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A roundup of fiction recommendations By Gwen Cooper “Scarier than Coronavirus” Edition Have predictions of an apocalyptic fall/flu season/sure-to be-contested presidential election—not to mention a rampaging, incurable pandemic that shows no signs of abating—left you feeling a bit on edge? Fear no longer! This selection of titles that dip deep into the uncanny valley will remind you that no matter how terrifying things may seem now, they could always be much, much scarier. The Haunting of Hill House, Shirley Jackson – This foundational classic of the modern haunted-house genre isn’t just scary; it’s SO scary. [How scary is it?] This book is so scary that it gave Stephen King nightmares. (True story!) It’s so scary that—hand to God, and much to my husband’s dismay—I had to sleep with the lights on for a week after I finished reading it. Of course, like any truly great haunted-house tale, Hill House is ultimately a shrewd and insightful psychological portrait of a character on the edge—in this case a shy and somewhat cloistered young woman named Eleanor, who’s staying in the house with five strangers brought together by a paranormal investigator to determine whether local rumors of poltergeists in the home are true. Eleanor—oppressed broadly by the misogynistic conventions of mid-century America and specifically by a bullying older sister and her husband—is initially exhilarated by the freedom and friendship she finds in her new surroundings, now that she’s out from under her family’s overbearing thumb. But, as Eleanor’s grasp of reality and conditions in Hill House itself both begin to fray, the question becomes: Is a haunted Hill House the cause of Eleanor’s unraveling, or is it vice versa? White is for Witching, Helen Oyeyemi – Some of you may remember my having written about Helen Oyeyemi in an earlier edition of “What’s the Story?” This 2009 novel, Oyeyemi’s third published before her 30th birthday, centers on a pair of teenaged twins and their widowed dad who live in Dover, England in a haunted house/B&B across the street from a cemetery filled with unmarked graves. Also, the haunted house is racist, which we know because it narrates part of the novel itself—providing us along with the way with unsettling details about the twins’ mom’s death years ago. Miriam, the female twin, struggles with an eating disorder known as pica (pronounced PIE-kah), which causes her to eat chalk, dirt, and the like. Some of the novel’s key themes—among them that England itself may be a haunted house of sorts, constitutionally inhospitable to immigrants—come into play when a Yoruba housekeeper comes to live with the family (much to the house’s dismay), while Miriam heads off to Oxford and a friendship with her Nigerian roommate (Oyeyemi is herself a Nigerian-born Oxford graduate). I won’t say that this is Oyeyemi’s most successful novel, but it’s thought provoking, original, and spine-tinglingly eerie—and what more could an intelligent reader hope for in a ghost story? Revenge: Eleven Dark Tales, Yoko Ogawa – Chances are you’ve heard some buzz around Ogawa’s novel The Memory Police—in part about a dystopian police state (and therefore currently zeitgeist-y)—that was published in Japan in the early ‘90s and recently (finally!) translated into English. It’s an extraordinary and moving novel, and well worth checking out, but my favorite Ogawa is still the first book of hers I ever read. Revenge is a collection of eerie short tales—about a “torture museum” (where yesteryear’s torture devices are displayed for contemporary crowds’ amusement), a woman whose heart is on the outside of her body, another woman who grows carrots in the shape of human hands, a disappearing and reappearing hamster, and more—that seem independent at first, but end up fitting into each other in startling and fascinating ways. This is more of a “shiver up your spine” than a “wide awake in terror” kind of book, and its relatively short length (my copy’s only about 160 pages) pretty much guarantees you’ll want to give it a reread it so you can check out the connections and overlaps you missed the first time around. The Birds and Other Stories, Daphne du Maurier – The acclaimed author of the latter-day gothic masterpiece Rebecca had an equal command of the short-story form, and counted no less a personage than Alfred Hitchcock among her legions of admirers. If you’ve been meaning to get around to reading the short story upon which he based his 1963 film The Birds, you’ll find it in this reissue from the same year (originally published in the ‘50s as The Apple Tree: A Short Novel and Several Long Stories). There’s a lot to love in this collection, but for my money the real standout is the title story of the original publication. “The Apple Tree” tells the tale of an unhappily married man whose wife dies, and who shortly thereafter finds a long-barren apple tree in his yard slowly surging back to life—as if to spite him as his wife always did. There’s a long and grand horror-story tradition involving the malevolence of supposedly