which he says he plans to continue pursuing .
Although the Sanders @ @ @ @ @ @ @ any financial assistance from Bloomberg , the former mayor has said that he will support Sanders if he ends up becoming the Democratic nominee .
( “ I would vote for Sanders , but I would not be happy doing it , ” he said on Monday . )
Bloomberg endorsed Biden on Wednesday , saying , “ I will work to make him the next President of the United States.
” Bloomberg as a Presidential candidate was not charismatic or warm , and he didn ’ t seem to care ; he @ @ @ @ @ @ @ what is normally an emotional and chaotic process , but it didn ’ t always help him .
When confronted with serious questions about discriminatory policing policies that he promoted as the mayor of New York City , and allegations of sexism and harassment at his company , he behaved as if he could half-apologize and change the subject .
His lack of empathy for certain people was too obvious .
But , during a town-hall event hosted by Fox News , at George Mason University , on Monday night , another side @ @ @ @ @ @ @ had already answered questions from audience members and from the hosts , Martha MacCallum and Bret Baier—about his possible path to victory , how he would respond to the coronavirus , and whether or not he was “ a real Democrat ” —when there was an outburst in the audience .
A number of gun-rights advocates wearing orange caps or T-shirts that said “ Guns Save Lives ” on them started challenging Bloomberg about his signature issue , his support for restrictions on gun ownership ; the exchange turned into a burst of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of it critical of Bloomberg .
Three other men jumped out of their seats holding up white signs , interrupting the gun advocates , and surrounded the stage .
They shouted “ Stop and Frisk is wrong !
” and yelled for Bloomberg to release women who had sued his company for discrimination from nondisclosure agreements .
The moderators cut to a commercial break , and the protesters were escorted out , although the gun advocates and their hecklers soon began shouting at each other again .
Then women spread throughout the audience @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ; they appeared to be affiliated with the gun-control movement that Bloomberg had started after the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School , in 2012 , in which twenty-one first-grade children and five adults were killed .
Their clapping and cheering drowned out the gun-rights supporters , and a woman stood up .
“ He is a hero , ” she said .
“ He ’ s saving our children !
”

The mood at Michael Bloomberg’s final campaign stop, held on Tuesday evening, was celebratory. The campaign had characterized it as an “organizing event,” but inside the Palm Beach County Convention Center, in Florida, it felt more like a rock concert, with indigo lighting, a stadium-worthy sound system, and hundreds of enthusiastic attendees crowded up against the stage, cheering and waving American flags. Tension had been building throughout the day, as Bloomberg raced across the state between campaign stops, and results from some of the fourteen Democratic primaries and caucuses being held on Super Tuesday started to come in. By around eight o’clock in the evening, the former Vice-President Joe Biden had already been declared the winner in Alabama, North Carolina, and Virginia—a state where Bloomberg had hoped to do well. Bloomberg’s decision to enter the Presidential race, back in November, had been based on a theory that Biden was failing to gain momentum, leaving the Democrats without an establishment-friendly candidate to challenge Bernie Sanders, whom some Party leaders fear cannot win in a national race against Donald Trump. Suddenly, in the past thirty-six hours, everything had changed. Biden now looked like a favorite, Sanders was not doing as well as he could have, and Bloomberg was in a position to hurt the very cause that he purported to be helping, by siphoning critical moderate votes away from Biden. By sundown, Bloomberg risked being compared to Ralph Nader, who ran as a Green Party candidate in 2000 and was blamed by some for costing Al Gore the Presidency.
For a few final hours, though, all of that was put aside, and the fantasy atmosphere of a victory celebration took hold. Bloomberg was introduced by Robert Buckhorn, the former mayor of Tampa, who spoke in soaring terms about unity (“It doesn’t matter how you got here. It doesn’t matter the language that you speak. It doesn’t matter the gods you love. It doesn’t matter who you love. . . . We are all in this together”), and Keith James, the mayor of West Palm Beach (“This is a once-in-a-lifetime, once-in-a-generation opportunity coming up!”), followed by Judge Judy Sheindlin, the television personality, who arrived in a bright blue suit (“This is the greatest country in the world! It doesn’t need a revolution. It may need a little tweaking”).
Bloomberg finally came out onstage, to the U2 song “It’s A Beautiful Day,” and took his position behind the podium. He looked startled, or pleasantly surprised, at the size and enthusiasm of the crowd, and pivoted back and forth, taking it all in with a half smile on his face. “My message is simple,” he finally said. He was running “to start rebuilding our country, and to start getting things done. And I mean big important things, like stopping gun violence, and fighting climate change, and finally achieving affordable health coverage for all Americans. This is a campaign for change, for honesty, for inclusion . . . and a campaign for human decency. And this is a campaign to bring our country back together.” The only hint of anything less than defiance came in a line that Bloomberg uttered, almost plaintively, partway into his prepared remarks: “No matter how many delegates we win tonight, we have done something no one thought was possible. In just three months, we’ve gone from one per cent in the polls to being a contender for the Democratic nomination for President.”
The departing supporters seemed giddy. Three women I spoke with in the lobby of the convention center, all members of the Atlantis Democratic Club, in Palm Beach County, were smiling and holding flags. “I’m tired of hearing talk. I want to hear experience. I want to hear somebody who can get it done,” one of them, Thais Villanueva, told me. She said that the most important issues to her were gun control, climate change, immigration, and reproductive rights. When I asked whether she had contemplated the possibility that Bloomberg would drop out soon, Villanueva shook her head as if she didn’t want to hear of it. “I heard him say, ‘Are you asking Biden that question?’ ” she said, referring to Bloomberg. “He’s a smart guy. He’s in it for a win. He’s going to wait to see the results from today.”
