Last night, via videoconference, we played Castles Of Burgundy. This was done at Michael’s insistence — he felt we all needed a game. He rigged up his iPad as a monitor and aimed his laptop at himself so we could see what he was doing. We made our moves virtually, according to the honor system, […]
Category Archives: News
Far East, far out
You may believe that the White House is in an indefensible position. They don’t agree. Or maybe deep down they do, but they’ll do what they can to hang on to power, even as they’ve proven, decisively, that they don’t know what to do with it when they get it. Deflection has been the name […]
Getting away
By text, Steven tells us that he braved the crowded aisles at Whole Foods because he missed New York City. This becomes especially poignant when you realize that Steven lives in New York City. Not in an outerborough, either: his little flat is on Delancey Street, right in the shadow of the Williamsburg Bridge. For […]
It’s up to you
A little more than one month ago, we visited New York City by train. We went to the Downtown Eataly to get the focaccia Barese that is just about my favorite thing in the world to eat: checkerboard-sized squares of bread with oil, olives, and cherry tomatoes. I can’t remember what else we bought. We […]
Powerlessness
In the spring of 2007, our cat got sick. She stopped eating, and wandered aimlessly around our flat in circles, as if she’d been struck. I didn’t know what to do. Uma the Cat had been with Hilary ever since she’d retrieved her from a Baltimore gutter during a downpour in 1991. She was tiny, […]
Reflections on a grey day
At the tail end of March, George called. He told me that he felt his life had been reduced to a frustrating Commodore-64 style text adventure in which he was limited to simple commands: get groceries, use sanitizer, check inventory, sleep. He is riding it out in Western Brooklyn, on the banks of the Gowanus, […]
Easter sermon
It was G.K. Chesterton who wrote, with his customary pith, that Christianity was the only religion that had the guts to make God a rebel as well as a king. He was overstating: as a scholar of the Old Testament as well as the New, he knew that Yahweh was as much a temperamental artist […]
Playing the odds
There was good reason to have faith in ventilators. They help doctors treat pneumonia, and pneumonia is one of the worst conditions associated with this virus. The ventilator count was a main concerns in March: would we have enough to accommodate all of the people who were bound to develop critical symptoms? Did we have […]
The screws tighten
Municipal parks have been closed for a long time. Yesterday the Governor announced that state greenspace is out of bounds, too. This is meant to limit congregations of people who might be passing around the pathogen, but it also prohibits us from taking refuge in wide open spaces. Liberty State Park doesn’t tend to be […]
About chloroquine
After her admission to the hospital, my cousin was treated with plaquenil. That’s the trade name for hydroxychloroquine, the milder version of the chloroquine medication that the White House seems determined to make famous. I’m pretty sure she wasn’t asked if she wanted it; she was just given it, in the same way that she […]