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."

Why Felines Make the Purr-fect White House Pet By Gwen Cooper "Tradition has it that Adolf Hitler hated cats,” Roger A. Caras notes in his book Celebrating Cats. “He probably did; everything else was wrong with him." Now, I’m certainly not saying—or even implying!—that any world leader without a cat is basically Hitler. That would be absurd. But I’m not not saying it, either. I guess my overall point is that any president, prime minister, potentate, or poobah looking to dispel rumors that he or she is the literal reincarnation of Adolf Hitler—and reasonable people can probably agree that “isn’t Hitler” is among the more desirable personal traits a world leader can have—would be well advised to adopt a cat or two (or possibly even five) in order to put such rumors to rest. It would appear that President-Elect Joe Biden has taken this advice to heart; word on the street is that the pitter-patter of feline feet will once again be heard in the Oval Office come January 20th. This is just as it should be, because everybody knows that cats make the very best Presidential pets—an empirical and inarguable fact attested to by a wide range of U.S. presidents from Theodore Roosevelt to John F. Kennedy to Ronald Reagan to Bill Clinton. Abraham Lincoln reportedly took in numerous strays during his time in office and was gifted by a cabinet member with two kittens named Tabby and Dixie. “Dixie is smarter than my whole cabinet,” Lincoln allegedly remarked on several occasions—which seems a bit hard upon the cabinet member who gave him Dixie in the first place, yet nevertheless was likely an accurate assessment. Here are but a few of the reasons why cats make far superior Oval Office companions to the various dogs, goats, parrots, fighting cocks (stay classy, Andrew Jackson), horses, rabbits, and other critters that have graced the Executive Branch over the past two-and-a-half centuries: Cats keep you humble. You may be President of the United States, Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces, and putative leader of the free world, but as far as your cat’s concerned, you’ll always first and foremost be Chief-Back-Scratcher and Undersecretary of Opening Doors (and closing them, and opening them, and closing them, and…). And while ascending to the Presidency may grant you nearly godlike authority—the nuclear “football” giving you literal life-and-death power over billions of people at the push of a button—it’s hard to think of a better memento mori than waking up of a morning to find your cat’s cheerful puckered bung wedged firmly against your cheek. I’m the most powerful human being in the world, probably won’t be the first thought that crosses your mind. But cats aren’t humble themselves. It’s impossible not to feel affection for dogs with all their engaging, abject humility—the way they yip their eagerness and loll their tongues and pant excitedly and roll around on their backs with a complete lack of self-consciousness as they beg complete strangers to rub their tummies. While such displays undoubtedly add cheer to the homes of many a private citizen, they’re hardly appropriate in public office when it comes to conducting diplomacy or affairs of state. Cats, on the other hand, are dignified and circumspect creatures, and therefore suitable to grace even the highest level of sensitive meetings. Not to mention, as any power player from Blofeld to Don Corleone can confirm, there’s no better companion animal for helping you gain psychological dominance over others in a meeting than a cat. “If he’s managed to gain mastery over this proud creature,” attendees will be asking themselves, “what can’t he do?” Cats help you keep a clean desk. Granted, this is primarily accomplished by their somewhat annoying (but also endearing!) habit of constantly pushing things off of desks. But…still. It simply wouldn’t do to have presidential photo ops take place in front of a Resolute Desk that looks like something salvaged from the set of Sanford and Son. Cats are mousers. Old houses—and the White House certainly qualifies as one—have a great deal of charm, but they seem to be particular magnets for mice. This is especially true of an older home that hosts a higher-than-average number of banquets and dinner parties. This is why a Mouser-in-Residence makes such purr-fect sense. Skeptical? The Brits have long recognized the wisdom of deploying a four-legged front line when it comes to pest control, and have commissioned an official Chief Mouser to the Cabinet Office, who lives in the Prime Minister’s residence, since the 1500s. (The current Chief Mouser, a brown-and-white tabby named Larry, has been at 10 Downing Street since 2011.) Certain “budget hawk” types like to go on and on and on about “wasteful government spending” and “lazy bureaucrats” and so forth. But a White House cat in her prime is one federal employee who will satisfy even the hawkiest hawk—and she’ll look absolutely adorable while doing so. A cat won’t poop all over the Great Lawn. Unlike a dog. Just sayin’. Gwen Cooper is the New York Times bestselling author of Homer's Odyssey: A Fearless Feline Tale, or How I Learned About Love and Life with a Blind Wonder Cat; My Life in a Cat House: True Tales of Love, Laughter, and Living with Five Felines; Spray Anything: More True Tales of Homer and the Gang; and The Book of PAWSOME: Head Bonks, Raspy Tongues, and 101 Reasons Why Cats Make Us So, So Happy; along with numerous other titles. Her work has been published in nearly two-dozen languages. Gwen lives in Jersey City with her husband, Laurence. She also lives with her two perfect cats--Clayton "the Tripod" and his litter-mate, Fanny--who aren't impressed with any of it. Check out a full list of Gwen's titles on her Amazon.com author page.

Jeffrey D. Sachs | November 27, 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) Last month, I wrote that Amy Coney Barrett would help to usher in a new post-truth jurisprudence on the Supreme Court. While I had cited her anti-science statements on climate change, her arrival on the court has created a new 5-4 majority against public-health science at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic. When it ruled this week against New York state's decision to limit religious gatherings in a few high-incidence parts of New York City, the court proved the dangers of scientifically illiterate judges overturning government decisions that were based on scientific evidence. The immediate effect on New York City is moot because the state had already lifted the particular orders under review. The grave, imminent danger lies in the rest of the country, where public health authorities will feel hamstrung to restrict religious gatherings even when the virus is spreading out of control. The two cases under review were brought by two religious bodies: the Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn and Agudath Israel of America, an Orthodox Jewish group. Both objected to stringent limits on religious gatherings in particularly hard-hit neighborhoods in Brooklyn. The court's five conservative justices, a new majority with Barrett now on the bench, argued that the state's limits on religious gatherings violated "the minimum requirement of neutrality" to religion under the First Amendment. The court majority characterized the violation of neutrality this way: "In a red zone, while a synagogue or church may not admit more than 10 persons, businesses categorized as 'essential' may admit as many people as they wish. And the list of 'essential' businesses includes things such as acupuncture facilities, camp grounds, garages, as well as many whose services are not limited to those that can be regarded as essential, such as all plants manufacturing chemicals and microelectronics and all transportation facilities." In his concurring opinion, Justice Neil Gorsuch opines as follows: "So, at least according to the Governor, it may be unsafe to go to church, but it is always fine to pick up another bottle of wine, shop for a new bike, or spend the afternoon exploring your distal points and meridians. Who knew public health would so perfectly align with secular convenience? ... The only explanation for treating religious places differently seems to be a judgment that what happens there just isn't as 'essential' as what happens in secular spaces. Indeed, the Governor is remarkably frank about this: In his judgment laundry and liquor, travel and tools, are all 'essential' while traditional religious exercises are not. That is exactly the kind of discrimination the First Amendment forbids." Justice Brett Kavanaugh argued similarly: "The State argues that it has not impermissibly discriminated against religion because some secular businesses such as movie theaters must remain closed and are thus treated less favorably than houses of worship. But under this Court's precedents, it does not suffice for a State to point out that, as compared to houses of worship, some secular businesses are subject to similarly severe or even more severe restrictions ... Rather, once a State creates a favored class of businesses, as New York has done in this case, the State must justify why houses of worship are excluded from that favored class." The problem is that the apparently scientifically illiterate majority on the court missed the entire point of the restriction on religious services. Gorsuch mistakenly claims that New York state deems laundry and liquor as essential but religious services as not essential. That is false. Kavanaugh mistakenly claims that New York state failed to justify why houses of worship are excluded from the "favored class" of businesses with lesser restrictions. This too is false. Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, writing in the minority, explained the basic scientific facts that were completely overlooked by the majority: "But JUSTICE GORSUCH does not even try to square his examples with the conditions medical experts tell us facilitate the spread of COVID-19: large groups of people gathering, speaking, and singing in close proximity indoors for extended periods of time ... Unlike religious services, which 'have every one of th(ose) risk factors,' ... bike repair shops and liquor stores generally do not feature customers gathering inside to sing and speak together for an hour or more at a time. ('Epidemiologists and physicians generally agree that religious services are among the riskiest activities'). Justices of this Court play a deadly game in second guessing the expert judgment of health officials about the environments in which a contagious virus, now infecting a million Americans each week, spreads most easily." In fact, the great risks for transmission are indoor places like religious services, restaurants, concert halls and theaters where large groups are together for a considerable period of time, typically an hour or more. As Justices Sotomayor and Kagan point out, "New York treats houses of worship far more favorably than their secular comparators," by "requiring movie theaters, concert venues, and sporting arenas subject to New York's regulation to close entirely, but allowing houses of worship to open subject to capacity restrictions." A recent study by Stanford University researchers published in Nature Magazine made the same point regarding the highest risks of viral transmission: "on average across metro areas, full-service restaurants, gyms, hotels, cafes, religious organizations, and limited-service restaurants produced the largest predicted increases in infections when reopened." What is especially disappointing in the Supreme Court decision is that the lower court had made the correct points very clearly in a decision that was brazenly overlooked by the majority decision. The Federal District Court had noted that: "Among the other problematic features of religious gatherings, congregants arrive and leave at the same time, physically greet one another, sit or stand close together, share or pass objects, and sing or chant in a way that allows for airborne transmission of the virus." None of this is to argue that New York state's regulations were perfectly drawn. That is not the point. The point is that the Supreme Court should be on the side of saving lives and urging rational, science-based behavior by all, especially at this moment of maximum peril to the population. Even more than the Supreme Court, religious groups should also be siding actively and energetically with public health authorities, both to protect their own congregants and all of society. Pope Francis succored Catholics around the world by shifting to an online Mass in response to the quarantine. His recent New York Times op-ed eloquently makes the point that the common good takes precedence over simplistic appeals to "personal freedom" in protests against justified public health measures. Our religious faiths are the great teachers of the supreme value of human life, and they can be great healers for those in mental distress during the pandemic. The message to the American people should be a united one, with the nation's faith leaders, public health specialists, the politicians and, yes, Supreme Court justices using scientific knowledge combined with compassion to end the pandemic with the maximum speed and the least further suffering and loss of life. https://www.cnn.com/2020/11/27/opinions/scientifically-illiterate-scotus-covid-decision-sachs/index.html