Later in the evening, in a statement, Bloomberg’s campaign manager, Kevin Sheekey, repeated Bloomberg’s lines about having gone from one-per-cent support to becoming a contender. He added, “Our No. 1 priority remains defeating Donald Trump.” There was, notably, no reference to beating Trump as a Presidential opponent, only the promise, which Bloomberg had made from the beginning, that he would commit whatever resources he had to saving the country from a second Trump term. Just after ten o’clock on Wednesday morning, Bloomberg officially withdrew from the race, putting an end to one of the most rushed and costly experiments in American politics.
Bloomberg outspent his rivals by magnitudes; estimates put the price tag of his campaign at more than five hundred million dollars, all expended in around a hundred days, much of it on television ads, mailers, twenty-four hundred staff members in states across the country, and the seeding of a political-data and polling unit called Hawkfish. The vastness and efficiency of his campaign organization is a testament not only to the fortune he had to spend but also to his effectiveness at running an organization. The stunning collapse of the campaign before it even got going suggests, somewhat reassuringly, that buying one’s way to the Presidency isn’t quite as straightforward as some of his opponents and their supporters had feared. There is clearly more to the enterprise than management skills and capital.
Despite the humbling comedown, the events of the past few days leave Bloomberg in a position to exert influence over what comes next. He has the resources to play an important role in the campaign to unseat Trump, which he says he plans to continue pursuing. Although the Sanders campaign stated that it would not accept any financial assistance from Bloomberg, the former mayor has said that he will support Sanders if he ends up becoming the Democratic nominee. (“I would vote for Sanders, but I would not be happy doing it,” he said on Monday.) Bloomberg endorsed Biden on Wednesday, saying, “I will work to make him the next President of the United States.”
Bloomberg as a Presidential candidate was not charismatic or warm, and he didn’t seem to care; he brought an unflappable, no-nonsense approach to what is normally an emotional and chaotic process, but it didn’t always help him. When confronted with serious questions about discriminatory policing policies that he promoted as the mayor of New York City, and allegations of sexism and harassment at his company, he behaved as if he could half-apologize and change the subject. His lack of empathy for certain people was too obvious.
But, during a town-hall event hosted by Fox News, at George Mason University, on Monday night, another side of him came into view. Bloomberg had already answered questions from audience members and from the hosts, Martha MacCallum and Bret Baier—about his possible path to victory, how he would respond to the coronavirus, and whether or not he was “a real Democrat”—when there was an outburst in the audience. A number of gun-rights advocates wearing orange caps or T-shirts that said “Guns Save Lives” on them started challenging Bloomberg about his signature issue, his support for restrictions on gun ownership; the exchange turned into a burst of angry shouting across the room, most of it critical of Bloomberg. Three other men jumped out of their seats holding up white signs, interrupting the gun advocates, and surrounded the stage. They shouted “Stop and Frisk is wrong!” and yelled for Bloomberg to release women who had sued his company for discrimination from nondisclosure agreements. The moderators cut to a commercial break, and the protesters were escorted out, although the gun advocates and their hecklers soon began shouting at each other again. Then women spread throughout the audience started clapping in support of the candidate; they appeared to be affiliated with the gun-control movement that Bloomberg had started after the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School, in 2012, in which twenty-one first-grade children and five adults were killed. Their clapping and cheering drowned out the gun-rights supporters, and a woman stood up. “He is a hero,” she said. “He’s saving our children!”


newyorker--2020-03-05--What Can the Coronavirus Teach Us?

What Can the Coronavirus Teach Us?

Subscribers to The Climate Crisis newsletter received this piece in their in-boxes .
Sign up to receive future installments .
There ’ s nothing good about the novel coronavirus—it ’ s killing many people , and shutting millions more inside , with fear as their main companion .
However , if we ’ re fated to go through this passage , we may as well learn something from it , and it does strike me that there are a few insights that are applicable to the climate crisis that shadows all of our lives .
Some of these lessons are @ @ @ @ @ @ @ killers and , it turns out , can become floating sick wards .
Other ideas evaporate once you think about them : China is producing far less carbon dioxide , for the moment , but , completely apart from the human toll , economic disruption is not a politically viable way to deal with global warming in the long term , and it also undercuts the engines of innovation that bring us , say , cheap solar panels .
Still , it ’ s worth noting how nimbly millions of people seem to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for instance , are scrambling to stay productive , even with many people working from home .
The idea that we need to travel each day to a central location to do our work may often be the result of inertia , more than anything else .
Faced with a real need to commute by mouse , instead of by car , perhaps we ’ ll see that the benefits of workplace flexibility extend to everything from gasoline consumption to the need for sprawling office parks .
Of course , that ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ reverse as well .
The best excuse for an office is people bouncing ideas off one another , and the best excuse for a society is just people bouncing off one another , something that ’ s getting harder right now , as events start cancelling .
But the “ social distancing ” that epidemiologists now demand of us to stop the spread of infectious diseases is actually already too familiar to lots of Americans .
Living lives of comparative , suburban isolation , we already have fewer close friends than we used @ @ @ @ @ @ @ on Thursday , of a serious epidemic of loneliness , which older Americans are more vulnerable to .
The research shows that , when controlling for all other variables , older Americans who reported being lonely are twice as likely to die prematurely than those who aren ’ t . )
But the patterns that produce this solitude in our culture are so ingrained that we ’ ve come to take them for granted .
Perhaps , in an odd way , the prospect of forced isolation may lead us to embrace a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
I can ’ t imagine what it ’ s like to be penned up in a Wuhan apartment ; I can guess , though , that liberation will feel sweet when it comes , not only because people presumably will be safe but because they can be social .
A certain kind of environmentalist has long hoped that we ’ ll learn to substitute human contact for endless consumption ; maybe this is the kind of shock that might open a few eyes .
( Also , strained global supply chains are @ @ @ @ @ @ @ very practical benefits . )
This might also be the moment when we decide to fully embrace the idea that science , you know , works .
