newyorker--2020-03-16--“Endlings” Questions the Legitimacy of Storytelling

The theatre is full of interruption these days .
The lights go down , the play begins , and then , suddenly , stops .
Some other action takes over , which , more often than not , critiques what we ’ ve just watched and—rubes that we are—maybe even enjoyed .
The effect , sometimes profoundly , productively destabilizing , can also be glibly “ gotcha , ” as the audience finds itself mocked for its willingness to suspend disbelief .
But lately I ’ ve heard a note of anxiety sounding beneath all the restless form-shifting , one @ @ @ @ @ @ @ idea of “ storytelling ” —that poor , overworked word , corporately co-opted to within an inch of its life .
Is it all right to make things up ?
the playwrights seem to be asking .
Is it ethical ?
Is it interesting ?
And who am I to be doing it ?
“ Endlings , ” Celine Song ’ s latest play , is really two works spliced roughly together : a traditional play that seeks to depict people ’ s lives , and a metafictional examination of the playwright ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ honesty before traipsing down a solipsistic path of no return .
( The play , directed by Sammi Cannold , opened at New York Theatre Workshop on March 9th ; last week , the theatre , like others around New York , announced that it is suspending its programming for the next month , in response to COVID-19 . )
The action begins on the beach of Korea ’ s Man-Jae island .
Standing before a landscape as stark as a child ’ s drawing—blue sea , black rocks , pale sand—are three @ @ @ @ @ @ @ are haenyeo : female Korean divers who swim to the ocean floor , without the luxury of oxygen tanks , to gather seafood to sell .
They dive every day , no matter the weather , and their work lasts a lifetime .
Han Sol ( Wai Ching Ho ) , a sanguine , grandmotherly woman whose great pleasure is watching television , is in her nineties ; Go Min ( the wonderful Emily Kuroda ) , salty-mouthed and tough , is in her eighties ; Sook Ja ( Jo Yang ) , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ before a dive—is the seventysomething baby .
Like a doomed trio of Beckett characters , they are alone on the beach , waiting—for a fisherman , whom we never see , to come and take their harvest to the mainland , and also , ultimately , for death .
Song ’ s conceit is that the three women are the last of their kind ; their profession will die when they do .
“ When they were young they would ask me to teach them how to dive into the ocean with a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , of her children , who left the island long ago .
“ And I would smack them on the head.
” As the haenyeo go about their business ( the Basil Twist-like set , in which hidden windows open to reveal the women flippering around in a surrealist aquarium populated with puppets of clams and one very large turtle , is by Jason Sherwood ) , a bright female voice comes over the speaker system .
She sounds like an announcer on some Discovery Channel reality show , overlaying the action with @ @ @ @ @ @ @ biographical tidbits .
Is this a dig at the way Han Sol ’ s beloved television packages the mysterious world for facile consumption ?
The haenyeo , who can hear the announcer , seem to be participating , grudgingly or not , in her commodification of their lives , though to what end it ’ s hard to say .
Soon we meet the woman behind the voice : Ha Young ( Jiehae Park ) , a stand-in for the playwright , who is identified in the script as a “ Korean-Canadian Manhattanite @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , like someone on a coke spree or in the middle of a panic attack , she tells us the “ story of my immigration , ” beginning with her grandmother ’ s escape from northern Korea , in the forties , and continuing to her mother ’ s journey , with her , to the West , some fifty years later .
Ha Young seems personally aggrieved about the crimes that history has committed against her family , but she also uses irony to distance herself from strong feeling even as she @ @ @ @ @ @ @ t that so cool ?
” she says , after playing a clip of real haenyeo singing a haunting song about a magical island where their dead husbands wait for them .
“ Aren ’ t you excited to tell your friends ?
How you saw a weird play about weird old diving women from Korea ?
” What ’ s behind that accusatory sarcasm ?
After a brief return to the plot of the play—disaster befalls Sook Ja , plunging Han Sol and Go Min into mournful melancholy—we find out .
Stagehands @ @ @ @ @ @ @ leaving us in a drab Manhattan apartment with Ha Young and a man ( Miles G. Jackson ) , who wears a placard identifying him as her “ WHITE HUSBAND ( also a playwright ) .
” She ’ s just shown him the script for the play that we ’ ve been watching , and although he ’ s blandly encouraging , he doesn ’ t seem to like it much .
Ha Young wants him to be jealous , because isn ’ t your partner ’ s creative envy confirmation that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ?
( No , but this sophomoric marriage isn ’ t a subject the play is interested in exploring . )
“ Me being jealous of this play would mean being jealous of who you are , which I ’ m not , ” White Husband tells her .
He ’ s getting at something real , and in a rush Ha Young tells him what it is :

The theatre is full of interruption these days. The lights go down, the play begins, and then, suddenly, stops. Some other action takes over, which, more often than not, critiques what we’ve just watched and—rubes that we are—maybe even enjoyed. The effect, sometimes profoundly, productively destabilizing, can also be glibly “gotcha,” as the audience finds itself mocked for its willingness to suspend disbelief. But lately I’ve heard a note of anxiety sounding beneath all the restless form-shifting, one that suggests playwrights’ ambivalence about the idea of “storytelling”—that poor, overworked word, corporately co-opted to within an inch of its life. Is it all right to make things up? the playwrights seem to be asking. Is it ethical? Is it interesting? And who am I to be doing it?
“Endlings,” Celine Song’s latest play, is really two works spliced roughly together: a traditional play that seeks to depict people’s lives, and a metafictional examination of the playwright’s own motivations, which flirts with honesty before traipsing down a solipsistic path of no return. (The play, directed by Sammi Cannold, opened at New York Theatre Workshop on March 9th; last week, the theatre, like others around New York, announced that it is suspending its programming for the next month, in response to COVID-19.) The action begins on the beach of Korea’s Man-Jae island. Standing before a landscape as stark as a child’s drawing—blue sea, black rocks, pale sand—are three old women in orange wetsuits. They are haenyeo: female Korean divers who swim to the ocean floor, without the luxury of oxygen tanks, to gather seafood to sell. They dive every day, no matter the weather, and their work lasts a lifetime. Han Sol (Wai Ching Ho), a sanguine, grandmotherly woman whose great pleasure is watching television, is in her nineties; Go Min (the wonderful Emily Kuroda), salty-mouthed and tough, is in her eighties; Sook Ja (Jo Yang), the glamorous one—she likes to apply lipstick before a dive—is the seventysomething baby. Like a doomed trio of Beckett characters, they are alone on the beach, waiting—for a fisherman, whom we never see, to come and take their harvest to the mainland, and also, ultimately, for death. Song’s conceit is that the three women are the last of their kind; their profession will die when they do. “When they were young they would ask me to teach them how to dive into the ocean with a rusty knife,” Go Min says, of her children, who left the island long ago. “And I would smack them on the head.”
As the haenyeo go about their business (the Basil Twist-like set, in which hidden windows open to reveal the women flippering around in a surrealist aquarium populated with puppets of clams and one very large turtle, is by Jason Sherwood), a bright female voice comes over the speaker system. She sounds like an announcer on some Discovery Channel reality show, overlaying the action with a string of diving factoids and cheesy biographical tidbits. Is this a dig at the way Han Sol’s beloved television packages the mysterious world for facile consumption? The haenyeo, who can hear the announcer, seem to be participating, grudgingly or not, in her commodification of their lives, though to what end it’s hard to say.
Soon we meet the woman behind the voice: Ha Young (Jiehae Park), a stand-in for the playwright, who is identified in the script as a “Korean-Canadian Manhattanite in her late 20s.” Speaking breathlessly, like someone on a coke spree or in the middle of a panic attack, she tells us the “story of my immigration,” beginning with her grandmother’s escape from northern Korea, in the forties, and continuing to her mother’s journey, with her, to the West, some fifty years later. Ha Young seems personally aggrieved about the crimes that history has committed against her family, but she also uses irony to distance herself from strong feeling even as she confides in us. “Wasn’t that so cool?” she says, after playing a clip of real haenyeo singing a haunting song about a magical island where their dead husbands wait for them. “Aren’t you excited to tell your friends? How you saw a weird play about weird old diving women from Korea?”
What’s behind that accusatory sarcasm? After a brief return to the plot of the play—disaster befalls Sook Ja, plunging Han Sol and Go Min into mournful melancholy—we find out. Stagehands whisk away the lovely seaside set, leaving us in a drab Manhattan apartment with Ha Young and a man (Miles G. Jackson), who wears a placard identifying him as her “WHITE HUSBAND (also a playwright).” She’s just shown him the script for the play that we’ve been watching, and although he’s blandly encouraging, he doesn’t seem to like it much. Ha Young wants him to be jealous, because isn’t your partner’s creative envy confirmation that you’ve made something truly worthwhile? (No, but this sophomoric marriage isn’t a subject the play is interested in exploring.) “Me being jealous of this play would mean being jealous of who you are, which I’m not,” White Husband tells her. He’s getting at something real, and in a rush Ha Young tells him what it is:
I decided to write this play because I was trapped
I first told some white people about haenyeos and how amazing they are
And then they were like “oh my god that’s amazing you have to write a play about them”
And I was like “you think?”
And they were like “yes definitely you should definitely write it”
And I was like “maybe I will”
And some of them even supported me writing it by giving me free food and vacation
Some of them gave me money so that I could keep working on it
Some of them just leaned in
Looked at me lustfully
Looked at me hungrily
And said “tell me more about these women”
The appearance of White Husband, a stale joke in place of a character, had depressed me, but this monologue (it’s spoken fluidly, despite being versified on the page) made me sit up again. Was Song prepared to call bullshit on the well-meaning liberal captains of the theatre industry, who have, in recent years, tried to make up for the relative homogeneity of their programming by fetishistically encouraging young artists to exploit their “exotic” identities for the gratification of a sympathetic but persistently white audience? “I just wanted to tell the story of remarkable Asian lives,” Ha Young says, but White Husband knows better: this is marketing speak, not the way an artist truly thinks.
The moment feels exciting and a little dangerous, as when anyone tells a discomfiting truth. But “Endlings” soon cracks under a crisis of confidence. By telling us that she was “bribed by white people’s attention” to write about the haenyeo, Ha Young effectively labels the promising play we’ve been watching as the work of an identity-peddling sellout. But, instead of showing us what she’d rather write, she lampoons the kind of play she presumes we’d rather see. What follows is a fatally broad, passé pastiche of the theatre as a place for white men to cry about their problems: a group of white male actors (Matt DaSilva, Mark Mauriello, Keith Michael Pinault, and Andy Talen) mime a performance of a “white play” at a “white theatre,” saying things like “Oh my white god hear my white prayer.” These lines get easy laughs, but I doubt even Song believes them. Earlier, Ha Young said that when she was in graduate school she made a photo collage of her writer heroes: “I called it my ‘wall of boyfriends’ and every single person on it was a white man.” Park delivers the line pointedly, but it turns out that Ha Young’s heroes were Samuel Beckett, Edward Albee, and Shakespeare—white men, all, but hardly ones who used the theatre to generically flatter their own narrow egos. (And why not explore the absence of women and playwrights of color from her crush list?)
It’s strange to critique a white-male-centric point of view by pushing women off the stage; when the haenyeo finally return, for a coda of sorts, it does little to make up for the fact that their story has been sacrificed for a sermon. The uncomfortable impression is of a failure of imagination on Song’s part, a desire to blame the audience for not wanting to hear what she herself doesn’t yet know how to say. ♦