November 27, 2020 Jeffrey D. Sachs | Project Syndicate The world’s environmental, social, and security problems are now so complex and interconnected that only strong cooperation within and across regions will suffice to manage them. To achieve it, US President-elect Joe Biden’s success in healing a deeply divided America will be essential. NEW YORK – Owing to America’s disproportionate military, financial, and technological power, the breakdown of rational politics in the United States is the most dangerous fact for the world today. And while President Donald Trump’s recent election defeat is a necessary step toward restoring sanity to American politics, it is only the first of many that will be required to stop the downward slide of the US and convince the rest of the world that the country no longer poses a threat to itself or others. There are two urgent challenges facing America and the world in the wake of the US election. First, President-elect Joe Biden must take on the long uphill struggle to restore some measure of domestic political stability. Second, other regions of the world should forge their own paths of global cooperation, rather than waiting in vain for the US to return to global leadership. AMERICA’S RATIONALITY CRISIS The profound crisis of US politics has been starkly demonstrated in two ways this year. First, the federal government failed utterly to suppress the COVID-19 pandemic – or even to try. As 2020 draws to a close, the daily rate of new cases is approaching 200,000, far exceeding the previous peaks in April and July. During the week of November 15-21, the US had nearly 1.2 million newly confirmed cases, while China, America’s putative Great Power rival, had just 86 newly confirmed cases, despite having more than four times the US population. Second, the US can no longer manage presidential elections according to basic democratic standards. While the voting itself was highly orderly, with a large turnout and a careful, transparent ballot-counting process, the election did not produce the needed consensus on the outcome. Trump falsely and notoriously claimed victory on election night, and then, as Biden took the lead as mail-in ballots were counted, Trump brazenly claimed massive electoral fraud without a shred of corroborating evidence. Yet Trump’s claims were backed by senior members of the Republican Party, leading commentators in the right-wing media ecosystem, a burgeoning number of Facebook groups, and a shockingly high 75% of Republicans. One is tempted to blame the COVID-19 and election fiasco on Trump himself, and Trump’s personal role was no doubt both malign and essential. He is a sociopath and a demagogue, whose political repertoire has consisted of fueling division, evading responsibility, and promoting delusions. But factors beyond Trump are also at play. This is the fourth US presidential election in a generation, after all, that has been followed by a crisis of legitimacy. The 2000 election was decided only by a contentious Supreme Court decision that stopped a recount in Florida, handing the state – and the presidency – to George W. Bush by 537 votes. Following Barack Obama’s victory in 2008, Trump concocted doubts about Obama’s birthplace and citizenship. So-called birtherism was as destructive of public trust as it was phony to the core. The 2016 election was heavily influenced by Russian meddling that Trump both welcomed and denied. Moreover, in both 2000 and 2016, the Republican candidate won in the Electoral College despite losing the national popular vote. And, despite Trump’s extraordinary personal flouting of norms, most GOP leaders, many media outlets, and millions of voters supported and facilitated his outlandish behavior. Trump is not only a mentally disordered individual, but also a symptom of a gravely damaged body politic. A FAILED GREAT POWER? The events of 2020 are the latest additions to a growing list of American political debacles, both foreign and domestic. Since 2000, US foreign policy has been erratic at best. The US-led or US-backed wars since 2000 have created political and humanitarian disasters in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, and Yemen. Obama’s two foreign-policy successes, joining the Paris climate agreement and negotiating a nuclear agreement with Iran in 2015, were both reversed by Trump, despite nearly global opposition. At home, the US has failed to reinvest in its own dilapidated infrastructure, despite the rising frequency of massive losses from natural disasters such as wildfires in the West and flooding following devastating tropical storms. In addition to COVID-19, the US has suffered an epidemic of what Anne Case and Angus Deaton call, chillingly and accurately, “deaths of despair” (from suicide, drug overdose, and alcoholism) among working-class families, also without a meaningful policy response. And the US budget deficit is now chronically high at roughly 5% of GDP – even reaching an extraordinary 16% of GDP in 2020 due to COVID-19 – reflecting the lack of any semblance of political consensus about the federal government’s long-term funding and priorities. The list goes on and on. Reflecting the breakdown of the legislative process, there has scarcely been a major domestic federal policy in the past 20 years that has been enacted by Congress rather than implemented by executive order of the President. The exceptions, such as the 2010 Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) and the 2017 tax cut, were approved by tiny margins with no support from the losing party. There are many explanations for the derangement of US politics, and there are no doubt many intertwined processes at work. Surveying them makes clear that while Trump’s psychopathy has surely aggravated America’s political crisis, his presidency reflects the decline of US problem-solving and consensus-building over the course of more than four decades. SOURCES OF SYSTEMIC STRAIN Among the factors underlying decades of increasingly frequent national failures and bouts of malaise, observers have identified an array of economic, cultural, and political trends. Rapid technological change. The US and some other high-income countries are in the grips of the “future shock” envisaged 50 years ago by the futurologist Alvin Toffler. The rapid shift to the digital age has deeply disrupted and divided US society. A huge and growing gulf has appeared between a professional class, comprising those with a bachelor’s degree or higher, most of whom have experienced rising incomes and living standards, and workers with less than a bachelor’s degree, who have tended to suffer falling earnings, home foreclosures, and the effects of automation on the labor market. Trump rode the ressentiment of disaffected white, working-class voters to power in 2016. White backlash. The US is in a long-term transition from an overwhelmingly white, Protestant nation where de jure and de facto discrimination prevailed until the 1960s, to a majority non-white nation in which people of color are finally winning civil rights. Since the 1970s, this has led to often-furious white reaction. Obama represented the vanguard of the new multiracial society, and Trump an especially brutal backlash. (In the weeks after the election, Trump openly and brazenly urged Republican election board members not to certify the votes from mostly African-American Detroit.) The end of social democratic politics. The US had a majoritarian social democratic ethos, led by the Democratic Party, from the New Deal of Franklin D. Roosevelt (1933-45) to the Great Society of Lyndon Johnson (1963-68). Government expanded to provide a widening range of social protection, in alliance with the growing organized labor movement. Yet this majority bloc collapsed after 1968, mainly because the Civil Rights era of the 1960s spurred an exodus of white working-class voters and southern “Dixiecrats” in Congress to the Republican Party. The Republicans became the party of white backlash and social conservatives who opposed “big government,” while the Democrats became the party of professionals, minorities, and social progressives calling for racial, gender, and sexual and reproductive rights. The prior consensus for social-democratic policies collapsed. The evangelical awakening. The US experienced a surge of white Christian evangelical religiosity and activism from the 1950s till the early 2010s. Mainline Christians flocked to socially conservative evangelical mega-churches that preached a form of biblical literalism that was anti-science and fervently anti-government. Instead of funding social programs with their taxes, congregants were told by their preachers to oppose taxes and instead to give larger tithes to the churches in order to reap divine returns. White evangelicals have aggressively opposed the civil-rights and progressive social agenda, as well as government social protection. They were ardent supporters of the Cold War as a crusade against the godless Soviet Union, and more recently have supported wars against militant Islam and trade wars against atheistic China. In 2016 and 2020, they voted overwhelmingly for Trump. Plutocracy. Policy gridlock has served the interests of the wealthiest Americans, who are benefiting from the greatest transfer of wealth from the poor and middle-class to the rich in human history, while also being assured that political paralysis will keep them free of new federal taxes. The plutocracy has been abetted by successive Supreme Court rulings that have permitted unlimited anonymous campaign contributions. It is estimated that $14 billion was spent in the 2020 elections, with each party backed by dozens of billionaires. Antiquated political institutions. The longevity of political institutions is a double-edged sword. The core of the US constitutional system dates back to 1787. It included dysfunctional anomalies such as the Electoral College, first-past-the-post voting in single-member election districts, and an overly powerful president. These institutions are now baked into the US political system, even as they lead to over-weighting of votes from sparsely populated states, a two-party system that severely distorts the representation of public opinion, an autocratic executive, a near-moribund Congress, and a Supreme Court that has been weaponized by the main political parties. Social media. Marshall McLuhan was right that fundamental changes in the media of communications reshape politics and culture. Radio broadcasting and mass-circulation newspapers led to the rise of public relations, mass advertising, and highly personalized politics through mass communication. The new social media have led to the disintegration of a single national discourse and the pervasive misrepresentation of reality. With as many “truths” as Facebook groups, agreement on basic facts, much less a consensus about what they mean, has collapsed. (For a play-by-play account of the rise of many of these forces during the 1970s, see Rick Perlstein’s Reaganland). THE BLEAK AMERICAN EXCEPTION Each of these factors shines a light on one facet of today’s reality. Some of them are common to most high-income democracies. Western Europe, like the US, faces rising inequalities from technological change, a social media-driven breakdown of consensus, and deepening political divides caused by tensions accompanying its societies’ changing ethnic composition. In the US, ethnic change reflects the growing share of Hispanic and Asian populations, whereas in Europe it has been driven largely by four decades of immigration from the Middle East and Africa. Yet many of the factors are specific to the US. Europe has not experienced a collapse of social democratic norms, which are deeply embedded in the European Union’s laws and institutions. Europe does not have America’s entrenched white supremacist politics, which the earth-shattering crimes of Nazism discredited and uprooted more thoroughly. Nor does Europe have the religious-based and politicized social conservatism seen among America’s white Evangelicals. And by virtue of Europe’s utterly tumultuous history, notably the wars and revolutions of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, its parliamentary democracies are generally more up-to-date and better structured than America’s eighteenth-century presidential model. There will be no quick fixes for the US. Only with good fortune and skilled leadership will the US pull itself out of the downward spiral of internal division and external war that has characterized the country for more than 40 years. Biden will aim to heal American divides, a task for which he is well suited. He is a centrist, a moderate, a rationalist, and a gentleman. He understands disaffected white America as well as any US political leader, and he knows that he needs to win the support of swing states and Republicans in Congress, not run over them. Nor does he bear grudges. He knows that sharp elbows are part of politics and wisely shrugs off the jabs, insults, and preposterous claims. But these highly favorable personal traits will not be sufficient. When Trump’s predecessor, Obama, took office in 2009, the Democrats controlled both houses of Congress and immediately began to pass legislation on almost straight party-line votes over united Republican opposition. Such party-line voting was unusual for the US Congress and was a clear expression of political polarization. But since 2010, when the Democrats lost their majority in the House of Representatives, divided government has prevailed, with the exception of 2017-18, when Republicans controlled the White House and both houses of Congress. This has blocked nearly all legislative initiatives. Parliamentary democracies can function routinely with straight party-line voting, because the government (almost by definition) has the majority or plurality of votes needed to enact legislation. In the US, by contrast, whenever the president and at least one house of Congress are controlled by different parties, or when there is an effective blocking coalition in the 100-member Senate due to the filibuster rule (which requires a 60-vote supermajority for some legislation), party-line voting means paralysis. There is a slight chance that Biden will have a working majority in both houses of Congress, if the Democrats win the two Senate runoff elections in Georgia on January 5. A sweep for the Democrats would give each party 50 seats, with Vice President-elect Kamala Harris casting a tie-breaking vote. It is more likely, however, that Biden will need Republican votes in the Senate, and often in the House as well (when a few Democrats vote against the president). This will pit the structural factors leading to division in the US against the legislative imperatives for action and change. Biden will then need to take his case to the people in an effort to win over some moderate Republicans to restart the gears of the federal government. In the US system, a president can do much without legislation. Trump managed his entire foreign policy, including trade and sanctions, almost without any congressional input, and Biden, too, will no doubt govern by decree, at least in some areas. Yet this practice has several serious downsides. First, it is autocratic. Second, executive orders alone generally do not provide federal financing, only regulatory changes. Third, executive orders are easily overturned by the next president, and therefore do not bind future governments or promote the necessary long-term changes to business investments. THE ACTIVE EXECUTIVE In any event, Biden will have no choice but to rely on executive orders at the start of his administration. This will be necessary to re-establish the federal role in containing COVID-19, which will be enormously beneficial in overcoming the crisis. Likewise, Biden will not have to rely on Congress to return the US to United Nations treaties and agencies, including the Paris climate agreement and the World Health Organization. He will most likely return the US to the Iran nuclear deal and other UN agencies and processes as well, and rescind various unilateral tariff measures and sanctions imposed by Trump. And he will likely announce by executive order the US goal of reaching net-zero greenhouse-gas emissions (“climate neutrality”) by 2050, in line with the EU, Japan, Korea, and China (which has set 2060 as its target date). Yet accomplishing more than this will require ending the logjam in Congress, which can be accomplished only if enough independent and Republican voters get on board. By dint of personality and pragmatic policy vision, Biden has the skills to win such backing. The question is whether today’s deeply divided Americans can revive a long-dormant capacity to reason together. Biden will have to convince conservative white working-class voters that COVID-19 control, more accessible health