newyorker--2020-01-09--“Advocate” Documents the Battles of an Israeli Activist

The thought-provoking Israeli documentary “ Advocate , ” from the directors Rachel Leah Jones and Philippe Bellaïche , opens with its subject , the human-rights lawyer Lea Tsemel , making her way resolutely toward the elevators at the district court in Tel Aviv .
A short and solidly built woman in her seventies , with a mop of dark hair and kohl-rimmed eyes , Tsemel is on her way to the courthouse ’ s detention cells to meet with a client .
“ Is it going down ?
” she asks as she approaches the elevator ’ s nearly closed @ @ @ @ @ @ @ them and muscling her way in .
“ Lea , what will become of you ?
When will you mend your ways ?
” a man inside the elevator asks her .
“ Who , me ?
I ’ m a lost cause , ” she answers .
The exchange is joshing , but Tsemel , an Israeli Jew who has been practicing human-rights law since 1972 , is a controversial figure in her country—one whose determination to thrust a tenacious leg forward and crack open the doors of the uniform Zionist narrative @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ deep anger .
In her first trial , she defended members of the Arab-Jewish cell Red Front .
Their leader , Udi Adiv , a politically radicalized former I.D.F .
paratrooper , was charged with treason for delivering classified information to Syria .
( Adiv claimed that he was attempting to work toward the liberation of the Palestinian people . )
Over the past four-and-a-half decades , Tsemel has focussed her practice on defending Palestinians who , as she explains in a TV interview from the nineties that is included in the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ but that the average person in the world would call freedom fighters.
” Tsemel , as her daughter Talila says in the film , has no red lines .
She is an agitator by nature , who seems to feed off her inherently oppositional role in Israeli society .
She has served as a lawyer for all manner of Palestinian defendants , including violent offenders , such as stabbers and suicide bombers .
( The client that she is en route to meet with at the beginning of “ Advocate , ” for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ was accused of stabbing an Israeli bus driver and eleven of his passengers . )
She was also a member of the team that , in 1999 , appealed to the Israeli Supreme Court to achieve a banner ruling that made it illegal for the country ’ s secret service to use torture in interrogations .
As an Israeli occupier who enjoys the fruits of the occupation , Tsemel explains , she has no right to tell Palestinians how to struggle against their oppressive circumstances , even if their acts include premeditated bloodshed @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to resist the occupation as such , I ’ ll take it on , ” she says .
“ Advocate , ” which has recently been short-listed for the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature , and is showing this week in theatres in New York and Los Angeles , presents archival materials and interviews with Tsemel and her family members and associates .
It also follows a case in which the lawyer defends Ahmad , a thirteen-year-old boy from the Palestinian village Beit Hanina , in East Jerusalem .
He has been @ @ @ @ @ @ @ two Israeli civilians—one of them himself a thirteen-year-old boy—in the Jewish neighborhood of Pisgat Ze ’ ev .
The actual stabbing was carried out by Ahmad ’ s fifteen-year-old cousin , Hassan , who was shot to death by Israeli forces—DNA samples revealed that the knife Ahmad was carrying was never actually used—but the prosecution argues that Admad ’ s intent was to commit murder .
Tsemel is a first-generation Israeli , whose Zionist parents fled the Holocaust and settled in the city of Haifa .
She was a law student at the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ at the time of the Six-Day War , and , in the aftermath of the conflict , her sympathies turned to the radical left .
In the documentary , she describes realizing that Israel ’ s possession of its occupied territories was leading to a human-rights crisis , with refugees being compelled to flee their homes ( she says that they looked to her like figures of the wandering Jew ) and Palestinians ’ civil rights curtailed under Israeli rule .
She decided to join Matspen , a socialist , anti-Zionist far-left group @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , the fellow-activist Michel Warschawski .
From that moment on , she says , “ I never looked back.
” As both a portrait of an exceptional character and something of a legal procedural , “ Advocate ” is a fascinating watch .
It is also , unsurprisingly , a grim one .
As we follow Tsemel in her defense of Ahmad , from remand to sentencing , we see just how far her path departs from public sentiment .
In footage from the crime scene in Pisgat Ze ’ ev , an @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a car in his flight , is seen bleeding on the ground as a raging crowd cries for his blood .
“ Die , you motherfucker , ” one shouts .
“ Die , you son of a bitch.
” “ Murder him !
, ” another yells .
Even under duress , Ahmad continues to claim that he had no intention of harming anyone , and that the knife he carried was simply meant to scare Israelis .
( In a clip , we see an interrogator screaming at him to admit @ @ @ @ @ @ @ do , in the high-pitched cry of a boy . )
Tsemel rejects a plea deal that would send Ahmad to a juvenile facility , rather than to prison , but that would require him to admit his intent was to murder , and , instead , decides to go to trial , which , in her idealism , she hopes will be uncolored by political motives .
Of course , what some see as idealism , many see as tantamount to treason , and in Israel one need not be as politically @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of this .
I grew up in Israel in the eighties and nineties , in a leftist home , and recall with depressing clarity how quickly one could be accused of being an “ Arab lover ” or a “ traitor ” for expressing anti-occupation opinions .
On two occasions , for example , my parents ’ car window was shattered—once because it was adorned with a sticker advocating for pulling out of Lebanon during the Israeli-Lebanon war , another time because it bore one supporting the left-wing activist group Peace Now .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ political beliefs , but also , with a child ’ s desire to blend in , simultaneously mortified .
As a tween , I hoped that my classmates wouldn ’ t notice those stickers when I was dropped off at school or at birthday parties .
These minor events pale in comparison to those presented in “ Advocate.
” Nissan Warschawski , Tsemel ’ s son , speaks about the shame and fear he felt due to his parents ’ political activities .
He recalls walking down the street as a child with @ @ @ @ @ @ @ them with a gun .
When he asked her why she couldn ’ t choose a profession that wouldn ’ t put her family so far outside the status quo as to imperil it , she responded , “ I can ’ t do anything else .
I believe in it.
” There is a wildly admirable , if almost reckless , courage in her total conviction .
“ I ’ ve been called every name in the book : A traitor , a leftist , a devil ’ s advocate , ” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
“ I always took it as a compliment.
” The release of “ Advocate ” in Israel was itself controversial .
After winning the top award at the Docaviv film festival , in Tel Aviv , last May , the documentary received a purse from the Israeli lottery to mount an Oscars campaign .
Subsequently , the right-wing Minister of Culture , Miri Regev , called the film “ outrageous and deserving of condemnation , ” and the lottery announced that it would no longer give the grant to Docaviv winners .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ community , the grant was reinstated , but with the money going to the festival itself instead of the winning film .
Still , Regev continues to call for the cancellation of screenings .
In the film , the Palestinian academic , activist , and legislator Hanan Ashrawi states that Tsemel is “ the only one who recognized us in the Greek sense of anagnorisis : I recognize your humanity and what you ’ re going through.
” The documentary suggests that , as the occupation has continued , the endless cycle of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ has grown ever more intractable , with each side increasingly refusing to sympathize with the other ’ s plight—one responding with state violence , the other with the violence of the dispossessed .
The human-rights lawyer Avigdor Feldman , who served alongside Tsemel on the team that appealed the Supreme Court in 1999 , says that over time even the torture ban ’ s sway has eroded , and that the secret service ultimately doesn ’ t abide by it .
“ I don ’ t believe in justice , ” he adds @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is a priori unequal.
” Toward the end of “ Advocate , ” the court convicts Ahmad of attempted murder , and he is sentenced to twelve years in prison .
( It was later reduced to nine and a half years , after Tsemel appealed to the Supreme Court . )
One of Tsemel ’ s law interns tells her that she should have taken the plea deal , as if amazed at her continued belief in the justice system .
Tsemel , however , remains undeterred .
“ Our defeat as @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the far-reaching and long-lasting defeat for Israeli society and its judicial system , ” she says , addressing the press after the sentence is given .
“ Fifty years of occupation were stricken from the record and vanished from the judges ’ consciousness , unfortunately .
I hope it won ’ t vanish from the public ’ s consciousness.
” At this moment , her words sound more like a doomsday prophet ’ s than like those of a lawyer .