newyorker--2020-03-16--Fiona Apple’s Art of Radical Sensitivity

Apple has tried all kinds of cures .
She was sent to a family therapist at the age of eleven , when , mad at her sister , she glibly remarked , on a school trip , that she planned to kill herself and take Amber with her .
After she was raped , she spent hours at a Model Mugging class , practicing self-defense by punching a man in a padded suit .
In 2011 , she attended eight weeks of silent Buddhist retreats , meditating from 5 a.m.to 9 p.m. , with no eye contact—it was part of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ She had a wild breakthrough one day , in which the world lit up , showing her a pulsing space between the people at the retreat—a suggestion of something larger .
That vision is evoked in the new song “ I Want You to Love Me , ” in which Apple sings , with raspy fervor , of wanting to get “ back in the pulse.
” She tried a method for treating P.T.S.D .
called eye-movement desensitization and reprocessing therapy , and—around the time she poured her vodka down the drain , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ balancing.
” Articles about neurological anomalies fascinated her .
The first day we met , Apple spread printouts of brain scans on the floor of her studio , pointing to blue and pink shapes .
She was seeking patterns , just as she often did on Tumblr , reposting images , doing rabbit-hole searches that she knew were a form of magical thinking .
Apple doesn ’ t consider herself an alcoholic , but for years she drank vodka alone , every night , until she passed out .
When she ’ d @ @ @ @ @ @ @ d reach for a sip ; for her , the first step toward sobriety was simply being conscious of that impulse .
She had quit cocaine years earlier , after spending “ one excruciating night ” at Quentin Tarantino ’ s house , listening to him and Anderson brag .
“ Every addict should just get locked in a private movie theatre with Q.T .
and P.T.A .
on coke , and they ’ ll never want to do it again , ” she joked .
She loved getting loose on wine , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Her father has been sober for decades , but when Apple was a little kid he was a turbulent alcoholic .
He hit bottom when he had a violent confrontation with a Manhattan cabdriver ; Apple was only four , but she remembers his bloody face , the nurse at the hospital .
When I visited Apple ’ s mother at her Manhattan apartment , she showed me a photo album with pictures of Apple as a child .
One image was captioned “ Fiona had too much wine—not feeling good , ” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , at two , had wandered around an adult party , drinking the dregs .
For decades , Apple has taken prescription psychopharmaceuticals .
She told me that she ’ d been given a diagnosis of “ complex developmental post-traumatic stress disorder.
” ( It was such a satisfyingly multisyllabic phrase that she preferred to sing it , transforming it into a ditty . )
In December , she began having mood swings , with symptoms bad enough that she was told to get an MRI , to rule out a pituitary tumor @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , she had to wean herself off an antipsychotic that she had been prescribed for her night terrors ; the dosage , she said , had been way too high .
As she recovered , she felt troubled , sometimes , by a sense of flatness : if she couldn ’ t feel the emotion in the songs , she said , she wouldn ’ t be able to tell what worked .
Earlier that fall , she had given an interview to the Web site Vulture , in which she was brassy @ @ @ @ @ @ @ women saw in Apple a gutsy iconoclast who ’ d shrugged off the world ’ s demands .
She won praise , too , for having donated a year ’ s worth of profits from “ Criminal ” —which J .
Lo dances to in the recent movie “ Hustlers ” —to immigrant criminal-defense cases .
But the positive response also threw her , she realized .
“ Even the best circumstances of being in public may be too much , ” she told me .
By January , the situation was better @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , although she was still worried , at times , by her moods .
One layer of self-protection had been removed when she stopped using alcohol , she said ; another was lost with the reduction in medication .
And , although she was enthusiastic about some new mixes , she felt apprehensive .
She could listen to the tracks , but only through headphones .
So we talked about the subject that made her feel best : the dog rescues she was funding .
She paid her brother Bran to pick up @ @ @ @ @ @ @ drive them to L.A. , for placement in foster homes .
She and Hallman followed along through videos that Bran sent them .
The dogs had been through terrible experiences : one was raped by humans ; another was beaten with a shovel .
Apple felt that she should not flinch from these details .
Rebecca Corry , of Stand Up for Pits , had given her advice for coping : “ You have to celebrate small victories and remember their faces and move on to the next one.
” Then , one @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to her house to listen to the latest mixes .
The next afternoon , her face was glowing again .
She had wondered if the meeting would be awkward—if the band might disagree on what edits to make .
Instead , she and Amy Aileen Wood kept glancing at each other , ecstatic , as they had all the same responses .
At last , Apple could listen to the album on speakers .
Afterward , I texted Wood .
“ Dare I say it was magical ?
!
” Wood wrote .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ !
” Steinberg told me that the notes were simple : “ Get out of the way of the music ” and let Apple ’ s voice dominate .
Apple knew what she wanted , he said .
He described his job as helping her to recognize “ that she was her own Svengali.
” It reminded me of a story that Bran had told me , about working in construction .
One day , when he was twenty-eight , he strolled out onto a beam suspended thirty-five feet in the air—a task @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Suddenly , he was frozen , terrified of falling .
Yet all he had to do was touch something—any object at all—to break the spell .
“ Because you ’ re grounded , you can just touch a leaf on a tree and walk , ” he said .
Seeing her band again had grounded Apple .
She felt a renewed bravado .
She ’ d made plans to rerelease “ When the Pawn .
.
.
” on vinyl , but with the original artwork , by Paul Thomas Anderson , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ just a great album , ” she told me .
Looking back on her catalogue , she thought that her one weak song might be “ Please Please Please , ” on “ Extraordinary Machine , ” which she wrote only because the record company had demanded another track : “ Please , please , please , no more melodies.
” In the next few weeks , she sent updates : she was considering potential video directors ; she was brainstorming ideas for album art , like a sketch of Harvey Weinstein with @ @ @ @ @ @ @ gone out to see King Princess perform .
One night , after petting Janet ’ s skull and talking to her , Apple went into her old bedroom : she was able to sleep on the futon again , with Mercy .
She ’ d also got a new tattoo , of a black bolt cutter , running down her right forearm .
On the day that Jonathan Ames came over , Apple had pondered the exact nature of her work .
Maybe , she suggested , she was like any other artist @ @ @ @ @ @ @ wears her feet out or a sculptor who strains his back .
Maybe she , too , wore herself out .
Maybe that ’ s why she had to take time to heal in between projects .
In “ On I Go , ” the first song she ’ d written for “ Fetch the Bolt Cutters , ” she chanted about trying to lead a life guided by inner , rather than outer , impulses : “ On I go , not toward or away / Up until now it was day @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in a rush to prove / But now I only move to move.
” In the middle of the track , she screwed up the beat for a second and said , “ Ah , fuck , shit.
” It was a moment almost anyone making a final edit would smooth out .
She left it in .
♦