My grandfather was , for many decades , doctor to the tiny town of Kirkland , Washington , now a suburb filled with software execs , which has turned into an American coronavirus ground zero .
So I ’ m thinking frequently of the brave nurses and paramedics carrying out front-line care , and also the researchers who have scrambled with remarkable speed to produce prototype @ @ @ @ @ @ @ when they come bearing cures .
And that should probably carry over to other realms : Americans , polling shows , are wary of Trump ’ s cavalier disregard for reality when it comes to global warming ; now he ’ s claiming that the virus is a hoax , as well .
Given his contention that maybe a “ miracle ” might make it “ disappear , ” I ’ d expect that skepticism to keep growing .
And one would also expect a growing awareness that what happens elsewhere matters—that there @ @ @ @ @ @ @ out the rest of the planet .
That ’ s true for the virus , which seems to have seeped through most of the world ’ s borders in a matter of days .
It ’ s even truer , of course , for the CO molecule .
Not even a guy in a hazmat suit , clutching a temperature gun , can slow down the warm air cascading up to the Arctic , or the hurricane headed across the Atlantic .
So maybe it ’ s a moment when we remember that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is a boon , not a trap .
Above all , I think , a physical shock like COVID-19 is a reminder that the world is a physical place .
That ’ s easy to forget when we apprehend it mostly through screens , or through the cozy , contained environments that make up most of our lives .
We seem to have a great deal of control , right until the moment that we don ’ t have any .
Things can go very , very wrong , and very , very @ @ @ @ @ @ @ scientists have been telling us for decades now about the climate crisis , and it ’ s what people have learned , from Australia to California , Puerto Rico , and everywhere that flood and fire has broken out .
That planets get sick slightly slower than populations do—over a few decades , not a few weeks—doesn ’ t change the basic calculation .
Biology doesn ’ t really care what we think of it , any more than physics or chemistry does .
Reality is capable of biting , and biting hard @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 57 of climate-striking , every Friday , in front of the White House .
The high-school senior has become a force—just last month , the Audubon Naturalist Society gave him its Youth Environmental Champion award ( and , since youth are now driving the environmental movement , this is no niche prize ) .
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity .
What ’ s the essential message that young people would like to get across to older people about climate change—what do you think older generations are not understanding correctly @ @ @ @ @ @ @ substantive progress to take place to stymie the climate crisis , humanity needs to operate from a standpoint of intergovernmental solidarity , empathy , equity , and moral clarity .
These should be the pillars on which we forge the pathway to a sustainable future .
Also , what older generations are not understanding is the meaning of the Native American proverb , “ We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors ; we borrow it from our children.
” What was it like to walk in that crowd in Washington , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Global Climate Strike , and realize : I helped make this happen ?
I felt a great sense of optimism , community , and belonging , but I also felt mad , because we invited our elected officials to speak and none of them could provide us a real plan to get us out of this crisis .
What I hoped for was not just for fifteen thousand people or twenty thousand people to show up .
I wanted a real policy announcement from our national representatives , saying that we have your @ @ @ @ @ @ @ hold the fossil-fuel industry accountable .
Tell me about OneMillionOfUs , which you helped start last March .

Subscribers to The Climate Crisis newsletter received this piece in their in-boxes. Sign up to receive future installments.
There’s nothing good about the novel coronavirus—it’s killing many people, and shutting millions more inside, with fear as their main companion. However, if we’re fated to go through this passage, we may as well learn something from it, and it does strike me that there are a few insights that are applicable to the climate crisis that shadows all of our lives.
Some of these lessons are obvious: giant cruise ships are climate killers and, it turns out, can become floating sick wards. Other ideas evaporate once you think about them: China is producing far less carbon dioxide, for the moment, but, completely apart from the human toll, economic disruption is not a politically viable way to deal with global warming in the long term, and it also undercuts the engines of innovation that bring us, say, cheap solar panels.
Still, it’s worth noting how nimbly millions of people seem to have learned new patterns. Companies, for instance, are scrambling to stay productive, even with many people working from home. The idea that we need to travel each day to a central location to do our work may often be the result of inertia, more than anything else. Faced with a real need to commute by mouse, instead of by car, perhaps we’ll see that the benefits of workplace flexibility extend to everything from gasoline consumption to the need for sprawling office parks.
Of course, that’s a lesson that can be learned in reverse as well. The best excuse for an office is people bouncing ideas off one another, and the best excuse for a society is just people bouncing off one another, something that’s getting harder right now, as events start cancelling. But the “social distancing” that epidemiologists now demand of us to stop the spread of infectious diseases is actually already too familiar to lots of Americans. Living lives of comparative, suburban isolation, we already have fewer close friends than we used to. (Health-care authorities warned, on Thursday, of a serious epidemic of loneliness, which older Americans are more vulnerable to. The research shows that, when controlling for all other variables, older Americans who reported being lonely are twice as likely to die prematurely than those who aren’t.) But the patterns that produce this solitude in our culture are so ingrained that we’ve come to take them for granted. Perhaps, in an odd way, the prospect of forced isolation may lead us to embrace a bit more gregariousness when the virus relents. I can’t imagine what it’s like to be penned up in a Wuhan apartment; I can guess, though, that liberation will feel sweet when it comes, not only because people presumably will be safe but because they can be social. A certain kind of environmentalist has long hoped that we’ll learn to substitute human contact for endless consumption; maybe this is the kind of shock that might open a few eyes. (Also, strained global supply chains are a good reminder that local agriculture has very practical benefits.)
This might also be the moment when we decide to fully embrace the idea that science, you know, works. My grandfather was, for many decades, doctor to the tiny town of Kirkland, Washington, now a suburb filled with software execs, which has turned into an American coronavirus ground zero. So I’m thinking frequently of the brave nurses and paramedics carrying out front-line care, and also the researchers who have scrambled with remarkable speed to produce prototype vaccines. Élites seem a little better when they come bearing cures. And that should probably carry over to other realms: Americans, polling shows, are wary of Trump’s cavalier disregard for reality when it comes to global warming; now he’s claiming that the virus is a hoax, as well. Given his contention that maybe a “miracle” might make it “disappear,” I’d expect that skepticism to keep growing.