The thought-provoking Israeli documentary “Advocate,” from the directors Rachel Leah Jones and Philippe Bellaïche, opens with its subject, the human-rights lawyer Lea Tsemel, making her way resolutely toward the elevators at the district court in Tel Aviv. A short and solidly built woman in her seventies, with a mop of dark hair and kohl-rimmed eyes, Tsemel is on her way to the courthouse’s detention cells to meet with a client. “Is it going down?” she asks as she approaches the elevator’s nearly closed doors, before sticking her leg between them and muscling her way in. “Lea, what will become of you? When will you mend your ways?” a man inside the elevator asks her. “Who, me? I’m a lost cause,” she answers.
The exchange is joshing, but Tsemel, an Israeli Jew who has been practicing human-rights law since 1972, is a controversial figure in her country—one whose determination to thrust a tenacious leg forward and crack open the doors of the uniform Zionist narrative has often been met with her compatriots’ deep anger. In her first trial, she defended members of the Arab-Jewish cell Red Front. Their leader, Udi Adiv, a politically radicalized former I.D.F. paratrooper, was charged with treason for delivering classified information to Syria. (Adiv claimed that he was attempting to work toward the liberation of the Palestinian people.) Over the past four-and-a-half decades, Tsemel has focussed her practice on defending Palestinians who, as she explains in a TV interview from the nineties that is included in the documentary, “you call terrorists, but that the average person in the world would call freedom fighters.”
Tsemel, as her daughter Talila says in the film, has no red lines. She is an agitator by nature, who seems to feed off her inherently oppositional role in Israeli society. She has served as a lawyer for all manner of Palestinian defendants, including violent offenders, such as stabbers and suicide bombers. (The client that she is en route to meet with at the beginning of “Advocate,” for instance, is a young man who was accused of stabbing an Israeli bus driver and eleven of his passengers.) She was also a member of the team that, in 1999, appealed to the Israeli Supreme Court to achieve a banner ruling that made it illegal for the country’s secret service to use torture in interrogations. As an Israeli occupier who enjoys the fruits of the occupation, Tsemel explains, she has no right to tell Palestinians how to struggle against their oppressive circumstances, even if their acts include premeditated bloodshed. “If the act is intended to resist the occupation as such, I’ll take it on,” she says.
“Advocate,” which has recently been short-listed for the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature, and is showing this week in theatres in New York and Los Angeles, presents archival materials and interviews with Tsemel and her family members and associates. It also follows a case in which the lawyer defends Ahmad, a thirteen-year-old boy from the Palestinian village Beit Hanina, in East Jerusalem. He has been accused of attempting to stab to death two Israeli civilians—one of them himself a thirteen-year-old boy—in the Jewish neighborhood of Pisgat Ze’ev. The actual stabbing was carried out by Ahmad’s fifteen-year-old cousin, Hassan, who was shot to death by Israeli forces—DNA samples revealed that the knife Ahmad was carrying was never actually used—but the prosecution argues that Admad’s intent was to commit murder.
Tsemel is a first-generation Israeli, whose Zionist parents fled the Holocaust and settled in the city of Haifa. She was a law student at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 1967, at the time of the Six-Day War, and, in the aftermath of the conflict, her sympathies turned to the radical left. In the documentary, she describes realizing that Israel’s possession of its occupied territories was leading to a human-rights crisis, with refugees being compelled to flee their homes (she says that they looked to her like figures of the wandering Jew) and Palestinians’ civil rights curtailed under Israeli rule. She decided to join Matspen, a socialist, anti-Zionist far-left group, where she also met her husband, the fellow-activist Michel Warschawski. From that moment on, she says, “I never looked back.”
As both a portrait of an exceptional character and something of a legal procedural, “Advocate” is a fascinating watch. It is also, unsurprisingly, a grim one. As we follow Tsemel in her defense of Ahmad, from remand to sentencing, we see just how far her path departs from public sentiment. In footage from the crime scene in Pisgat Ze’ev, an injured Ahmad, who was hit by a car in his flight, is seen bleeding on the ground as a raging crowd cries for his blood. “Die, you motherfucker,” one shouts. “Die, you son of a bitch.” “Murder him!,” another yells. Even under duress, Ahmad continues to claim that he had no intention of harming anyone, and that the knife he carried was simply meant to scare Israelis. (In a clip, we see an interrogator screaming at him to admit his guilt, which he refuses to do, in the high-pitched cry of a boy.) Tsemel rejects a plea deal that would send Ahmad to a juvenile facility, rather than to prison, but that would require him to admit his intent was to murder, and, instead, decides to go to trial, which, in her idealism, she hopes will be uncolored by political motives.
Of course, what some see as idealism, many see as tantamount to treason, and in Israel one need not be as politically radical as Tsemel to have some experience of this. I grew up in Israel in the eighties and nineties, in a leftist home, and recall with depressing clarity how quickly one could be accused of being an “Arab lover” or a “traitor” for expressing anti-occupation opinions. On two occasions, for example, my parents’ car window was shattered—once because it was adorned with a sticker advocating for pulling out of Lebanon during the Israeli-Lebanon war, another time because it bore one supporting the left-wing activist group Peace Now. I was proud of my parents’ political beliefs, but also, with a child’s desire to blend in, simultaneously mortified. As a tween, I hoped that my classmates wouldn’t notice those stickers when I was dropped off at school or at birthday parties.
These minor events pale in comparison to those presented in “Advocate.” Nissan Warschawski, Tsemel’s son, speaks about the shame and fear he felt due to his parents’ political activities. He recalls walking down the street as a child with his mother and having a man threaten them with a gun. When he asked her why she couldn’t choose a profession that wouldn’t put her family so far outside the status quo as to imperil it, she responded, “I can’t do anything else. I believe in it.” There is a wildly admirable, if almost reckless, courage in her total conviction. “I’ve been called every name in the book: A traitor, a leftist, a devil’s advocate,” Tsemel says in the nineties TV clip. “I always took it as a compliment.”
The release of “Advocate” in Israel was itself controversial. After winning the top award at the Docaviv film festival, in Tel Aviv, last May, the documentary received a purse from the Israeli lottery to mount an Oscars campaign. Subsequently, the right-wing Minister of Culture, Miri Regev, called the film “outrageous and deserving of condemnation,” and the lottery announced that it would no longer give the grant to Docaviv winners. Thanks to pressure from the Israeli artistic community, the grant was reinstated, but with the money going to the festival itself instead of the winning film. Still, Regev continues to call for the cancellation of screenings.


newyorker--2020-01-09--The Restorative Pause of Silent Record Week

In 1959 , a group of undergraduates at the University of Detroit sneaked two records into a jukebox in the snack bar at the Student Activities Building : one was silent , and the other played a short beep every fifteen seconds .
A pretty solid gag—until people started purposefully cueing up the records .
They were played so often , in fact , that their surfaces wore down from overuse , and they had to be replaced by fresh pressings .
A Billboard reporter attributed the unexpected success of the silent records to “ an especially determined group of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ just seemed as if people were increasingly eager to secure a moment of peace .
The students started their own label , the Hush Record Label Company , to meet the demand .
“ Other customers are willing to pay for sound , but here was a group willing to put nickels in the chute in return for nothing at all , ” Billboard marvelled .
The following year , the same students declared the first week of January to be Silent Record Week and hosted a revue to celebrate .
Performances included @ @ @ @ @ @ @ from Great Drama , ” a d.j .
playing “ Great Things Left Unsaid by Philosophers , ” and a group of sixty-five vocalists “ non-singing ” a piece called “ The Anvil Chorus , ” accompanied by twenty anvils being gently tapped by rubber mallets .
The timing felt deliberate : there is perhaps no other week on the calendar in which Americans are more desperate for a flash of quietude , a pause in which to take stock and collectively reconsider our life styles .
January is the month most intimately @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
We reorient our lives around a list of optimistic resolutions—self-betterment via denial .
Silence itself is often linked with piousness and a kind of dignified reserve .
The monastic vow of silence is solemn and unforgiving ; we linger in a moment of silence to commemorate grim events ; we punish each other for transgressions by responding to earnest entreaties with stone-faced silence .
But silence is also a balm ; even the briefest retreat from the gnawing din of humanity can be spiritually and physiologically curative .
Researchers have referred to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ plague.
” A study from 2006 in the medical journal Heart found that silence was more effective at lowering heart rate and blood pressure than playing relaxing music .
( The scientists discovered that people actually chilled out more during the inadvertent break between songs . )
A study from 2013 in Brain Structure and Function discovered that two hours of silence each day led to the development of new cells in the hippocampus of mice , the region of the brain most firmly associated with memory , learning , and emotion .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ years since the students in Detroit took over that jukebox , the idea of paying for a moment of silence still feels relevant .
( Right now , within a few blocks of my Brooklyn apartment , there are opportunities to shell out a hundred and nine dollars to float in a sensory-deprivation tank for an hour or nine hundred and sixty dollars for a series of transcendental-meditation courses . )
Much of modern wellness is concerned with escaping one ’ s self , but , at the same time , the self—as @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Every day , we are told to both cultivate and erase ourselves .
My own relationship to silence is complicated .
Since the nineteen-eighties , when portable audio became readily available , it has been possible for anyone with a little disposable income to spend an entire day immersed in a bespoke audiosphere of one ’ s own design : to willfully curate exactly what you hear and exactly what you don ’ t .
That this has become not just socially acceptable but perhaps even socially preferable is astounding—where I live @ @ @ @ @ @ @ unusual to see people out for a run , or sitting on the subway , or standing in line at Duane Reade without headphones tucked into their ears .
( I wrote about the ubiquity of headphone use back in 2016 . )
I ’ ve had to learn how to mediate the impulse in myself .
Going for a walk while listening to music is fun for a lot of reasons , but , in part , because it casts the listener as the precise center of the universe , and everyone @ @ @ @ @ @ @ melodrama—your problems and your pleasures suddenly become beautiful and important , because they ’ re all that you can access .
My resolution for 2020 was to resist perpetual sound : to nurture silence when I can , and when I can ’ t , to be more mindful of the natural sound of the world around me .
Perhaps the most famous instance of institutionalized “ silence ” is John Cage ’ s “ 4 ’ 33 ” , ” a conceptual piece that he began working on in the late nineteen-forties @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is not silent , exactly , but is instead the sound of musicians in a room not playing their instruments—and the sound of a fidgeting audience , unsure of how to metabolize the musicians ’ inaction .
Since it was first performed , near Woodstock , New York , in 1952 , “ 4 ’ 33 ” ” has confounded and occasionally titillated listeners , inspiring many ( very good ) volumes of scholarly analysis and meditations on the definition of music .
No performance of the work is ever the same .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ that the piece received , which included heckles from the crowd .
“ There ’ s no such thing as silence , ” Cage said , following the première .
“ What they thought was silence , because they didn ’ t know how to listen , was full of accidental sounds .
You could hear the wind stirring outside during the first movement .
During the second , raindrops began pattering the roof , and during the third the people themselves made all kinds of interesting sounds as they talked or walked @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a difference between accidental silence and the deliberate playing of a silent record or a piece like “ 4 ’ 33 ” .
” These projects do the simple yet profound work of formally containing a few minutes—of demarcating time and calling attention to it .
I like their certainty , and the way they offer a kind of sanctioned time-out , a small but serious protest against abundance .
Suddenly , all sound is music , and all life is art—a corny idea , maybe , but also a powerful way of @ @ @ @

