By Andy Borowitz January 4, 2021 ATLANTA (The Borowitz Report)—Georgia’s secretary of state has blocked the number of a desperate caller who phoned him on Saturday with a series of unhinged threats. Brad Raffensperger said that he stayed on the line with the caller for approximately an hour “in the hopes of talking him down.” “He really seemed to be in distress,” Raffensperger said. “I thought that if I spoke to him in a calm, soothing voice, that might help him feel better, but nothing I said made any difference.” “He was spouting all sorts of nutty conspiracy theories about dead people,” he added. “It seemed like he spent a lot of time on Twitter.” After it became clear that the caller was “not in touch with reality,” the secretary of state ended the call and blocked the man’s number. “I felt bad about that, but there was nothing more I could do,” Raffensperger said. “I just hope he gets the help he needs.” Andy Borowitz is a Times best-selling author and a comedian who has written for The New Yorker since 1998. He writes The Borowitz Report, a satirical column on the news.

December 31, 2020 Jeffrey D. Sachs | Project Syndicate With the completion of a major investment treaty between the European Union and China, the new year will begin on a promising footing. Now is the time for the world's leading powers to stop casting stones from glass houses, and start coming together to end the pandemic and set the stage for a green, digital global recovery. NEW YORK – Kudos to the European Commission for finalizing a new investment agreement with China. Europe’s active diplomacy also played a role in China’s recent commitment to achieve carbon neutrality by 2060 – a decision that was quickly followed by Japan’s pledge to decarbonize by 2050. Now it has yielded yet another major success. The new EU-China investment agreement will benefit Europe, China, the world, and even the United States, despite the latter’s warnings against it. In general terms, the agreement signifies the intention of the EU and China to continue to deepen economic relations, by granting each party more assured access for investments in the other’s economy. European industry will gain better access to China’s enormous domestic market just as China embarks on a decade of green and digital economic restructuring, and at a time when Europe is striving to stay at the technological forefront in these areas. The agreement comes in the face of deeply misguided – indeed, dangerous – attempts by US President Donald Trump’s administration not only to cut economic ties with China in high-tech industries, but also to contain China’s growth by forging a US-led alliance that Trump hoped would be backed by the EU and Asia-Pacific countries, including Australia, India, Japan, and South Korea. It appears that the incoming Biden administration may well lean in the same direction, though certainly with more finesse and less bombast than Trump. The ostensible aim of US policy is to constrain China’s belligerence and human-rights violations, or so the US says. But it is worth noting that the policy is favored by a bipartisan US foreign-policy establishment that maintains some 800 overseas military bases, and that has repeatedly launched illegal wars, imposed illegal unilateral sanctions, and otherwise refused to abide by the United Nations Charter, treaties, and Security Council decisions. It’s certainly hard to argue that China is the belligerent party here. China, no doubt, should improve its human-rights record – particularly to address the issues raised by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights regarding the situation in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. But let’s be clear: the US, Europe, India, and many Western nations should make similar improvements. Over the past 20 years, in particular, Muslim populations in the Middle East and South and Central Asia have repeatedly suffered from brutal wars waged by Western powers, domestic crackdowns, unilateral US sanctions, and other abuses. The fact is that few countries properly abide by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights; and the US, to its great shame, still has not even ratified the UN Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights, while China and the EU’s 27 member states did so long ago. The correct response to genuine human-rights concerns is to raise them in a serious and constructive manner, without hypocritical finger-pointing, exaggeration, or disruptions to dialogue, diplomacy, and economic relations. Let the country without sin cast the first stone. But America’s real intention in opposing China has nothing to do with human rights. Particularly under Trump’s lawless administration, US policies have been motivated by a hunger for dominance, plain and simple. The US is trying to stop China’s technological and economic rise in order to preserve its own predominance. The world economic system, however, cannot and should not operate for the benefit of US hegemony, especially considering that the US accounts for a mere 4% of the global population. Following the tragedies of 2020, the world needs renewed global cooperation, not a new US-stoked cold war. It is time to get the pandemic under control and to chart a new course toward recovery and sustainable development. China can and should be involved as a full partner in tackling these challenges. After all, China, unlike the US and Europe, successfully suppressed its COVID-19 epidemic in 2020 (as did most of its neighbors in the Asia-Pacific region). Now, China and its neighbors should help the rest of the world to implement the non-pharmaceutical interventions (testing, contact tracing, and quarantining) that have succeeded where US and European policies have failed. And provided that the new Sinovac and Sinopharm vaccines are proven safe and effective with peer-reviewed data, China should start mass-producing and distributing these vaccines worldwide. The EU, China, and US President-elect Joe Biden’s administration should also join forces to map out a green and digital global recovery. With leading emitters now pursuing carbon neutrality, and with Biden planning to return the US to the Paris climate agreement and to commit the US to decarbonization by 2050, we have the makings for a truly green broad-based recovery. Moreover, development and deployment of new green technologies – renewable energy, electric vehicles (EV), and battery storage – will benefit immensely from global cooperation. For example, just this week, China’s Yahua Group, a major producer of lithium hydroxide, signed up to supply five years’ worth of inputs for battery production at Tesla, a US-based EV manufacturer. Similar opportunities are available with digital technologies. In a world where digital access is crucial for economic participation, 5G-based technologies