And one would also expect a growing awareness that what happens elsewhere matters—that there’s no real way to shut out the rest of the planet. That’s true for the virus, which seems to have seeped through most of the world’s borders in a matter of days. It’s even truer, of course, for the CO 2 molecule. Not even a guy in a hazmat suit, clutching a temperature gun, can slow down the warm air cascading up to the Arctic, or the hurricane headed across the Atlantic. So maybe it’s a moment when we remember that coöperation with the rest of the world is a boon, not a trap.
Above all, I think, a physical shock like COVID-19 is a reminder that the world is a physical place. That’s easy to forget when we apprehend it mostly through screens, or through the cozy, contained environments that make up most of our lives. We seem to have a great deal of control, right until the moment that we don’t have any. Things can go very, very wrong, and very, very quickly. That’s precisely what scientists have been telling us for decades now about the climate crisis, and it’s what people have learned, from Australia to California, Puerto Rico, and everywhere that flood and fire has broken out. That planets get sick slightly slower than populations do—over a few decades, not a few weeks—doesn’t change the basic calculation. Biology doesn’t really care what we think of it, any more than physics or chemistry does. Reality is capable of biting, and biting hard.
Passing the Mic
Jerome Foster II just finished Week 57 of climate-striking, every Friday, in front of the White House. The high-school senior has become a force—just last month, the Audubon Naturalist Society gave him its Youth Environmental Champion award (and, since youth are now driving the environmental movement, this is no niche prize). This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
What’s the essential message that young people would like to get across to older people about climate change—what do you think older generations are not understanding correctly?
Two things. In order for substantive progress to take place to stymie the climate crisis, humanity needs to operate from a standpoint of intergovernmental solidarity, empathy, equity, and moral clarity. These should be the pillars on which we forge the pathway to a sustainable future. Also, what older generations are not understanding is the meaning of the Native American proverb, “We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors; we borrow it from our children.”


newyorker--2020-03-06--“Minor Feelings” and the Possibilities of Asian-American Identity

Early in the formidable new essay collection “ Minor Feelings : An Asian American Reckoning , ” the poet Cathy Park Hong delivers a fatalistic state-of-the-race survey .
“ In the popular imagination , ” she writes , “ Asian Americans inhabit a vague purgatorial status .
.
.
distrusted by African Americans , ignored by whites , unless we ’ re being used by whites to keep the black man down.
” Asians , she observes , are perceived to be emotionless functionaries , and yet she is always “ frantically paddling my feet underwater , always overcompensating to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Not enough has been said , Hong thinks , about the self-hatred that Asian-Americans experience .
It becomes “ a comfort , ” she writes , “ to peck yourself to death .
You don ’ t like how you look , how you sound .
You think your Asian features are undefined , like God started pinching out your features and then abandoned you .
You hate that there are so many Asians in the room .
Who let in all the Asians ?
you rant in your head.
” Hong , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ author of three poetry collections , including “ Dance Dance Revolution , ” which was published in 2007 , and is set in a surreal fictional waystation called the Desert , where the inhabitants speak a constantly evolving creole .
( “ Me fadder sees dis y decide to learn Engrish righteo dere , ” the narrator says . )
“ Minor Feelings ” consists of seven essays ; Hong explains the book ’ s title in an essay called “ Stand Up ” that centers on Richard Pryor ’ s “ Live @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the racialized range of emotions that are negative , dysphoric , and therefore untelegenic.
” One such minor feeling : the deadening sensation of seeing an Asian face on a movie screen and bracing for the ching-chong joke .
Another : eating lunch with white schoolmates and perceiving the social tableaux as a frieze in which “ everyone else was a relief , while I felt recessed , the declivity that gave everyone else shape.
” Minor feelings involve a sense of lack , the knowledge that this lack is a social construction @ @ @ @ @ @ @ it .
In “ The End of White Innocence , ” Hong describes her childhood home as “ tense and petless , with sharp witchy stenches.
” Her father drank ; her mother , she writes , “ beat my sister and me with a fury intended for my father.
” Her parents grew up in postwar poverty in Korea—as a child , her father caught sparrows to eat .
In order to get a visa to immigrate to the United States , he pretended to be a mechanic , and ended up @ @ @ @ @ @ @ where he was injured , and fired .
He moved to Los Angeles and found a job selling life insurance in Koreatown , then bought a dry-cleaning supply warehouse , and became successful enough to send Hong to private high school and college .
He recognized that Americans valued emotional forthrightness in business and developed a particular way of speaking at work .
“ Thanks for getting those orders in , ” Hong remembers him saying on the phone .
“ Oh , and Kirby , I love you.
” Hong feels ashamed @ @ @ @ @ @ @ awkward English , or her features , or witchy domestic stenches .
“ My shame is not cultural but political , ” she writes .
She is ashamed of the conflicted position of Asian-Americans in the racial and capital hierarchy—the way that subjugation mingles with promise .
“ If the indebted Asian immigrant thinks they owe their life to America , the child thinks they owe their livelihood to their parents for their suffering , ” Hong writes .
“ The indebted Asian American is therefore the ideal neoliberal subject.
” She becomes @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” a “ urinal cake of shame.
” Hong ’ s metaphors are crafted with stinging care .
To be Asian-American , she suggests , is to be tasked with making an injury inaccessible to the body that has been injured .
It is to be pissed on at regular intervals while dutifully minimizing the odor of piss .
For a long time , Hong recounts in the book ’ s first essay , she did not want to write about her Asian identity .