In 1959, a group of undergraduates at the University of Detroit sneaked two records into a jukebox in the snack bar at the Student Activities Building: one was silent, and the other played a short beep every fifteen seconds. A pretty solid gag—until people started purposefully cueing up the records. They were played so often, in fact, that their surfaces wore down from overuse, and they had to be replaced by fresh pressings. A Billboard reporter attributed the unexpected success of the silent records to “an especially determined group of somber radicals,” but it mostly just seemed as if people were increasingly eager to secure a moment of peace. The students started their own label, the Hush Record Label Company, to meet the demand. “Other customers are willing to pay for sound, but here was a group willing to put nickels in the chute in return for nothing at all,” Billboard marvelled.
The following year, the same students declared the first week of January to be Silent Record Week and hosted a revue to celebrate. Performances included a theatre critic presenting “Famous Pauses from Great Drama,” a d.j. playing “Great Things Left Unsaid by Philosophers,” and a group of sixty-five vocalists “non-singing” a piece called “The Anvil Chorus,” accompanied by twenty anvils being gently tapped by rubber mallets. The timing felt deliberate: there is perhaps no other week on the calendar in which Americans are more desperate for a flash of quietude, a pause in which to take stock and collectively reconsider our life styles. January is the month most intimately linked with abstention: no more overindulging. We reorient our lives around a list of optimistic resolutions—self-betterment via denial.
Silence itself is often linked with piousness and a kind of dignified reserve. The monastic vow of silence is solemn and unforgiving; we linger in a moment of silence to commemorate grim events; we punish each other for transgressions by responding to earnest entreaties with stone-faced silence. But silence is also a balm; even the briefest retreat from the gnawing din of humanity can be spiritually and physiologically curative. Researchers have referred to pervasive sound pollution as a “modern plague.” A study from 2006 in the medical journal Heart found that silence was more effective at lowering heart rate and blood pressure than playing relaxing music. (The scientists discovered that people actually chilled out more during the inadvertent break between songs.) A study from 2013 in Brain Structure and Function discovered that two hours of silence each day led to the development of new cells in the hippocampus of mice, the region of the brain most firmly associated with memory, learning, and emotion.
Though it has been more than sixty years since the students in Detroit took over that jukebox, the idea of paying for a moment of silence still feels relevant. (Right now, within a few blocks of my Brooklyn apartment, there are opportunities to shell out a hundred and nine dollars to float in a sensory-deprivation tank for an hour or nine hundred and sixty dollars for a series of transcendental-meditation courses.) Much of modern wellness is concerned with escaping one’s self, but, at the same time, the self—as brand, as business—has become increasingly monetized. Every day, we are told to both cultivate and erase ourselves.
My own relationship to silence is complicated. Since the nineteen-eighties, when portable audio became readily available, it has been possible for anyone with a little disposable income to spend an entire day immersed in a bespoke audiosphere of one’s own design: to willfully curate exactly what you hear and exactly what you don’t. That this has become not just socially acceptable but perhaps even socially preferable is astounding—where I live, at least, it’s unusual to see people out for a run, or sitting on the subway, or standing in line at Duane Reade without headphones tucked into their ears. (I wrote about the ubiquity of headphone use back in 2016.) I’ve had to learn how to mediate the impulse in myself. Going for a walk while listening to music is fun for a lot of reasons, but, in part, because it casts the listener as the precise center of the universe, and everyone else as a bit player in that melodrama—your problems and your pleasures suddenly become beautiful and important, because they’re all that you can access. My resolution for 2020 was to resist perpetual sound: to nurture silence when I can, and when I can’t, to be more mindful of the natural sound of the world around me.
Perhaps the most famous instance of institutionalized “silence” is John Cage’s “4’ 33”,” a conceptual piece that he began working on in the late nineteen-forties. “4’ 33” ” is not silent, exactly, but is instead the sound of musicians in a room not playing their instruments—and the sound of a fidgeting audience, unsure of how to metabolize the musicians’ inaction. Since it was first performed, near Woodstock, New York, in 1952, “4’33” ” has confounded and occasionally titillated listeners, inspiring many (very good) volumes of scholarly analysis and meditations on the definition of music. No performance of the work is ever the same. Cage was frustrated by the mixed response that the piece received, which included heckles from the crowd. “There’s no such thing as silence,” Cage said, following the première. “What they thought was silence, because they didn’t know how to listen, was full of accidental sounds. You could hear the wind stirring outside during the first movement. During the second, raindrops began pattering the roof, and during the third the people themselves made all kinds of interesting sounds as they talked or walked out.”
Ultimately, there’s a difference between accidental silence and the deliberate playing of a silent record or a piece like “4’33”.” These projects do the simple yet profound work of formally containing a few minutes—of demarcating time and calling attention to it. I like their certainty, and the way they offer a kind of sanctioned time-out, a small but serious protest against abundance. Suddenly, all sound is music, and all life is art—a corny idea, maybe, but also a powerful way of humanizing the world.


newyorker--2020-01-09--Daily Cartoon: Thursday, January 9th

Daily Cartoon: Thursday, January 9th

How to Write a New Yorker Cartoon Caption : “ Sesame Street ” Edition Elmo , Big Bird , Cookie @ @ @ @ @ , of Sesame Street , team up to tackle The New Yorker ’ s cartoon-caption @ @

“I can’t wait until the country is bitterly polarized around political issues again instead of around ‘Star Wars’ movies.”