inanimate or non-sentient things (dolls, cars, monkey’s appendages, et cetera), and this tale fits into that tradition snugly. And that’s before you even get to “The Birds,” or the story about the alluring cinema usherette who leads a shy young mechanic to the local cemetery where a disturbing truth is revealed, or the isolated mountaintop community where young women are led and then never heard from again, along a grab bag of additional spooky delights. The Green Man, Kingsley Amis – Part middle-aged comedy, part haunted-house tale, The Green Man just may be the funniest novel that ever makes you shiver with dread. Amis cheerfully mixes up genres here as easily as shuffling a deck of cards, recounting five days in the life of British countryside innkeeper Maurice Allington, owner and proprietor of the possibly haunted Green Man, which dates back to the 14th Century. Allington is simultaneously attempting to overcome his alcoholism and hypochondria, make sense of what may or may not be disturbances caused by the restless spirit of a 17th Century scholar named Thomas Underhill (murderer and former denizen of the Green Man), and—on the day of his father’s funeral, no less—persuade his attractive neighbor to engage in a threesome with him and his wife. There’s no shortage of bumbling subplots, well-drawn character sketches, or alcohol-fueled musings on middle-age and its discontents. In other words, and despite its horror trappings, it’s all veddy, veddy Kingsley Amis. Gwen Cooper is the New York Times bestselling author of Homer's Odyssey and My Life in a Cat House, among numerous other cat-centric titles. Check out a full list of Gwen's titles on her Amazon.com author page.

Michael Cohen Comes Clean By Doug Dworkin It’s less than two months until the election, and insider books about the Trump administration continue to drop off the presses like the falling leaves of October. I’ve recently been slogging my way through John Bolton’s The Room Where It Happened, an informative but ponderous read weighed down by lots of detail and Bolton’s insufferable pomposity (slightly leavened by his biting sarcasm). Earlier this week, as a mental palate cleanser, I decided to take a break from Bolton and picked up Michael Cohen’s Disloyal, an account of Cohen’s time working for Donald Trump as his personal lawyer and fixer from 2006 through Cohen’s imprisonment on May 6, 2019. On the plus side, Cohen’s account is a breeze to read, and if you have heard Cohen speak, his writing style mimics his speaking, flowing easily from scene to scene with a few too many clichés. On the downside, there is not much new revealed here, certainly nothing to compete with Bob Woodward’s about-to-be-released Rage. If you follow the news closely, Cohen’s book is mostly about things you already know. But if you’ve had better things to do than follow the details of Cohen’s career as Trump’s fixer, this is a revealing narrative of Trump’s nefariousness. At one point, Cohen compares himself to the fictional character in Showtime’s “Ray Donovan.” Personally, I don’t think Cohen could administer a beatdown like Ray, but he sure knew how to beat his gums as he carried out his tasks with a mixture of threats, lawsuits and financial trickery. Cohen’s narrative takes the form of a confessional, detailing with regret all the despicable methods he used to pursue the ends of Trump, a man he describes as “a cheat, a liar, a fraud, a bully, a racist, a predator, a con man.” He asserts that to him (and others), Trump was like the cult leader Jim Jones, “who took control of the minds of those drawn to him, not all at once but gradually over time, by luring them into his mind.” Those around Trump often told each other to “Stop Drinking the Kool-Aid” when they had to stay on his message, “even though we knew it was nonsense.” (In an amusing aside, Cohen reveals that Jones did not use Kool-Aid but a cheap knockoff, Flavor Aid. That would be a Trump move, but of course he never would have joined in the final quaff.) Whether you buy Cohen’s remorse or not, it’s a revealing and seductive narrative, and there’s no reason to doubt the truth of most of it, since the antics he describes have been supported by many other authors, journalists and participants. No doubt some of the behavior will make you recoil and marvel that Trump has avoided a decisive comeuppance. The mystery to me is the fact that all the business sophisticates around Trump, including Cohen, were taken in by him. It’s a mystery because the real unsung heroes of this story—Cohen’s wife, Laura, and their daughter Samantha and son Jake—presciently perceived Trump for what he is. They hated him for co-opting their father, who is lucky to have them after all the angst he brought upon them. Being Jewish, I assume that Cohen doesn’t do a religious confession, but he should devote his attention and gratitude to his family, whose support he is lucky to have. Doug Dworkin is a former junior high school teacher, encyclopedia editor, and IT executive at IBM. Now retired, he Is beginning a new career as a professional dabbler and dilettante.