care, higher taxes on the rich, and relief on crippling student debt are policies intended for them and their families, rather than being narrowly aimed at Democratic Party constituencies that these voters shun. To win cross-party support, Biden has to sell the inclusiveness of social democratic policies, rather than relying on identity-based appeals. Biden must also convince more voters that a shift to renewable energy and away from fossil fuels will deliver a similar nationwide boon. Fortunately, most US states, both blue (Democratic) and red (Republican), have vast untapped wind and solar power potential. Moreover, the swing states of the industrial heartland (including Wisconsin, Michigan, and Ohio) and northern Appalachia (including Pennsylvania, Kentucky, and West Virginia) would play a huge role in building the solar panels, wind turbines, and electric vehicles that will form the heart of the low-carbon economy. Mayors of eight major cities in the industrial heartland recently called for precisely this kind of reindustrialization policy to build the new green economy. THE WORLD AFTER AMERICA Whatever happens in the US during the 2020s, important lessons for the rest of the world are already clear. Most important, the US will, at best, be a cooperating partner in the coming decade. It is far too wounded and divided – and often confused and misdirected – to provide global leadership. The Asian-Pacific region has vastly outpaced the US and Europe economically during the pandemic, and will continue to drive global growth in 2021. Europe above all needs to look beyond its long-strained relations with the US to forge its own foreign policy, including security policy, and defense capability, as well as boost its competitiveness in the new digital technologies. The US under Biden will be a good partner, but there is no substitute for Europe achieving its goal of “strategic autonomy.” Moreover, Europe is the world’s leader in sustainable development policies, and should use its position to promote environmental sustainability and social inclusion around the world. The EU needs to craft its own cooperative policies with China, rather than duck behind the US. And it needs to continue to lead on global governance issues such as digital taxation, digital security, and digital privacy, areas where Europe is well ahead of the US and will remain so for the coming decade. Asia, for its part, has the opportunity to break free of a US cold-war mentality obsessed with “containing” China and isolating it from its neighbors – a preposterous idea that has nonetheless recently animated both US parties. Asia’s growing economic and technological strength will best be nurtured by strong regional institutions. The newly signed Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), a free-trade area that includes the ten Association of Southeast Asian Nations countries, along with China, Japan, Korea, Australia, and New Zealand, is a promising harbinger of cooperation within Asia, and between Asia and the rest of the world. In fact, the Biden administration should welcome a strong Europe and regional initiatives such as the RCEP, and aim to bring the US in as a supportive partner. We are past the era of hegemonic leadership, whether by the US or any other country. The world’s environmental, social, and security problems are now so complex and interconnected that only strong cooperation within and across regions will suffice to manage them. Biden’s success in healing a deeply divided America will be essential not only to restoring political rationality and problem-solving capacity at home, but also to enabling a constructive US contribution to the global cooperation we so urgently need. https://www.project-syndicate.org/onpoint/america-political-crisis-and-global-cooperation-by-jeffrey-d-sachs-2020-11?h=pH%2foOwgQpqUg9Qc9qjwOa8YBZwEijS%2bwcrkIr0NEdNU%3d&

November 27, 2020 Dear Editor, My last trip to New York City occurred in March, on the weekend before Saint Patrick's Day.  The train in was noticeably less populated.  Perhaps it was a week or so later that life officially changed, that long stretch of time continuing to the present.  I think what we’ll all remember is the experience of only gradually understanding what began as a news story about somewhere else thousands of miles away, was to become the story of our time, indeed of our lives.  Perhaps our minds initially resisted such a drastic reorientation, especially regarding our freedom to move about, and our safety. I live on a quiet Connecticut suburban street, which, in the past eight months I have become much more familiar with than I would have ever thought possible.  In late March I began taking daily walks, just to the end of the street and back--roughly a half hour's walk.  Only the rare car would pass by--no one was going anywhere.  The stillness was profound.  The birds became louder and more communicative with one another than I ever recalled.  Slowly, slowly, the last of winter gave way to early signs of spring.  I felt there wasn't a bud, a leaf, or green shoot that escaped my attention.  There was surely never a more closely examined change of season.  The senses become more focused when the world narrows. As the temperature warmed, I encountered the occasional neighbor out walking, and while remaining on our respective sides of the street. we would exchange brief pleasantries about the weather. The larger and more obvious topic was studiously avoided.  Though my world narrowed down to my house and street, I was painfully aware of my good fortune when speaking to friends in Manhattan, confined to their cramped apartments, fearful of their grocery stores and disgusted by the increasing filth on the streets of their neighborhoods.  I had never been absent from the city for so long, and it is hard to relate these descriptions to my memories. I am fortunate that I am a painter, always absorbed in my work.  The days pass swiftly, though there is a growing sense of disquiet as the season turns once again towards winter.  The trees are now bare, and still we wait. Here’s to 2021, Pernel Berkeley/Danbury, Conn. Pernel Berkeley attended Bennington College and graduated from the School of Visual Arts. She can be found every day in her studio with a pencil or paint brush in hand, listening to Tom Petty.

By Jessie Seigel/Washington, D.C. This week, President Trump finally permitted some in his Administration to communicate with President-Elect Joe Biden’s transition team. But don’t get comfortable. Don’t think the Trump Administration and its backers have given up on turning our country into their own fiefdom to whatever degree they are able. Don’t listen to what they say. Keep your eye on what they do. Judging by his actions, Trump’s plan has been multifaceted. First, if possible, complete a de facto coup by suppressing votes, getting canvassing boards to throw out legitimate ballots from Democratic districts en masse (especially urban majority Black Democratic districts), while also challenging those ballots in court. In Michigan, Trump went so far as to summon Republican state legislators to the White House, trying to enlist them in a plot to ensure Electoral College votes for Trump regardless of whom the public voted for or the Michigan canvassing boards certified. Fortunately, these schemes failed miserably in the states where they were tried. The backup plan, if a coup was not possible? Rush through an executive order permitting Trump to fire and replace nonpartisan civil servants with loyalists who would follow Trump’s orders before he leaves office and undermine Biden’s administration afterwards; create as much doubt about the winner’s legitimacy as possible; and incite violence by right-wing militia groups. In addition, on the international front, Trump has harassed our security agencies to declassify information about their sources and methods, and has had to be dissuaded from attacking Iran’s nuclear facility. In short, Trump’s backup plan has been to cause so much chaos that Biden’s incoming administration cannot govern. Trump has not perpetrated these actions alone. With almost no exceptions, the Republican party has backed Trump’s play. A handful of Republicans have done so openly and loudly, the rest by a deliberate silence that amounts to taking part in Trump’s efforts to install himself as president regardless of the election results. The fact that Trump’s efforts have not, so far, been successful, is irrelevant to the GOP’s participation in his corruption. The Republican party’s own plan, once Biden is in office, most likely is to obstruct any of his administration’s attempts to fix the damage Trump and his minions have done to the country. Their success, of course, is dependent on Mitch McConnell remaining Senate Majority Leader, something the two Georgia Senate runoff elections in January will determine. How are Biden and the Democrats combatting these Republican machinations? Biden and his team have treated Trump’s actions as stunts to be ignored because they know that they honestly and solidly won the election, and have had faith that the courts would support their win. For the weeks since the election, they have moved the transition calmly and steadily forward to the best of their ability, absent the official recognition they should have had. They have been making plans for dealing with COVID-19, and for an early reversal of Trump’s damaging executive orders. This week, Biden began announcing his cabinet appointees—all solid, experienced people. Understandably, once in office, Biden wants to focus on the work of the country: COVID-19, the economy, climate change, immigration, racial equality, infrastructure, reestablishing good relations with allies, and so on. And he must. But, according to a November 17 Washington Post article, the President-Elect “has privately told advisers that he doesn’t want his presidency to be consumed by investigations of his predecessor,” and he “raised concerns that investigations would further divide a country he is trying to unite and risk making his presidency about Trump.” Apparently, one of the unnamed advisers said Biden has made it clear that he “just wants to move on.” We’ve tried “just moving on” before. It is part of what has landed us at the brink of the authoritarian dictatorship we’ve just narrowly escaped. In 1974, President Gerald Ford pardoned President Richard Nixon for his Watergate crimes—spying on the Democratic National Committee in order to steal an election, obstruction of justice, and all else Nixon may have done. Ford’s reasoning was that if Nixon was indicted, tried, and/or convicted, the attention of the President, the Congress, and the American people would be diverted from the country’s policy concerns. According to Ford’s one-time lawyer, Benton Becker, Ford’s decision was also influenced by a 1915 court case, Burdick v. United States, which states that a pardon carries an "imputation of guilt,” and that accepting a pardon is “an admission of guilt.” Therefore, by accepting the pardon, Nixon was accepting his guilt. If this was Ford’s reasoning, it was pure rationalization. The only thing Ford’s pardon did was show those inclined to follow in Nixon’s footsteps what they could get away with. And each time these kinds of crimes are ignored, the next would-be dictator grows bolder and stronger. If we want to protect democracy, there must be a price—a real price—to be paid by perpetrators for the illegal actions they take to destroy democracy. The Washington Post article notes Biden’s stance that his Justice Department will function independently from the White House, and that he will not tell federal law enforcement officials whom or what to investigate or not investigate. That is as it should be. But the article also quotes an unnamed adviser saying that Biden “can set a tone about what he thinks should be done,” even though “he’s not going to be a president who directs the Justice Department one way or the other.” This suggests Biden could set a tone that has the Justice Department letting the Trump Administration off the hook for any crimes they have committed. That would be a deadly mistake for the future of our democracy. When Trump pardons convicted cohorts, as he has just done with Michael Flynn, there may not be much the Justice Department can do. But it is nevertheless imperative that Biden appoint an attorney general with a strong prosecutorial background who will pursue investigations wherever legally indicated and wherever they lead. Only that can give us any hope of reestablishing the rule of law and protecting our democracy against the next onslaught. Because that onslaught will come. Biden has also expressed a genuine desire to bring the country together and represent those who did not vote for him as well as those who did. It is a fine and honorable thing for a president to try to represent all American citizens and to reach out to all of them. But it would be a mistake to confuse the Republican politicians in the Senate or House of Representatives with the American people. Biden appears to have the noble idea that with Trump gone, Republican senators and congressmen will work with him. But the only thing the Republicans work on consistently is obtaining one-party minority rule. They have been working towards this for decades. As early as 1978, former Republican Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich was arguing that politics is simply a merciless “war for power.” In an October 17, 2018 Atlantic article, McKay Coppins wrote that during Gingrich’s two decades in Congress, the Speaker “pioneered a style of partisan combat—replete with name-calling, conspiracy theories, and strategic obstructionism…his strategy was to blow up the bipartisan coalitions that were essential to legislating.” One can draw a direct line from Gingrich’s “partisan combat” to Mitch McConnell’s obstinate obstruction. In 2010, Karl Rove devised the Redistricting Majority Project (REDMAP), whose purpose was to target state legislative races in 16 states (including Wisconsin, Michigan, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas and Florida), so that Republicans could obtain the power to gerrymander. The endgame: placing as many Black and Democratic voters into as few districts as possible, thus establishing large areas of minority Republican control. The ultimate goal of this gerrymandering has been to make that minority control of government perpetual. And the Gingrich-McConnell obstructions are meant to keep power out of Democratic hands, even if a Democratic majority manages to win. One cannot negotiate, compromise or work with people who treat politics as a cutthroat war for power. Turning the other cheek never works well in a boxing ring. One has to fight back. The Democrats don’t have to fight dirty like the McConnells, Gingriches and Trumps. Biden can speak softly. But he must have surrogates who carry big sticks, especially when dealing with Republican Machiavellis. We simply must stop saving the country from fascist machinations only at the last moment, and by the skin of our teeth. 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.