newyorker--2020-01-10--The Cost of Fleeing Climate Change

The Cost of Fleeing Climate Change

In the summer of 2015 , Shelma Lamy and her infant daughter , Neslina , got on a plane in Majuro , the capital of the Marshall Islands , and flew to northwest Arkansas .
Life in the islands had been difficult .
While she was growing up , Lamy ’ s parents worked nonstop—her father was a carpenter but also drove a taxi ; her mother was a cook in a restaurant—so she spent much of her time helping with chores around the house , cooking and cleaning , and watching the smaller children , including a brother who @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , she stopped going to school , like many other kids her age ; as she got older , it was hard to find work .
The unemployment rate in the Marshall Islands is nearly forty per cent , and most of the available jobs for someone with little education are men ’ s jobs , such as construction , Lamy said— “ and they don ’ t always bring enough money to support the whole household.
” Often , one household , as was Lamy ’ s case , includes three or @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of the Marshall Islands , situated between Hawaii and the Philippines , includes twenty-nine widely dispersed coral atolls and five volcanic islands , spread across seven hundred and fifty thousand square miles of the Pacific Ocean .
At the end of the Second World War , the United States took control of the Marshall Islands from Japan and quickly turned the region into a nuclear-weapons test site .
Over the next decade or so , the U.S. military dropped sixty-seven atomic bombs in the islands , primarily around and on Bikini and Enewetak @ @ @ @ @ @ @ plutonium and other particles of radioactive fallout .
There have since been high rates of thyroid cancer and birth defects , including congenital cataracts .
Lamy was born with a cataract in one eye , which severely restricts her vision , though it is impossible to know with certainty whether radiation exposure was the cause .
Her daughter was born with the same condition .
The islands , which , on average , are six and a half feet above sea level , now face another existential threat : rising seas , shifting @ @ @ @ @ @ @ with climate change .
High-tide flooding is a frequent occurrence , even in the most developed areas of Majuro , where boulders and land fill have been deployed to protect infrastructure .
In 2015 , an unseasonal typhoon left Majuro Atoll “ like a war zone , ” as one Marshallese official put it .
In 2016 , the Marshall Islands suffered a drought so severe that water was rationed to residents for a limit of four hours per week .
Coral reefs and the fish they sustain are dying , and extended @ @ @ @ @ @ @ creates fish-killing algae blooms , as well .
In the first week of December , fifteen-foot waves flooded Majuro , washing away several homes and businesses , while the country ’ s two hospitals were at capacity due to the largest recorded outbreak of dengue fever .
That same week , Hilda Heine , who was the President of the Marshall Islands until January , spoke by video feed to world leaders gathered for the United Nations climate talks in Madrid .
The Marshall Islands are “ facing death row , ” she @ @ @ @ @ @ @ commit to rapid , and much more ambitious , emissions cuts , she pleaded , was the equivalent of “ passing sentence on our future , forcing our country to die.
” While migration from the islands to the United States has been increasing , thanks largely to remittances from family members who are already here , much of the population that wants to migrate can not afford a plane ticket .
When Lamy got pregnant with Neslina , at the age of nineteen , she was overjoyed , but quickly realized that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ own , with no support from the father .
When she got pregnant a second time , a year later , she was scared .
She started speaking with her relatives to see if there was someone else who might help .
Adoption between relatives and in-laws is common throughout the Marshall Islands , and children often live freely between households—raised , in fact , by a village .
According to one study , as many as twenty-five per cent of all Marshallese children are adopted .
But most birth parents are still @ @ @ @ @ @ @ maintain relationships with them into adulthood .
Lamy , at first , had such an arrangement in mind , and yet none of her relatives were in a position to raise another child .
Then one of her uncles told her that there might be another option .
An acquaintance knew an American attorney named Paul Petersen , who had been a Mormon missionary in the Marshall Islands years ago and who now ran an adoption agency in the United States .
If she was interested , Petersen would fly her and her @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s relatives had settled a few years prior—and give her money throughout the course of her pregnancy to pay for rent , food , clothes , medical bills , and other expenses .
An American couple would then adopt her baby after she gave birth .
Lamy wondered whether she would have a say in who the adoptive parents would be .
Her uncle did not know—that would have to be sorted out once she arrived in Arkansas .
In any case , adoption in exchange for a ticket to the United States @ @ @ @ @ @ @ too good to be true .
A month later , an aunt met her at the airport and gave her a ride to her apartment in the town of Springdale , an old agricultural outpost with around eighty thousand residents and home to the corporate headquarters of Tyson Foods .
Lamy was twenty years old and seven months pregnant .
“ I couldn ’ t believe I was really living in America , ” she told me .
“ I felt like I had won the lottery.
” In Majuro , everyone has @ @ @ @ @ @ @ knows someone who lives there .
When the Marshall Islands gained full independence from U.S. administration , in 1986 , the country entered into an agreement called the Compact of Free Association with the U.S. , which allows Marshallese citizens to live and work in the United States freely , without a visa .
The U.S. maintains a missile-test site on Kwajalein Atoll , and military interests—as opposed to concern about the atomic damage that had already been done in the islands—were at the center of American negotiations .
The portal to Arkansas @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Moody moved to the United States and eventually settled in Springdale for a job at one of Tyson ’ s chicken plants .
As word spread that jobs were plentiful—George ’ s , Inc. , Cargill , and Butterball also have poultry-processing plants in the area—relatives followed .
In 2008 , a Marshallese consulate opened just off of Springdale ’ s main street .
The corporate office of Tyson Foods , in downtown Springdale .
Many local Marshallese work in nearby poultry-processing plants .
As climate change has intensified over the past decade @ @ @ @ @ @ @ larger each year , ” Melisa Laelan , the founder and head of the Arkansas Coalition of Marshallese , told me .
Laelan is a Marshallese princess and grew up in Majuro .
When she was seventeen , she joined the U.S. military and served for ten years , including stints in Bosnia and Afghanistan .
She eventually settled in northwest Arkansas in the two-thousands and got a job as a court translator .
In 2011 , she founded the organization to support Marshallese citizens , a third of whom now live in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the islands is slightly more than fifty thousand .
Although thousands of Marshallese migrants live in Hawaii , Washington , Oregon , California , and other states , the concentration in the U.S. is greatest in northwest Arkansas , where population estimates hover between twelve and fifteen thousand .
In light of the threat that climate change poses to the Marshall Islands , Laelan sees it as her mission to continue building a social infrastructure so that islanders in Arkansas can thrive .
“ We got ta prepare our community for the future @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is the Springdale Atoll .
We are surrounded by Marshallese.
” I met Lamy ’ s daughter , Neslina , who is now five , before I met Lamy .
She was running after an Aussiedoodle in the office of an adoption agency called Shared Beginnings .
When she saw me , although we hadn ’ t been introduced , she smiled and hugged my legs ; it is , I later learned , her standard greeting .
The temperature was in the forties outside , but Neslina , like many Marshallese migrants @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the islands , in a floral , short-sleeved dress and rainbow-colored flip-flops .
Lamy , too , wore a floral dress , bright green , with a red-and-black-plaid flannel pullover on top—Pacific islands meets the Ozarks .
She greeted me with a shy but giant smile .
We sat down with her cousin , Bielly Pation , in Shared Beginning ’ s family-meeting room , which was furnished with purple pillows and curtains , a giant stuffed llama , and signs that read “ Love ” and “ Blessed.
” As Neslina sat @ @ @ @ @ @ @ box of toys , Lamy , with Pation providing interpretation , told me the rest of her story .
A Marshallese woman in Arkansas named Maki Takehisa , who worked for Paul Petersen ’ s adoption agency , gave her a thousand dollars in cash at the beginning of each month , then another five hundred halfway through , providing enough money for her and her daughter to live comfortably during her pregnancy .
As her due date approached , she met with another woman from the agency to sign adoption paperwork , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ it turned out , she would not have any say in who the adoptive parents would be , which seemed strange .
But when she spoke , by phone , to the couple the agency had selected ( again , with Takehisa interpreting ) , they seemed nice , and she felt a bit better .
She did not meet or speak with Petersen , who lived in Arizona .
( He had been elected as the assessor of Maricopa County in 2014 . )
A month and a half after her arrival @ @ @ @ @ @ @ parents flew in from Utah and went straight to the hospital to pick up the baby , a boy .
They met Lamy briefly , and then Lamy said goodbye to her son .
As far as she understood , she said , looking out the window , she would be reunited with him when he turned eighteen .
After the birth , Lamy said , she was sad , but she eventually felt that she had made the right decision , especially for Neslina .
Lamy got a job working at the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ line in the packaging department .
Then she met a new man and thought , at the time , that she had fallen in love .
She stopped working at the Tyson plant and soon was pregnant again .
She knew little about birth control , which is not commonly used in the Marshall Islands .
When it became apparent that the relationship would not last , she decided to place the baby for adoption , and got back in touch with Takehisa .
Things proceeded as they had with the previous pregnancy @ @ @ @ @ @ @ month , and Petersen ’ s agency chose a couple for her .
They came to meet her in her third trimester .
After she gave birth , she signed the papers and said goodbye .
She started working at another chicken plant and left Neslina in the care of relatives .
Then , at the start of 2019 , she got pregnant a fourth time .
She knew where to turn .
Lamy was far from alone .
While adoption is common among the Marshallese community in Arkansas—in a loose , unofficial @ @ @ @ @ @ @ it is in the islands—it had also become common , in the region , for Marshallese women to put their babies up for adoption with white American families .
Petersen ’ s agency was one of the most popular , and had flown many birth mothers , like Lamy , to the United States while they were pregnant .
Another Marshallese woman , who , with her daughter , had only been in the United States for a month and was a week away from giving birth , told me , “ The @ @ @ @ @ @ @ get here.
” While pregnant in Majuro , she had spoken with her brother in the United States , who occasionally worked for Petersen as a translator and who had , with his fiancée , placed several of his own children up for adoption through the agency .
What no one had told her , or Lamy , was that , under the Compact of Free Association with the U.S. , it is illegal for a woman to travel to the United States for the purpose of putting a child up for adoption @ @ @ @ @ @ @ as one former employee for the Arkansas Department of Human Services told me , “ were selling their babies for cash.
” That was not the case , but , as Kathryn Joyce wrote in The New Republic , in 2015 , over the past decade , adoptions of Marshallese babies were occurring in the Springdale area at an alarming rate , with many of the mothers feeling pressured into a situation that they could not escape .
Joyce profiled one Marshallese woman , Maryann Koshiba , who had placed her baby up @ @ @ @ @ @ @ able to keep in touch with the adoptive parents and see her child in the future .
But , in Arkansas , the law dictates that all adoptions are closed—the birth parents ’ identities are sealed and unavailable to the adopted child , and the adoptive parents ’ identities are sealed and unavailable to the birth parents .
( Arrangements can be made to circumvent that law and keep identities transparent . )
Koshiba , however , did not know anything about closed adoption and became increasingly frantic when she was unable to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ anything about her baby .
“ Welcome to the world of legal realities , ” Petersen told The New Republic .
If law-enforcement officials “ really want to stop it , then they should bar all Marshallese people—women—from coming to the U.S. unless they have a medical examiner show they ’ re not pregnant.
” On Sundays , Shared Beginnings rents out its office ’ s meeting room for a church service run by the Reverend Lucy Capelle , who moved to Springdale in 2014 .
The Marshallese community is overwhelmingly Christian , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ homespun churches in the area .
On the morning I visited , Capelle sang and played an electronic keyboard .
Her husband , who wore a tie made of seashells , read from the Gospel of Mark , then delivered a booming homily .
“ What good is it for man to gain the whole world if his faith is sold ?
” he cried .
The congregation prayed for the health of their island home , and for the health of the community here .
After the service ended , there was @ @ @ @ @ @ @ pot of rice , chicken soup , and stir-fried vegetable noodles .
“ I moved here because of sea-level rise , ” Capelle told me .
“ I lived close to the sea and had water constantly coming into my apartment.
” One of Capelle ’ s congregants , Netha Gideon , who is sixty-five , moved to Springdale a year ago , after retiring from her job in Majuro as an accountant for the Marshall Islands ’ Ministry of Public Works .
Among other things , she was involved in efforts to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ sea walls .
( She also starred in six locally made films , including one called “ Jilel : The Calling of the Shell , ” about climate change , sea-level rise , and the fossil-fuel industry . )
“ We are scared of the rising sea , ” she said .
“ That ’ s why most of my family is now here , ” in the U.S. She has four children “ and twenty-seven grandchildren , ” she said , with a big belly laugh .
She has made sure that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Netha Gideon , who worked for the Marshallese government , moved to Springdale a year ago .
“ We are scared of the rising sea , ” she said .
Even if world leaders rapidly reduce greenhouse-gas emissions , climate migration and displacement will define the twenty-first century .
“ We know that a lot of contemporary migration , in fact , is shaped by the adverse impacts of climate change , ” Dina Ionesco , the head of the migration , environment , and climate-change division at the International Organization for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ at the recent U.N. climate negotiations in Madrid .
Disasters caused by natural hazards—the vast majority were storms and floods—displaced 17.2 million people in 2018 ( almost twice as many as those displaced by conflict ) and another seven million in the first half of 2019 .
Looking ahead , even in a best-case scenario , in which the average global temperature increases no more than 1.7 degrees Celsius , floods are still likely to displace twenty million people per year by 2090 , according to a study released in December by the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ greenhouse-gas mitigation , floods could displace as many as fifty million people per year .
“ Climate displacement poses a huge global challenge , ” Justin Ginnetti , the report ’ s lead author , said .
“ We expect even more extreme weather in the future , so it ’ s imperative that we understand the magnitude of future risk , what ’ s driving it , and what we can do about it.
” A paper published in June , in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences , found that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ rise could exceed six and a half feet by 2100 .
For the Marshall Islands , six and a half feet of sea-level rise would submerge its land entirely , jeopardizing the very idea of Marshallese statehood .
Over the past year , the Marshallese government has been working on a national adaptation plan , which officials expect the United States , as part of the compact , will help fund and implement .
“ We call it our survival plan , ” President Heine told me by phone , from Majuro .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ is the issue of whether or not we ’ re above the water.
” Physical adaptations include the costly project of raising sections of Majuro , improved rainwater catchments on the outer islands , regrowing coral reefs , and new agricultural approaches to locally grown food such as coconut , bananas , breadfruit , and taro .
“ We want people to stay here , ” Heine said .
“ And there are those of us who would not leave no matter what .
They are too invested in their land , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ She went on , “ It is really painful for us to contemplate what might happen .
We want to believe that there is a common humanity out there , and that rich countries will do what they need to do to insure the future of all countries , including the Marshall Islands.
” ( In January , Heine lost her bid for reëlection . )
But , in the era of a shrinking planet , there is also a new imperative to make certain that people “ migrate with dignity , ” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and their children are not exploited in schemes like Petersen ’ s , that they can live healthily , equitably , and safely in new communities .
( International initiatives have been launched in the past several years to create a universal legal criteria that defines forced migration across international borders due to climate change . )
Melisa Laelan , the founder of the Arkansas Coalition of Marshallese , wants to see greater legal regulation in Marshallese adoptions , even a bill similar to the Indian Child Welfare Act , from 1978 , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ children should be placed with a family member , a member of their tribe , or , if those two options are impossible , a family from another tribe .
The act was a reaction to decades of forced “ assimilation , ” in which white families took Native American children from their families .
“ You ’ re seeing what happened to Native Americans happen to the Marshallese , ” Laelan said .
In early October , after a multiyear federal investigation , a grand jury indicted Petersen in three states—Arizona , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in an illegal adoption scheme .
The charges , tied to some seventy-five adoptions over three years , include human trafficking , the sale of a child , fraud , forgery , and conspiracy to commit money laundering .
In Mesa , Arizona , eight pregnant Marshallese women were found living in an apartment that he owned .
Petersen was also charged with illegally accessing more than eight hundred thousand dollars worth of state Medicaid benefits .
In Arkansas , Maki Takehisa was charged with several counts of fraud .
Shared Beginnings , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , took over a number of the Arkansas cases that Petersen ’ s agency had been handling , helping the mothers decide whether they wanted to proceed with adoptions .
The day I was there , birth mothers were meeting with their case workers and picking up supplies that the agency provided at no cost—packages of diapers , prenatal gummy vitamins , bottles of laundry detergent , toiletries , and a closet full of donated clothes and shoes .
The Marshallese community , generally , has been relieved that Petersen was arrested .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ it took this long for it to be looked at by the Feds , ” Moutina Milne , a Marshallese probation officer in Springdale who also directs a new Marshallese youth-mentorship group , told me .
“ But it is being addressed now , which I ’ m thankful for .
I wish it had been sooner .
There is no right or wrong , just a lot of heartache.
” Sheldon Riklon , a Marshallese doctor in Springdale , told me , “ Coming to America is a dream for many of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ exactly what he was doing , that under the compact it is illegal—he did it anyway , taking advantage.
” Petersen has pleaded not guilty to all the charges , and was released on bail at the end of October .
His defense team has asked a judge to postpone his trial , which is now scheduled for February of 2021 .
“ It was sad for me to see that he got out of jail and was flying back home , ” Riklon said .
“ He spoke about how happy he @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Like he was so fatherly.
” The news of Petersen ’ s arrest shocked Lamy ; in her mind , she said , Takehisa had not been doing anything wrong .
She had still never met Petersen , who , it turned out , had been charging each set of adoptive parents up to forty thousand dollars while only giving the mothers around ten thousand dollars , to cover expenses .
After the indictment , the parents who were in the midst of proceedings with Petersen ’ s agency filed a civil @ @ @ @ @ @ @ adoptions , if they went forward , were carried out in an ethical manner .
Lamy , however , who was seven months pregnant , had already been in contact with the couple that had previously adopted her second son , and they had agreed to adopt this child , as well .
She decided , despite the indictments , that placing her son with them , so that he would be with his half-brother , was still the best option .
“ The couple wanted to be really sure that she wanted @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” Pation , Lamy ’ s cousin , told me .
“ So they let her be and did not come visit her until the end of the pregnancy.
” For the third time , Lamy said goodbye .
The Complex Legacy of Vigilantism in South Africa When Can a Woman Who Kills Her Abuser Claim Self-Defense ?
Untangling the Hate at the Heart of the Mass Shooting in Jersey City One evening , I joined Lamy , Pation , and their kids for dinner , at an all-you-can-eat Chinese buffet in Springdale @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a job , was frustrated .
“ At the moment , I can not do things on my own .
I can not drive , ” she said .
“ So finding a job is my first priority .
But it can ’ t require working on a computer or talking to anyone in English .
The only thing I know how to do is work at the chicken factory.
” But she also felt some hope , especially for her daughter .
They had started going to Pation ’ s Pentecostal church @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , ” Lamy said , laughing .
Neslina pointed out a wooden bear carved into a decorative woodland scene , in the wooden booth near where she was sitting .
“ Can I touch it ?
” she asked , her eyes wide .
Lamy said yes , and she scampered over , tracing her finger over all the dancing wooden animals .
“ Life here is easier , ” Lamy said .
“ When things get hard , it ’ s easier to find a solution.
” Lamy said that she does @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
And , in any case , during her experience with Shared Beginnings , she did not receive money in the way that she had with Petersen ’ s agency .
As Lamy and Neslina went up to the buffet to get dessert , Pation said that it seemed like a good thing that Takehisa and Petersen had been caught .
“ Back in the Marshall Islands , people did not have gold or silver , ” she said .
“ We never ever had those kinds of things that people treasure here @ @ @ @ @ @ @ older people had , a long time ago , was their children .
Our gold was our kids.
” Lamy arrived back at the table with slices of orange .
Pation asked her how she felt about the relationship that she will have with her adopted children in the future .
“ I was told that they will come back to me when they turn eighteen , ” she said , again .
“ When they finish school , the adoptive parents will tell the children about me , and eventually they will @ @ @ @ @ @ @ knows this scenario might no longer be the case .
But the adoptive parents do send pictures every month of her sons , which make her happy and sad all at once .
I asked , considering all that had happened , whether they want to return to the islands .
“ I don ’ t like it here , ” Pation said , with a wistful smile .
“ But with all of these kids we are raising ” —Pation ’ s three children and those of her cousin , who passed @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ I think my future is here .
I don ’ t know how I would ever be able to go back.
” She cracked off a crawfish ’ s red tail and added , “ Perhaps that is why I don ’ t feel scared about the sea level rising .
I just feel more heartbreak to know that the island is going to go under .
Because that is where all of our memories are.
” Marshallese children play during a kemen , a traditional celebration of a child ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @

In the summer of 2015, Shelma Lamy and her infant daughter, Neslina, got on a plane in Majuro, the capital of the Marshall Islands, and flew to northwest Arkansas. Life in the islands had been difficult. While Lamy was growing up, her parents worked nonstop—her father was a carpenter but also drove a taxi; her mother was a cook in a restaurant—so she spent much of her time helping with chores around the house, cooking and cleaning, and watching the smaller children, including a brother who was half-paralyzed. In the eighth grade, she stopped going to school, like many other kids her age; as she got older, it was hard to find work. The unemployment rate in the Marshall Islands is nearly forty per cent, and most of the available jobs for someone with little education are men’s jobs, such as construction, Lamy said—“and they don’t always bring enough money to support the whole household.” Often, one household, as was Lamy’s case, includes three or four families living together.
The Republic of the Marshall Islands, situated between Hawaii and the Philippines, includes twenty-nine widely dispersed coral atolls and five volcanic islands, spread across seven hundred and fifty thousand square miles of the Pacific Ocean. At the end of the Second World War, the United States took control of the Marshall Islands from Japan and quickly turned the region into a nuclear-weapons test site. Over the next decade or so, the U.S. military dropped sixty-seven atomic bombs in the islands, primarily around and on Bikini and Enewetak Atolls, severely contaminating the region with plutonium and other particles of radioactive fallout. There have since been high rates of thyroid cancer and birth defects, including congenital cataracts. Lamy was born with a cataract in one eye, which severely restricts her vision, though it is impossible to know with certainty whether radiation exposure was the cause. Her daughter was born with the same condition.
The islands, which, on average, are six and a half feet above sea level, now face another existential threat: rising seas, shifting weather patterns, and high temperatures associated with climate change. High-tide flooding is a frequent occurrence, even in the most developed areas of Majuro, where boulders and land fill have been deployed to protect infrastructure. In 2015, an unseasonal typhoon left Majuro Atoll “like a war zone,” as one Marshallese official put it. In 2016, the Marshall Islands suffered a drought so severe that water was rationed to residents for a limit of four hours per week. Coral reefs and the fish they sustain are dying, and extended periods of dangerous warming in the water creates fish-killing algae blooms, as well. In the first week of December, fifteen-foot waves flooded Majuro, washing away several homes and businesses, while the country’s two hospitals were at capacity due to the largest recorded outbreak of dengue fever.
That same week, Hilda Heine, who was the President of the Marshall Islands until January, spoke by video feed to world leaders gathered for the United Nations climate talks in Madrid. The Marshall Islands are “facing death row,” she said. Rich nations’ failure to commit to rapid, and much more ambitious, emissions cuts, she pleaded, was the equivalent of “passing sentence on our future, forcing our country to die.”
While migration from the islands to the United States has been increasing, thanks largely to remittances from family members who are already here, much of the population that wants to migrate cannot afford a plane ticket. When Lamy got pregnant with Neslina, at the age of nineteen, she was overjoyed, but quickly realized that she would be raising her on her own, with no support from Neslina’s father. When she got pregnant a second time, a year later, she was scared. She started speaking with her relatives to see if there was someone else who might help. Adoption between relatives and in-laws is common throughout the Marshall Islands, and children often live freely between households—raised, in fact, by a village. According to one study, as many as twenty-five per cent of all Marshallese children are adopted. But most birth parents are still able to see their children regularly and maintain relationships with them into adulthood.
Lamy, at first, had such an arrangement in mind, and yet none of her relatives were in a position to raise another child. Then one of her uncles told her that there might be another option. An acquaintance knew an American attorney named Paul Petersen, who had been a Mormon missionary in the Marshall Islands years ago and now ran an adoption agency in the United States. If Lamy was interested, Petersen would fly her and her daughter to Arkansas—where some of her relatives had settled a few years prior—and give her money throughout the course of her pregnancy to pay for rent, food, clothes, medical bills, and other expenses. An American couple would then adopt her baby after she gave birth. Lamy wondered whether she would have a say in who the adoptive parents would be. Her uncle did not know—that would have to be sorted out once she arrived in Arkansas. In any case, adoption in exchange for a ticket to the United States seemed like the best choice, almost too good to be true.
A month later, an aunt met her at the airport and gave her a ride to her apartment in the town of Springdale, an old agricultural outpost with around eighty thousand residents and home to the corporate headquarters of Tyson Foods. Lamy was twenty years old and seven months pregnant. “I couldn’t believe I was really living in America,” she told me. “I felt like I had won the lottery.”
In Majuro, everyone has heard of Arkansas, and virtually everyone knows someone who lives there. When the Marshall Islands gained full independence from U.S. administration, in 1986, the country entered into an agreement called the Compact of Free Association with the U.S., which allows Marshallese citizens to live and work in the United States freely, without a visa. The U.S. maintains a missile-test site on Kwajalein Atoll, and military interests—as opposed to concern about the atomic damage that had already been done on the islands—were at the center of American negotiations. The portal to Arkansas began when a Marshallese man named John Moody moved to the United States and eventually settled in Springdale for a job at one of Tyson’s chicken plants. As word spread that jobs were plentiful—George’s, Inc., Cargill, and Butterball also have poultry-processing plants in the area—relatives followed. In 2008, a Marshallese consulate opened just off of Springdale’s main street.
The corporate office of Tyson Foods, in downtown Springdale. Many local Marshallese work in nearby poultry-processing plants.
As climate change has intensified over the past decade, “the numbers have been getting larger each year,” Melisa Laelan, the founder and head of the Arkansas Coalition of Marshallese, told me. Laelan is a Marshallese princess and grew up in Majuro. When she was seventeen, she joined the U.S. military and served for ten years, including stints in Bosnia and Afghanistan. She eventually settled in northwest Arkansas in the two-thousands and got a job as a court translator. In 2011, she founded the organization to support Marshallese citizens, a third of whom now live in the United States. The population in the islands is slightly more than fifty thousand. Although thousands of Marshallese migrants live in Hawaii, Washington, Oregon, California, and other states, the concentration in the U.S. is greatest in northwest Arkansas, where population estimates hover between twelve and fifteen thousand. In light of the threat that climate change poses to the Marshall Islands, Laelan sees it as her mission to continue building a social infrastructure so that islanders in Arkansas can thrive. “We gotta prepare our community for the future,” Laelan said. “This is the Springdale Atoll. We are surrounded by Marshallese.”
I met Lamy’s daughter, Neslina, who is now five, before I met Lamy. She was running after an Aussiedoodle in the office of an adoption agency called Shared Beginnings. When she saw me, although we hadn’t been introduced, she smiled and hugged my legs; this is, I later learned, her standard greeting. The temperature was in the forties outside, but Neslina, like many Marshallese migrants in Arkansas, was still dressed for the islands, in a floral short-sleeved dress and rainbow-colored flip-flops. Lamy, too, wore a floral dress, bright green, with a red-and-black plaid flannel pullover on top—Pacific islands meets the Ozarks. She greeted me with a shy but giant smile. We sat down with her cousin, Bielly Pation, in Shared Beginnings’ family-meeting room, which was furnished with purple pillows and curtains, a giant stuffed llama, and signs that read “Love” and “Blessed.” As Neslina sat on the floor, rummaging through a box of toys, Lamy, with Pation providing interpretation, told me the rest of her story.
A Marshallese woman in Arkansas named Maki Takehisa, who worked for Paul Petersen’s adoption agency, gave her a thousand dollars in cash at the beginning of each month, then another five hundred halfway through, providing enough money for her and her daughter to live comfortably during her pregnancy. As her due date approached, she met with another woman from the agency to sign adoption paperwork, relying on Takehisa for interpretation. As it turned out, she would not have any say in who the adoptive parents would be, which seemed strange. But when she spoke, by phone, to the couple the agency had selected (again, with Takehisa interpreting), they seemed nice, and she felt a bit better. She did not meet or speak with Petersen, who lived in Arizona. (He had been elected as the assessor of Maricopa County in 2014.) A month and a half after her arrival, she gave birth. The adoptive parents flew in from Utah and went straight to the hospital to pick up the baby, a boy. They met Lamy briefly, and then Lamy said goodbye to her son. As far as she understood, she said, looking out the window, she would be reunited with him when he turned eighteen.


