Even amidst the pandemic, historic unemployment, and the near-halt of our lives, many have worries about what will happen when isolation eases. Like the rumble of an avalanche yet to be seen, there are plenty of signs that economic problems are snowballing to hit later. What will happen after a…
As Boston College historian Heather Cox Richardson has pointed out, the sudden eruption of problems in Wisconsin elections this week has national importance, since it serves as warning for what could happen on the third of November. As she puts it, “It’s hard to imagine that the election of…
(Image: Emilian Robert Vicol from Pixabay) After a few weeks of making myself crazy—wait, I touched the metal gate at the dog park, the virus lives on metal for I forget how long but who knows where those greyhound owners have been lately—cannot blow my nose now, dammit—nobody is looking,…
“Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers.” That line has rung in my head for years. Every time an online sale reaches through the screen and forces me to click. Every time I watch someone brilliant and creative forced to do a soul-killingly monotonous job just to stay…
Karl was from Springsteenland. Sammy had left the island of Puerto Rico for the first time. Moses came from the part of New York that is nearly Canada. I was from Midwest coal country. We met at Fort Campbell, Kentucky, cold-war warriors not turned 20. We were Americans in a…
Real travel is measured not in distance but in unfamiliarity, the otherness of the place and its food, music, language, art, customs, landscape, wildlife, history, rituals, and beliefs. The suburbs might be a start, with their soccer games, minivans, and influx of coyotes. But will I be able to immerse myself without being cast out as a strange and presumptuous voyeur?
As we have seen, hoarding causes things to disappear from supermarket shelves. We also know it is illogical, since there is neither increased need for some of those items, nor a production shortage of them. (The first and most obvious example was toilet paper.) I shop only every 10 days…
Protesters against the Vietnam War in Wichita, Kansas, 1967. “We are in the midst of forming a COVID-19 generation,” says anthropologist Jim Wertsch, who studies collective memory. “I’m in the Vietnam generation, and that provided the lens through which I saw the world. My parents were in the Depression generation,…
(Image by Anastasia Gepp from Pixabay) “This has essay written all over it,” a friend texted, attaching a link to Quarantine Chat. Oh, my gosh, of course it did. What stranger would they match me with? What would we discover about each other? Would we have…
An old friend, poet Les Kay, said on Facebook today what many of us have been thinking: “Couldn’t get to sleep last night for some reason. Woke up with cough and sweating. No big deal in normal times. Easily explained as allergies and a bad dream in normal times.