Hallman, an affable, silver-haired lesbian, grew up poor in Appalachia; after studying engineering at Stanford, she worked in the California energy industry. In the mid-aughts, she moved to L.A. to try filmmaking, getting some small credits. Each woman called their relationship balanced—they split expenses, they said—but Hallman’s role displaced, to some degree, the one Apple’s brother had played. In addition, Hallman sat in on our interviews and at recording sessions; she often took videos, posting them online. They slept on the daybeds in the living room. Apple had made it clear that anyone who questioned her friend’s presence would get cut out. Hallman described their dynamic as like a “Boston marriage—but in the way that outsiders had imagined Boston marriages to be.”
Hallman said that she hadn’t recognized Apple when they met. Initially, she’d mistaken the singer for someone younger, just another Venice Beach music hopeful in danger of being exploited: “I felt relieved when she said she had a boyfriend in the Hills, to take care of her.”
“Oh, my God, you were one of them! ” Apple said, laughing.
After my July visit, Apple began to text me. She sent a recording of a song that she’d heard in a dream, then a recording describing the dream. She texted about watching “8 Mile”—“doing the nothing that comes before my little concentrated spurt of work”—and about reading a brain study about rappers that made her wonder where her brain “lit up” when she sang. “I’m hoping that I develop that ability to let my medial prefrontal cortex blow out the lights around it!” she joked. Occasionally, she sent a screenshot of a text from someone else, seeking my interpretation (a tendency that convinced me she likely did the same with my texts).
In a video sent in August, she beamed, thrilled about new mixes that she’d been struggling to “elevate.” “I always think of myself as a half-ass person, but, if I half-assed it, it still sounds really good.” She added that she’d whispered into the bathroom mirror, “You did a good job.”
In another video—broken into three parts—she appeared in closeup, in a white tank top, free-associating. She described a colorized photograph from Auschwitz she’d seen on Tumblr, then moved on to the frustrations of O.C.D.—how it made her “freak out about the littlest things, like infants freak out.” She talked about Jeffrey Epstein and the comfort of dumb TV; she held up a “cool metal instrument,” stamped “1932,” that she’d ordered from Greece. Near the end of the video, she wondered why she was rambling, then added, “Oh—I also ate some pot. I forgot about that. Well, knowing me, I’ll probably send this to you!”
Apple’s lifelong instinct has been to default to honesty, even if it costs her. In an era of slick branding, she is one of the last Gen X artists: reflexively obsessed with authenticity and “selling out,” disturbed by the affectlessness of teen-girl “influencers” hawking sponcon and bogus uplift. (When she told an interviewer that she pitied Justin Bieber’s thirsty request for fans to stream his new single as they slept, Beliebers spent the next day rage-tweeting that Apple was a jealous “nobody,” while Apple’s fans mocked them as ignoramuses.)
Apple told me that she didn’t listen to any modern music. She chalked this up to a fear of outside influences, but she had a tetchiness about younger songwriters, too. She had always possessed aspects of Emily Dickinson, in the poet’s “I’m Nobody” mode: pridefulness in retreat. Apple sometimes fantasized about pulling a Garbo: she’d release one final album, then disappear. But she also had something that resembled a repetition compulsion—she wanted to take all the risks of her early years, but this time have them work out right.
When I returned to Venice Beach, in September, the mood was different. Anxiety suffused the house. In July, Apple had been worried about returning to public view, but she was also often playful and energized, tweaking mixes. Now the thought of what she’d recorded brought on paralyzing waves of dread.
To distract herself, she’d turned to other projects. She accepted a request from Sarah Treem, the co-creator of the Showtime series “The Affair,” to cover the Waterboys song “The Whole of the Moon” for the show’s finale. (Apple had also written the show’s potent theme song—the keening “Container.”) Apple agreed to write a jokey song for the Fox cartoon “Bob’s Burgers,” and some numbers for an animated musical sitcom, “Central Park.” She was proud to hit deadlines, to handle her own business. “I have a sense of humor,” she told me. “I’m not that fucking fragile all the time! I’m an adult. You can talk to me.” But, before I arrived one day, she texted that things weren’t going well, so that I’d be prepared.
“I don’t think that tooth is going anywhere.” Cartoon by Zachary Kanin Copy link to cartoon Copy link to cartoon Shop Shop
That afternoon, we found ourselves lounging on the daybeds with Hallman, watching “The Affair.” Apple had already seen these episodes, which were from the show’s penultimate season. In August, she’d sent me a video of herself after watching one, tears rolling down her face. That episode was about the death of Alison, one of the main characters. Played by Ruth Wilson, Alison is a waitress living in Montauk, an intense beauty who is grieving the drowning death of her son and suffers from depression and P.T.S.D. She falls into an affair with a novelist, and both of their marriages dissolve. The story is told from clashing perspectives, but in the episode that Apple had watched, only one account felt “true”: an ex-boyfriend of Alison’s breaks her skull, then drops her unconscious body in the ocean, making her death look like a suicide.
As we watched, Apple took notes, sitting cross-legged on the daybed. She saw herself in several characters, but she was most troubled by an identification with Alison, who worries that she’s a magnet for pain—a victim that men try to “save” and end up hurting. In one sequence, Alison, devastated after a breakup, gets drunk on a flight to California, as her seat partner flirts aggressively, feeding her cocktails. He assaults Alison as she drifts in and out of consciousness. She fights back, complaining to the flight attendant, but the man turns it all around, making her seem like the crazy one; she winds up handcuffed, as other passengers stare at her. Apple found the sequence horrifying—it reminded her of how she came across in her worst press.
Her head lowered and her arms crossed, she began to perseverate on her fears of touring. She ticked off potential outcomes: “I say the right thing, but I look the wrong way, so they say something about the way I look”; “I look the right way, but I say the wrong thing, so they say something mean about what I said.” She went on, “I have a temper. I have lots of rage inside. I have lots of sadness inside of me. And I really, really, really can’t stand assholes. If I’m in front of one, and I happen to be in a public place, and I lose my shit—and that’s a possibility—that’s not going to be any good to me, but I won’t be able to help it, because I’ll want to defend myself.”
Later, we tried to listen to the album. She played the newest version of “Rack of His,” but got frustrated by the tinny compression. She worried that she’d built “a record that can’t be made into a record.” When she’d get mad, or say “fuck,” Mercy would get agitated; wistfully, Apple told me that she sometimes wished she had a small dog that would let her be sad. Despite her fears, she kept recording—at the end of “For Her,” she’d multitracked her voice to form a gospel-like chorus singing, “You were so high”—and said that she wanted the final result to be uncompromising. “I want primary colors,” she said. “I don’t want any half measures.”
We listened to “Heavy Balloon,” a gorgeous, propulsive song about depression. She had added a new second verse, partly inspired by the scene of Alison drowning: “We get dragged down, down to the same spot enough times in a row / The bottom begins to feel like the only safe place that you know.” Apple, curling up on the floor, explained, “It’s almost like you get Stockholm syndrome with your own depression—like you’re kidnapped by your own depression.” Her voice got soft. “People with depression are always playing with this thing that’s very heavy,” she said. Her arms went up, as if she were bouncing a balloon, pretending to have fun, and said, “Like, ‘Ha, ha, it’s so heavy! ’ ” Then we had to stop, because she was having a panic attack.
Apple has tried all kinds of cures. She was sent to a family therapist at the age of eleven, when, mad at her sister, she glibly remarked, on a school trip, that she planned to kill herself and take Amber with her. After she was raped, she spent hours at a Model Mugging class, practicing self-defense by punching a man in a padded suit. In 2011, she attended eight weeks of silent Buddhist retreats, meditating from 5 a.m.to 9 p.m., with no eye contact—it was part of a plan to become less isolated. She had a wild breakthrough one day, in which the world lit up, showing her a pulsing space between the people at the retreat—a suggestion of something larger. That vision is evoked in the new song “I Want You to Love Me,” in which Apple sings, with raspy fervor, of wanting to get “back in the pulse.”
She tried a method for treating P.T.S.D. called eye-movement desensitization and reprocessing therapy, and—around the time she poured her vodka down the drain, in 2018—an untested technique called “brain balancing.” Articles about neurological anomalies fascinated her. The first day we met, Apple spread printouts of brain scans on the floor of her studio, pointing to blue and pink shapes. She was seeking patterns, just as she often did on Tumblr, reposting images, doing rabbit-hole searches that she knew were a form of magical thinking.
Apple doesn’t consider herself an alcoholic, but for years she drank vodka alone, every night, until she passed out. When she’d walk by the freezer, she’d reach for a sip; for her, the first step toward sobriety was simply being conscious of that impulse. She had quit cocaine years earlier, after spending “one excruciating night” at Quentin Tarantino’s house, listening to him and Anderson brag. “Every addict should just get locked in a private movie theatre with Q.T. and P.T.A. on coke, and they’ll never want to do it again,” she joked. She loved getting loose on wine, but not the regret that followed. Her father has been sober for decades, but when Apple was a little kid he was a turbulent alcoholic. He hit bottom when he had a violent confrontation with a Manhattan cabdriver; Apple was only four, but she remembers his bloody face, the nurse at the hospital. When I visited Apple’s mother at her Manhattan apartment, she showed me a photo album with pictures of Apple as a child. One image was captioned “Fiona had too much wine—not feeling good,” with a scribbled sad face. Apple, at two, had wandered around an adult party, drinking the dregs.