An Insider’s Look at the Impassioned Pandemic Protests in Israel By Joel Dzodin Allies: Donald Trump and Benjamin (Bibi) Netanyahu have often worked hand-in-hand (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90) Political protests have been happening nonstop over the past several months in Israel. As an American-Israeli (or Israeli-American), as I’ve observed and taken part in these demonstrations, I’ve taken pride in the peaceful nature of the sustained protests against Prime Minister Benjamin (Bibi) Netanyahu, especially as we witnessed from afar the violent excesses that roiled American society and tainted the legitimate protests against George Floyd’s murder earlier this year. Much of the anger fueling these demonstrations is due to the government’s failure to control the spread of COVID-19 and the resulting skyrocketing unemployment and economic hardship here. In my own city, Holon, near Tel Aviv, these protests have been happening every Thursday and Saturday evening at three different locations. We never know how many people will show up each time, but those that do come hold aloft signs that are visible to the cars passing through the traffic circle. There’s also a loudspeaker playing anti-Bibi tunes and chants which are picked up by the assembled protesters. And sometimes the cars passing by honk a distinctive series of beeps that show support. Following several potentially violent actions by supporters of Netanyahu, such as aggressive, in-your-face taunts and verbal threats and projectiles thrown from passing cars, police protection has been added to ensure our right to protest safely. A certain jovial atmosphere has emerged, so when pro-Bibi cars passing our protest slow down to shout “Rock Bibi!” (“Only Bibi!), we protesters shout back in unison ”IN JAIL!” It remains to be seen if these ongoing weekly protests will bear fruit and lead to increased public support for a serious change in leadership. Ever since the first measures to restrict the spread of COVID-19 in Israel were implemented in March. 2020, the government has consistently preserved and protected the fundamental right to public protest, even during our two periods of sustained lockdown. But as calls for Netanyahu to resign have become more strident and turned into an ongoing fixture in the daily news, the Netanyahu government has unsuccessfully sought to curb such activities, in the name of public safety and falsely claiming that they had led to an increase in COVID-19 cases. To date, each such challenge has been rebuffed by Israel’s Ministry of Justice, although limited restrictions have been adopted at times, such as during our second lockdown when protestors were required to remain within one one kilometer (0.6 miles) of their place of residence. By and large, protesters have observed the mandated social distancing of two meters (6.6 feet) , and the wearing of masks. Photographing the weekly protests has been challenging. The venue of our activity is at a major traffic circle and the lighting conditions at night are poor. I’ve experimented using different lenses ranging from an old 1971 Nikkor f1.4 50mm lens to a more modern professional-grade f2.8 Nikon zoom lens. The key factor in getting semi-decent images has been to shoot at very high ISO settings and most of the images reproduced here were captured at ISO 10,000, using only ambient light on the evening of November 14. From my vantage point, participating in these demonstrations has been an uplifting and inspiring example of how a democracy should function, both in terms of their peaceful nature and the official protection extended by the police to make sure we stay safe. Both Trump and Bibi have been employing very similar populist dog whistles to energize their respective bases, while simultaneously dismissing, demonizing and marginalizing their opposition. Not that long ago, Netanyahu became the longest-serving Prime Minister in Israel’s history. He has succeeded in radically steering the nation’s direction toward the extreme nationalist right, including an increasing embrace of the settlement enterprise that has rent asunder the nation’s sense of unity and cohesion, and abandoned much of the vision of its founding generation. While it is true that we ourselves must make the hard decisions that directly affect our security and sense of purpose, we must also recognize the extent to which the right wing’s settlement enterprise has caused many nations to increasingly see us as a pariah state, heading toward a form of apartheid. I suspect that not everyone who has been joining these demonstrations is against the settlements; many, if not most, are demanding a restoration of honesty and a repudiation of corrupt leadership whose failure to effectively deal with the pandemic has caused economic havoc to all segments of the political spectrum. Netanyahu’s pending trials on three serious corruption charges will play out at a crucial time when historic new alliances are being forged, as states try to respond to the growing power and influence of Iran, and events here will continue to impact American foreign policy, as we head into a new and radically different administration under President-Elect Joe Biden. EXCLUSIVE PHOTOS BY JOEL DZODIN The sign says LECH (GO!) and the stylized letter “lamed” is taken from Bibi's own Likud party logo Acting now to pass on a better country to the next generation The signs say “We're sick of you out-of-touch politicians” (l) and “Bribery-Fraud-Breach of Trust” (r) Facing the traffic circle Some drivers beep their support, while others express derision One of the founding generation seeking change and reform Eitan, a member of the founding generation, calls for social and political reform Listening to Eitan's words of encouragement, which connect the weekly Torah portion (Parsha) read in the synagogue to the goals of the ongoing protests The numbers refer to the criminal case numbers brought against Netanyahu Reminding Israeli voters of the Netanyahu corruption cases, viewed against the background of one of Holon’s four sister city’s seals Facing the voters driving in the nearby Holon traffic circle Father and daughter, and thoughts of what she will inherit Starting early. The sign is a play on words of a popular song and says “C'mon Bibi, Go home; Thank you and goodbye” Not so many years from now, she'll vote and perhaps run for office Father and son In the midst of chanting slogans, a moment of meditation At the barricade It's rare to see protest signs in English In German or Hebrew, the wish is the same. The sign says “Corrupt; Go Home” Grandmother and granddaughter protesting for a better future Marching for her. The sign says “Bibi, get out of my future” Ask her and she'll tell you: “Bibi, Habeita” (Bibi, Go Home) To paraphrase President John F. Kennedy: Let the word go forth from this time and place, to friend and foe alike, that the torch has been passed to a new generation of Israelis Last but not least, the protection of the police is appreciated. There have been no projectiles thrown since they began standing guard some weeks back Joel Dzodin is a former Detroiter now living in Israel. At different points in his life he has worked as an archaeologist, an IT Help Desk guy, and an online English teacher to adults around the world. Photography has long been a major passion and theme in his life, since taking his first photos at the age of 6, using a Kodak box camera. A lot of Joel’s photographs focus on the small unexamined details of everyday life, such as the beauty of minute water condensation that forms on cold bottles in the hot Israeli weather. During Joel’s time in Israel, he has been fortunate to photograph the activities of the NGO PeacePlayers International, Middle East, witnessing firsthand how authentic friendships can be forged between Jews and Arabs despite long-standing and severe religious, cultural and ideological barriers. He is an inveterate hoarder of technological antiques, so that his young children once referred to his home office as "The NASA Control Room." One of Joel’s major pleasures during normal times is to wander the fields and trails of Israel, stumbling over prehistoric and historic evidence of previous human settlement. During the pandemic, he has had to occupy himself at home by shooting portraits of ants and spiders also sheltering in place, using a mid-1970s Nikon close-up lens adapted for today's digital cameras. Today, Joel lives near Tel Aviv with his wife Susanne, whom he met on a kibbutz in 1975. They have two adult children, one living in the U.S. and the other in Israel. During the current (second) lockdown, he has to practice social distancing outside with his three grandchildren, two of whom are already speaking English.

By Victoria Rolfe This is, of course, the time of year that we traditionally give thanks for our blessings. We might be tempted this year to grumble about what we’re not thankful for, but believe me, if you think about it, we still should feel grateful. Even if our Thanksgiving table has been reduced to our immediate household this year, there are still blessings to appreciate in our lives. We express gratitude for our warm homes, our families, our health, the bountiful food set before us, and whatever other good fortune has befallen us during the course of the year. Then we dig in, and move on to other things; sports, the weather, movies, politics (and hopefully World War III does not erupt at the dinner table at this point). But what about the other 364 days of the year? And what, pray tell, does this have to do with frugality? In a word… everything! Why? If you think about it for a moment, the very cause of overspending is exactly the opposite of gratitude and thankfulness. If we are truly content and happy with what we have in our lives at this very moment, then why would we feel the need to go out and acquire (buy) more (and more) stuff? We wouldn’t. It’s one thing to pay lip service to thankfulness, but unless we truly feel it in our hearts, we will never be completely content and will never resist that constant urge to acquire more. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying you’re a bad person every time you buy something. And it is absolutely human nature to continually want more, in fact, I would argue not only human but animal nature as well. It is bred into us as a survival mechanism. In a world of “survival of the fittest” and scarcity, this instinct is necessary to keep us alive. But herein lies the rub. We no longer live in that world of scarcity, but unfortunately, our basic animal instinct has not caught up with that fact. So now instead of a nice little cache of saved up nuts and berries to get us through the colder months, we have 15 pairs of shoes and a few dozen pieces of jewelry stashed away. And that “wanting itch” will just not go away. Comparison is another enemy of contentedness. We don’t only live in our own little bubble, but we are constantly looking at what everyone else has. I can’t even fathom what the survival mechanism is in play here but animals definitely do this too. If you’ve ever had more than one cat, it is comical to watch them run to the other’s bowl before they have even finished their own meal, just to make sure the other cat did not get something better than they did. If you live in a 1,500-square foot house while everyone around you is in a tiny shack, you feel like a queen, but how would you feel if everyone else was living in a 4,000-square foot “McMansion”? Is there anything different about your 1,500 house? No. So what changed your level of happiness? Most people in our country live far more opulent lives than a large percent of the world’s population, even more opulent than the general population of our own country did 50 years ago. But since see we don’t see them (or remember that simpler time), we are constantly striving for something better. The problem is that there is never an endgame to this desire. And people literally go into debt every day because of it. I’m not saying it is easy, and it is certainly going against the very grain of our instinctual nature, but in the long run, your life will be more deeply satisfying and happy if you can fight the urge to splurge and feel the rich ample abundance of what you already have. And that, my friends, is what being frugal is all about. Wishing you all a very happy Thanksgiving weekend! If you would like to read more about living a life of peaceful gratitude (or living better on less) click here: https://brightfuture2budget4.weebly.com/blog/the-joy-of-slow-acquisition Victoria Rolfe is a family budget coach who has had a lifetime of experience in the art and joy of frugal living and its resulting financial freedom. She spent many years as a stay-at-home mom and home economist and rose successfully to the challenge of raising a family of four kids on a modest income without incurring debt. She did crazy things like paying for all their cars with cash, paying off their mortgage in ten years, buying their next house for cash, and sending all her kids to college with no student loans, while building a comfortable retirement nest egg for their own bright future. She is now passionate about helping others to enter this beautiful world of peaceful and simple frugality and to achieve their own financial goals with the knowledge and personal finance skills that she has acquired. She writes a monthly blog, teaches via a series of light-hearted group presentations that she created, and sees clients in one-on-one personal meetings. Visit her website and blog at brightfuture2budget4.weebly.com, or email her at brightfuture2budget4@gmail.com.