promise pathbreaking solutions to a host of challenges, from improving energy efficiency to scaling up e-commerce and e-health. Fortunately, the EU-China investment treaty will help drive digital cooperation, which could give a huge boost to sustainable development. Still, it will be important for Europe to continue resisting US pressure against China. Trump’s main weapon against China has been to cut off the export of advanced technologies with the hope of bringing Huawei and other major Chinese tech firms to their knees. This move comes straight out of the US hegemony playbook, and was applied against the Soviet Union during the Cold War. Trump’s administration justifies its approach vis-à-vis Huawei on the grounds that China might spy on others using Huawei’s 5G equipment. A more plausible reason is that Huawei equipment would make it more difficult for the US government to spy on others, including US citizens. An even more likely reason is that the US naively thinks it can maintain technological superiority indefinitely by cutting off advanced inputs to China. Yet China will probably be able to close the remaining technology gaps in advanced semiconductor production quickly. Europe is right to engage actively, deeply, and constructively with China, while also attending to its abiding and admirable concerns about human rights around the world. Biden’s administration should resist the hegemonic impulse and instead restart constructive relations with China. For now, the new EU-China investment agreement is a good way to end a dismal year. The EU is asserting its appropriate foreign-policy prerogatives independent of the US. But more challenges await us in 2021, when the world urgently needs to change course to end the pandemic and move onto a path toward sustainable development. https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/eu-china-investment-agreement-by-jeffrey-d-sachs-2020-12

By Jessie Seigel/Washington, D.C. Donald Trump promised us he would “drain the swamp” and, in this, Donald Trump was a man of his word. During his presidential campaign and his four years in office, Trump drained every conceivable swamp in the country, and brought the reptiles inhabiting that primordial ooze to power in Washington, D.C.—from the convicted (now pardoned) criminals Michael Flynn, Roger Stone, and Paul Manafort to most of the corporate members of Trump’s cabinet, who have put public funds in their own pockets, to the Proud Boy berserker wannabes and their ilk. In the waning days of his Administration, Trump has busied himself and his minions with finding some way—any way—to stay in power. He has considered confiscating voting machines and ordering new elections in swing states. He has found some Republicans in the House and at least one in the Senate to challenge certification of the Electoral College results by Congress on January 6. Trump is encouraging the Proud Boys and others to come to D.C. on that day and go “wild,” which could be used as a pretext to declare martial law or deploy the military domestically pursuant to the Insurrection Act. At the same time, Trump is denying his successor access to crucial cooperation from government agencies like the Department of Defense and the Office of Management and Budget; and using his last days to replace any remaining veteran professionals with subservient yes-men lackeys who might be willing to aid him in his dreams of a coup. President-elect Biden, Vice President-elect Harris, and their transition team have mostly ignored Trump’s ravings about election fraud as well as his coup-like rumblings. They have moved coolly and steadily forward with the transition between administrations despite Trump’s refusal to allow many government agencies to meet with Biden’s transition team. Publicly, Biden and Harris are trying, in their calm, confident manner, to reassure the nation that the transition will be orderly and that democratic normalcy will be reestablished. We must hope that, privately, they are developing plans to deal with Trump’s obstruction if he attempts further and more violent disruptions—something beyond calling Trump out on his actions. But let’s assume that nothing cataclysmic will occur and Biden’s entrance into the White House on January 20 will be peacefully uneventful. In his efforts to undo all the damage Trump has caused during the last four years, Biden will still face obstruction in the Senate regardless of whether the coming Georgia senatorial run-off election leaves Republicans in the majority or minority. That is obvious, for obstruction is what the Republicans do best. Less obvious is the obstruction Biden may face within administrative agencies. Agency jobs vary as to tenure and job security. Political appointees to cabinet posts generally change when a new administration comes in. A political appointee’s staff is hired by the appointee and do not automatically keep their jobs when the appointee leaves. They generally leave when their bosses do. On the other hand, nonpolitical civil service employees have seniority protections and attorneys and others in excepted service have some civil service-like protections as well. When political appointees leave an agency, they often try to find nonpolitical positions for members of their staff, so that those staff members can remain at the agency, with job security. This in itself is not nefarious. However, sometimes this effort has been used to embed in the government long-term adherents of a prior administration’s agenda after that administration has departed. If Trump appointees install loyalists in government positions from which they cannot easily be extracted, it will allow them to obstruct Biden’s efforts and subvert our democracy from within the agencies. Trump’s Education Secretary Betsy DeVos is reportedly urging Education Department employees to resist the Biden Administration. Biden’s Administration simply must find and root out such embedding of Trump disciples. And where the incoming Administration cannot remove them, it must sideline them. Give them an office and no work of importance related to policy. Joe Biden is going to have his work cut out for him. Let’s hope that he has the fortitude to drain Trump’s supersized swamp. Jessie Seigel is a fiction writer, an associate editor at the Potomac Review, a reviewer for The Washington Independent Review of Books, and a dabbler in political cartoons at Daily Kos. She has twice received an Artist’s Fellowship from the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities for her work. But, Seigel also had a long career as a government attorney, in which she honed her analytic skills. Of this double career, Seigel would say, “I guess my right and left brains are well balanced.” More on and from Seigel can be found at The Adventurous Writer, https://www.jessieseigel.com.