newyorker--2020-03-16--Snow Science Against the Avalanche

Snow Science Against the Avalanche

One night earlier this winter , the only road out of Alta , Utah , was closed down .
At ski lodges , signs warned guests to stay inside or face fines .
Already that season , twenty-two feet of snow had fallen , and , the day before , a storm had dropped thirty-three inches ; another foot was predicted by morning .
The most dangerous time for avalanches is after a rapid snowfall , and three-quarters of the buildings in Alta are threatened by a known avalanche path .
A standard measure for danger on roads , the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to the size and frequency of avalanches and the number of vehicles that are exposed to them .
An A.H.I .
of 10 is considered moderate ; at 40 , the road requires the attention of a full-time avalanche forecaster .
State Highway 210 , which runs down the mountain to Salt Lake City , if left unprotected , would have an A.H.I .
of 1,045 .
Just before 5 A.M. , a small group of ski patrollers gathered at a base by the resort ’ s main lift .
Dave Richards , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ program , sat in the control room .
Maps and marked-up aerial photographs hung on the wall next to what looked like a large EKG—that season ’ s snowfall , wind speeds , and temperature data plotted by hand .
Clipboards on hooks were filled with accounts of past avalanches .
Forty and bearded , with tattoos on his arms , Richards has the bearing of a Special Forces soldier .
He wore a vest with a radio strapped to it and held a tin of dipping tobacco , spitting occasionally into the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ objects when people say that he works in avalanche control ; he prefers the term “ mitigation.
” Sitting nearby was Jude , his English cream golden retriever , named for the patron saint of lost causes .
Jonathan Morgan , the lead avalanche forecaster for the day , described the snow .
He wore a flat-brimmed cap and a hoodie .
“ Propagation propensity ’ s a question mark , ” he said .
“ Not a lot of body in the slab .
.
.
.
Dry facets , two to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ It ’ s running the whole gamut of crystal types—wasn ’ t ice , by any means .
Rimy , small grains.
” At ski resorts like Alta , large avalanches are avoided by setting off smaller ones with bombs .
On the walls above the maps were dummy mortar rounds .
Above Richards ’ s desk were binders marked “ Old Explosives Inventory.
” The idea , Morgan explained , was to “ shoot the terrain we can ’ t get to.
” Richards started considering their targeting plan .
The @ @ @ @ @ @ @ down : first by artillery shells , then with hand charges .
Before any shots are fired , paths leading to the mountains are closed .
Because not all skiers keep to groomed trails—backcountry adventurers seek out remote areas—the Utah Department of Transportation also checks the roadside for tracks .
Sometimes it scours the mountainside with infrared cameras before giving the all-clear .
“ So we ’ ll go fourteen for Baldy ?
” Richards said .
“ Doesn ’ t include a shot seventeen.
” Baldy was one of the resort ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ planned to fire fourteen shells ; seventeen was a spot on its ridgeline .
“ Seventeen wouldn ’ t be the worst idea , ” Morgan concurred .
“ You got a seven in there ?
” Richards and Morgan repaired to the mess hall—dark carpet , pool table , a deer head on the wall—for breakfast .
At five-thirty , the ski lift opened .
As Richards walked out the door , Liz Rocco , another ski patroller , mentioned that she had prepared some of the hand charges they would be @ @ @ @ @ @ @ will light them , and throw them into the darkness , ” Richards said .
We rode the lift up in the moonlight .
Snow was falling on the fir trees .
Richards spent his childhood at Alta : his father was a ski patroller for thirty-three years , and his mother , who later became a university administrator , worked the front desk at the Rustler Lodge .
Richards started his career as a professional skier , then worked as a heli-skiing guide , before joining the patrol full time .
“ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is the snow , ” he said .
“ Working with a natural material that can be— ” He paused .
“ It ’ s light and fluffy and soft and downy , and it ’ s everybody ’ s favorite thing in the world .
It ’ s also one of the most destructive forces in nature .
Under the right conditions , that soft , wonderful little snowflake can tear forests out of the ground , throw cars through the air , flatten buildings .
And you get to watch that.
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ , we started hiking .
A voice crackled over the radio .
“ Copy , ” Richards said .
“ Just give me a holler when you pull the trigger.
” A moment later , the radio crackled again ; Richards ducked and covered his head , and an explosion went off somewhere nearby .
We resumed hiking .
After a few minutes , we arrived at a two-story shed .
A garage door opened onto a pair of hundred-and-five-millimetre howitzer cannons , of Second World War vintage , installed on semicircular tracks @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the mountaintops .
A crew was loading bags of gunpowder into the undersides of artillery shells—enormous bullets , six inches wide and two and a half feet long .
Richards wrapped a rag around a large stick and jammed it into a gun barrel , to clean it .
“ One Sunday morning , ” he began singing to himself .
“ As I went walking .
.
.
” The patrollers donned foam earplugs and large over-ear headphones ; Richards and his co-gunner walked around one of the weapons , checking locks @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , and the barrel swung toward its first target .
“ Zero , zero , two , seven , ” Richards yelled—the elevation and the deflection .
Two other patrollers confirmed the coördinates .
“ Ready to fire , ” Richards said .
“ Fire !
” He pulled hard on a chain .
The muzzle flashed , and a plume of acrid smoke filled the air .
There was a high-pitched ringing .
It wasn ’ t possible to see the mountain , but Richards listened for impact and , a few @ @ @ @ @ @ @ !
” Outside , while the barrage continued , a patroller named Kyle took a small cast-booster explosive out of his pack : it resembled two cans of beans wired together with licorice , the cartoon version of a bomb .
He pulled the fuse and tossed it underhand over the cliffside .
“ That didn ’ t go where I wanted , ” he said .
Ninety seconds later , it exploded into a black-and-white cloud of snow dust .
Afterward , the cleaning and stowing of the guns began .
When @ @ @ @ @ @ @ nine o ’ clock .
Richards prepared to ski back toward the base .
During the night , the resort had sent an alert to Alta skiers , telling them to expect between nine and fourteen inches of new snow—some of the best skiing of the season .
On the way down , the sun shone on fresh powder reaching up to Richards ’ s waist .
Small cracks shot out from his ski tips as he descended .
Piles of snow slid downslope .
He paused and , turning his ski pole @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a probe .
The pole slid easily into the first foot of snow .
Feeling resistance , he pushed harder—and broke through into a hollow .
After the snow settled and drifted , there could be avalanches .
The project of avalanche control in the Alps goes back at least to 1397 , in Andermatt , Switzerland , with a law that prohibited logging .
Swiss peasants had moved farther into the mountains .
Their new farmhouses sat in avalanche paths .
It was soon discovered that old-growth trees anchored the snow and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the eighteen-seventies , Johann Coaz , the head of the Swiss Forest Service , made records of historical avalanches .
He drew up maps of potential disaster zones and designed walls to protect vulnerable settlements ; the stones used to build them were hauled up the mountainsides by hundreds of men .