By D’vorah Kost Exhale. Again. And again. Of course don't forget to inhale. Exhale. Welcome, parasympathetic nervous system engaging, at least these few seconds. With a lengthened exhalation I can savor, for a few seconds more, the slowing of the heart rate, the lowered blood pressure and the release of muscle tension. These days, I'm directing my breath to my mind, heart and bones, which need steady reminders to release the ever-present tension which lives inside every cell of my body and this country these days. [Take a deep breathe iiinnnnn. Let it ooouuuuuttt.] These weeks. Months. Years…four to be exact. We're all talking about it. Some of us are raging about it, some are surely drinking about it, smoking about it, writhing about it or writing about it. I'm grateful that I'm able to write this because writing is another tool I employ to maintain balance. Journaling helps me get the crazy out. Writing an article for The Insider gives me a purpose and a deadline. One more stress relief strategy to consider: Physical shaking. Have you tried it? Just start with your hands. Shake them. Sometimes that's enough, though usually I proceed with shaking the arms, the shoulders, head (gently), hips, knees, feet. Sometimes fast, sometimes slow, big, little, vibrate, wiggle, shudder. Again, again. Stress! BE GONE! In Somalia, they do all that and say shu sho BAH, shu sho BAH. I learned that from my Somali women yoga students. We do it every Sunday, on Zoom now. The laughter that follows also helps. Many people are looking for ways to cope with these extreme times of extremism. Young new activists, working so intensively for so many months, fighting for their lives, ask us elders, "How can we avoid burn-out?" The dire helplessness we feel in the face of an absolutely incomprehensible state of affairs--the inflammatory double whammy of coronavirus and Trumpitis-- necessitates more than the usual level of self-care. I have amped up my meditation practice with the teachings of Gurudev Sri Sri Ravi Shankar. He's the real thing. A mensch from India. He teaches that the mind is not inside the body. Rather, the body is inside the mind. "The body is like the wick of a candle," he intones, in lyrical heavily-accented online guidance, "and the mind is the glowing light cast around it." I am seriously choosing to believe that when we strongly focus our heart mind awareness, i.e. intention, we can fuel our energetic power to impact, beyond the visible realm. Some call it prayer. May we who are compassionate, sensible, honest and caring human beings take deliberate time to 'beam our inner light, our energetic vibrations towards healing the massive destructiveness we face on so many fronts, climate disaster above all. It can't hurt, and at the very least, it feels good. Invoke your imagination, visualize a world of justice and truth, equality, democracy and planetary stewardship (or sustainability). Conjure what you want to see until you feel it deeply, as though it were true right now. Doesn't that put a smile on your face? Don't forget to smile, as much as you can. You do know that helps reduce worry and the wrinkles caused by the same, and can actually tone and uplift your face? Do you see any wrinkles on the Buddha's face? Four years ago, I wasn't sure how our country and I would survive a full term of Trump. I tried conjuring his term-ination within the first year, (I got very hopeful during the impeachment hearings. Inhale. Hold my breath. Eventually I exhaled, and now I can't stop until January 20th, and he is out. I like to visualize the big bungling baby being bodily removed from the White House, by six hulking and joyous hims, hers, and thems. Did I say Hymns? Hallelujah! Which reminds me... Leonard Cohen, may his memory be for blessing, departed four years ago. Will you intercede for us, Lenny? Please? He was a dedicated meditator too. On election day in 2016, I was flying over the Atlantic Ocean to the Gaza Strip, via Jerusalem, with a medical delegation. I learned of Trump's win just hours before crossing the Erez border into Gaza. I was going nuts. I had to stuff my feelings in order to get across the border, and to be present for the Palestinians of Gaza whom we came to serve. As deeply enriching and gratifying the experience of the Gazan people was, at the same time I was feeling the agony of the election results and also the reality of being away from Seattle and my peeps for five to six weeks, depriving me of grieving in community, in post-traumatic-election-distress. I know of many people who were triggered this month with memories of November, 2016. Instead, there I was with Gazans, whose collective chronic trauma of war, occupation, seige and blockade didn't dissuade them from trying to comfort us privileged Americans, "Don't worry, you will get through this" they said, smiling wryly, "if we can get through 68 years, you can get through four." And here we are. We have, indeed, survived four years. BIG SIGH of relief...an exhale! It's OVER, It's DONE. BIDEN WON! HOWEVER ( Inhale. Notice the tension building?). Cheeto just can't do anything without creating chaos, instigating division, spreading suspicion, and polluting with his poison. No surprise that he refuses to concede. The poster child for malignant narcissism relishes the drama of keeping us anxiously on the edge of our seats with his lies and nonsense. The toxicity spewed and the horrific damage wrought by the Trump Administration and his cowardly lackeys in the legislature and cabinet, on the social fabric of this country and our semblance of democracy is beyond measure, unreal. But it is real. What is most terrifying is that tens of millions of Americans seem to have fallen under Trump's evil spell. From the get-go, Trump's ploy for ultimate power gained traction when he began to succeed with his meme of Fake News, which became his foundation for credibility. He could then invent and disseminate any distortion of reality to serve his self-interest. Is it that Trump's base is seduced by his celebrity, hyperbole and drama, enjoying his flair for conflict, bullying and excitement, thus cheering him on, invoking similarly charged emotions as fans in football stadiums and boxing rings? Roman coliseums, public hangings, military spectacles. It's not unlike how some children take the side of the classroom bully, so as not to be the next victim. It seems addictive as well as contagious. Opium and Covid-19 on steroids. I deeply fear that the numbers of Fox News afficionados, and conspiracy believers are growing, as seen in the increasing subscribership to Parler, a rightwing extremist social media platform. Nearly half of American voters prefer to have Trump for another four years, rather than a man of essential decency and humanity. It is beyond my comprehension. I hate giving such vent to my fears, keeping me awake, for better or worse. But I must face my heartache and wrestle with my belief in humanity. Needless to say, daily effort is required to keep replenishing hopefulness and patience, love and compassion and belief that we can build bridges toward unity. We must learn to carry the sorrow and the joy simultaneously, while holding on to our center. I make sure to give attention to the beauty and wonder of the natural world. I make art. I dance alone and with others, music or not, moving my body in unexpected ways, so as to stay strong and balanced. I also smoke a little weed, legal here in Washington, of course.. I cultivate humor, seeking opportunity to laugh. I drink beer, and wine too, preferably red. Projection can have numerous meanings. In the world of psychology, it refers to qualities, motivations or behaviors that one blames on another, when they are primarily true of oneself. Trump accuses his opponents of cheating because cheating is how HE lives his life, always has, and being a malignant narcissist, he can't conceive that others might be motivated otherwise. It is his party that is f***ing with the elections, not the Democrats. We have to wait until January 5 to find out about the Senate. We have to wait until January 20 to allow our shoulder blades to release down our backs. Move your body often, in all the ways it can, and don't hold your breath. A suburban Detroit transplant, D'vorah has lived in Seattle for 42 years.  After a 30-year career as a clinical social worker, retirement means more time for her to pursue lifelong pleasures of drawing, writing, dancing, connecting with loved ones and nature, and teaching yoga and creative movement. She's looking forward to traveling after pandemic.  And she has finally given up on her mission to save the world.

Four College Students on Their COVID Experience An Insider Exclusive Zoom classes. Masks. Remote learning. Social distancing. The Pandemic of 2020 is shaping the lives of students on campuses across America. This week, with COVID surging to all-time highs, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention even recommended that college students not travel home for the Thanksgiving holiday. Those who decide to go anyway were warned to take extra precautions, including quarantining before returning home and getting tested. The Insider speaks this week to four college students about what it is like to be enrolled in school in the midst of a health crisis. Their circumstances vary widely, as do the situations at their individual schools. Some of them have been affected by COVID personally, while others have been lucky enough to view it from a relative distance. But one thing Is certain: no one in Generation P will ever forget the unique experience of higher education in the middle of a pandemic. Lina Berman Michigan State University/ East Lansing, Michigan Neuroscience Sophomore Age: 19 The Insider: What happened with COVID when you went back to school this semester? Lina Berman: One of my friends got a fever and she got tested and we all quarantined in our rooms. Then once she came back positive, I three-days later, on September 14, we all got tested immediately. Within half-an-hour the whole sorority house was gone in different cars and we all got tested and waited in line for about three hours, because the line is crazy here. The Insider: So you were living in a room with them? Lina Berman: I have a single, I am by myself. The Insider: So everybody in the house went and got tested? Lina Berman: Yes. The Insider: Approximately how many people are there? Lina Berman: At that point, we probably had about 20, 21. The Insider: Wow! What were the results? Lina Berman: Well the girl who tested positive is my close friend so there were four of us total. It was me, my friend who had already tested positive, my other close friend, and another close friend, because we all spent the most time together. So I had a feeling, I was the last one to get my results, so I had a feeling at that point that I was positive. The Insider: Were you having symptoms by then? Lina Berman: We had mild symptoms, all of us. The Insider: What were your symptoms? Lina Berman: Throughout the whole thing, I had loss of smell, loss of taste, headaches, fatigue. I didn't have as thermometer for a while, but I don't think I had a fever, but I also didn't have a thermometer for like half of it, so my aunt sent me one in the mail. But I think that because we were all college students and we were all tired and looking at our screens all day anyway, we were already really tired, so we just thought it was that. It was allergy season for the fall too, so some people in the house had sniffles, even if they didn't test . No one knew what was what. So I think at least for me I was kind of in denial a little bit. Like I didn't think I had it at first, but then once my friends had it I was like, "Oh I probably have it." But at some point throughout the week I lost some of those like taste and smell. The Insider: And as soon as you found out, what was your reaction? Lina Berman:When my first friend tested positive, I had cried. It was the closest person I had known to get COVID. When I tested positive, I was concerned and stressed because I had been careful. However, after finding out about my friend's’ test result, I was emotionally prepared for a positive result. It was stressful because I had to move out of my house immediately. People who got COVID in the house were moved to these apartments that my mom referred to as “COVID Row.” The company that owns our house also owns these apartments and kept them for people who needed them to isolate in during the pandemic this school year. They only had one apartment available and I took the last one. The Insider: How long did you have it for? Lina Berman: They say that once you test positive or experience symptoms, you should stay isolated for ten days. I did everything up to protocol. But I don't know when it stops, because you can have antibodies for a really long time, because I got antibody tested a couple of weekends later. The Insider: Did you have antibodies? Lina Berman: Yes. But they tell you not to get tested through your nasal cavity or your nose, because you could technically keep testing positive for up to three to six months. I'm going to plan on getting the antibody test again until it doesn't show it anymore. and then I can start getting tested again. The Insider: So what did you do, did you isolate for ten days or quarantine for ten days? Lina Berman: Yes, yes. I found out around 7:30 PM, it was a Wednesday, I believe. An hour later, I packed up. An hour later, I was at the apartments. Then I stayed at the apartments for a full ten days and then you get to leave the next morning after the full ten days. So I was probably there for really like eleven-ish days, including like the night and the morning of the next day. The Insider: Were you doing schoolwork during this time? Lina Berman: Yes, I didn't tell any professors that I had COVID. The Insider: Because? Lina Berman: I didn't have bad enough symptoms and I wasn't tired enough to not go to class and also I had as much time like on my hands as I would ever have.. I could do absolutely nothing, so might as well just do my schoolwork. The Insider: That's really admirable! I don't know how you concentrated. Lina Berman: I don't know. I guess a lot of people stay where they are and isolate, so they still have all of their stuff, but I just brought what I needed and then my aunt sent me some stuff, but it was only stuff I would use to cook or clean or stuff, so it wasn't anything entertaining. So I would basically watch a ton of Netflix or work on homework. But I was on top of my work the most that week. The Insider: Yes it sounds like it. That's very impressive.. So how long until your friends got better? Did everybody get better pretty fast? Lina Berman: Oh yeah. None of us really had…we didn't notice that we had it, except for my friend who got her fever, but her fever was over within 24 hours and the rest of us just had like mild symptoms. None of us were really sick, so we got better fast. It was just more of a boring week. The Insider: Oh, that's interesting. So I guess it's true that younger people weather it more easily. Lina Berman: I think that are some people who still get really bad symptoms who are young. But I had another friend in Wisconsin who got it too and she was about the same as me… I