newyorker--2020-01-10--Rose Byrne and Bobby Cannavale Take On “Medea”

With female rage being reconsidered as both a political tool and a cultural trope , what better time to revisit @ @ @ @ @ In a new adaptation of Euripides ’ “ Medea , ” written and directed by @ @ @ @ @ ” ) , Rose Byrne plays the vengeful barbarian who takes extraordinary measures to punish @ @ @ @ @ by Byrne ’ s real-life partner , Bobby Cannavale .
The production , which originated @ @ @ @ @ plays at BAM ’ s Harvey Theatre Jan. 12-Feb. 23 .

With female rage being reconsidered as both a political tool and a cultural trope, what better time to revisit the original angry woman? In a new adaptation of Euripides’ “Medea,” written and directed by Simon Stone (“Yerma”), Rose Byrne plays the vengeful barbarian who takes extraordinary measures to punish her unfaithful husband, played by Byrne’s real-life partner, Bobby Cannavale. The production, which originated at Internationaal Theatre Amsterdam, plays at BAM’s Harvey Theatre Jan. 12-Feb. 23.


newyorker--2020-01-10--The Chaotic, Beautiful Larks of Elizabeth Wurtzel

A little more than a year ago , she published an essay titled “ Bastard , ” about learning , at age fifty , that the man she ’ d thought was her father , a distant nonentity with whom she ’ d long fallen out of touch , was not her father .
Her biological father was the photographer Bob Adelman , famous for his photos of the civil-rights movement .
Wurtzel saw that she had been trying , all her life , to solve the wrong problem—and that those flailing attempts to make sense of herself constituted her @ @ @ @ @ @ @ I was so wild , ” she wrote .
“ I never knew how come I had to be a firebrand .
I thought there was something wrong with me .
Then I realized there is something right with me .
Now I know I was born this way .
I did not invent myself after all.
” She also learned that she had inherited the BRCA mutation that caused her breast cancer from Adelman , but she didn ’ t report how she felt about that .
“ People see me now @ @ @ @ @ @ @ I am with the same artificial blonde hair I ’ ve always had , and they think cancer was a phase , ” she wrote .
If it was a phase , she wasn ’ t out of it .
Before she died , Wurtzel was putting together a manuscript for a book called “ Bastard , ” which , she told me , she often wrote on her iPhone while she was taking her dog , Alistair , to the park .
In 2015 , Wurtzel wrote for Vice about being diagnosed @ @ @ @ @ @ @ very prospect of anyone feeling sorry for a woman like Elizabeth Wurtzel .
( Later , in the Guardian , she wrote , “ I am worse than cancer .
And now I have cancer .
All anyone can do is forgive me .
Which is exactly what they have been doing all along.
” ) “ All my life , I had problems—galore !
—with no answers , ” she wrote .
“ At long last , I find myself in trouble and there are solutions.
” She knew that her cancer @ @ @ @ @ @ @ drug addiction had taught her that “ we are never so free as when we are running for our lives.
” Four years later , Wurtzel published one of the best things she ever wrote , an essay for New York magazine about what she termed her “ one-night stand of a life .
” “ I am proud that I have never so much as kissed a man for any reason besides absolute desire , ” she wrote , “ and I am more pleased that I only write what I feel @ @ @ @ @ @ @ I got out of college in 1989.
” “ Prozac Nation , ” her blockbuster memoir from 1994 , had bought her freedom , and she had “ spent that freedom carelessly , and with great gratitude , ” she wrote .
“ Why would I do anything else ?
” Then a stalker named Maria appeared in Wurtzel ’ s Bleecker Street apartment and threatened to slash up her face .
Being unmoored instantly lost its glamour : “ At long last , I had found myself vulnerable to the worst of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ my life was not so different from the way it was at 24.
” This ordeal had made her “ harsh and defeated , ” and yet , she added , the story had the best possible ending : she herself was telling it .
About a decade ago , when the writer Elizabeth Wurtzel rounded forty , her work—previously a gale-force project of unbridled self-mythologizing—started to look backward and inward in a different way .
She began dealing more explicitly in unease and defiance , and she considered what her mythology had @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Elle , in 2009 , about having been “ temporarily credentialed ” by extraordinary beauty—growing up thinking that “ love would be simpler than tying a string bikini , the kind I wore a lot while waiting on the beach for my ship to come in.
” She had figured out how to get what she wanted in most situations , she explained , but she hadn ’ t learned , either as a “ terrifically brooding and mature teenager ” or as “ a whiny and puerile adult , ” how to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ chasing .
Now she ’ d finally begun to find some attractive stability , graduating from Yale Law School and working as an attorney at Boies Schiller Flexner .
But she was forty-one—on the cusp , she believed , of losing the lambent physical magnetism that she ’ d both used perfectly and perhaps only ever misused .
I was friends with Elizabeth Wurtzel , though something cautions me against overstating the matter .
I met her in 2015 , after trying to interview her , getting stalled by a publicist , and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , two-hundred-and-seventy-word text message that began “ Jia .
Hi .
This is Elizabeth Wurtzel.
” During the next few years , I became familiar with her West Village apartment , stacked floor to ceiling with books and CDs and records and filled with plants and candles and amazing curios and photos , often of her .
We went out to dinner in dark downtown restaurants , sometimes with Alistair , an aloof and striking husky mix , who rebuked me with a nip every time I tried to pet him .
( @ @ @ @ @ @ @ personality , ” she said .
“ But really it ’ s just that he ’ s so beautiful everyone gets confused.
” ) There was always red wine , and then more red wine , in little glasses ; always her long hair and huge brown eyes floating in front of me , as if she was a deviant Alice in Wonderland and a grinning Cheshire Cat both .
Returning the relentless volleys of her arguments and proclamations , I felt alternately trapped and enthralled , infuriated and liberated—a grain-alcohol-strength distillation of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ her work .
I had the sense that I was occupying a place in a procession of younger female writers in whom she ’ d perceived a resemblance .
Like others , I was grateful for this—for the way she ’ d lived out an advance trajectory of what might happen when your writing career centers on your charisma and the strong feelings that people tend to have about young women , how that could boost and confine you , could make you dissemble ( she once told me that she didn ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ how her success had to do with her being beautiful ) , and could acquaint you with exactly who you are .
I also just liked her .
I admired her singularity , and I loved her absolutely chaotic instincts .
More than once she suggested that I ought to break up with my boyfriend , even though I ’ d given no signs of wanting to do so .
She ’ d stopped doing drugs a long time before , but she still remembered all the best restaurant bathrooms in Manhattan for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the experience of being a generational icon , and she ’ d only ever understood herself as someone who would be loathed and fawned over ; all her recent writing had analyzed , with more devotion and brutality than anyone else could possibly muster , exactly how that had warped and lit up her life .
I found these later essays much more interesting than “ Prozac Nation , ” the memoir that had prompted the Times Book Review to call her “ Sylvia Plath with the ego of Madonna ” and had @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s desire to represent a collapse at the center of the Zeitgeist and her desire to be more special , more unusual , more everything than everyone else .
The original cover of her second book , “ Bitch ” —a collection of essays that was published in 1998 and was subtitled “ In Praise of Difficult Women ” —showed Wurtzel topless and giving the finger .
The book ’ s analytical framework was amazingly inconsistent , but the essays were often several orders bolder than the endless Internet-era deconstructions of complicated female @ @ @ @ @ @ @ mostly concern women who , like Wurtzel , manifested a “ mixture of prettiness and pollution so striking and inexplicable that it is as hypnotic and paralyzing as a skyscraper burning down , so strange that mystification becomes inevitable.
” She wonders if bad girls often meet nasty ends because of a “ lack of conviction : they recoil at their own badness and try to be the sweethearts they were raised to be.
” But my favorite book of Wurtzel ’ s is “ More , Now , Again , ” from @ @ @ @ @ @ @ her later essays would cover , finally admitting the real possibility of regret .
It ’ s a memoir of her prodigious descent into Ritalin and cocaine addiction while working on and promoting “ Bitch , ” a process that involved literally moving into her publisher ’ s office and getting drugs FedExed to stops on her book tour .
Tweaking out in Florida , she becomes fixated on abolishing the death penalty ; she tweezes out all her leg hairs individually ; she spends days online tracking the status of Mir , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ clarity of recovery , she announces , “ I think I am ten times prettier than I actually am.
” She wonders if maybe all the mess she ’ s made will be worth it—maybe she ’ ll have produced a work of genius .
“ Trouble is , you never know , ” she writes .
“ You never know until it ’ s all done.
” I haven ’ t been able to concede yet that that moment has come for Wurtzel already .
I was always terrified of the way @ @ @ @ @ @ @ it were a joke she ’ d been telling to the devil for years .
I hope she wrote enough of the “ Bastard ” manuscript that we get to read it .
A new kind of grace was emerging in her writing , which felt all the more profound for coming from a person who ’ d long had more interest in being shocking than in being graceful .
“ I have always made choices without considering the consequences , because I know all I get is now , ” she wrote @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for New York , seven years ago .
“ Maybe I get later , too , but I will deal with that later .
I choose pleasure over what is practical .
I may be the only person who ever went to law school on a lark .
And I wonder what I was thinking about with all those other larks , my beautiful larks , larks flying away .
”