One night earlier this winter, the only road out of Alta, Utah, was closed down. At ski lodges, signs warned guests to stay inside or face fines. Already that season, twenty-two feet of snow had fallen, and, the day before, a storm had dropped thirty-three inches; another foot was predicted by morning. The most dangerous time for avalanches is after a rapid snowfall, and three-quarters of the buildings in Alta are threatened by a known avalanche path. A standard measure for danger on roads, the Avalanche Hazard Index, computes risk according to the size and frequency of avalanches and the number of vehicles that are exposed to them. An A.H.I. of 10 is considered moderate; at 40, the road requires the attention of a full-time avalanche forecaster. State Highway 210, which runs down the mountain to Salt Lake City, if left unprotected, would have an A.H.I. of 1,045.
Just before 5 A.M., a small group of ski patrollers gathered at a base by the resort’s main lift. Dave Richards, the head of Alta’s avalanche program, sat in the control room. Maps and marked-up aerial photographs hung on the wall next to what looked like a large EKG—that season’s snowfall, wind speeds, and temperature data plotted by hand. Clipboards on hooks were filled with accounts of past avalanches.
Forty and bearded, with tattoos on his arms, Richards has the bearing of a Special Forces soldier. He wore a vest with a radio strapped to it and held a tin of dipping tobacco, spitting occasionally into the garbage can beneath his desk. He objects when people say that he works in avalanche control; he prefers the term “mitigation.” Sitting nearby was Jude, his English cream golden retriever, named for the patron saint of lost causes.
Jonathan Morgan, the lead avalanche forecaster for the day, described the snow. He wore a flat-brimmed cap and a hoodie. “Propagation propensity’s a question mark,” he said. “Not a lot of body in the slab. . . . Dry facets, two to three mils,” he continued. “It’s running the whole gamut of crystal types—wasn’t ice, by any means. Rimy, small grains.”
At ski resorts like Alta, large avalanches are avoided by setting off smaller ones with bombs. On the walls above the maps were dummy mortar rounds. Above Richards’s desk were binders marked “Old Explosives Inventory.” The idea, Morgan explained, was to “shoot the terrain we can’t get to.”
Richards started considering their targeting plan. The ski resort is cleared from the top down: first by artillery shells, then with hand charges. Before any shots are fired, paths leading to the mountains are closed. Because not all skiers keep to groomed trails—backcountry adventurers seek out remote areas—the Utah Department of Transportation also checks the roadside for tracks. Sometimes it scours the mountainside with infrared cameras before giving the all-clear.
“So we’ll go fourteen for Baldy?” Richards said. “Doesn’t include a shot seventeen.” Baldy was one of the resort’s mountain faces, at which they planned to fire fourteen shells; seventeen was a spot on its ridgeline.
“Seventeen wouldn’t be the worst idea,” Morgan concurred. “You got a seven in there?”
“When was Baldy shot last?” Richards asked. “Forty inches ago?”
“Open up for the cleaning crew.” Cartoon by Frank Cotham Copy link to cartoon Copy link to cartoon Shop Shop
“Yeah, Friday morning.”
Richards and Morgan repaired to the mess hall—dark carpet, pool table, a deer head on the wall—for breakfast. At five-thirty, the ski lift opened. As Richards walked out the door, Liz Rocco, another ski patroller, mentioned that she had prepared some of the hand charges they would be using that morning. “And I will light them, and throw them into the darkness,” Richards said.
We rode the lift up in the moonlight. Snow was falling on the fir trees. Richards spent his childhood at Alta: his father was a ski patroller for thirty-three years, and his mother, who later became a university administrator, worked the front desk at the Rustler Lodge. Richards started his career as a professional skier, then worked as a heli-skiing guide, before joining the patrol full time. “The thing that makes it for me is the snow,” he said. “Working with a natural material that can be—” He paused. “It’s light and fluffy and soft and downy, and it’s everybody’s favorite thing in the world. It’s also one of the most destructive forces in nature. Under the right conditions, that soft, wonderful little snowflake can tear forests out of the ground, throw cars through the air, flatten buildings. And you get to watch that.”
At the top of the lift, we started hiking. A voice crackled over the radio. “Copy,” Richards said. “Just give me a holler when you pull the trigger.” A moment later, the radio crackled again; Richards ducked and covered his head, and an explosion went off somewhere nearby. We resumed hiking. After a few minutes, we arrived at a two-story shed. A garage door opened onto a pair of hundred-and-five-millimetre howitzer cannons, of Second World War vintage, installed on semicircular tracks. The gun barrels were pointed at the mountaintops. A crew was loading bags of gunpowder into the undersides of artillery shells—enormous bullets, six inches wide and two and a half feet long. Richards wrapped a rag around a large stick and jammed it into a gun barrel, to clean it. “One Sunday morning,” he began singing to himself. “As I went walking . . .”
The patrollers donned foam earplugs and large over-ear headphones; Richards and his co-gunner walked around one of the weapons, checking locks and bolts. They turned a crank, and the barrel swung toward its first target.
“Zero, zero, two, seven,” Richards yelled—the elevation and the deflection. Two other patrollers confirmed the coördinates. “Ready to fire,” Richards said. “Fire!”
He pulled hard on a chain. The muzzle flashed, and a plume of acrid smoke filled the air. There was a high-pitched ringing.
It wasn’t possible to see the mountain, but Richards listened for impact and, a few seconds later, yelled, “Report!” Outside, while the barrage continued, a patroller named Kyle took a small cast-booster explosive out of his pack: it resembled two cans of beans wired together with licorice, the cartoon version of a bomb. He pulled the fuse and tossed it underhand over the cliffside. “That didn’t go where I wanted,” he said. Ninety seconds later, it exploded into a black-and-white cloud of snow dust.
Afterward, the cleaning and stowing of the guns began. When everything was done, it was nearly nine o’clock. Richards prepared to ski back toward the base. During the night, the resort had sent an alert to Alta skiers, telling them to expect between nine and fourteen inches of new snow—some of the best skiing of the season. On the way down, the sun shone on fresh powder reaching up to Richards’s waist. Small cracks shot out from his ski tips as he descended. Piles of snow slid downslope. He paused and, turning his ski pole upside down, began using it as a probe. The pole slid easily into the first foot of snow. Feeling resistance, he pushed harder—and broke through into a hollow. After the snow settled and drifted, there could be avalanches.
The project of avalanche control in the Alps goes back at least to 1397, in Andermatt, Switzerland, with a law that prohibited logging. Swiss peasants had moved farther into the mountains. Their new farmhouses sat in avalanche paths. It was soon discovered that old-growth trees anchored the snow and kept slides from gathering mass. During the eighteen-seventies, Johann Coaz, the head of the Swiss Forest Service, made records of historical avalanches. He drew up maps of potential disaster zones and designed walls to protect vulnerable settlements; the stones used to build them were hauled up the mountainsides by hundreds of men.
Around the same time, prospectors in the western United States began finding silver ore high in the mountains. At Alta, which began as a major silver camp, miners logged the alpine forests for firewood and to reinforce their tunnels. According to legend, the avalanche danger grew so high that women weren’t allowed to live there in winter. Alta was abandoned in 1927, when the price of silver plummeted, but, in the nineteen-thirties, European-style ski resorts spread across the American West. The first mechanical lift appeared in Alta in 1939.
After the Second World War, some veterans of the U.S. 10th Mountain Division, who had trained for alpine combat, found themselves responsible for snow safety at the resorts. In 1945, Montgomery Atwater, a freelance writer who had fought with the 10th, heard about a snow-ranger job at Alta and applied on a whim. “That Alta was ideally conceived by nature to become the first avalanche research center on this continent and that I was there to take the plunge were mere coincidences,” he later wrote, in “The Avalanche Hunters,” from 1968.


newyorker--2020-03-16--Will This Year’s Census Be the Last?

Will This Year’s Census Be the Last?