didn't get a cough, just got tired mostly,. I think it just tires you out more than you're expecting. The Insider: You having any lingering symptoms? Do you still have fatigue from it? Lina Berman: I don't think I still have fatigue from it. I think sometimes I think I can smell differently. I have a really good sense of smell: My mom always says I should test perfumes, because I can smell everything. But I think it's just altered a little bit. It's not quite as sharp. The Insider: Please ell me the exact date that you got tested. Lina Berman: September 14th. The Insider: Wow, so that was soon after getting back to school. Lina Berman: Yes. Then I got my results the 16th at night. We were also recruiting during this like online via Zoom, so there was a lot going on. The Insider: Did you tell the people who were rushing the sorority that you had COVID? Did they know? Lina Berman: I didn't, We were completely done by the time I had found out. So I didn't need to mention it. But I mean I would have. In our house we are very open about it if you're going to get tested, because it involves everyone and people prefer honesty over you know. The Insider: Oh absolutely, you can't lie about this one. Lina Berman: Yes. The Insider: What kind of situation did you walk into when you came back to school? Was there as crisis, an outbreak on campus at that point? Were things bad when you got it around the campus? Lina Berman: Yes. Around the time I got it numbers were rising. Around the time I tested positive, our house and a bunch of other sororities and fraternities or other houses had a great number of people, because we have a lot of houses here that can hold a bunch of people even if it's not Greek life. Basically, houses with a certain number living there were put on a mandatory quarantine, so we would have to stay in our house. And basically all of campus and then the extension of where a bunch of people who live away from campus, that are just off of campus were placed on, I don't know if it was a full quarantine, but a watch. Like they were extra cautious of those areas and then my house was put on a quarantine by the Health Department. The Insider: What is the situation on campus now, COVID-wise? Lina Berman: I'm actually not quite sure. I haven't heard it being any worse, but I would say it's been consistently not great here. It's a college campus, so you can't stop everyone. But also at this point probably a bunch of people have had it, so less people can get it for awhile or that's what studies say or the CDC says. The Insider: How has the administration has handled it at school? Have you been satisfied or dissatisfied?. Lina Berman: I don't think I have an opinion. I think they're trying. The Insider: What do other people think? What does the general student body think of how the administration is doing? Lina Berman: People in my house, I would say, do care a lot about it and we've been I would say fairly good and people would say that a bunch of fraternities and sororities aren't being good, but we haven't really gone out that much. I would say, as a whole, the student body is just annoyed that they can't have tailgates and can't go out. I think people want their college experience and they're annoyed by it. But then the same thing people are going out anyway and getting sick, so… The Insider: Does everybody wear a mask on campus? Lina Berman: Everyone's supposed to have a mask on campus. I think everyone does. I even walk with my mask for the most part, unless I really need to take a breather, but even so it's usually when there's not a big crowd around. I also live more in the neighborhood than right on campus. But everyone has a mask or they're supposed to have a mask. The Insider: What are the other sort of should's? What should people be doing? Lina Berman: People should be socially distancing, People aren't supposed to be at large gatherings. Technically my house exceeds the limit, but that's just because we all live together, so iit's not against the rules, but we can't have like a separate gathering with other people. But I don't know what the new should's are because Michigan just changed it last night. The Insider: Yes. So you must feel kind of buffeted around by all of this. Things keep changing and happening. Lina Berman: Right. It wasn't that big of a change. I don't really go out to eat that much. I hadn't been in a restaurant -- the last time I was in a restaurant was right the week before everything shut down. Then I hadn't been in a restaurant again since, until after I had COVID. I really haven't gone that much since then, maybe only a couple of times. So it doesn’t change much because we just carry out anyway or grocery shop. The Insider: Tell me what's not happening on campus? I'm sure there are no sports, right? Lina Berman: We have football. We have sports still, but there's something really strict for them. I think they get tested a bunch. I think that they can only really see each other. There's no tailgating technically, but it was really funny on game day to see a bunch of people, but as cops showed up, you could see people dispersing. The Insider: So there's a temptation to break the rules on campus. Lina Berman: I guess so. The Insider: For a lot of people, not you, It sounds like you're being very strict. Lina Berman: Yes,. I don't think,anyone in our house went to a tailgate. We all watched the game with a mask inside though on the TV. The Insider: Do you wear a mask around the house, is that how it works? Lina Berman: Yes, in common areas. The Insider: That makes sense. Is there anything else about your COVID experience that you think would enlighten me? Lina Berman: It’s funny from my family. We're very closely connected at least to our extended family and I've never received so many text messages asking me about COVID or just to talk. In one weekend, I've got so many text messages from family members. The Insider: And what are they saying, what types of things? Lina Berman: It was just the same, "Oh my gosh you have COVID! Are you okay? How are you? What does it feel like? You're the first person in the family..' They asked me a bunch, will we ever get it? Asking me if I need anything. My mom was funny. At that point, since my friends had tested positive on the previous two days, she knew I had it before I even knew.She said I sounded tired on the phone. So I told her and she was like watching a show I think and she was like, "Okay, that's unfortunate." It was like, "I'll call you later." (Laughs) So I had to pack up. But I think just it wasn't that big of a reaction from the both of us because we were prepared for it. At that point it was my three closest friends that I probably spent the most time with so you know I just… It would make no sense if I didn't have it I guess. The Insider: Well you're right with the times. You had the 2020 experience now. Lina Berman: Yes. The Insider: I'm glad you're over it. Did you feel very isolated when you were in your apartment, when you were in that room? Lina Berman: I thought I would and some days I did, but for at least the girls who were there we would FaceTime for every meal, so that it wouldn't be like alone or feel as alone and if we got bored we would FaceTime. But I honestly think we just committed a lot to our studies that week. We probably should have taken that excuse and just been like, "We can't show up today." But it gets boring just watching TV all day , I couldn't do it the whole time. The Insider: Right. It's so impressive that you did your schoolwork during this, It's really amazing that you got anything done while this was going on, That's great. Lina Berman: Thank you, yes. The Insider: What is the school doing about next term? Are classes remote? Will there be any in-person classes? Lina Berman: This semester is all online. Next semester, they were supposed to add more hybrid, but it was supposed to be for people who are trying to graduate, so juniors and seniors. But we haven't heard any updates since last night or since the numbers have increased. The Insider: Are you learning? Do you feel like you can learn under these circumstances? Lina Berman: I don't think it's as beneficial for the long run, but it's what we have to do. I don't prefer it, because I don't. Last year, you would have a brain break in between classes when you walked to one building to the next or maybe you'd take a break and study somewhere else. But you got to move locations. The Insider: Yes. Lina Berman: But this is where I Zoom from, This is where my desk is, I stay here all day. But I am someone who needs to move around a lot. The Insider: Do you get some exercise? Lina Berman: Yeah, I have been like working out five days a week in my room or in the main area or my friends and I will take longer walks. The Insider: So you have adjusted to it, you have too, you have too. Lina Berman: Yes it's better this semester than it was, I think. spring semester. The Insider: Because it was newer then and then stranger. Lina Berman: And that's also why I came up to school, because I think at least I'm trying to be more in the school mindset, whereas at home, I'm home with my mom and my dad and my dog. So there are more distractions. Even though I'm with a bunch of girls, they're also in classes and they also want to focus at some point. So we're more at the mindset ,we have to do schoolwork. But also my mom's like, "Do you want to come home now?" I'm like, "No, I'm going to come home in a week," because I would rather try to focus as long as possible before I just enjoy a little bit of a break. The Insider: I'm really impressed. I wouldn't have been able to do that. I wouldn't have been able to study. I would have used it as an excuse to just, "I can't do anything." Lina Berman: Right, I know. I mean I haven't really heard of many people taking off this semester, but I know that some people probably have just because it is really difficult to learn this way. The Insider: How are you handling Thanksgiving? Lina Berman: If I hadn't gotten COVID ,I probably would have gotten tested a few days before and just stayed not isolated, but I guess under a self-type of quarantine. But because I had it technically… I mean we've done a lot of research, all my friends and I and our families who have had it just to make sure we're okay, but technically we're not able to give or receive it while we have the antibodies. So my mom feels pretty safe with me coming home and I had just gotten antibody tested I think two to three weeks ago. I could get it again before I come back to school because that would be about the window of when they’re supposed to expire, but they can last longer. The Insider: Is the school telling people not to go home by any chance? Aren't some schools doing that? Lina Berman: Our school is saying that before you go home you should get tested and they have testing at the stadium and there's also it's called "Sparrow Hospital," but they have a testing site where there used to be I believe like a car shop or something. There's one there and there's one at the stadium. They're saying get tested before you go home so you don't accidentally spread it to your family.. They're not saying, don't go home, but they're saying ,be cautious before you go home. The Insider: Do they tell you to get tested before you come back to campus? Lina Berman: Yes, but they said that if you had gotten a positive test result within the last three months don't get tested. The Insider: But they want everybody else to have a test before they come back to campus or they're not saying that? Lina Berman: Yes, I mean they haven't reviewed that, but I'm almost positive that's what's it's going to be. Our sorority house is also going to ask for a test result when we come back. Ana Claire Piacentini Brown University/Providence, Rhode Island English and International and Public Affairs Sophomore Age: 19 The Insider: Why don't you fill me in on what the COVID situation is on the campus? Ana Claire Piacentini: Brown has been doing a really great job, especially with COVID. So, we get tested, We have to get tested every four days, and it's in one of our athletic facilities where we go. And we have the daily symptom tracker where we have to track whether or not we've been in contact with someone who contracted COVID., whether we have any symptoms that kind of disregard allergies, so it's based on kind of how you know yourself and your body.. Then, after we get tested, we'll get our results within at least 24 hours. The, results have been coming back really quickly, which is good. And then, each week, they update a Covid website where we can see the rates of asymptomatic students who test positive. And for the most part, the rate has been very, very low. But starting last week, I believe we had 17 cases, which was an all-time high. And then, this past week, we have had 26 cases, so far, from asymptomatic students. So, I think right now, the health on the campus is slowly going down, but all semester, it's been really healthy, which has been great. The Insider: Do you know anyone who's gotten sick? Ana Claire Piacentini: I've heard of some people, but for the most part, no, I've been very fortunate to not have been in contact with people. The Insider: It sounds like your school is being very careful. Ana Claire Piacentini: Yes. President Paxson has, honestly, done a great job, and her Healthy Team at Brown, they've been excellent. The Insider: Tell me what it's like to go to the mass testing situation. Ana Claire Piacentini: It's honestly not that bad. We have to schedule a time and we go within the time frame, and everyone who works there is super nice. During quiet period, it was the highlight of my day, because it was really the only human interaction I had. So they're super friendly, and you go, and you don't have to do the super crazy one where you stick it all the way up to your brain. It's just the little one where you go kind of in both nostrils, three times around. And it's super organized, very clean, extremely spaced-out, and everyone there is super friendly, which is nice. The Insider: And what other precautions are you asked to do by the school? Ana Claire Piacentini: Wear a mask everywhere, not in your dorm room but in the hall, in the bathroom, and every time you go out, When you do homework, you really kind of should stay in your room. but you can go to certain lounges and do your work. But for the most part, I think students stay in their dorm rooms and do their homework and do classes. So it's been nice. And also, people have gone outside. Some people wear a mask and others don't. It's kind of all to the discretion of the individual, which is to be expected, I guess, because we're adults now. But for the most part, here, everyone on campus is very considerate about COVID, and COVID-conscious. The Insider: I guess there are no libraries open, right? Ana Claire Piacentini: There are, but you schedule a time to go. I haven't been to one, just because I don't mind doing homework in my room. But I know some of my friends have, and they say it's fine, just certain floors are open, and certain aren't. The Insider: And everything is very spaced, right? Ana Claire Piacentini: Yes, and you get a two-hour time block, I believe. The Insider: What about the eating situation