By Marieke Slovin Lewis The Author's Life in Bailleul, France I am a wandering soul. I have been (up)rooting myself every two months to two years since leaving for university at the age of 18. My longest stay of all the places I have lived was recently in Brussels, Belgium, where I lived for just under four years while my husband completed his doctorate at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel. Moving so often can be a lonely and exhausting business. Starting over in a new community, trying to meet people, putting down some shallow roots, all the while knowing that it is likely only temporary. There are times when I have wondered why I should even bother making the effort, and yet I always do because the benefits of connecting with kindred people all over the world far outweigh the loneliness of a solitary existence. The concept of starting over has taken on new meaning in the year 2020, My husband and I are both originally from the United States. We were all set to return there in May 2020 when pandemic pandemonium swept over the globe, changing our plans dramatically and wreaking havoc and uncertainty for people everywhere. We wound up canceling our plans to return and moving just across the Belgian border to Bailleul, a small farming community in northern France. We were lucky my husband was able to find work, allowing us to stay in a part of the world where we felt relatively safe. Not long after we settled into a small farmhouse surrounded by fields of corn, the entire country went into a second lockdown. Instead of extending my roots out to neighbors and people in the community as I would traditionally try to do, I found myself isolated and alone in a foreign land. In addition to being a world traveler, I am also a musician and composer. I write stories from people’s spoken stories, using a method of songwriting I call Story-to-Song (STS). As people share their stories with me, I listen and look for patterns and themes that communicate a universal concept from the human experience. This universal might be an emotion or a call for action that is familiar to many people: the desire to belong; the desire to be loved; the wish for peace. I shape these words into a chorus or refrain, and the events of the story unfold through the verses. People who listen to the finished song can make a personal connection with the universal theme from the chorus, even if they have not lived through the same experiences being communicated in the verses. As the verses and chorus progress in their back and forth call-and-response, the listener can begin to imagine what it might be like to become a mother, to move to a new place, to live through a war. One of the benefits of becoming a resident of the world is that I have been given the gift of meeting people who live in the many corners where I have ventured. Rather than finding my footing in France, I found myself expanding my reach to friends all over the world. In an effort to experience human connection in 2020, if only virtually, I sent emails, texts, and messages to the many people who have come to make up my global community. I spent far too many hours on video calls through multiple platforms—Skype, Google Hangout, Zoom, FaceTime, Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp—all from the deeply human, primal desire to feel less alone. As a result of my far-reaching, I have been able to vicariously experience a profoundly unique year through a diverse lens of perspectives. It is the beautiful, painful, dark, and light breadth of perspective that I wish to share as 2020 slowly but surely draws to a close. Being a person who is constantly seeking out stories of our humanity and lifting those words into songs to help create a feeling of solidarity, in this pandemic time of isolation and loneliness, I decided to reach out to friends around the world to see what kinds of stories my global community might have to share about their journeys through 2020. I was curious to see what patterns they might reveal, and I thought they could offer some solace and solidarity as 2020 draws to a close. In true 2020 fashion, I seemed to stir the waters more than I intended, causing emotional stirrings and concern over meeting deadlines, what to write, and how to capture such a tumultuous year in a few short sentences. Jen Chauvet, Homer, Alaska An initial response came from Jen Chauvet, a friend in Homer, Alaska, who expressed doubt that anyone would be interested in hearing about her lockdown life: Obsolete park ranger isolates at home. Writes Jr. Ranger book. Gardens, skis, eats too much. She sent a couple of photos of her pandemic experience in wintry Alaska. Soon, more written accounts began arriving from friends living around the globe. Melissa Watkins, Brussels, Belgium My friend Melissa Watkins, who is originally from the United States and has been living in Belgium for many years, sent me a text message, saying that she was finding it challenging to write about 2020 when it was still so present: I find it really strange, but it is hard to put everything in words when we are still living it, still coping. Do you know what I mean? I did know, and I agree. It is often with time and distance that we are finally able to find meaning in difficult moments of our lives. This meaning might change shape with the more time that passes as we have more time to digest the experience and gain a fuller perspective. Meaning I have derived from experiences during my childhood have shape-shifted over the decades that have followed, and I imagine that many insights and patterns from 2020 will evolve and change in the years to come. After the holidays, Melissa sent the following piece. Her universal theme of gratitude rose like mist atop cold, clear water as the morning sun rises in the sky, warming everything below. Writing about our 2020 experience has tied me up in thoughts and writing, writing, writing. I always find writing about something you are currently living to be difficult, even when there is a lot to write about. After all, 2020 started with a cyclone. Literally. We spent New Year’s on a tiny airplane fleeing a cyclone and watching the New Year’s fireworks illuminating the sky beneath us. The rest of 2020 just continued along this same theme: fleeing or avoiding disaster one way or another. It was like we were in a little bubble, watching the rest of the world fall apart. We have had many sad, funny, momentous stories, but nothing too terrible. Underlying all of them was a tremendous feeling of gratitude. We have been so lucky because nothing devastating hit our family or close friends. I sometimes caught myself falling down the rabbit hole of “what if’s"; linking all the debilitating occurrences and imagining “the end of the world as we know it”; or grieving the loss of normality, especially for my young adult kids. But then I would find my feet still planted firmly on the ground. I would go for a walk or run and feel my breath and remember, we are ok:
 WE are ok. 
 we ARE ok. 