By the time she began studying for her @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Workshop , she had concluded that doing so was “ juvenile ” —and she couldn ’ t find the right form , anyway .
The confessional lyric felt too operatic , and realist fiction wasn ’ t right , either : “ I didn ’ t care to injection-mold my thoughts into an anthropological experience where the reader , after reading my novel , would think , The life of Koreans is so heartbreaking !
” In “ Stand Up , ” she asks , “ Will there be a future where I @ @ @ @ @ @ @ I , on the page , and not I , proxy for a whole ethnicity , imploring you to believe we are human beings who feel pain ?
” The predicament of the Asian-American writer , as Hong articulates it , is to fear that both your existence and your interpretation of that existence will always be read the wrong way .
At Iowa , Hong noticed other writers of color stripping out markers of race from their poems and stories to avoid being “ branded as identitarians.
” It was only later @ @ @ @ @ @ @ writers she had noticed doing this were Asian-American .
I read “ Minor Feelings ” in a fugue of enveloping recognition and distancing flinch .
I have tended to interpret my own acquiescence to and resentment of capitalism in generational terms rather than racial ones ; many people my age seem to accept economic structures that we find humiliating because we reached adulthood when the margins of resistance appeared to be shrinking .
I know , too , that my desire to attain financial stability is connected with a hope , bordering on @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , as they grow older , from the worst of the country that they immigrated to for my benefit .
But , for some reason , I haven ’ t written very much about that .
Was I , like Hong ’ s grad-school classmates , afraid of being branded as an identitarian ?
Had I considered the possibility of being positioned as a proxy for an entire ethnic group , and , unlike Hong , turned away ?
The term “ Asian-American ” was invented by student activists in California , in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ by the civil-rights movement and dreamed of activating a coalition of people from immigrant backgrounds who might organize against structural inequality .
This is not what happened ; for years , Asian-Americans were predominantly conservative , though that began changing , gradually , during the Obama years , then sharply under Trump .
Today , “ Asian-American ” mainly signifies people with East Asian ancestry : most Americans , Hong writes , think “ Chinese is synecdoche for Asians the way Kleenex is for tissues.
” The term , for many people—and for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , bankers .
( We are imagined as the human equivalent of stainless-steel countertops : serviceable and interchangeable and blandly high-end . )
But , although rich Asians earn more money than any other group of people in America , income inequality is also more extreme among Asians than it is within any other racial category .
In New York , Asians are the poorest immigrant group .
Hong describes a visit to a nail salon , where a surly Vietnamese teen-age boy gives her a painful pedicure .
She imagines him and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ each other , ” united and then divided by their discomfort in their own particular Asian positions .
Then she pauses .
“ What evidence do I have that he hated himself ?
” she wonders .
“ I wished I had the confidence to bludgeon the public with we like a thousand trumpets against them , ” she writes elsewhere .
“ But I feared the weight of my experiences—as East Asian , professional class , cis female , atheist , contrarian—tipped the scales of a racial group that remains so nonspecific @ @ @ @ @ @ @ shared language between us .
And so , like a snail ’ s antenna that ’ s been touched , I retracted the first person plural.
” Hong doesn ’ t fully retract it— “ we ” appears fairly often in the book—but she favors the second person , deploying a “ you ” that really means “ I , ” in the hope that her experience might carry shards of the Asian-American universal .
Throughout the book , Hong at once presumes and doesn ’ t presume to speak for people whose @ @ @ @ @ @ @ or Sri Lanka , or Thailand , or Laos—or the Philippines , where my parents were born .
The Philippines were under Spanish control from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century , and under American control until the middle of the twentieth .
Many Filipinos have Spanish last names and come to the States speaking English ; many have dark skin .
In his book “ The Latinos of Asia , ” the sociologist Anthony Christian Ocampo argues that Filipinos tend to manifest a sort of ethnic flexibility , feeling more at home @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ethnic groups , with whites , African-Americans , Latinos , and other Asians .
The experience of translating for one ’ s parents is often framed as definitive for Asian-Americans , but it ’ s not one that many Filipinos of my generation share ; my parents came to North America listening to James Taylor and the Allman Brothers , speaking Tagalog only when they didn ’ t want their kids to listen .
I grew up in a mixed extended family , with uncles who are black and Mexican and Chinese and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ found that less than half of Filipino-Americans checked “ Asian ” on forms that asked for racial background—a significant portion of them checked “ Pacific Islander , ” for no real reason .
It denoted proximity to Asian-Americanness , perhaps , without indicating a direct claim to it .
( About a month ago , at a doctor ’ s appointment , an East Asian nurse checked “ Pacific Islander ” when filling out a form for me . )

Early in the formidable new essay collection “Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning,” the poet Cathy Park Hong delivers a fatalistic state-of-the-race survey. “In the popular imagination,” she writes, “Asian Americans inhabit a vague purgatorial status . . . distrusted by African Americans, ignored by whites, unless we’re being used by whites to keep the black man down.” Asians, she observes, are perceived to be emotionless functionaries, and yet she is always “frantically paddling my feet underwater, always overcompensating to hide my devouring feelings of inadequacy.” Not enough has been said, Hong thinks, about the self-hatred that Asian-Americans experience. It becomes “a comfort,” she writes, “to peck yourself to death. You don’t like how you look, how you sound. You think your Asian features are undefined, like God started pinching out your features and then abandoned you. You hate that there are so many Asians in the room. Who let in all the Asians? you rant in your head.”