By Merrill Lynn Hansen I cast my first vote when I was in the fifth grade, participating in the John Dewey Elementary School's mock presidential election between John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon. I don't recall if anyone campaigned for either of the candidates, but at home and at school, there was an emphasis on the importance of voting, and I was pleased that my vote for Kennedy contributed to his presidential win. I never thought about a time in our country's history when women were prohibited from voting, and that young girls my age had never thought of the possibility of participating in politics sometime in their future. I later learned that the leading argument against the suffrage movement by scientists, academics and doctors in the United States and Britain, was that women shouldn't vote because their brains were inferior. It was even believed that mental exertion and the stress of voting could harm a woman's reproductive organs, and possibly cause her ovaries to shrivel. I read a letter that the famous British bacteriologist, Almroth Wright, wrote to The Times of London in 1912, about his theory of the suffrage movement. He wrote that when a doctor looks upon a militant suffragist, he cannot shut his eyes "to the fact that there is mixed up with the woman's movement, much mental disorder,” and that some women might resort to physical violence. He also theorized that "in some instances, a part of women's nature has undergone atrophy.” Like many "experts " who were against the suffrage movement, Wright warned of women's physiological emergencies,” and made less than delicate references to women's psychological behavior when they are menstruating. I was amused when I read a very clever and obviously sarcastic response from Clementine Churchill, the wife of Winston Churchill, in a letter she wrote to The Times of London, which began: Sir, After reading Sir Almroth Wright’s able and weighty exposition of women as he knows them, the question seems no longer to be “Should women have votes?” but “Ought women not to be abolished altogether?" When Michelle Obama recently spoke about her love of our country in her speech at the Democratic convention and Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer spoke about democracy being a team sport, I couldn't imagine a scientific theory that could ever disqualify them from voting. But the women who are being showcased by the Republican party scare the hell out of me. I don't permit myself to think about their menstrual cycles (or the possibility of shriveled ovaries), but I can't help but wonder whether Wright's theory, and Ms. Churchill's response, are worthy of reconsideration. Mary Ann Mendoza, a member of the Trump campaign's Advisory Committee, was scheduled to speak via video at the Republican convention, to praise President Trump for his crackdown on the border and support of law enforcement. However, Mendoza’s video was removed at the last minute, because earlier that day, she had encouraged her Twitter followers to read a thread from a QAnon conspiracy theorist about the Rothschilds, a famous Jewish banking family from Germany. Supposedly, they had created a plot to terrorize “goyim" (non-Jews). Their "plot" included plans to “make the goyim destroy each other” and "rob them of their land and properties.” The thread also linked Jewish people to the sinking of the Titanic. Georgia Republican congressional candidate Marjorie Taylor Greene, who is also a QAnon supporter, and described by Trump as a " rising star" in the GOP, on September 3 posted on her Facebook page an image of herself holding a gun. The gun-toting picture appeared alongside of images of Democratic Representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, and Rashida Tlaib. Greene wrote that the Republican party needed "strong conservative Christians to go on the offense against these socialists who want to rip our country apart.” I've no doubt that if today's leading scientists subscribed to the Wright theory regarding the harmful mental-health consequences of voting on women, Ms. Mendoza, and Ms. Greene would be among their case studies. While I won't go so far as to say Mendoza and Greene should be "abolished,” I have exercised great restraint by not writing and suggesting they play in traffic...blindfolded. When I watched Kimberly Guilfoyle's speech at the RNC, I was scared. Her face turned as red as the dress she was wearing and she shouted that the Democrats "want to steal your liberty, your freedom, what you see, and think and believe, so they can control how you live." When she raised up her arms at the end of her speech, as if she was anticipating cheers and applause, it occurred to me that if Clementine Churchill were alive today, she would have laughed at Guilfoyle's poor performance as Evita Perón, singing "Don't Cry For Me, Argentina", and suggested that Guilfoyle ought be abolished. Wright, no doubt, would have agreed. But finally, it is Melania Trump's fashion statements that cause me to embrace Wright's theory about the mental instability of women. I'm not quite certain why she gave her Republican convention speech in the Rose Garden dressed like Fidel Castro, but her earlier "I Don't Care Do U?" stadium jacket infuriated me, because I do care . Even though Wright made no specific reference to women who wear 6" stiletto heels to visit hurricane victims, it is insane, and I can think of no better example of why Republican women should not be permitted to vote (and stilettos abolished). Merrill Hansen is a legal assistant, living in West Bloomfield, Michigan. She describes herself as a frustrated writer, who wishes she could be Nora Ephron (when she was alive), if only for a day. She is a news-, political- and FB-junkie, a combination that requires a constant reminder that she needs to take deep cleansing breaths when responding to people who don't agree with her.