 we are OK. Tanya Kitterman, Bellingham, Washington, United States I received another 2020 reflection piece, titled “Living through 2020,” from my friend Tanya Kitterman, who I met when I was first beginning my career as a park ranger and volunteering with the United States Forest Service in the Pacific Northwest. Tanya shared a written piece with an accompanying photo album of images that offered a visual tour of her year in the life. She wrote about her experiences working in the wilderness division of a national park in Washington State: I work at a national park during the summer months. Due to the pandemic we had to keep our indoor public facilities closed in 2020. Thankfully, we were able to find ways to keep the park open so that people could seek the joy and rejuvenation found in wild places, and maybe bring back a sense of normalcy for a bit. She also shared scenes of the pandemic from Bellingham, Washington, where she lives with her family: In the small city where I live, people have tried to stay kind and help their neighbors. We have been wearing masks, trying to support stores and restaurants by ordering takeout and goods for curbside pickup, and moving much of life outside. Our social life consists of chat threads at livestream online concerts, phone calls, waving to friends from a distance across a front yard, and "podding up" with another family of close friends in the neighborhood. Thankful we can have some interaction outside our immediate family this way. Tanya expressed gratitude and pride in her community, where people were doing as much as they could to take care of one another: I am lucky to be employed, and trying to help out others where I can, especially artists, musicians and small businesses who may not make it through such a long shutdown. Our 20-year-old son has moved back home after only one year away. His work in the restaurant business has dried up and he is earning some small income delivering takeout. As we move into winter, many of the usual emergency homeless shelters will stay closed this year. A tent city has set up on the lawn of the city hall and library and citizens are looking for solutions for when the weather drops below freezing. Right now in the US, we are experiencing various levels of shutdown or lockdown depending on our local leadership. The thing in common nationwide is that we are doing it all with little federal government support such as the people and businesses in Europe are getting. Closing a business would be easier if wages were covered for employees, or if citizens got paid to stay home and stay safe. Her final thoughts were cautiously hopeful and spoke of an enduring human spirit: It feels like 2021 is going to be even more challenging as we try to recover. As long as we continue to have compassion and care for others, we can do it. Karel Deneckere, Berlin, Germany I chatted via Facebook Messenger with Karel, a Belgian friend who spent 2020 with his girlfriend Amelie in her apartment in Berlin, Germany. He shared stories of life in Berlin, including the protests against government-imposed lockdown restrictions for fear of a shift toward absolute state control: I've seen people waiting at the bus stop, for example, wearing armbands with slogans that they refuse to have the government restrict their "freedom." The armbands are reminiscent of the Star of David and are, of course, intended to shock. It's pretty clear that they intend to draw parallels with Nazi Germany (at least, from the perspective of leftist corona critics). Unfortunately, I didn't dare to take a picture. There have been huge demonstrations all over Germany and, as I see from nearby, it's tearing apart friends. One should keep in mind that Germany has a history of state violence, which, to a certain extent, legitimizes the fears for freedom restrictions. Often the question then becomes who is restricting the freedom of whom? We chatted back and forth, and he added: In fact, the curious thing is that in Germany (as compared to most other western European countries) it is not only people from the far right who are protesting. Also people who consider themselves “leftists” (anti-vaxxers, and those suspicious of the global pharmaceutical industry, “which is only out to turn the pandemic into a profitable hysteria”). The demonstrations that took place in Berlin and other large German cities were attended both by people waving the old imperial flag and those carrying A-flags (anarchists). The so-called “Reichsfahne,” the flag of the German empire during WWI, was until recently the legal alternative for the swastika flag of the Nazis. Now, Amelie told me, this imperial flag has become illegal. Karel shared a screen shot from the German newspaper, “Zeit” (“Times”) to show the number of COVID-19 cases in the country: Note the difference between West and East, which suggests divergent views on governmental intervention. Germany was divided into two separate regions after World War II. The West remained democratic while the East was conservative and Soviet-controlled. At the same time as conservatives and far right extremists were protesting around the country, my friend Karel was experiencing a paradigm shift in his own life. He and his girlfriend had been seeing each other long-distance prior to the pandemic. When the first lockdown went into effect, he was stranded in Berlin. Spending an entire lockdown in a small apartment brought them closer together. They have recently moved into a larger apartment in Berlin and are making plans to welcome a new life into the world. Karel’s year in a few words: Headaches, stress, but also great expectations. 😉 Joel Dzodin, Holon, Israel I also reached out to a couple of Insider contributors, and I was thrilled to receive a pandemic piece from Joel Dzodin in Israel. Joel shared a sobering description of his life this past year with beautiful, haunting photos. Woven through the thread of disquiet were rays of gratitude and appreciation for elements of life that often go unnoticed in the wave of activity that comprises a typical year in the life. At sunset tonight (12/27), Israel will enter its third lockdown since the pandemic reached these shores in March. It will require the population to remain within one kilometer [0.62 miles] of their homes, and entry into other people’s homes will be forbidden. Most businesses will shut down and public transportation will operate at 50 percent capacity. The lockdown is expected to last for the next two to three weeks. Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has unfortunately allowed politics to intrude on what should have remained a purely public health and safety issue. Just this week, Israel launched its mass-vaccination program even as the government's fragile and fractious coalition began to seriously fall apart, necessitating Israel's fourth election within the past two years. Trying to put his best foot forward, Netanyahu went on record saying, “I want to tell you that the combination of the marvelous vaccine campaign on the one hand, and a short and quick lockdown on the other, is allowing us to get out of the coronavirus [pandemic].” He went on to say, “And we’ll likely be the first country to get out of [it], within a few weeks” (https://www.timesofisrael.com/netanyahu-claims-pandemic-will-likely-be-over-in-israel-within-a-few-weeks/). Based solely on an admittedly tiny sample size (i.e., my personal experience and observation since the pandemic engulfed us in March), I’m not nearly as sanguine as our Prime Minister seems to be about overcoming COVID-19. We seem to live in two different realities. Sadly, the blatant disregard of the government's public health regulations by far too many of my fellow-countrymen has taken a serious toll on my sense of social solidarity and I've been jarred by seeing so many people fundamentally disregarding basic human concern for the well-being of others. This has run the gamut from (a) store employees adamantly refusing to put on a mask, in shops with prominent signs requiring that such masks be worn, to (b) maskless people ignoring the two-meter distancing rule laughing at me when I obviously sought to move away from them, to (c) people deliberately trying to intimidate me by getting much too close to purposely cough in my face. Although I'm very aware that these forms of sociopathy have also been reported in the U.S., that's not enough to mitigate my own anger at the behaviors that only serve to propagate the ongoing pandemic. On the other hand, for the better part of the past nine months, I've rarely been outside more than once or twice a week (wanting to avoid my often-unmasked neighbors) and it's a testament to my relationship with my wife that we have done so well being semi-confined in such close quarters for so long. I've enjoyed the chance to appreciate music and to photograph the small things in life that are often overlooked or ignored during normal times, such as macro-scale portraits of spiders in the apartment and the cosmos represented in miniscule condensed water droplets. Today I received my first COVID-19 vaccination in Tel Aviv and was struck by the high proportion of people wearing masks. The situation yesterday was very different in my own city of Holon, a city located next to Tel Aviv, where the situation was essentially reversed. I fervently hope that the mass-vaccination program will succeed, and I will personally continue taking measures to insure my own and other people's safety. But without vigorous enforcement of the necessary legal measures, I fear COVID-19 will be with us for the foreseeable future. Perhaps I can end this short account on a positive note. The sun is setting, and we are now less that 15 minutes away from the start of the lockdown. My wife has returned from some last-minute shopping and reported that the neighborhood business streets were full, and that most people were masked. Let's hope that this will continue. Kari Doyle, Copenhagen, Denmark My friend Kari Doyle is another U.S. American living abroad. She sent a piece titled, “Getting Hygge in Denmark,” which begins with a description of the very real fear she experienced while moving with her family from Belgium, a country with many cases of COVID, to Denmark, a country with very few. During the summer of 2020 my expat family needed to move from Belgium to Denmark for work. This was not an ideal time for a move. As with most things this year, this move was even more stressful due to the increasing cases of COVID-19. I was seriously concerned that we would not be allowed to enter our new country because we were arriving from Belgium, which had the highest positive cases per capita in all of Europe! I traveled by airplane with my daughter while my husband traveled by car with our son and beloved dog. Both parties were concerned about whether we would successfully reunite in our new country. I loved reading about how Kari and family, after successfully completing what was undoubtedly a stressful moving experience, were settling into their new life. They were also discovering new cultural traditions in Denmark that were soothing in the midst of a volatile time and also served as a reminder to slow down and remember what is most precious in life. The Danes welcomed us without any problems. We have since learned and experienced part of the Danish culture that has allowed us to endure the isolation which accompanies our current global situation. The Danish concept of being cozy and content is captured by the word hygge. Danes tend to isolate during dark winter months, preferring to be with close friends and family indoors with warm woolen socks, hot mugs of their preferred beverage, next to a crackling fire. We have embraced this lifestyle during the winter of 2020 and have come to see it as a chance to slow down and connect with our own family. As things open up and the pandemic comes to a close, I hope to continue to cultivate hygge in my life. These accounts from North America, Europe, and the Middle East offer a breadth of pandemic perspectives, and they are unequivocally human in their authenticity and vulnerability. These were the stories I was hoping to receive. While they might not provide a picture of the pandemic from all corners of the globe, they do reveal a glimpse of what it has been like for people living in places with unique cultures, languages, politics, and perspectives. Facebook Around the World In an effort to piece together a bit more of the global pandemic puzzle, I decided to try one more tactic. This time, I simplified my request. Rather than asking for something written with a deadline immediately following the Christmas holiday, I wrote a short post on Facebook. My ask: So if you could sum up 2020 in a few words, what would they be? No judgment, all responses are welcome. 🙂 I posted this accompanying photo by way of encouragement. I asked, and people sent responses from all over the world. Omnishambles…and a time for deeper connections (in a different way) A year to focus on one’s blessings I guess this was the “interesting times” the old Chinese proverb mentioned The best of times, the worst of times (sic Charles Dickens) It’s like not realizing how depressed you were until you got off birth control… Zoom Just keep going Deep pain, new beginnings, take nothing for granted Summing up 2020? Suggestions: 1) breathing is serious, especially what you breathe on and to; and 2) talking is so old-fashioned. 2020—the year of the mask Reflection. Connection. Remembering what’s important. Hibernation. Joy and grief. Life paused. Reflective. ‘Inwardly.’ Teachable in so many ways! Ick, but somehow hopeful now. The words from a Belgian friend from our neighborhood in Brussels whose female Yugoslav shepherd had a bit of a love affair with our white husky were at once poignant and heartbreaking. She wrote in French. The following is a translation into English: In January we were happy. In February we left for two days with all the children and grandchildren and then gathering for my grandson's birthday at the beginning of March. Since then, nothing. Short visits at 3 meters (9.8 feet) apart, and the months go by without more than virtual contact, usually with family and friends. You feel like you are alone and living a nightmare. You complain about your life. You are afraid to see the holidays arrive, these holidays that each year you plan for months in advance. You are sad and then, at the beginning of December everything collapses. You learn that your daughter has cancer, and there you cry all the tears of your body and you realize that you were depressed about little things and that now you are going to have to fight against this crap cancer with your child. Voilà, the unfolding of my 2020. And the responses continued: Family time What a year! Shite. Amazing. Challenging. Transformative. Surrender I saved for last my favorite of all the words shared. The word is knuffelcontact. Knuffelcontact is a Dutch word that translates as “hug or cuddle contact,” which became popular during the second lockdown when the Belgian government suggested that people “could choose one contact outside of their household to be close to” in order to allow for a modicum of human contact. People need human contact. They need hugs. I found it very uplifting to learn that knuffelcontact has recently been voted the Flemish Word of the Year. This seems like a perfect metaphor for 2020 that encompasses humanity at its best. In the pattern of perspectives from around the globe I see reflected a desire to focus on the positive even in the midst of the bittersweet and heartbreaking. I am reminded that every person in the world carries an ocean of emotions and experiences within them. What we see on the surface is but the tip of an iceberg that sits largely hidden underwater. There are infinite, unseen layers that tell the story of a moment, a month, a year, a life. What I take from these and my own experiences is a desire to practice gratitude for all that I have; to remember that life is precious; to be gentle with people because what might appear to be reactionary behavior may stem from grief and loss; and to be gentle with myself as well. As 2020 draws to close, I take heart in knowing that people from around the world can express such heart, authenticity, and poetry. I close with a chorus: Wherever you are in the world May these words wrap themselves around you In a warm, safe embrace A knuffelcontact of love And grace Marieke Slovin Lewis is a writer, musician, composer, yoga teacher, and editor. She grew up in Massachusetts and holds a Ph.D. in Sustainability Education from Prescott College. Marieke is a wandering soul and has lived all over the world. She currently finds herself in a second lockdown in northeast France with her husband, Richard Lewis, three cats and a big white husky. Marieke strives to create balance in her life through long walks around the farm fields that surround her home; practicing yoga and meditation; singing and strumming on her ukulele or banging on her bodhran; and writing, writing, writing.

A Poem by Dr. Barry Lubetkin When I was young My New Year’s celebration was successful only if at midnight my lips would find another’s. Nothing else had any standing in my sexually raging brain. To be alone at twelve was to feel adrift and defeated. But oh! Success led to a celebration of immensity. Boasting, strutting, and a confetti of masculine joy! So I resolved to have a year full of romance. As the years progressed my New Year’s celebrations were boisterous nights at obscenely overpriced restaurants. Dom Perignon flowed and Beluga caviar was spread with abandon. Horns and rattles shook the walls, but could not blot out the pain of aching joints, disappointing friends and lost opportunities. But oh! I was alive, loved by some and blessed to be an American. I was safe, free, affluent .and conveniently blind to my own racism, narcissism, and belief in the basic goodness of my leaders. So I resolved to focus on wellness and self-awareness And now I am older in a COVID-ravaged world. New Year’s Eve will be subdued at home A quiet red wine will be fine I will smile at Andy and Anderson at a sad and silent Times Square. And I will struggle to celebrate the birth of the New Year. I pray it will be promising. But can it be? Can I really dare to celebrate? 2020 asserts an ugly grip on the infant year. George Floyd has his knee on the soul of America. Millions of fellowmen ache from hunger and poverty. Our leader, unstable and unpredictable, wrecks every norm and law we believed inviolate. His minions will continue to savage all that is good to guard their power. But oh! I’m still alive! Joe did win. The vaccine survived the doubts and lies and political stains. Broadway and music and dance will return! Lips will touch again! Prejudices will erode. Black Lives Will Matter. To celebrate the New Year I will struggle all year. Forgive me, but I can’t feel real joy right away. Yet even my own cynicism will eventually erode. After all, The People saved democracy! So I will resolve in 2021 to protect my country and my children from ever blinking again in the face of monstrous fascism. Barry Lubetkin, Ph.D. is the co-director and co-founder of the Institute for Behavior Therapy in New York City. He is the author of numerous academic and popular articles, as well as two popular self-help books, Bailing Out and Why Do I Need You to Love Me in Order to Like Myself. The Institute for Behavior Therapy is the oldest private cognitive behavior center in the United States.

The 200-year history of the song with three Austrian guests

December 18, 2020 Free of charge Fred Plotkin, pleasure activist and passionate opera expert, speaks each Friday with fascinating people in the music world. He is the author of Opera 101 and Classical Music 101 and leads opera symposia for New York Times Journeys. In this episode: Israeli stage director, and the General and Artistic Director of Atlanta Opera, Tomer Zvulun. https://app.idagio.com/live/event/fred-plotkin-on-fridays-tomer-zvulun?utm_medium=share&utm_campaign=idagiolive&utm_source=pcl FRED PLOTKIN is one of America’s foremost experts on opera and has distinguished himself in many fields as a writer, speaker, consultant and as a compelling teacher. He is an expert on everything Italian, the person other so-called Italy experts turn to for definitive information.  Fred discovered the concept of "The Renaissance Man" as a small child and has devoted himself to pursuing that ideal as the central role of his life. In a “Public Lives” profile inThe New York Timeson August 30, 2002, Plotkin was described as "one of those New York word-of-mouth legends, known by the cognoscenti for his renaissance mastery of two seemingly separate disciplines: music and the food of Italy." In the same publication, on May 11, 2006, it was written that "Fred is a New Yorker, but has the soul of an Italian."