Hong, who teaches at Rutgers, is the author of three poetry collections, including “Dance Dance Revolution,” which was published in 2007, and is set in a surreal fictional waystation called the Desert, where the inhabitants speak a constantly evolving creole. (“Me fadder sees dis y decide to learn Engrish righteo dere,” the narrator says.) “Minor Feelings” consists of seven essays; Hong explains the book’s title in an essay called “Stand Up” that centers on Richard Pryor’s “Live in Concert.” Minor feelings are “the racialized range of emotions that are negative, dysphoric, and therefore untelegenic.” One such minor feeling: the deadening sensation of seeing an Asian face on a movie screen and bracing for the ching-chong joke. Another: eating lunch with white schoolmates and perceiving the social tableaux as a frieze in which “everyone else was a relief, while I felt recessed, the declivity that gave everyone else shape.” Minor feelings involve a sense of lack, the knowledge that this lack is a social construction, and resentment of those who constructed it.
In “The End of White Innocence,” Hong describes her childhood home as “tense and petless, with sharp witchy stenches.” Her father drank; her mother, she writes, “beat my sister and me with a fury intended for my father.” Her parents grew up in postwar poverty in Korea—as a child, her father caught sparrows to eat. In order to get a visa to immigrate to the United States, he pretended to be a mechanic, and ended up working for Ryder trucks in Pennsylvania, where he was injured, and fired. He moved to Los Angeles and found a job selling life insurance in Koreatown, then bought a dry-cleaning supply warehouse, and became successful enough to send Hong to private high school and college. He recognized that Americans valued emotional forthrightness in business and developed a particular way of speaking at work. “Thanks for getting those orders in,” Hong remembers him saying on the phone. “Oh, and Kirby, I love you.”
Hong feels ashamed, but not of her proximity to awkward English, or her features, or witchy domestic stenches. “My shame is not cultural but political,” she writes. She is ashamed of the conflicted position of Asian-Americans in the racial and capital hierarchy—the way that subjugation mingles with promise. “If the indebted Asian immigrant thinks they owe their life to America, the child thinks they owe their livelihood to their parents for their suffering,” Hong writes. “The indebted Asian American is therefore the ideal neoliberal subject.” She becomes a “dog cone of shame,” a “urinal cake of shame.” Hong’s metaphors are crafted with stinging care. To be Asian-American, she suggests, is to be tasked with making an injury inaccessible to the body that has been injured. It is to be pissed on at regular intervals while dutifully minimizing the odor of piss.
For a long time, Hong recounts in the book’s first essay, she did not want to write about her Asian identity. By the time she began studying for her M.F.A., at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, she had concluded that doing so was “juvenile”—and she couldn’t find the right form, anyway. The confessional lyric felt too operatic, and realist fiction wasn’t right, either: “I didn’t care to injection-mold my thoughts into an anthropological experience where the reader, after reading my novel, would think, The life of Koreans is so heartbreaking!” In “Stand Up,” she asks, “Will there be a future where I, on the page, am simply I, on the page, and not I, proxy for a whole ethnicity, imploring you to believe we are human beings who feel pain?” The predicament of the Asian-American writer, as Hong articulates it, is to fear that both your existence and your interpretation of that existence will always be read the wrong way. At Iowa, Hong noticed other writers of color stripping out markers of race from their poems and stories to avoid being “branded as identitarians.” It was only later that Hong realized that all of the writers she had noticed doing this were Asian-American.
I read “Minor Feelings” in a fugue of enveloping recognition and distancing flinch. I have tended to interpret my own acquiescence to and resentment of capitalism in generational terms rather than racial ones; many people my age seem to accept economic structures that we find humiliating because we reached adulthood when the margins of resistance appeared to be shrinking. I know, too, that my desire to attain financial stability is connected with a hope, bordering on practical obligation, to protect my parents, as they grow older, from the worst of the country that they immigrated to for my benefit. But, for some reason, I haven’t written very much about that. Was I, like Hong’s grad-school classmates, afraid of being branded as an identitarian? Had I considered the possibility of being positioned as a proxy for an entire ethnic group, and, unlike Hong, turned away?
The term “Asian-American” was invented by student activists in California, in the late sixties, who were inspired by the civil-rights movement and dreamed of activating a coalition of people from immigrant backgrounds who might organize against structural inequality. This is not what happened; for years, Asian-Americans were predominantly conservative, though that began changing, gradually, during the Obama years, then sharply under Trump. Today, “Asian-American” mainly signifies people with East Asian ancestry: most Americans, Hong writes, think “Chinese is synecdoche for Asians the way Kleenex is for tissues.” The term, for many people—and for Hollywood—seems to conjure upper-middle-class images: doctors, bankers. (We are imagined as the human equivalent of stainless-steel countertops: serviceable and interchangeable and blandly high-end.) But, although rich Asians earn more money than any other group of people in America, income inequality is also more extreme among Asians than it is within any other racial category. In New York, Asians are the poorest immigrant group.
Hong describes a visit to a nail salon, where a surly Vietnamese teen-age boy gives her a painful pedicure. She imagines him and herself as “two negative ions repelling each other,” united and then divided by their discomfort in their own particular Asian positions. Then she pauses. “What evidence do I have that he hated himself?” she wonders. “I wished I had the confidence to bludgeon the public with we like a thousand trumpets against them,” she writes elsewhere. “But I feared the weight of my experiences—as East Asian, professional class, cis female, atheist, contrarian—tipped the scales of a racial group that remains so nonspecific that I wondered if there was any shared language between us. And so, like a snail’s antenna that’s been touched, I retracted the first person plural.” Hong doesn’t fully retract it—“we” appears fairly often in the book—but she favors the second person, deploying a “you” that really means “I,” in the hope that her experience might carry shards of the Asian-American universal.