About a decade ago, when the writer Elizabeth Wurtzel rounded forty, her work—previously a gale-force project of unbridled self-mythologizing—started to look backward and inward in a different way. She began dealing more explicitly in unease and defiance, and she considered what her mythology had wrought. She wrote a piece for Elle, in 2009, about having been “temporarily credentialed” by extraordinary beauty—growing up thinking that “love would be simpler than tying a string bikini, the kind I wore a lot while waiting on the beach for my ship to come in.” She had figured out how to get what she wanted in most situations, she explained, but she hadn’t learned, either as a “terrifically brooding and mature teenager” or as “a whiny and puerile adult,” how to actually connect with the men she was chasing. Now she’d finally begun to find some attractive stability, graduating from Yale Law School and working as an attorney at Boies Schiller Flexner. But she was forty-one—on the cusp, she believed, of losing the lambent physical magnetism that she’d both used perfectly and perhaps only ever misused.
Four years later, Wurtzel published one of the best things she ever wrote, an essay for New York magazine about what she termed her “one-night stand of a life.” “I am proud that I have never so much as kissed a man for any reason besides absolute desire,” she wrote, “and I am more pleased that I only write what I feel like and it has been lucrative since I got out of college in 1989.” “Prozac Nation,” her blockbuster memoir from 1994, had bought her freedom, and she had “spent that freedom carelessly, and with great gratitude,” she wrote. “Why would I do anything else?” Then a stalker named Maria appeared in Wurtzel’s Bleecker Street apartment and threatened to slash up her face. Being unmoored instantly lost its glamour: “At long last, I had found myself vulnerable to the worst of New York City, because at 44 my life was not so different from the way it was at 24.” This ordeal had made her “harsh and defeated,” and yet, she added, the story had the best possible ending: she herself was telling it.
In 2015, Wurtzel wrote for Vice about being diagnosed with breast cancer, and mocked the very prospect of anyone feeling sorry for a woman like Elizabeth Wurtzel. (Later, in the Guardian, she wrote, “I am worse than cancer. And now I have cancer. All anyone can do is forgive me. Which is exactly what they have been doing all along.”) “All my life, I had problems—galore!—with no answers,” she wrote. “At long last, I find myself in trouble and there are solutions.” She knew that her cancer might kill her, but depression and drug addiction had taught her that “we are never so free as when we are running for our lives.”
A little more than a year ago, she published an essay titled “Bastard,” about learning, at age fifty, that the man she’d thought was her father, a distant nonentity with whom she’d long fallen out of touch, was not her father. Her biological father was the photographer Bob Adelman, famous for his photos of the civil-rights movement. Wurtzel saw that she had been trying, all her life, to solve the wrong problem—and that those flailing attempts to make sense of herself constituted her life. “I never understood why I was so wild,” she wrote. “I never knew how come I had to be a firebrand. I thought there was something wrong with me. Then I realized there is something right with me. Now I know I was born this way. I did not invent myself after all.” She also learned that she had inherited the BRCA mutation that caused her breast cancer from Adelman, but she didn’t report how she felt about that. “People see me now, I look the same, there I am with the same artificial blonde hair I’ve always had, and they think cancer was a phase,” she wrote. If it was a phase, she wasn’t out of it. Before she died, Wurtzel was putting together a manuscript for a book called “Bastard,” which, she told me, she often wrote on her iPhone while she was taking her dog, Alistair, to the park.
I was friends with Elizabeth Wurtzel, though something cautions me against overstating the matter. I met her in 2015, after trying to interview her, getting stalled by a publicist, and, weeks later, receiving a late-night, two-hundred-and-seventy-word text message that began “Jia. Hi. This is Elizabeth Wurtzel.” During the next few years, I became familiar with her West Village apartment, stacked floor to ceiling with books and CDs and records and filled with plants and candles and amazing curios and photos, often of her. We went out to dinner in dark downtown restaurants, sometimes with Alistair, an aloof and striking husky mix, who rebuked me with a nip every time I tried to pet him. (“People think he has this great personality,” she said. “But really it’s just that he’s so beautiful everyone gets confused.”) There was always red wine, and then more red wine, in little glasses; always her long hair and huge brown eyes floating in front of me, as if she was a deviant Alice in Wonderland and a grinning Cheshire Cat both. Returning the relentless volleys of her arguments and proclamations, I felt alternately trapped and enthralled, infuriated and liberated—a grain-alcohol-strength distillation of the way it sometimes felt to read her work. I had the sense that I was occupying a place in a procession of younger female writers in whom she’d perceived a resemblance. Like others, I was grateful for this—for the way she’d lived out an advance trajectory of what might happen when your writing career centers on your charisma and the strong feelings that people tend to have about young women, how that could boost and confine you, could make you dissemble (she once told me that she didn’t read her press or think about how her success had to do with her being beautiful), and could acquaint you with exactly who you are.
I also just liked her. I admired her singularity, and I loved her absolutely chaotic instincts. More than once she suggested that I ought to break up with my boyfriend, even though I’d given no signs of wanting to do so. She’d stopped doing drugs a long time before, but she still remembered all the best restaurant bathrooms in Manhattan for doing cocaine. She had lived through the experience of being a generational icon, and she’d only ever understood herself as someone who would be loathed and fawned over; all her recent writing had analyzed, with more devotion and brutality than anyone else could possibly muster, exactly how that had warped and lit up her life. I found these later essays much more interesting than “Prozac Nation,” the memoir that had prompted the Times Book Review to call her “Sylvia Plath with the ego of Madonna” and had expressed an irreconcilable tension between Wurtzel’s desire to represent a collapse at the center of the Zeitgeist and her desire to be more special, more unusual, more everything than everyone else.
The original cover of her second book, “Bitch”—a collection of essays that was published in 1998 and was subtitled “In Praise of Difficult Women”—showed Wurtzel topless and giving the finger. The book’s analytical framework was amazingly inconsistent, but the essays were often several orders bolder than the endless Internet-era deconstructions of complicated female pop-culture icons that would follow. They mostly concern women who, like Wurtzel, manifested a “mixture of prettiness and pollution so striking and inexplicable that it is as hypnotic and paralyzing as a skyscraper burning down, so strange that mystification becomes inevitable.” She wonders if bad girls often meet nasty ends because of a “lack of conviction: they recoil at their own badness and try to be the sweethearts they were raised to be.”
But my favorite book of Wurtzel’s is “More, Now, Again,” from 2001, which approaches the territory that her later essays would cover, finally admitting the real possibility of regret. It’s a memoir of her prodigious descent into Ritalin and cocaine addiction while working on and promoting “Bitch,” a process that involved literally moving into her publisher’s office and getting drugs FedExed to stops on her book tour. Tweaking out in Florida, she becomes fixated on abolishing the death penalty; she tweezes out all her leg hairs individually; she spends days online tracking the status of Mir, the Russian space station. In the clarity of recovery, she announces, “I think I am ten times prettier than I actually am.” She wonders if maybe all the mess she’s made will be worth it—maybe she’ll have produced a work of genius. “Trouble is, you never know,” she writes. “You never know until it’s all done.”
I haven’t been able to concede yet that that moment has come for Wurtzel already. I was always terrified of the way she spoke about death, as if it were a joke she’d been telling to the devil for years. I hope she wrote enough of the “Bastard” manuscript that we get to read it. A new kind of grace was emerging in her writing, which felt all the more profound for coming from a person who’d long had more interest in being shocking than in being graceful. “I have always made choices without considering the consequences, because I know all I get is now,” she wrote, at the close of her essay for New York, seven years ago. “Maybe I get later, too, but I will deal with that later. I choose pleasure over what is practical. I may be the only person who ever went to law school on a lark. And I wonder what I was thinking about with all those other larks, my beautiful larks, larks flying away.”