in the dorms? Ana Claire Piacentini: We have this mobile app called GetMobile, and we'll place our online order, and then, you'll go to the dining hall and pick it up. It's very spaced out, really, it's very efficient. You get a confirmation e-mail that your order has been received, and then you get a confirmation e-mail when your order is ready to be picked up. It's fantastic. The Insider: That's really very efficient. Ana Claire Piacentini: Yes. And then, we have two dining halls where you can go in and just grab-and-go, but I haven't been to them just because they're not my favorite. So, I do the GetMobile app pretty much every day, twice a day. The Insider: And has this been going on all semester since you got back to school? Ana Claire Piacentini: Yes. So, during quiet period, we couldn't use the mobile app; we could only go into one specific dining hall for two weeks. And, I mean, that was a little rough. The Insider: What do you mean by quiet? Ana Claire Piacentini: So, quiet period is where we came back to school and we had to isolate for two weeks. It was definitely difficult, but what was nice is I live with, like, three of my friends, we got to choose who we live with So, we would hang out in one person's dorm room, like, stay in your pod, which was good. And we all tested negative multiple times before we saw each other. The Insider: Tell me about what a pod is. Ana Claire Piacentini: So, a pod is a group of people that you choose to spend your time with and choose to hang out with. So, on Brown, you're supposed to stick with your pod. So, my pod is the people I live with, so it's the people who are my neighbors, and it's been really fun. There's four of us in total, and I think our pod can only be up to six people, but I'm not definitive on the number. The Insider: Is that in a dorm or in an apartment? Ana Claire Piacentini: In a dorm room. The Insider: Do most undergraduates lives in dorms at Brown? Ana Claire Piacentini: Freshman and sophomore year, you have to live in a dorm room. The Insider: So you admire the administration. Ana Claire Piacentini: They've really done a good job. The Insider: How do your friends feel? Same way, would you say? Ana Claire Piacentini: The same way, yes. If you look at the health of our campus, it's been very healthy, for the entirety of the semester, and I think it's because they've taken so many precautions with the testing. If you don't get tested once every four days, they send you multiple e-mails;. They'll eventually call you, I believe. And it's a violation of the code of conduct, which has been clearly outlined, so you know whether you're breaking rules or not. The Insider: So you could be thrown out of the school for not complying with it? Ana Claire Piacentini: Potentially, but I haven't heard of any of those cases. I've heard of some cases where students are potentially on probation, but for the most part, I don't think anyone's been kicked out of school yet. The Insider: That's good. Why do you think people are so compliant on campus? Ana Claire Piacentini: Because I think everyone knows it's a privilege to be here, so, people are doing, I guess, the most they can to be able to stay on campus and assure that everyone's healthy. The Insider: Now, what does the future look like, and what are they doing, now, because the rates are going up? Ana Claire Piacentini: So, we're going home [for the rest of the semester]. I'm going home on Friday of this week, for Thanksgiving, but as of now, sophomores are allowed back on campus in the spring. Their original Covid plan was to break, like, the year up into trimesters. So, seniors, juniors, and sophomores are on campus, concurrently. And then, in the spring, it was supposed to be freshmen, juniors, and seniors. And then, in the summer, it was supposed to be sophomores and freshmen. But as of now, that's not happening, and sophomores are back on campus, as well. So, that's what we've heard. We register for classes tomorrow, and as of now, we're coming back, but I'm not sure if that's going to happen. The Insider: What are they doing about Thanksgiving? How is that working? Ana Claire Piacentini: We have to get a negative Covid test before we go home, and then, they kind of just set us free. What we do is we have to return our key and put in the range of dates that we're leaving. So we'll submit our key, get our last Covid test, and hopefully test negative, and then we can go home. And if you test positive, you have to isolate. The Insider: It sounds like a model program, but – Ana Claire Piacentini: It really is. The Insider: But it's disturbing, of course, that it's starting to go up a little bit, even despite all of the precautions. Ana Claire Piacentini: I think just the health of the state of Rhode Island hasn't been doing so great, and just because I think the exposure of people coming on College Hill. That's what we call Brown's campus, where it's situated in the city. The Insider: Are Brown's rates lower than the regular population,? Ana Claire Piacentini: I'm not 100 percent sure, but I would think so, just because our asymptomatic testing. I think we test about 2,000 people – these numbers I'm pulling out of thin air, so I'm not 100 percent sure, but we got – 27 people were asymptomatic and tested positive. The Insider: Are you worried, personally, at this point? Ana Claire Piacentini: I wouldn't say I'm worried, I'm just definitely taking more precautions than I had. I've been very cautious for the entirety of the semester, but now I'm trying not to leave my room, for the most part. And, like, I'll go outside and do work if it's nice, but I'm not going to leave my room if it's unnecessary. I'll run and I'll go get food, and that's pretty much the only exception for me to leave my room. The Insider: So, your lifestyle now is studying. Ana Claire Piacentini: Yes, it is. Honestly, school has been very difficult this semester. The workload's been very tough.. I think that's across the board for every student here. But I think, the combination of having to do Zoom classes online, plus, the amount of work, kind of feels like you're sitting staring at a screen all day. Going and walking to class and seeing your friends in class,was kind of a break. And plus, too, it's always very nice to see the professors in-person, because you kind of develop nice relationships with them. So that's kind of been a bit difficult, this semester. The Insider: You have no in-person classes at all. Ana Claire Piacentini: I have one. So, it was an option to go in-person, and I've been going, but as of now, I don't think I'm going to go, this week. The Insider: Which class was it? Ana Claire Piacentini: Social statistics. The Insider: And how often did you meet? Ana Claire Piacentini: We met twice a week, but I could only go one day a week, because he divided up the students who wanted to go, just to alleviate the numbers in the classroom. The Insider: Describe what the physical situation was:--very socially distanced and all of that? Ana Claire Piacentini: It was extremely socially distanced. There were maybe seven kids in the class, and it was a huge classroom. And the professor sat behind a plexiglass screen and taught us. And everyone wore a mask, so. The Insider: They couldn't be any more careful. Would I be right in thinking, though, it's sort of – it's almost as though you can't do everything, because it gets a little worse anyway, even with the school being this careful, there was still a little tick up. Would that be the right conclusion? Ana Claire Piacentini: I think so. I think everyone here has been making the most of this semester. I know I certainly have, honestly – it's been really, really fun. And we've been fortunate enough to be able to have practices, and I think it's all about how you look at the situation. If you go in with a glass-half-full attitude, then you can make the best of it. I mean, it's definitely been different, but I wouldn't say different's a bad thing, in this case. The Insider: No, I mean something different. I mean health-wise, that the school is faced with a situation where, no matter how careful you are, there's a chance of an uptick. Ana Claire Piacentini: I think so, just because of the people coming in and out, and it's a college campus. My little brother goes to Lawrenceville, where they can kind of control the flow in and out of the campus, also, too, because it's pretty isolated. Whereas, we're in a city, so, that's always a little difficult. But honestly, the cases have just started rising, and it hasn't even risen too, too much. So I would say it's been – the health on the campus has been really, really good, so far, just with all the testing, they'll catch it in, like, a blink of an eye. I think it's all contingent on your pod, how well you enjoy the situation. And I think I really lucked out with my pod and being able to make the most of the situation. Linda Kennedy Henry Ford College/Dearborn, Michigan Culinary Arts Age: 70 The Insider: Your program just began in January. How do you like it so far? Linda Kennedy: I love school. I'm a lifelong learner. The Insider: Have you been at other colleges before? Linda Kennedy: I have a B.A. from Oakland University. I went to UCLA for teacher certification. then I came back to Michigan and got a masters in teaching, reading, and language arts at Oakland University.. I taught at a community college. The Insider: Great! This program sounds very practical. The world needs more chefs so that's good. Are you a good cook now? Linda Kennedy: Yes, yes. Everybody says I'm a good cook. The Insider: So you're perfecting your skills. Tell me about what the school is doing about COVID to make sure that students don't get it. Linda Kennedy: There’s only one way to enter the campus and one way to get off the campus. When you enter the campus, you have a sign a document stating that you haven't been exposed to COVID or anyone with it, and you don't have any of the symptoms. You also have to state where you're going on campus. You have to give your name, your email address, and your telephone number. Once you've done all of that, they take your temperature. If you don't have a temperature, you're free to go to class. You have to wear a mask at all times. They have stations on campus for sanitizing your hands and keeping them clean. In the kitchen, we constantly have to wash our hands and keep them clean. We have gloves that we can use in the kitchen. Every time we change doing a certain task, we have to take those gloves off , wash our hands and put on new gloves. The Insider: So, everybody's very careful? Linda Kennedy: Very careful in the kitchen. That is , to my knowledge, one of the few in-person classes that are on campus. But our Governor just shut us down. In fact, I was supposed to go to school on Monday but someone in our class had COVID. The Insider: Oh, no! Linda Kennedy: Yes. Well, they can't tell us who it is because of the HIPPA law. I thought someone was going to call us and tell us — the Health Department or something like that — but that didn't happen. The chef, they gave him a rapid test and he tested positive for COVID, but 50 percent of the rapid tests give false positives. So he went and got a regular test. When he got his regular test, it was negative. The Insider: Are you quarantining now? Linda Kennedy: Well no. I had to take Merrill's mother {a woman whom she is an aide for] to the doctor. I asked the doctor and I explained my situation to her. She told me "get tested. You should go get tested yourself,” so I did. From the time that we were informed that someone in the classroom had COVID, it had already been seven days. Still, I didn't feel comfortable because I'm here with Merrill's mother and Merrill and both of them have pre-existing conditions and I myself have pre-existing conditions and I'm black, and I'm overweight. The Insider: Oh, boy. A lot of signs you gotta be careful right? Linda Kennedy: Right, right. The Insider: Would it be too nosy for me to ask what your preexisting condition is? Linda Kennedy: ! I've had thyroid cancer. They removed my thyroid. And I'm obese.. I'm, overweight. The Insider: I have a preexisting condition too. So, you''ve got to be so careful. Linda Kennedy: Yes and I have high blood pressure, too. The Insider: Oh, you've go to be really careful. So, what's happened to your class now? Linda Kennedy: Well when they found out that the person had been exposed and had COVID, they shut our class down for two weeks so everybody had to stay at home and quarantine. The Insider: Oh, boy. Linda Kennedy: Then, we were supposed to go back on Monday but on Sunday, the Governor — because the conditions here in Michigan are so horrible, and the hospital beds are filling up so fast and everything and they're afraid that they won't have any space. The Governor shut down bars, restaurants, colleges, high schools… she shut it down again. She shut it down for three weeks. The Insider: Oh, boy. How do you feel about all of this? Linda Kennedy: You know what? I feel like the president . . . well — The Insider: No, you can say it! I don't like the president either. Don't worry about it. Linda Kennedy: Okay, good. Okay. The Insider: I hate him as a matter of fact. Linda Kennedy: Well, to be totally honest, I wrote to my friends on Facebook. I'll be glad when they get that trash out the White House. The Insider: Absolutely. Linda Kennedy: We really need to go there and disinfect it with some bleach and some Lysol since he loves Lysol so much. The Insider: Ahh! That's very funny.. I know,. I agree with you 100 percent. Linda Kennedy: He has people believing that there is no COVID, that this is a farce. People are dying. You know, I told a friend that I think that once he gets out of office, they should charge him as a war criminal because he said he was fighting a war on — that we were at war with COVID. He's done a piss-poor job. He hasn't lived up to the common decency of a human being. He has not done that. They need to try him just like they tried the Nazi war criminals and put him under the jailhouse. Him and his whole family. The Insider: Yes. I agree with you. It's a terrible situation and he's caused it, I believe. Linda Kennedy: Yes,. he knew about it and wouldn't say anything. And right now he's sitting in the White House pouting. He should have said, "Okay, Joe, Mr. Biden, President-elect Biden, you won. I concede." No, he's all about the money, honey. He's got the $412 million debt coming due and he's trying to make all the money he can so he can pay that debt. I like to know who he owes. The Insider: Yep!. You really follow politics don't you? I agree with you completely. He's a total jerk. Linda Kennedy: His own mother called him an idiot. Really, someone sent me the thing. His mother was standing next to him and she said, "My son is an idiot. I just hope he doesn't go into politics." The Insider: Oh, no! Linda Kennedy: Yep. That was a quote by his mother and I got already make a T-shirt out of it. The Insider: We're going to get rid of him pretty soon, I hope. He's on his way out at least. Thank goodness for elections. Did you have to wait in line a long time at the election? Linda Kennedy: No, I did an absentee ballot. I got a ballot in the mail. I took it back to my clerk's office because I