Throughout the book, Hong at once presumes and doesn’t presume to speak for people whose families come from India, say, or Sri Lanka, or Thailand, or Laos—or the Philippines, where my parents were born. The Philippines were under Spanish control from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century, and under American control until the middle of the twentieth. Many Filipinos have Spanish last names and come to the States speaking English; many have dark skin. In his book “The Latinos of Asia,” the sociologist Anthony Christian Ocampo argues that Filipinos tend to manifest a sort of ethnic flexibility, feeling more at home, compared with members of other Asian ethnic groups, with whites, African-Americans, Latinos, and other Asians. The experience of translating for one’s parents is often framed as definitive for Asian-Americans, but it’s not one that many Filipinos of my generation share; my parents came to North America listening to James Taylor and the Allman Brothers, speaking Tagalog only when they didn’t want their kids to listen. I grew up in a mixed extended family, with uncles who are black and Mexican and Chinese and white. Ocampo cites a study which found that less than half of Filipino-Americans checked “Asian” on forms that asked for racial background—a significant portion of them checked “Pacific Islander,” for no real reason. It denoted proximity to Asian-Americanness, perhaps, without indicating a direct claim to it. (About a month ago, at a doctor’s appointment, an East Asian nurse checked “Pacific Islander” when filling out a form for me.)
“Koreans are self-hating,” one of Hong’s Filipino friends tell her. “Filipinos, not so much.” My experience of racism has been different than Hong’s, as has my response to it. Much of the discourse around Asian-American identity centers on racist images associated with the stereotypical East Asian face: single-lidded eyes, yellow-toned skin, a supposed air of placid impassivity. I don’t have that face, exactly, and I’m not sure that I’ve confronted quite the same assumptions; when I hear people perform gross imitations of “Chinese” accents, I don’t know if it hurts the way it does because I’m an Asian person or because I come from a family of immigrants or simply because racism is embarrassing and foul.
If you escape the dominant experience of Asian-American marginalization, have you necessarily done so by way of avoidance, or denial, or conformity? What can you do when colonization is embedded in your family’s history, in your genetic background, in your very face? If I feel comforted in a room full of Asian people rather than alarmed at the possibility that my inner racial anxieties have been cloned all around me, is this another effect of the psychic freedom I’ve been granted with double eyelids and an ambiguously Western last name, or does it mark progress in the form of a meaningful generational shift? In the decade that separates me from Hong, the currency of whiteness has lost some of its inflated cultural value; one now sees Asian artists and chefs and skateboarders and dirtbags and novelists on the Internet, in the newspaper, and on TV. Is this freedom, or is it the latest form of assimilation? For Asian-Americans, can the two ever be fully distinct?


newyorker--2020-03-06--The Brooklyn Museum Revisits a Night-Life Legend with “Studio 54: Night Magic”

Studio 54 looms so large in the cultural imagination that it ’ s hard to believe it was open only @ @ @ @ @ What made the night club so unforgettable ?
As Fran Lebowitz ( above , in @ @ @ @ @ for the September , 1981 , issue of Interview ) once recalled , “ It @ @ @ @ @ before AIDS—and there were a lot of cute people there , and it was filled @ @ @ @ @ I think is very important to a successful night.
” Starting on March 13 , @ @ @ @ @ legend in “ Studio 54 : Night Magic .
”

Studio 54 looms so large in the cultural imagination that it’s hard to believe it was open only from 1977 to 1980. What made the night club so unforgettable? As Fran Lebowitz (above, in a portrait by Richard Bernstein for the September, 1981, issue of Interview) once recalled, “It was very sexy—it was still before AIDS—and there were a lot of cute people there, and it was filled with sexual intent, which I think is very important to a successful night.” Starting on March 13, the Brooklyn Museum revisits the legend in “Studio 54: Night Magic.”


newyorker--2020-03-06--With Verōnika, Stephen Starr Brings Old World Dining to Fotografiska

Robin Standefer and Stephen Alesch , the married couple behind the interior-design firm Roman and Williams , met while working on a movie set .
This first act seems to have informed their aesthetic at large , but of their many projects in New York—including the French restaurants Le Coucou and La Mercerie—none feels quite as cinematic as Verōnika , the restaurant in the new New York outpost of the Swedish photography museum Fotografiska .
The drama begins at the reservation stage .
For access to Verōnika , which is owned and operated by the upmarket restaurateur Stephen Starr , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ menu includes imperial beluga caviar for two hundred and fifty-five dollars and lobster for fifty-six ) but also connections , or staff , unless you have time to spend what feels like hours pleading with icy reservationists and adding yourself to the wait list .
“ Bonsoir , Madame , ” the maître d ’ said on the night I finally got lucky .
Bonsoir , indeed .
Taper candles cast moody light on elegantly wild floral arrangements and on the stained glass original to the building , a gorgeous Renaissance Revival landmark @ @ @ @ @ @ @ room are as immersive as the set of “ Sleep No More , ” liquor bottles rising to the ceiling on a pyramid of bronze-and-glass shelves , brocade armchairs in intimate clusters , creamy pink-marble tables set with filigreed chargers .
On my second visit , a hostess asked if my date and I minded sitting side by side on a velvet banquette .
We didn ’ t ; all the better for people-watching .
Particularly transfixing was our server , whose long , wiry face , pencil mustache , and slightly hunched @ @ @ @ @ @ @ seen somewhere before—a Buñuel film , perhaps , or a Hirschfeld drawing .
( I was so busy studying him that I didn ’ t realize we had agreed to “ filtered ” water instead of tap until I noticed a six-dollar charge on the bill . )
Despite the provenance of Fotografiska , Verōnika ’ s food is not Swedish , though many dishes come from just across the Baltic Sea .
( The restaurant seems to have little to do with the museum , which exhibits mostly contemporary large-scale color photographs @ @ @ @ @ @ @ with the words “ If you don ’ t write your story , who will ?
” in the gift shop . )
The menu offers a whimsical mix of fancified Eastern and Central European staples and highly technical archaic French delicacies : borscht , goulash , and “ Herring Under a Fur Coat ” ; soufflé , sole meunière , and chou farci .
All this feels tailor-made for a Wes Anderson world—or for a Russian oligarch .