newyorker--2020-01-10--In Cobble Hill, the HiHi Room Stands Alone

The other day , outside the Lululemon on Smith Street , a woman wearing pearls spoke excitedly into her cell phone , which she was holding as though it were a walkie-talkie .
“ I guess Brooklyn is a hotter neighborhood now , ” she declared .
Cobble Hill has been hit hard , in recent years , by an influx of chain stores and the people who chase them .
The Chipotle on Court Street sends shivers down the spine .
And yet hope springs eternal at the HiHi Room , a promisingly off-kilter new restaurant from Eric Finkelstein @ @ @ @ @ @ @ behind Court Street Grocers , an understatedly exceptional sandwich shop that opened in adjacent Carroll Gardens a decade ago and now has four locations and its own line of ( delicious ) bottled sodas .
Their first full-service place broadcasts their unmistakable brand of irreverence from the front window with a neon sign greeting passersby in the same custom bubble font used on the menu : HI HI .
Inside , both food and décor are strung together by a loose motif—call it Southeastern American .
The menu was developed with Walker Stern @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , which enjoyed a long reign as the area ’ s best restaurant before it closed , in 2018 .
Carolina shrimp are poached for cocktail and seared to top grits from Geechie Boy , a renowned mill in South Carolina ; those grits are also used to make hush puppies , served with honey butter .
Boiled peanuts share top billing with “ Carolina caviar , ” the euphemism of choice for pimento-cheese spread , which comes with a half sleeve of Ritz crackers .
A prep-station butcher ’ s block in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ where open bottles of natural wine are kept on ice , is fitted with a gingham skirt , and a succession of Johnny Cash and June Carter duets streamed out of the stereo one recent afternoon .
( HiHi is open for lunch and dinner , and will start serving breakfast soon . )
“ Have a good night , y ’ all , ” a server hollered as I left one night .
I can ’ t complain about any of this , but I will say that the theme , arch @ @ @ @ @ @ @ an unnecessary crutch .
For the most part , the best things to eat fall outside of it , such as a salad of farro , pickled Habanada peppers , and hazelnuts , topped with thin slices of salt-baked celery root so luscious and translucent they called lardo to mind .
The “ Vegetable Curry !
!
!
” is surprisingly worthy of the punctuation : a brightly colored bowl of steamed but still crisp vegetables—bok-choy shoots , romanesco , Tokyo turnip , delicata squash—awash in a creamy coconut-based curry and topped with @ @ @ @ @ @ @ The curry comes with buttery Carolina Gold rice and an array of exciting condiments , including crushed peanuts , crumbled banana chips , and makrut lime .
If I were forced to choose one meal to eat every day , this would be a contender .
Allowed two , I ’ d start with the crab Louise , a pile of cool green lettuce leaves , sweet Jonah crabmeat , Castelvetrano olives , jammy boiled egg halves , sliced Persian cucumber , and avocado , Green Goddess dressing on the side .
And @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Root of All Beers , please , which mixes a licorice-and-sarsaparilla witch ’ s brew with rye , vermouth , and honey .
I wasn ’ t as sold on the Spaghetti Cincinnati , Stern ’ s take on the unofficial state dish of Ohio .
Painstakingly perfected versions of iconic specialties are a Court Street Grocers calling card , but this one , made with duck , hand-cut pasta , and aged Cheddar , reads more like a condescending attempt at elevation than an homage .
Still , I appreciate it as @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s daring yet disciplined eclecticism , which is much harder to pull off at a restaurant than at a sandwich shop .
Easier is a cheeseburger and fries , which they ’ d always wanted to try their hand at , but which wouldn ’ t fit into the production line at C.S.G .
The patty ’ s heavily salted , griddled surface gets incredibly crunchy even as the meat , from the nearby butcher Dellapietras , stays juicy and loose .
New York didn ’ t need another burger , but Cobble @ @ @ @ @ @ @ $ 32 . )
♦

The other day, outside the Lululemon on Smith Street, a woman wearing pearls spoke excitedly into her cell phone, which she was holding as though it were a walkie-talkie. “I guess Brooklyn is a hotter neighborhood now,” she declared. Cobble Hill has been hit hard, in recent years, by an influx of chain stores and the people who chase them. The Chipotle on Court Street sends shivers down the spine.
Flavors and ingredients of the Southeast United States, such as pimento cheese (top right), form the menu’s through line, but plenty of dishes and drinks adhere only to the instincts of HiHi’s restaurateurs and chefs, including the Spaghetti Cincinnati (left), a duck-based version of Ohio’s unofficial state dish. Photograph by Yudi Ela for The New Yorker
And yet hope springs eternal at the HiHi Room, a promisingly off-kilter new restaurant from Eric Finkelstein and Matt Ross, the RISD-grad duo behind Court Street Grocers, an understatedly exceptional sandwich shop that opened in adjacent Carroll Gardens a decade ago and now has four locations and its own line of (delicious) bottled sodas. Their first full-service place broadcasts their unmistakable brand of irreverence from the front window with a neon sign greeting passersby in the same custom bubble font used on the menu: HI HI.
Inside, both food and décor are strung together by a loose motif—call it Southeastern American. The menu was developed with Walker Stern, one of two chefs at Battersby, which enjoyed a long reign as the area’s best restaurant before it closed, in 2018. Carolina shrimp are poached for cocktail and seared to top grits from Geechie Boy, a renowned mill in South Carolina; those grits are also used to make hush puppies, served with honey butter. Boiled peanuts share top billing with “Carolina caviar,” the euphemism of choice for pimento-cheese spread, which comes with a half sleeve of Ritz crackers.
HiHi Room is the first sit-down restaurant from Matt Ross and Eric Finkelstein, the duo behind the sandwich shop Court Street Grocers and a line of bottled sodas. Photograph by Yudi Ela for The New Yorker
A prep-station butcher’s block in the middle of the dining room, where open bottles of natural wine are kept on ice, is fitted with a gingham skirt, and a succession of Johnny Cash and June Carter duets streamed out of the stereo one recent afternoon. (HiHi is open for lunch and dinner, and will start serving breakfast soon.) “Have a good night, y’all,” a server hollered as I left one night.
I can’t complain about any of this, but I will say that the theme, arch as it may be, seems like an unnecessary crutch. For the most part, the best things to eat fall outside of it, such as a salad of farro, pickled Habanada peppers, and hazelnuts, topped with thin slices of salt-baked celery root so luscious and translucent they called lardo to mind. The “Vegetable Curry!!!” is surprisingly worthy of the punctuation: a brightly colored bowl of steamed but still crisp vegetables—bok-choy shoots, romanesco, Tokyo turnip, delicata squash—awash in a creamy coconut-based curry and topped with fistfuls of bean sprouts and herbs.
A salad called crab Louise features Jonah crabmeat, ruffled leaves of lettuce, medium-boiled egg, avocado, Persian cucumber, and Castelvetrano olives, with a side of Green Goddess dressing. Photograph by Yudi Ela for The New Yorker
The curry comes with buttery Carolina Gold rice and an array of exciting condiments, including crushed peanuts, crumbled banana chips, and makrut lime. If I were forced to choose one meal to eat every day, this would be a contender. Allowed two, I’d start with the crab Louise, a pile of cool green lettuce leaves, sweet Jonah crabmeat, Castelvetrano olives, jammy boiled egg halves, sliced Persian cucumber, and avocado, Green Goddess dressing on the side. And do I get a cocktail? The Root of All Beers, please, which mixes a licorice-and-sarsaparilla witch’s brew with rye, vermouth, and honey.
I wasn’t as sold on the Spaghetti Cincinnati, Stern’s take on the unofficial state dish of Ohio. Painstakingly perfected versions of iconic specialties are a Court Street Grocers calling card, but this one, made with duck, hand-cut pasta, and aged Cheddar, reads more like a condescending attempt at elevation than an homage.
From left: pimento cheese, also known as Carolina caviar, with a half sleeve of Ritz crackers; chicken tremolo, glazed in cane syrup and spices, with a side of baked beans; vegetable curry with Carolina Gold rice and assorted toppings; buckwheat waffle with whitefish salad and whitefish caviar. Drink at top: the Fresh Pond Road, featuring tequila, Cynar, and Grocers Bottling Company’s celery soda. Drink at right: the Root of All Beers, made with rye, vermouth, and a root-beer-inspired licorice-and-sarsaparilla concoction. Photograph by Yudi Ela for The New Yorker
Still, I appreciate it as an example of Finkelstein and Ross’s daring yet disciplined eclecticism, which is much harder to pull off at a restaurant than at a sandwich shop. Easier is a cheeseburger and fries, which they’d always wanted to try their hand at, but which wouldn’t fit into the production line at C.S.G. The patty’s heavily salted, griddled surface gets incredibly crunchy even as the meat, from the nearby butcher Dellapietras, stays juicy and loose. New York didn’t need another burger, but Cobble Hill did. (Entrées $22-$32.) ♦