Columns, pieces and posts
Something shifted this month. Donald Trump’s hold on history loosened, and may be breaking. In some new way his limitations are being seen and acknowledged, and at a moment when people are worried about the continuance of their country and their own ability to continue within it. He hasn’t been equal to the multiple crises. […]
Summer begins and it may be a hard one. Lots of pain in this big place. The cultural upheaval continues, the plague marches on, a bitter election looms. This is a good time to think about something noble and inspiring, the life and work of Bob Dylan. He has an album out this week, his […]
I want to get back to the pandemic, which is not at the moment being seen for what it is. It is taking place within a very different context. It has been subsumed by the Upheaval, the culture-shaking event we are undergoing as a nation. States have begun to reopen, people are going out. Covid-19 […]
There’s so much to say but my mind keeps going back to New Year’s Eve, when we watched the ball come down and knew the story of 2020 was the presidential election and whatever stray harassments history throws our way. No one that night guessed—no one could have guessed—that in the next few months we’d […]
Something is coming that is well-meant and seriously intended but carries the promise of trouble. It is the planned state-by-state coronavirus contact-tracing regime. It has all the potential to be an onerous system that provokes resentment, spurs anxiety, and invites pushback. The plan is to curb Covid-19’s spread by tracking those exposed. They will be […]
We’re easing up. Good, it’s time. Spring is here, summer’s coming. You can pass any well-meaning restriction and do your best to enforce it, but great leaders work with human nature, not against it. People need to be together, out in the air, in the sun, and if you don’t let them they’ll find a […]
I think there’s a growing sense that we have to find a way to live with this thing, manage it the best we can, and muddle through. Covid-19 is not going away anytime soon. Summer may give us a break, late fall probably not. Vaccines are likely far off, new therapies and treatments might help […]
New jobless claims came out this week, putting American unemployment at an estimated 33.4 million. ADP, the payroll-processing company, reports the private sector lost more than 20 million jobs in April alone. Earnings reports are dreadful, and whole sectors—air travel, hospitality—are being wiped out. Nothing will turn around soon. It is a catastrophe. But you […]
I’ve been trying to get a sense of the economic effects of the 1918 flu pandemic, which killed an estimated 675,000 Americans. Government record-keeping in those days wasn’t what it is now; there’s not much data. You see references in academic papers to factories closed, businesses shuttered. You see newspaper pictures of people in masks […]
‘We are not all in the same boat. We are all in the same storm.” That succinct summation came from the writer Damian Barr this week, on Twitter. He’s right. Some are in yachts, he said, and “some have just the one oar.” Some will sail through, health and profession intact, some will lose one […]