didn't want the mailman having anything to do with it. If my bills are coming late, what would happen to my ballot? The Insider: Right. Right. Linda Kennedy: They showed all that mail sitting on the docks in Detroit and all the different post offices across the country.. I said "Oh, no." I think they should get the Postmaster General and put him in jail, too. The Insider: Oh, he's a crook, too. (Laughter.) Linda Kennedy: Yes. Birds of a feather flock together. The Insider: I know. Mr. DeJoy, I know. I totally agree with you. What is the name of the cooking class that you're taking this semester? Linda Kennedy: I'm taking Hospitality 340. The Insider: Have you known other people outside school who've had COVID? Linda Kennedy: There was an elderly gentleman. I don't know if you know about Royal Oak Township The Insider: I grew up in Detroit so I do. Linda Kennedy: You do, okay. Well, back in the day, that was a village at the height of its existence there was 45,500 black people out there. We had everything that we needed from grocery stores, doctors, judge,s lawyers, teachers, shoe repairmen, cleaners, everything out there. It was a village, you know? Most of the people like my mother and father are gone, but we'd have some 95-year olds and things like that who've been hanging on. One of our elders just passed last month. He was 95 and he died of COVID. The Insider: That's too bad. Do you talk to other students or are you more distant because you're working full-time? Linda Kennedy: No. The other students, they come to me for assistance because they say I'm the smartest one in the classroom. The Insider: I believe it. Linda Kennedy: (Laughs). When I was five years old, my mother pushed me up to the sink, put me in the chair, and I was washing dishes. I always helped her in the kitchen. My mother had 15 children but there's only 10 that lived. So, my mother baked like three times a day because that helped cut down on the food costs. She made bread. She did cakes and pies and stuff. I was always fascinated by, "How does she make the stuff work?" So, I always helped her in the kitchen. The Insider: So, do you hear from the other students how they feel about COVID? None of them are sick now, right? Linda Kennedy: No, none of my classmates have been sick. There's another lady in the class, she's about 65. The rest of them are younger, like in their 30s and 40s. Some of them are younger than that, 18, 20, 22, 23. Some of them didn't come back. I don't know if it was due to COVID. They are fearful and the biggest thing is we've been talking about whether or not we would take the vaccination. The vaccine? Nuh-uh. The Insider: You wouldn't take it? Linda Kennedy: No! Because the way they want to do it is older people in the nursing homes, the people — first responders, right? Then, the black people because we're the higher risk. But that's because they don't believe us when we tell them we're sick. They don't believe us, even the AMA. I read about a study they did. They asked the doctors if they believed their patients — their black patients — when they told them they were in pain. 95 percent of the doctors said they did not believe their black patients. The Insider: Oh my God. That is terrible. Linda Kennedy: And, I had an experience when I went through the hot flash stage. I kept telling the doctor, "There's something wrong with me. I'm short-tempered, I'm easily agitated. I don't want to yell at my kids and I'm yelling at my kids and I'm crying and stuff." "Oh, there's nothing wrong with you. You're too young. Don't worry about it." I kept telling this doctor for at least two years. The Insider: Oh, no. Linda Kennedy:: Yes and I'm teaching right? One day I went to the doctor and I had had one of these horrible days. You know, everything got on my nerves. He came in and, there was a metal table. He's just banging his pen on that table, you know? Banging it, banging it. I said, "If you bang that pen one more time, I'm gonna kill you." He said, "I think we need to test your hormones." The Insider: Ah, right. Linda Kennedy:: I said, "Alrighty now." I had to say I was gonna kill you before — I've been asking you for two years. He tested my hormones and they were at 14. The Insider: Oh no. What a jerk he was. Linda: Kennedy: And my kids had suffered horribly. You know? I felt like such an unfit mother.. I was screaming and yelling. The Insider: He was an unfit doctor. That's the problem. Let me ask you another question. Do you actually go into school now or are you learning remotely? Linda Kennedy: Before the shutdown, we were going into school. We were fixing and prepping things on campus. They have a restaurant and we would prep things for the meals on Wednesday nights. We would do our setup. We'd do all the cutting, chopping, dicing. Then, on Wednesday when we come in, we would get ready for orders. They were only doing takeout orders, no dine-in. We would fix the meals as they were ordered . The Insider: This was during the pandemic you're talking about? Linda Kennedy: Yes. During the pandemic. We provided curbside service but they had to come in off the curb in order to pick it up because, you know, the way the campus is set up. There are great big parking lots between each building and there's student parking, staff parking, handicapped parking, and all of that. So there's really no way they could get curbside service. They have to order their food, then we would prepare it, then they would receive — they would come to the door. It ended two weeks ago when we found out that someone had COVID. Now that they shut us down, all our assignments, all our tests, the videos of the chef doing certain techniques and things like that, that's online. Also, the textbook has videos and things about how to build a recipe and things like that. That's all online. So, the chef just text me yesterday and said "We're going to be doing some Zoom meetings online since we're going to be out for another three weeks." He's going to do some more lectures online so we can stay abreast of things. The Insider: What do you think about the online lessons? Are you learning or do you hate it? Linda Kennedy: Well, my problem is, you know most of these kids — excuse me. I shouldn't call them kids. The Insider: You can call them kids. Linda Kennedy: You know, most of my follow students, they have t iPhones or tablets. They can do everything on that. I have a phone that cost $16. I can receive texts, I can send texts, I can go online. But when I want to send an email, like this past week we had an assignment where we had to make eight entrees and we had the write the recipes for these entrees. We also had to take a picture of each entree. That means we actually had to prepare them, take a picture of them, send the recipes and the pictures for the entrees. Well, the only way my little phone could do it, I had to send the recipe by itself. Then I had to open another email to send the picture and so on and so forth. The Insider: That's rough. Linda Kennedy: Yes. Monday morning the chef sent me an email. He says, "Thanks for the 20 emails." Then he said, "LOL - you are amazing." The Insider: Oh, that's great. He appreciates how hard you're working. Linda Kennedy: So that was that. Daisy Diaz Wayne State University/Detroit, Michigan Social Work Senior Age: 22 The Insider: Are you doing clinical work yet for your social work degree? Daisy Diaz: Yes. For my whole senior year, I will do 16 hours a week. My agency is called Naomi’s Nest. It’s in Highland Park, Michigan. And it’s a rehab facility for women, an in-patient program. So if they’re addicted to any substance they’re able to recuperate while still living in that facility. The Insider: That’s really great. What made you go into social work? Daisy Diaz: It’s so clichéd but I want to help people. I wanted to be a nurse before a social worker, but I wanted to work with people not because they were injured or they were sick, I wanted to work with them on more on a policy change type of thing. If they were struggling to find housing for food stamps or anything like that. The Insider: That’s smart, you don’t have to meet somebody on a stretcher. It's true. Daisy Diaz: Yes. The Insider: I know that in Michigan there’s been an uptick in COVID. Were there new rules just imposed? Daisy Diaz: Yes, we're shutting down again tomorrow. So all restaurants, movie theaters, non-pro sports will be shut down. The Insider: You're continuing to do Zoom classes from home? Daisy Diaz: Yes. I haven’t been on campus since February of this year. The Insider: Right before the pandemic? Daisy Diaz: Yes. The Insider: Wow,! Really? Daisy Diaz: Yes. The Insider: So you haven’t had any in-person classes? Daisy Diaz: No, because our spring break was the last week of February. And then they gave us an extra week of spring break because of COVID. And then after that, they were like, we're going to just do online school now. The Insider: How has that been? Daisy Diaz: It’s been tough since it is my senior year. I do miss being in class. It’s not the same teaching, interacting with the students. Having to talk to them every day, it is different. I know it’s been hard to keep up with all of them since they are online. There’s a lot more reading now since our classes are online. We really have to make sure we go back and listen to the lectures just so that we can make sure that we catch up on everything. Usually, I can have written down notes like during class but now since I’m on Zoom, it’s a little bit harder because I have to make sure my connection is good,, that they can hear me when I’m saying something. So it’s a lot harder to write down answers and questions or any important information now. The Insider: I bet, I’m sure that’s true. So there is no campus right now? Daisy Diaz: No, there is no campus. Everything is shut down. I went to walk there during the summertime just because it was a really nice day and there were no students, no faculty. It was just so lonely. The Insider: Wow, so you miss being there. Daisy Diaz: Yes, and especially because it’s my senior year. I’m not going to be able to be there and I’m pretty sure I will be online as well for next semester, which is technically my last semester. The Insider: Are you afraid of getting COVID? Daisy Diaz: I am, I’m not a person who usually gets sick. I’ve never had the flu or anything like that. So it is scary because I’ve just never been sick to the point where I have to miss school or call off work. So it is a little bit scary, especially since there’s no real cure for it right now. The Insider: Right. Do you know people who have had it? Daisy Diaz: Yes, and I’ve actually known people who passed away from it as well. The Insider: Do you really? What happened? Daisy Diaz: He was already diabetic. My mom’s cousin Oscar. So I guess that makes him my cousin too. He passed away last month. The Insider: How old was he? Daisy Diaz: He was 50, no more than 50. He was diabetic, and everything just spiraled out of control once he got COVID. His diabetes started to get a little bit worse and worse. He had trouble breathing and they just decided that it was best to – The Insider: Let him go? Daisy Diaz: Yes, let him go. Because he was just suffering a lot at that point. The Insider: Did he have a family? Daisy Diaz: He did. The Insider: Kids? Daisy Diaz: Yes, he had four kids. The Insider: That’s really too bad, I’m sorry. Daisy Diaz: Yes. The Insider: Have you had friends with COVID? Daisy Diaz: I have not had any friends who had COVID. And I have a lot of friends so, no, thank God. The Insider: Have you known other people who’ve had it? Daisy Diaz: I work at Ulta. It’s a make-up and hair store. Both of my managers contracted COVID last week. So we had to bring managers in from other stores to help fill in. And since it is holiday season, it's been very, very crazy. And we've just been taking major precautions. Especially since we do deal with a lot of customers. The Insider: Did you have to quarantine after they came down with it? Daisy Diaz: I did not because I actually was not on the same shift that they were on that week. So I didn’t have to. The Insider: Lucky, very lucky. So that’s really stinks that your last year that you have to be going through this. That’s really not fair. Have you had a COVID test? Daisy Diaz: I have. The Insider: Why? Daisy Diaz: Before my internship started in September, I was required to get a COVID test. So I did a rapid COVID test but so I had to pay $100 to get itI had to wait outside in the long line. And I literally got the COVID test standing outside. I wasn’t even allowed to go in or anything like that. They just asked me if I had any symptoms, I had to fill out paperwork. II was really weird because I never had a test done outside. It on a busy road. It was just really weird. It was very painful, I will say. The Insider: Was it in your nose? Daisy Diaz: Yes, it was in my nose. And she told me if I moved, she would have to do it on my other nostril as well. So I had to make sure that when she did it on the first nostril I had to stay really, really still so she wouldn’t do it on the other one. It feels like you have water in your nose and it has that burning sensation. And I felt it for three hours later. I could still feel it. The Insider: Wow. Obviously it came out negative, though. Daisy Diaz: Yes, it was negative. The Insider: That was good news. Daisy Diaz: But it felt very, very uncomfortable. The Insider: How long did you have to wait for the results? Daisy Diaz: It was a rapid test, so it was only about 20 minutes. The Insider: And how accurate did they tell you it was? Daisy Diaz: They didn’t really say how accurate it was. But after tha,t I didn’t have any symptoms or I wasn’t sick. The Insider: How do you think that Wayne State’s administration has handled this? Have they done well about communicating with you? Or has it been bad? Daisy Diaz: So every time there’s an update from the Governor, they send out an e-mail to their students reiterating what the Governor said and what that means for Wayne State. So they’ve been doing a really, really good job.. I know I had to go on campus one day because I had to fill out some paperwork for FAFSA, financial aid..I had to fill out an application out there. So they had me do a screening test on my phone, answering questions like had I come in contact with anyone in the last 14 days with COVID.? Had I traveled, anything like that?. And I had to show that I finished that screening before I even entered any building. So they’ve been doing a pretty good job. The Insider: Careful, yes, it sounds like it. What is the COVID rate at Wayne? Has it gone up or is it lower? Daisy Diaz: It’s pretty low just because there is no contact with anyone. Everything is basically curbside. Also, what Wayne State did at the beginning of the year, since we couldn’t have any homecomings or anything like that, they passed out a goodie bag with a face mask, hand sanitizer, to all their students. So you just had to drive in your car and they would put it in your backseat. So I mean they’ve been doing a pretty good job in my opinion. Especially because they’re in downtown where like all the bars are, all the restaurants, so they’ve been doing a pretty good job of keeping everything closed and clean and safe.