By Andy Borowitz December 24, 2020 Dear my people, As you know, this is my last Christmas as your Queen. That means I will never again decorate ugly Christmas tree with ugly tinsel and ugly balls. Also, I will never talk to you again. As a famous jacket once said, “I really don’t care, do u?” (LOL) But before I go, I want to share some stories of amazing things that happened to your Queen this year. I don’t know where the time is going! Before I know, Barron will be going to college and I will only have only one baby at home. Be Best, Melania Andy Borowitz is a Times best-selling author and a comedian who has written for The New Yorker since 1998. He writes The Borowitz Report, a satirical column on the news.

One film journalist’s stream-of-consciousness cinematic journey through the pandemic, Part 24 By Laurence Lerman The end of a calendar year signals that it’s time for everyone to make their “Best of” compilations. For me, a Top Ten list or the like usually comes in second place to a rundown of the most memorable on-screen moments that I can recall from all the titles I’ve seen over the previous 12 months. To my satisfaction, I found that this year I could recall a great deal more of those memorable moments than in previous annums. That’s due, I think, to 2020 being the year that theatrical screenings became home streamings, allowing for multiple viewings and rewinds of particularly scenes—and all in the palm of my hand! The ritual of traveling back and forth to a theater, along with the dinner, drinks, encounters with friends and all the other pleasantries that might accompany a night at the movies, were essentially suspended this past year, making for a more distinct focus on the evening’s featured presentation. That said, I remembered a whole lot of nice stuff from the movies that were officially released on screens big and small this past year. That was a pleasant surprise, but not as revelatory as the fact that virtually all of my choices featured women, an aspect that was not lost on me…or my wife, for that matter. And so here, in no particular order, are my Top Ten moments—let’s call them flourishes—from the motion pictures that unspooled on our screens in 2020. Amanda Seyfried as actress Marion Davies, peeking her head out of a Rolls-Royce and beseeching screenwriter Herman Mankiewicz (Gary Oldman) to be gentle with his Citizen Kane script, in David Fincher’s impeccably produced Hollywood fable Mank. Loving wife Linda Cardellini patiently enduring her legendary gangster husband Al Capone’s (Tom Hardy) syphilis-induced dementia as he hazily wanders about their Florida estate in the bizarre gangster elegy Capone. Sierra McCormick, a small-town switchboard operator on the job in 1950s New Mexico, stumbling upon a strange audio frequency and slowly realizing there might be flying saucers hovering just overhead, in the atmospheric sci-fi suspenser The Vast of Night. Elisabeth Moss barely holding on to her sanity and slowly sensing she’s not alone in her home as she takes one cautious step after another in The Invisible Man, the latest reimagining of H.G. Wells’ classic novel. A drunken Carrie Coon cringeworthily mocking her social-climbing, entrepreneurial husband Jude Law in front of his clients in the uncomfortably class-conscious domestic drama The Nest. Sofia Coppola doing her damnedest to make the old man proud in The Godfather Coda: The Death of Michael Corleone, a re-edited and refurbished version of Francis Ford Coppola’s 1990 The Godfather, Part III, reminding us that Daddy’s little girl wasn’t all that bad in her viciously attacked portrayal of mob kingpin Michael Corleone’s naïve daughter Mary. Sultry saxophonist Angela Bassett coolly leading her combo at a downtown club and giving Jamie Foxx’s pianist a shot in Pixar’s animated, silky-smooth, “jazz is life” fable, Soul. New York film company support staffer Julie Garner quietly taking a dressing-down from an intimidating HR exec when she dares suggest there may be something sleazy going down with her Harvey Weinstein-esque boss in the quietly unnerving #MeToo-energized drama The Assistant. The irrepressible Cristin Milioti unleashing an astonished screech of “What the f*ck!?!” after Andy Samberg is inexplicably shot by a cross-bow bolt in the lively Groundhog Day-ish comedy Palm Springs. Ariana DeBose and Jo Ellen Pellman earning their long-awaited public kiss as same-sex sweethearts—and outshining superstar supporting players Meryl Streep, Nicole Kidman and James Cordon—in the climactic “It’s Time To Dance” number of the overly busy but big-hearted musical The Prom, Ryan Murphy’s adaptation of the 2018 Broadway production by the same name. So now it’s 2021 and Operation Warp Speed is slowly putting vaccines in the arms of the American public to combat the COVID pandemic, a roll-out that’s more exciting than anything Hollywood could ever deliver. Moving into a new year when the majority of existing movie theaters may return to operating capacity (as this issue goes to press, about 40% of them are open) and a lot of us may begin to head back to them, the highest-profile choices will be the usual big-screen spectacles. The newest installments in the long-running Mission: Impossible and James Bond series are teeing up, as are a dozen or so comic book extravaganzas, Black Widow, The Eternals and a new Spider-Man flick among them. But for every person taking a chance in a theater, there will probably be twice as many pressing play on the new ones in the comfort of their own living rooms. As for me, it will begin this week by popping in my Blu-ray of 1982’s Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, by far the best film to emerge from the nearly 50-year-old Star Trek franchise—and the inspiration for the Operation Warp Speed moniker (thus connecting Trek with our recovery from one of humanity’s darkest years in decades). When I first saw Star Trek II during its first week of release, I remember how shocking it was to witness the Starship Enterprise being fired upon with full phasers by a ship under the command of a crazed Ricardo Montalban. I’ve seen the film some dozen times since then, and watching the film again 38 years later reminds me how much I still love that moment, And at the dawn of 2021, I can only hope that the Enterprise’s misfortune is as bad as it’s gonna get for all of us as Warp Speed kicks in. Laurence Lerman is a film journalist, former editor of Video Business--Variety's DVD trade publication--and husband to The Insider's own Gwen Cooper. Over the course of his career he has conducted one-on-one interviews with just about every major director working today, including Martin Scorsese, Quentin Tarantino, Clint Eastwood, Kathryn Bigelow, Ridley Scott, Walter Hill, Spike Lee, and Werner Herzog, among numerous others. Once James Cameron specifically requested an interview with Laurence by name, which his wife still likes to brag about. Most recently, he is the co-founder and editor-in-chief of the online review site DiscDish.com.