“ Count all people , including babies , ” the U.S. Census Bureau instructs Americans on the questionnaire that will be mailed to every household by April 1 , 2020 , April Fool ’ s Day , which also happens to be National Census Day ( and has been since 1930 ) .
You can answer the door ; you can answer by mail ; for the first time , you can answer online .
People have been counting people for thousands of years .
Count everyone , beginning with babies who have teeth , decreed census-takers in China in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Zhou dynasty .
“ Take ye the sum of all the congregation of the children of Israel , after their families , by the house of their fathers , with the number of their names , every male by their polls , ” God commands Moses in the Book of Numbers , describing a census , taken around 1500 B.C.E.
, that counted only men “ twenty years old and upward , all that are able to go forth to war in Israel ” —that is , potential conscripts .
Ancient rulers took @ @ @ @ @ @ @ : to muster armies and levy taxes .
Who got counted depended on the purpose of the census .
In the United States , which counts “ the whole number of persons in each state , ” the chief purpose of the census is to apportion representation in Congress .
In 2018 , Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross sought to add a question to the 2020 U.S. census that would have read , “ Is this person a citizen of the United States ?
” Ross is a banker who specialized in bankruptcy @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , he had handled cases involving the insolvency of Donald Trump ’ s casinos .
The Census Bureau objected to the question Ross proposed .
Eighteen states , the District of Columbia , fifteen cities and counties , the United Conference of Mayors , and a coalition of non-governmental organizations filed a lawsuit , alleging that the question violated the Constitution .
Last year , United States District Court Judge Jesse Furman , in an opinion for the Southern District , found Ross ’ s attempt to add the citizenship question to be @ @ @ @ @ @ @ unconstitutional , but also , given the way Ross went about trying to get it added to the census , an abuse of power .
Furman wrote , “ To conclude otherwise and let Secretary Ross ’ s decision stand would undermine the proposition—central to the rule of law—that ours is a ‘ government of laws , and not of men.
’ ” There is , therefore , no citizenship question on the 2020 census .
All this , though , may be by the bye , because the census , like most @ @ @ @ @ @ @ under threat .
Google and Facebook , after all , know a lot more about you , and about the population of the United States , or any other state , than does the U.S. Census Bureau or any national census agency .
This year may be the last time that a census is taken door by door , form by form , or even click by click .
Until ten thousand years ago , only about ten million men , women , and children lived on the entire planet , and any @ @ @ @ @ @ @ few dozen .
( One theory holds that this is why some very old languages have no word for numbers . )
No one could count any sizable group of people until human populations began to cluster together and to fall under the authority of powerful governments .
Taking a census required administrative skills , coercive force , and fiscal resources , which is why the first reliable censuses were taken by Chinese emperors and Roman emperors , as the economist Andrew Whitby explains in “ The Sum of the People : How @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the Ancient World to the Modern Age.
” Censuses abound in the Bible , including one ordered by the Roman emperor Caesar Augustus and overseen by Quirinius , the Roman governor of Syria .
“ And it came to pass in those days , that there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus , that all the world should be taxed , ” according to the Gospel of Luke .
“ This census first took place while Quirinius was governing Syria.
” Everyone was supposed to register in the place of his or @ @ @ @ @ @ @ was why Joseph made the journey from Nazareth to Bethlehem , “ to be taxed with Mary his espoused wife , being great with child.
” ( Quirinius ’ census of Judea actually took place years later , but it ’ s a good story . )
The first modern census—one that counted everyone , not just men of fighting age or taxpayers , and noted all their names and ages—dates to 1703 , and was taken in Iceland , where astonishingly accurate census-takers counted 50,366 people .
( They missed only one @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a function of the modern state , and also of the scientific revolution .
Modern demography began with the study of births and deaths recorded in parish registers and bills of mortality .
The Englishman John Graunt , extrapolating from these records in the mid-seventeenth century , worked out the population of London , thereby founding the field that his contemporary William Petty called “ political arithmetic.
” Another way to do this is to take a census .
In 1753 , Parliament considered a bill for “ taking and registering an annual @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” in order to “ ascertain the collective strength of the nation.
” This measure was almost single-handedly defeated by the parliamentarian William Thornton of York , who asked , “ Can it be pretended , that by the knowledge of our number , or our wealth , either can be increased ?
” He argued that a census would reveal to England ’ s enemies the very information England sought to conceal : the size and distribution of its population .
Also , it violated liberty .
“ If any officer , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ me an account of the number and circumstance of my family , I would refuse it , ” he announced .
Two years later , in Pennsylvania , Benjamin Franklin published “ Observations Concerning the Increase of Mankind.
” Franklin had every reason to want to count the people in Britain ’ s North American colonies .
He calculated that they numbered about a million , roughly the population of Scotland , which had forty-five members in the House of Commons and sixteen peers in the House of Lords .
How many had @ @ @ @ @ @ @ this matter of representation mathematical , enumeration of the people , every ten years , is mandated by the U.S. Constitution .
There would be no more than one member of Congress for every thirty thousand people .
The Constitution also mandates that any direct tax levied on the states must be proportional to population .
The federal government hardly ever levies taxes directly , though .
Instead , it ’ s more likely to provide money and services to the states , and these , too , are almost always allocated in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of the census has huge implications .
Wilbur Ross ’ s proposed citizenship question , which was expected to reduce the response rate in congressional districts with large numbers of immigrants , would have reduced the size of the congressional delegations from those districts , and choked off services to them .
Under the terms of the Constitution , everyone in the United States was to be counted , except “ Indians not taxed ” ( a phrase that both excluded Native peoples from U.S. citizenship and served as a de-facto acknowledgment of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Every person would be counted , and there were three kinds : “ free persons ” ; persons “ bound to service for a term of years ” ; and “ all other persons , ” the last a sorry euphemism for enslaved people , who were to be counted as three-fifths of a free person .
It was a compromise between Northern delegates ( who didn ’ t want to count them at all , to thwart the South from gaining additional seats in Congress ) and Southern delegates ( who wanted @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of those seats ) —a compromise , that is , between zero and one .

“Count all people, including babies,” the U.S. Census Bureau instructs Americans on the questionnaire that will be mailed to every household by April 1, 2020, April Fool’s Day, which also happens to be National Census Day (and has been since 1930). You can answer the door; you can answer by mail; for the first time, you can answer online.
People have been counting people for thousands of years. Count everyone, beginning with babies who have teeth, decreed census-takers in China in the first millennium B.C.E., under the Zhou dynasty. “Take ye the sum of all the congregation of the children of Israel, after their families, by the house of their fathers, with the number of their names, every male by their polls,” God commands Moses in the Book of Numbers, describing a census, taken around 1500 B.C.E., that counted only men “twenty years old and upward, all that are able to go forth to war in Israel”—that is, potential conscripts.
Ancient rulers took censuses to measure and gather their strength: to muster armies and levy taxes. Who got counted depended on the purpose of the census. In the United States, which counts “the whole number of persons in each state,” the chief purpose of the census is to apportion representation in Congress. In 2018, Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross sought to add a question to the 2020 U.S. census that would have read, “Is this person a citizen of the United States?” Ross is a banker who specialized in bankruptcy before joining the Trump Administration; earlier, he had handled cases involving the insolvency of Donald Trump’s casinos. The Census Bureau objected to the question Ross proposed. Eighteen states, the District of Columbia, fifteen cities and counties, the United Conference of Mayors, and a coalition of non-governmental organizations filed a lawsuit, alleging that the question violated the Constitution.
Last year, United States District Court Judge Jesse Furman, in an opinion for the Southern District, found Ross’s attempt to add the citizenship question to be not only unlawful, and quite possibly unconstitutional, but also, given the way Ross went about trying to get it added to the census, an abuse of power. Furman wrote, “To conclude otherwise and let Secretary Ross’s decision stand would undermine the proposition—central to the rule of law—that ours is a ‘government of laws, and not of men.’ ” There is, therefore, no citizenship question on the 2020 census.
All this, though, may be by the bye, because the census, like most other institutions of democratic government, is under threat. Google and Facebook, after all, know a lot more about you, and about the population of the United States, or any other state, than does the U.S. Census Bureau or any national census agency. This year may be the last time that a census is taken door by door, form by form, or even click by click.
Until ten thousand years ago, only about ten million men, women, and children lived on the entire planet, and any given person had only ever met a few dozen. (One theory holds that this is why some very old languages have no word for numbers.) No one could count any sizable group of people until human populations began to cluster together and to fall under the authority of powerful governments. Taking a census required administrative skills, coercive force, and fiscal resources, which is why the first reliable censuses were taken by Chinese emperors and Roman emperors, as the economist Andrew Whitby explains in “The Sum of the People: How the Census Has Shaped Nations, from the Ancient World to the Modern Age.”
Censuses abound in the Bible, including one ordered by the Roman emperor Caesar Augustus and overseen by Quirinius, the Roman governor of Syria. “And it came to pass in those days, that there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus, that all the world should be taxed,” according to the Gospel of Luke. “This census first took place while Quirinius was governing Syria.” Everyone was supposed to register in the place of his or her birth. That, supposedly, was why Joseph made the journey from Nazareth to Bethlehem, “to be taxed with Mary his espoused wife, being great with child.” (Quirinius’ census of Judea actually took place years later, but it’s a good story.)
The first modern census—one that counted everyone, not just men of fighting age or taxpayers, and noted all their names and ages—dates to 1703, and was taken in Iceland, where astonishingly accurate census-takers counted 50,366 people. (They missed only one farm.) The modern census is a function of the modern state, and also of the scientific revolution. Modern demography began with the study of births and deaths recorded in parish registers and bills of mortality. The Englishman John Graunt, extrapolating from these records in the mid-seventeenth century, worked out the population of London, thereby founding the field that his contemporary William Petty called “political arithmetic.” Another way to do this is to take a census. In 1753, Parliament considered a bill for “taking and registering an annual Account of the total number of people” in order to “ascertain the collective strength of the nation.” This measure was almost single-handedly defeated by the parliamentarian William Thornton of York, who asked, “Can it be pretended, that by the knowledge of our number, or our wealth, either can be increased?” He argued that a census would reveal to England’s enemies the very information England sought to conceal: the size and distribution of its population. Also, it violated liberty. “If any officer, by whatever authority, should demand of me an account of the number and circumstance of my family, I would refuse it,” he announced.
Two years later, in Pennsylvania, Benjamin Franklin published “Observations Concerning the Increase of Mankind.” Franklin had every reason to want to count the people in Britain’s North American colonies. He calculated that they numbered about a million, roughly the population of Scotland, which had forty-five members in the House of Commons and sixteen peers in the House of Lords. How many had the Americans? None.
To make this matter of representation mathematical, enumeration of the people, every ten years, is mandated by the U.S. Constitution. There would be no more than one member of Congress for every thirty thousand people. The Constitution also mandates that any direct tax levied on the states must be proportional to population. The federal government hardly ever levies taxes directly, though. Instead, it’s more likely to provide money and services to the states, and these, too, are almost always allocated in proportion to population. So the accuracy of the census has huge implications. Wilbur Ross’s proposed citizenship question, which was expected to reduce the response rate in congressional districts with large numbers of immigrants, would have reduced the size of the congressional delegations from those districts, and choked off services to them.
Under the terms of the Constitution, everyone in the United States was to be counted, except “Indians not taxed” (a phrase that both excluded Native peoples from U.S. citizenship and served as a de-facto acknowledgment of the sovereignty of Native nations). Every person would be counted, and there were three kinds: “free persons”; persons “bound to service for a term of years”; and “all other persons,” the last a sorry euphemism for enslaved people, who were to be counted as three-fifths of a free person. It was a compromise between Northern delegates (who didn’t want to count them at all, to thwart the South from gaining additional seats in Congress) and Southern delegates (who wanted to count them, for the sake of those seats)—a compromise, that is, between zero and one.
It took six hundred and fifty census-takers eighteen months to enumerate the population in 1790. And then Americans went census-crazy. There were six questions on the first U.S. census. Then came questions that divided people into native-born and foreign-born. By 1840, when the questionnaires were printed, rather than written by hand, there were more than seventy questions. Other questions, like one about the ages of the enslaved population (lobbied for by abolitionists), were struck down. In the decades since, questions have been added and dropped. Most of them have involved sorting people into categories, especially by race. In the eighteen-forties, Southerners in Congress defeated proposals to record the names of people held in bondage and their place of birth. Had these proposals passed, the descendants of those Americans would be able to trace their ancestors far more easily, and the scholarship on the history of the African diaspora would be infinitely richer.
The 1850 census, the first conducted by a new entity known as the Census Board, was also the first to record individual-level rather than family data (except for enslaved people), the first to record an immigrant’s country of birth, and the first to ask about “color,” in column 6, a question that required particular instructions, as Paul Schor explains in “Counting Americans: How the U.S. Census Classified the Nation” (Oxford). “Under heading 6, entitled ‘Color,’ in all cases where the person is white, leave the space blank; in all cases where the person is black, insert the letter B; if mulatto, insert M. It is very desirable that these particulars be carefully regarded.”
The federal government had all kinds of reasons for carefully regarding these particulars. In 1860, the Census Board added a new “color,” for indigenous peoples who had become American citizens: the federal government wanted more information about a population that it sought to control. Although “Indians not taxed” were still not to be counted, “the families of Indians who have renounced tribal rule, and who under State or Territorial laws exercise the rights of citizens, are to be enumerated. In all such cases write ‘Ind.’ Opposite their names, in column 6, under heading ‘Color.’ ” Americans designated as “Ind.” could “exercise the rights of citizens” but were not, in 1860, deemed to be “white.”
The government’s interest in counting Indians grew during the era of westward expansion that followed the Civil War, leading to the establishment of an “Indian Division” of the census. The instructions grew elaborate as the government, pursuing remorseless military campaigns against Plains and Western Indians, sought to subject much of the Native population to U.S. rule by way of forced assimilation. The census became an extension of that policy, assimilation by classification: “Where persons reported as ‘Half-breeds’ are found residing with whites, adopting their habits of life and methods of industry, such persons are to be treated as belonging to the white population. Where, on the other hand, they are found in communities composed wholly or mainly of Indians, the opposite construction is taken.”