Indeed , if there ’ s a through line , it ’ s embodied @ @ @ @ @ @ @ dish that was adopted into the French canon by “ one of those nineteenth-century guys , ” the chef Daniel Boulud once told Bill Buford for an article in this magazine , referring to Auguste Escoffier and his peers .
“ They were all in Russia , hoping to get hired by a tsar.
” Coulibiac is confoundingly difficult to make because its component parts—filleted fish , whole eggs , rice , and mushroom duxelles wrapped in nesting-doll layers of spinach and pastry—require wildly different cooking times .
Verōnika ’ s iteration hits @ @ @ @ @ @ @ arresting slices , with a spoonful of champagne sauce and a cascade of trout roe , it ’ s at once ostentatious and comfortingly homey .
The same can be said of the foie-gras poché , for which a lobe is poached and presented in golden consommé , encircled by delicately cut radish , fennel , and carrot .
I thought I knew how deeply chickeny a chicken soup could taste ; adding goose liver , it turns out , opens up the bottom .
But in less than two years foie gras @ @ @ @ @ @ @ It ’ s hard to imagine that coulibiac will come back into style , or that a restaurant like Verōnika will survive the coming culture wars .
It ’ s a place for a last hurrah , for one final Baked Alaska , also known as omelette norvégienne .
Its dome of Italian meringue , concealing salsify ice cream atop a disk of spice cake , gets doused in rum and set on fire , a blaze of blue .
Watch it flicker , and then fade out .
( Entrées $ 27- @ @ @ @ @

Robin Standefer and Stephen Alesch, the married couple behind the interior-design firm Roman and Williams, met while working on a movie set. This first act seems to have informed their aesthetic at large, but of their many projects in New York—including the French restaurants Le Coucou and La Mercerie—none feels quite as cinematic as Verōnika, the restaurant in the new New York outpost of the Swedish photography museum Fotografiska.
The coulibiac, an interpretation of a Russian dish adopted into the French canon by nineteenth-century chefs, features salmon, lemon rice, and mushroom duxelles wrapped in spinach and then pastry. Photograph by Amanda Hakan for The New Yorker
The drama begins at the reservation stage. For access to Verōnika, which is owned and operated by the upmarket restaurateur Stephen Starr, you need not only money (the menu includes imperial beluga caviar for two hundred and fifty-five dollars and lobster for fifty-six) but also connections, or staff, unless you have time to spend what feels like hours pleading with icy reservationists and adding yourself to the wait list.
Verōnika’s opulent interior was designed by Roman and Williams, a firm whose principals got their start on film sets. Photograph by Amanda Hakan for The New Yorker
“Bonsoir, Madame,” the maître d’ said on the night I finally got lucky. Bonsoir, indeed. Taper candles cast moody light on elegantly wild floral arrangements and on the stained glass original to the building, a gorgeous Renaissance Revival landmark. Both the bar and the dining room are as immersive as the set of “Sleep No More,” liquor bottles rising to the ceiling on a pyramid of bronze-and-glass shelves, brocade armchairs in intimate clusters, creamy pink-marble tables set with filigreed chargers.
For the foie-gras poché, a lobe is poached and served in consommé, along with delicately cut vegetables. Photograph by Amanda Hakan for The New Yorker
On my second visit, a hostess asked if my date and I minded sitting side by side on a velvet banquette. We didn’t; all the better for people-watching. Particularly transfixing was our server, whose long, wiry face, pencil mustache, and slightly hunched posture I was certain I’d seen somewhere before—a Buñuel film, perhaps, or a Hirschfeld drawing. (I was so busy studying him that I didn’t realize we had agreed to “filtered” water instead of tap until I noticed a six-dollar charge on the bill.)
Desserts served off a trolley, from left: éclairs; Viennese chocolate cake; a French cake called a charlotte royale, made of vanilla sponge, raspberry bavarois, and Chantilly cream; a honey-flavored Russian layer cake called a medovik. Photograph by Amanda Hakan for The New Yorker
Despite the provenance of Fotografiska, Verōnika’s food is not Swedish, though many dishes come from just across the Baltic Sea. (The restaurant seems to have little to do with the museum, which exhibits mostly contemporary large-scale color photographs, and which sells a notebook printed with the words “If you don’t write your story, who will?” in the gift shop.) The menu offers a whimsical mix of fancified Eastern and Central European staples and highly technical archaic French delicacies: borscht, goulash, and “Herring Under a Fur Coat”; soufflé, sole meunière, and chou farci.
All this feels tailor-made for a Wes Anderson world—or for a Russian oligarch. Indeed, if there’s a through line, it’s embodied by the coulibiac salmon, a Russian dish that was adopted into the French canon by “one of those nineteenth-century guys,” the chef Daniel Boulud once told Bill Buford for an article in this magazine, referring to Auguste Escoffier and his peers. “They were all in Russia, hoping to get hired by a tsar.”
Coulibiac is confoundingly difficult to make because its component parts—filleted fish, whole eggs, rice, and mushroom duxelles wrapped in nesting-doll layers of spinach and pastry—require wildly different cooking times. Verōnika’s iteration hits all its marks; served in visually arresting slices, with a spoonful of champagne sauce and a cascade of trout roe, it’s at once ostentatious and comfortingly homey.
The same can be said of the foie-gras poché, for which a lobe is poached and presented in golden consommé, encircled by delicately cut radish, fennel, and carrot. I thought I knew how deeply chickeny a chicken soup could taste; adding goose liver, it turns out, opens up the bottom. But in less than two years foie gras will be illegal in New York. It’s hard to imagine that coulibiac will come back into style, or that a restaurant like Verōnika will survive the coming culture wars. It’s a place for a last hurrah, for one final Baked Alaska, also known as omelette norvégienne. Its dome of Italian meringue, concealing salsify ice cream atop a disk of spice cake, gets doused in rum and set on fire, a blaze of blue. Watch it flicker, and then fade out. (Entrées $27-$58.) ♦