Jeffrey D. Sachs | December 22, 2020 |  CNN.com Editor's Note: Jeffrey Sachs is a professor and director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University. The opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author; view more opinion articles on CNN. (CNN) The new Covid-19 stimulus package will be a great relief for tens of millions of Americans, but the process of getting to it exposed the need to overhaul our broken budget politics. Both parties have been at fault in creating a process that is chaotic, undemocratic and ultimately reckless. The late Illinois Sen. Everett Dirksen famously quipped, "A billion here, a billion there, and soon enough you're talking real money." Now, we toss around the trillions. The new round of Covid-19 relief is estimated to cost around $900 billion. We don't really know the bottom line, as there has not yet been a budget "score" by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. But we do know Congress is agreeing to spend a vast sum, in this case roughly 4.4% of GDP (or over a quarter of the federal tax revenues for the year), without waiting for a nonpartisan estimate of the likely costs. Even more problematic? Congressional leaders have not sought or welcomed an open national deliberation about best uses of the stimulus funds. There should have been an effort through online congressional hearings to gauge the public's priorities regarding different kinds of outlays: help for the hungry and unemployed, support for health workers, additional funding for testing and tracing systems, financial backstopping for small businesses, and assistance to state and local governments which need to pay to keep teachers, firemen and policemen on the front lines. In fact, the public has never been formally informed about options and tradeoffs, and their sentiments have not been asked. The American people never heard the testimony of mayors, teachers, health professionals and other first responders, nor did we, as citizens, have the opportunity to engage with specific budget options as might have been canvassed through opinion surveys. The same was true in March, when congressional leaders in the US Senate suddenly unveiled the terms of the first stimulus bill. An even vaster sum, around $1.7 trillion, or roughly 8.3% of GDP, was allotted without so much as a single congressional hearing or an opportunity for the public to deliberate. The combination of the stimulus spending and decline in tax revenues will push federal debt held by the public above 100% of GDP by 2021, the highest indebtedness since the end of World War II. One might think that the rush to spending without the time to think was due to the unprecedented Covid-19 emergency, but in both March and now, Congress could surely have held hearings preceding both bills. There have been months of discussion about the second round of spending, in particular, but there has been no serious explanation to the public about the budgetary options and no readiness to engage through hearings with key stakeholders. Yes, politicians voiced their opinions, but they didn't listen to the public's opinions in any systematic manner. That's what congressional hearings, at the very least, could have allowed for. No doubt Trump's chaotic eruptions throughout the year have added greatly to the difficulties of a rational deliberation. Even this week, desperate aides were working feverishly to stop Trump from disrupting the current negotiations. But the crisis of fiscal policymaking runs deeper than Trump's presidency. After all, this isn't the first time the public has been kept in the dark on major budgetary actions voted on by Congress. When Barack Obama became President in early 2009, in the midst of the ongoing financial crisis, congressional House Democrats quickly fashioned a stimulus bill of close to $800 billion behind closed doors, without inviting input from the Republicans and without congressional hearings. The stimulus eventually passed both houses of Congress, along party lines. When the federal government came close to shutting down at the end of 2012 as the government hit debt limits, negotiations between the White House and congressional leaders were again made behind closed doors, with the future of the US tax system at stake. The backroom negotiations made permanent most of George W. Bush's "temporary tax cuts" that had been voted on a decade earlier, without adequate public debate or deliberations. The results of the cliffhanger negotiations were eventually announced to the expectant public, who were treated as bystanders rather than as citizens worthy of being engaged in the process. In 2017, in Trump's first year of office, the tax system was massively overhauled in a Republican tax package that was voted on abruptly, and then signed into law, without the benefit of public hearings, expert opinions or informed public deliberations. As CNN reported, "The Senate voted on a tax bill that pretty much nobody has read," noting that the bill "was still being written, at times in cursive, on the night of the vote." In that case it was no wonder. Public opinion ran strongly against the gist of the Republican tax cuts, so the only way that the Republicans could enact it was to vote on it before allowing time for the nationwide opposition to get organized. The upshot is that we are squandering the benefits of deliberative democracy: assessing budgetary options, comparing them, debating the tradeoffs and then choosing among the options in an informed and rational manner. The two parties don't even try anymore to forge a public consensus on what we need to spend on and what we should tax. Neither party seemingly assesses long-term spending needs, nor proposes a tax structure to align with those needs. With so much wealth flowing to the richest Americans this year, we haven't yet called on them to help pay more of the bills. Instead, we are coasting by with massive borrowing. Interest rates are very low, and so it is easy to borrow and to service the debt. Yet such lucky conditions for massive federal borrowing could flip in future years. So, while I wholeheartedly subscribe to the new Covid-19 relief package, I object to the way we arrived at it and the way we are paying for it. I would feel better for today's young people, who will be servicing the public debt in the future, if we resolve to budget in a more serious and deliberative way in the future, including higher taxes on wealthy Americans as part of the deal. https://www.cnn.com/2020/12/22/opinions/stimulus-deal-ugly-part-sachs/index.html