Aside from essential trips for groceries, an occasional waltz through a nearby cemetery, or some long drives here and there, my self-imposed quarantine has been spent mostly in the same two-bedroom apartment. Three months ago, today, I made the decision to stay-at-home as the world around me changed due to a pandemic. Today, for the […]
Tag: virus
Is America Headed Toward Civil War?
Societies–because they’re made up of people–function a lot like people do as individuals. Just as you or I might bottle up our anger and then one day explode, so can a society bottle up its collective anger and then explode all at once. On an individual level, as well as a societal one, we can […]
Quarantine, Day 79
I went for a walk–a real one, not a virtual one–with my friend Andrew, the two of us maintaining healthy social distancing and wearing our masks. Though I’ve gone on long drives, waltzes into the cemetery, and made runs to a grocery store packed with people, this marks the first time in over two months […]
Five Reasons Americans Prefer a COVID-19 Death
I don’t understand why anyone is surprised that Americans are incapable of following “stay at home” orders. This is the country of “Honey Boo Boo,” anti-vaxxers, Joe Exotic, and Neo-Nazis holding public office. We aren’t exactly the cream of the crop, as countries go, even though we think we are. Here in New Jersey, while […]
Quarantine, Day 50
The longer this pandemic flows on, the more it seems the days grow somehow quieter, eerily quiet in fact. The bar beneath us hasn’t made a peep in well over a month. There are fewer cars on the street below, fewer voices on the corner with no one waiting for the bus. I know it’s […]
Quarantine, Day 46
Purchasing groceries under a quarantine is a huge stressor, at least in North Jersey. I’d taken to ordering the food via pick-up to try to avoid having to go into the store, but because so many of the online order apps are sold out, you have to get lucky to find anything available within one […]
Quarantine, Day 37
Coming out of the Great Depression, one of the Civil Works Administration projects of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal was the construction of a small stretch of road through Bergen County, New Jersey and into lower New York State. It’s maybe one of the most beautiful drives you can take in this part of the […]
One Month in Quarantine
A long while ago, in what now feels like another life, I was a painter–acrylics on canvas. I took it seriously enough that my portfolio at one point won me a $50,000 visual arts fellowship. I was, however, a terrible student of art. Something about being “assigned” an art project or having to work with […]
Quarantine, Day 27
My N-99 masks came–two of them with filters on the mask. They are black and make me look like Bane from the Batman series. To be honest, I’d feel guilty for having ordered them, knowing in hindsight they could’ve gone to someone in a hospital, except I ordered them back in February, before anyone was […]
The Lie of the ‘Great American Resurrection’
Last week when Trump said he wanted the country “open by Easter,” a Fox News anchor referred to it as the “great American resurrection.” The reference to the Easter tradition, celebrating the resurrection of Jesus, is an obvious attempt to signal to Trump’s evangelical base that this president really is a person of faith, a […]