newyorker--2020-03-16--Why Americans Are Dying from Despair

Why Americans Are Dying from Despair

It all started with a bad back .
For more than a decade , the Princeton economist Anne Case had suffered from chronic lower-back pain , and nothing seemed to help .
She ’ d made her name studying the connections between health and economic patterns in people ’ s lives ; her research showed , for instance , a connection between your health in early childhood , or even in utero , and your economic status later in life .
So she decided to research the patterns of pain in the population .
And as she pulled on this @ @ @ @ @ @ @ alarming story than she ever expected .
The question she began with , in 2014 , was whether pain had grown more or less prevalent in the United States over the past few decades .
Given advances in labor-saving technologies and in pain treatments , she expected that the prevalence reported in population surveys would have fallen .
Instead , it had gone up .
Some hundred million Americans now suffer from chronic pain—that is , they ’ ve been in pain on most days for the past three months .
And the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ : Americans in their fifties , unlike their counterparts in other countries , have higher rates of chronic pain than those in their seventies and eighties .
Case ’ s husband , Angus Deaton , is also an economist at Princeton .
In 2013 , he published a sweeping economic history , “ The Great Escape , ” which traced the way people had become healthier and wealthier in the past couple of centuries , though at a cost to economic equality .
During his research , he ’ d noticed that people @ @ @ @ @ @ @ this story .
As wealth rose , so did health and quality of life ; happiness did not necessarily follow .
He was struck , then , when his wife told him that pain rates had not declined , either .
Was there a link ?
They combed through survey data together and found that communities with higher rates of chronic pain also had higher rates of suicide .
What ’ s more , rates of both had risen markedly for middle-aged , non-Hispanic white Americans—but not for black or Hispanic Americans .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ and concerning the further they looked .
As Case and Deaton recount in their new book , “ Deaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism ” ( Princeton ) , they dug deeper into national vital statistics and compared rates of suicide with those of other causes of mortality .
“ To our astonishment , it was not only suicide that was rising among middle-aged whites ; it was all deaths , ” they write .
This was nearly unfathomable .
Outside of wars or pandemics , death rates for large populations @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for decades .
Yet working-age white men and women without college degrees were dying from suicide , drug overdoses , and alcohol-related liver disease at such rates that , for three consecutive years , life expectancy for the U.S. population as a whole had fallen .
“ The only precedent is a century ago , from 1915 through 1918 , during the First World War and the influenza epidemic that followed it , ” Case and Deaton write .
Between 1999 and 2017 , more than six hundred thousand extra deaths—deaths in excess @ @ @ @ @ @ @ people aged forty-five to fifty-four .
Case and Deaton first wrote about the rise in deaths from suicide and self-poisoning—what they came to call “ deaths of despair ” —in a 2015 paper .
The editors at JAMA and The New England Journal of Medicine , the two most prominent medical journals , somehow missed the paper ’ s significance and rejected it without even a formal review ; it was eventually published in a more technical journal , the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences , in November of that year @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , Deaton was named the winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics , for his earlier work in development economics .
But he considered this new paper to be as important as anything he ’ d done in his life .
Sure enough , when the paper came out it was discussed on television , talk radio , and social media , drawing the sort of public response that seldom greets economic research .
It had put numbers on a long-simmering but inchoate sense among many people that something had gone profoundly wrong @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , exactly ?
Why was this happening here and not elsewhere ?
Case and Deaton ’ s original paper offered no explanation , but their new book does .
And their explanation begins by dismantling several others .
Was the source of the problem America ’ s all-too-ready supply of prescription opioids ?
For decades , drug companies notoriously played down their addictive properties , and we physicians , to our lasting shame , gave out the drugs like lollipops .
Looking back , I am aghast at the glib reassurance I gave @ @ @ @ @ @ @ surgery .
“ Don ’ t worry , ” I ’ d say .
“ Addiction is unusual after surgery.
” But it wasn ’ t , and I should have known .
Studies revealed that three to eight per cent of surgery patients who took narcotics for the first time after brief hospital stays were still taking the drugs as much as twelve months later .
Abuse became widespread in the early years of this century .
After regulations tightened the legal supply of opioids , users turned to other sources .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ daily or near-daily .
Many others use illicitly obtained synthetic opioids like fentanyl .
Yet white Americans with bachelor ’ s degrees have accounted for only about nine per cent of overdose deaths in the past quarter century .
Such deaths are even rarer among black Americans .
As Case and Deaton note , most people who abuse or become addicted to opioids continue to lead functional lives and many eventually escape their dependence .
The oversupply of opioids did not create the conditions for despair .
Instead , it appears , the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ already adrift .
And , although opioid deaths plateaued , at least temporarily , in 2018 , suicides and alcohol-related deaths continue upward .
Could deaths of despair be related to the rising incidence of obesity ?
Obesity is known to increase chronic illness and joint pain , and its regional and demographic patterns track with deaths of despair .
But Case and Deaton report that we ’ re seeing the same troubling health trends “ among the underweight , normal weight , overweight , and obese.
” Is the problem poverty ?
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ have seen no decline for nearly three decades , even as poverty rates fell during the nineteen-nineties , rose during the Great Recession , and fell again in the years afterward .
Overdose deaths are most common in high-poverty Appalachia and along the low-poverty Eastern Seaboard , in places such as Massachusetts , New Hampshire , Delaware , and Connecticut .
Meanwhile , some high-poverty states , such as Arkansas and Mississippi , have been less affected .
Black and Hispanic populations are poorer but less affected , too .
How about income @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that patterns of inequality , like patterns of poverty , simply don ’ t match the patterns of mortality by race or region .
California and New York , for instance , have among the highest inequality levels in the country and the lowest mortality rates .
A consistently strong economic correlate , by contrast , is the percentage of a local population that is employed .
The numbers have undergone a long decline nationally .
In the late nineteen-sixties , Case and Deaton note , all but five per cent of men @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to fifty-four , had jobs ; by 2010 , twenty per cent did not .
In 2018 , well into the recovery from the Great Recession , fourteen per cent were still not at work .
Of that fourteen per cent , only a fifth reported that they were looking for work and were therefore counted in official statistics as “ unemployed.
” The rest were not in the labor force .
What Case and Deaton have found is that the places with a smaller fraction of the working-age population in jobs are @ @ @ @ @ @ @ despair—and that this holds true even when you look at rates of suicide , drug overdoses , and alcohol-related liver disease separately .
They all go up where joblessness does .

A consistently strong economic correlate, by contrast, is the percentage of a local population that is employed. The numbers have undergone a long decline nationally. In the late nineteen-sixties, Case and Deaton note, all but five per cent of men of prime working age, from twenty-five to fifty-four, had jobs; by 2010, twenty per cent did not. In 2018, well into the recovery from the Great Recession, fourteen per cent were still not at work. Of that fourteen per cent, only a fifth reported that they were looking for work and were therefore counted in official statistics as “unemployed.” The rest were not in the labor force. What Case and Deaton have found is that the places with a smaller fraction of the working-age population in jobs are places with higher rates of deaths of despair—and that this holds true even when you look at rates of suicide, drug overdoses, and alcohol-related liver disease separately. They all go up where joblessness does.
Conservatives tend to offer cultural explanations. You see this in J. D. Vance’s “Hillbilly Elegy” and Charles Murray’s “Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010,” not to mention a raft of state initiatives that would impose work requirements on Medicaid recipients. People are taking the lazy way out of responsibilities, the argument goes, and so they choose alcohol, drugs, and welfare and disability checks over a commitment to hard work, family, and community. And now they are paying the price for their hedonism and decadence—with addiction, emptiness, and suicide.
Yet, if the main problem were that a large group of people were withdrawing from the workforce by choice, wages should have risen in parallel. Employers should have been pulling out the stops to lure people back to work. But they haven’t. Wages have stayed flat for years.
So what does explain the rise of deaths of despair among white Americans without college degrees? Case and Deaton argue that the problem arises from the cumulative effect of a long economic stagnation and the way we as a nation have dealt with it. For the first few decades after the Second World War, per-capita U.S. economic growth averaged between two and three per cent a year. In the nineties, however, it dipped below two per cent. In the early two-thousands, it was less than one per cent. This past decade, it remained below 1.5 per cent.
Different populations have experienced this slowdown very differently. The earnings advantage for those with college degrees soared. Anti-discrimination measures improved earnings and job prospects for black and Hispanic Americans. Though their earnings still lag behind those of the white working class, life for this generation of people of color is better than it was for the last.
Not so for whites without a college education. Among the men, median wages have not only flattened; they have declined since 1979. The work that the less educated can find isn’t as stable: hours are more uncertain, and job duration is shorter. Employment is more likely to take the form of gig work, temporary contracting, or day labor, and is less likely to come with benefits like health insurance.
Among advanced economies, this deterioration in pay and job stability is unique to the United States. In the past four decades, Americans without bachelor’s degrees—the majority of the working-age population—have seen themselves become ever less valued in our economy. Their effort and experience provide smaller rewards than before, and they encounter longer periods between employment. It should come as no surprise that fewer continue to seek employment, and that more succumb to despair.
The problem isn’t that people are not the way they used to be. It’s that the economy and the structure of work are not the way they used to be. This has had devastating effects on the family and on community life. In 1980, rates of marriage by middle age were about eighty per cent for white people with and without bachelor’s degrees alike. As the economic prospects of those two groups have diverged, however, so have their marriage prospects. Today, about seventy-five per cent of college graduates are married by age forty-five, but only sixty per cent of non-college graduates are. Nonmarital childbearing has reached forty per cent among less educated white women. Parents without bachelor’s degrees are also now dramatically less likely to have a stable partner for rearing and financially supporting their children.
Religious institutions previously played a vital role in connecting people to a community. But the number of Americans who attend religious services has declined markedly over the past half century, falling to just one-third of the general population today. (The rate is lower still among non-college graduates.) Union membership has declined even more precipitously. Case and Deaton see a picture of steady economic and social breakdown, amid over-all prosperity. Physicians like me attend to the individual circumstances of illness and mortality. We see the seeds of suicide in pain, depression, or addiction, perhaps germinated by a life event, such as a breakup, a financial crisis, or a new health problem. But climate—the amount of social and economic instability not only in your life but also in your family and community—matters, too. Émile Durkheim pointed out more than a century ago that despair and then suicide result when people’s material and social circumstances fall below their expectations. The connection appears to be just as powerful for other forms of self-harm, such as drug and alcohol abuse.
“You fermented everything?” Cartoon by Liza Donnelly Copy link to cartoon Copy link to cartoon Shop Shop
Yet why has the steep rise in deaths of despair been so uniquely American? Case and Deaton identify a few factors. The United States has provided unusually casual access to means of death. The availability of opioids has indeed played a role, and the same goes for firearms (involved in more than half of suicides); we all but load the weapons of self-destruction for people in misery. The U.S. has also embraced automation and globalization with greater alacrity and fewer restrictions than other countries have. Displaced workers here get relatively little in the way of protection and support. And we’ve enabled capital to take a larger share of the economic gains. “Economists long thought that the ratio of wages to profits was an immutable constant, about two to one,” Case and Deaton point out. But since 1970, they find, it has declined significantly.
A more unexpected culprit identified by Case and Deaton is our complicated and costly health-care system. There is, to be sure, a strong correlation between lack of health coverage and increased risk of suicide (not to mention over-all mortality), but the problem doesn’t end with the plight of the uninsured. The focus of Case and Deaton’s indictment is on the fact that America’s health-care system is peculiarly reliant on employer-provided insurance.
As they show, the premiums that employers pay amount to a perverse tax on hiring lower-skilled workers. According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, in 2019 the average family policy cost twenty-one thousand dollars, of which employers typically paid seventy per cent. “For a well-paid employee earning a salary of $150,000, the average family policy adds less than 10 percent to the cost of employing the worker,” Case and Deaton write. “For a low-wage worker on half the median wage, it is 60 percent.” Even as workers’ wages have stagnated or declined, then, the cost to their employers has risen sharply. One recent study shows that, between 1970 and 2016, the earnings that laborers received fell twenty-one per cent. But their total compensation, taken to include the cost of their benefits (in particular, health care), rose sixty-eight per cent. Increases in health-care costs have devoured take-home pay for those below the median income. At the same time, the system practically begs employers to reduce the number of less skilled workers they hire, by outsourcing or automating their positions. In Case and Deaton’s analysis, this makes American health care itself a prime cause of our rising death rates.
It also means that, in order to revive the American Dream for people without college degrees, we must change the way we pay for health care. Instead of preserving a system that discourages employers from hiring, retaining, and developing workers without bachelor’s degrees, we need to make health-care payments proportional to wages—as with tax-based systems like Medicare. Democrats are split over whether our health care should involve a single payer or multiple insurers. But that’s not the crucial issue. In other advanced economies, people pay for health care through wage-based taxes. In some countries, such as Germany and Switzerland, the money pays for non-government insurance; elsewhere, the money pays for Medicare-like government insurance. Both strategies work. Neither undermines the employment prospects of the working class.


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

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


newyorker--2020-03-16--The Ripple Effects of a Pandemic

The Ripple Effects of a Pandemic

For most of us , the speed and intensity of the coronavirus pandemic has come as a shock , but @ @ @ @ @ A New Yorker staff writer and the author of nonfiction books about Scientology and Al @ @ @ @ @ a novel—due to be published in April—called “ The End of October , ” about @ @ @ @ @ virus that eerily resembles the outbreak of the coronavirus .
Wright looked to illnesses of @ @ @ @ @ understand their enduring consequences , and he mapped those ripple effects onto our contemporary circumstances @ @ @ @ @ October ” is a work of fiction and firmly in the thriller genre , but @ @ @ @ @ turns out to be unusually close to what we are experiencing now .
“ I @ @ @ @ @ feel like I ’ m reading another chapter of my own book , ” he @ @ @ @

For most of us, the speed and intensity of the coronavirus pandemic has come as a shock, but not for Lawrence Wright. A New Yorker staff writer and the author of nonfiction books about Scientology and Al Qaeda, Wright recently wrote a novel—due to be published in April—called “The End of October,” about the spread of a novel virus that eerily resembles the outbreak of the coronavirus. Wright looked to illnesses of the past to try to understand their enduring consequences, and he mapped those ripple effects onto our contemporary circumstances. “The End of October” is a work of fiction and firmly in the thriller genre, but what Wright imagined in it turns out to be unusually close to what we are experiencing now. “I read the paper and I feel like I’m reading another chapter of my own book,” he tells David Remnick.