One film journalist’s stream-of-consciousness cinematic journey through the pandemic, Part 16 By Laurence Lerman I revisited Warren Beatty’s celebrated 1981 epic historical drama Reds this past holiday weekend, as both an acknowledgement of the American labor movement and as a nod to the city of Portland, which for more than 100 days has been the epicenter of a series of intense civic protests and marches—or, as they’ve been reinterpreted and transmogrified by a certain President, unending riots, arson, destruction and violence. The central figure of Beatty’s Reds is Portland native John Reed, the journalist and communist activist who first garnered attention as a correspondent during WWI and who later witnessed Russia’s October Revolution firsthand, which yielded his landmark 1919 book Ten Days That Shook The World. The first half-hour or so of Reds quietly unspools in Portland, where Reed meets the feminism-charged journalist/activist Louise Bryant, who’s brought to life in the film by a focused and far-from-Annie Hall-ish Diane Keaton. After that, things get louder as the action moves to New York City and the growth of the Socialist movement in Greenwich Village, then on to Provincetown and Croton-on-Hudson, and then finally to Russia itself. The politics and history of the Russian Revolution and the growth of the anti-capitalist movement in the U.S. are chronicled and Reed weaves his way through both. Running in tandem is Reed and Bryant’s extended romance and marriage, which, like many affairs of the heart, don’t always conform to its participants’ ideas of commitment, in both a political and personal sense. This is particularly apparent when Jack Nicholson’s Eugene O’Neill gets involved with Bryant. The first film directed by Beatty on his own (he shared the credit with Buck Henry on 1978’s Heaven Can Wait), which he also produced and co-wrote, Reds remains his crowning achievement (though 1968’s Bonnie and Clyde, which he produced and stars in, remains the more significant cultural cornerstone). From the energized party meetings to the intimate scenes between the two activist lovers to the teeming crowd protests in the streets of Petrograd (actually Finland, standing in for Russia) to Keaton’s Doctor Zhivago-like trek across the Finnish tundra to rescue her scurvy-ridden imprisoned man, Reds delivers the dramatic arc, epic moments, romantic aspirations and comprehensible history that are required for this kind of large-scale entertainment. Okay, so I led off my Labor Day weekend streaming schedule with a three-hour-plus film celebrating an American communist, but the weekend didn’t end that way. His personal politics aside, John Wayne still remains one of the most symbolically American movie stars to emerge from Hollywood’s Golden Age, as well as one of its most famously conservative and vocally anti-communist. Regardless, as my proficiency in Hollywood’s classic westerns is nominal at best—I’m much more familiar with the revisionist ones—I decided this was the weekend for me to finally catch up with a pair of The Duke’s most famous pictures, 1939’s Stagecoach and 1959’s Rio Bravo. Stagecoach is one of the films to emerge from what film historians often term “the greatest year in the history of Hollywood”—the one that yielded Gone with the Wind, The Wizard of Oz, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Gunga Din, Ninotchka, Dark Victory, Goodbye, Mr. Chips, The Women, not to mention the year’s other great western, Destry Rides Again and, from across the pond, Jean Renoir’s The Rules of the Game. To say that Stagecoach deserves to be on the list is an understatement—it really is one of the greats. A potent western drama that’s as sweeping as it is tightly knit, Stagecoach showcases mid-career director John Ford in top form (he also helmed two other 1939 classics, Young Mr. Lincoln and Drums Along the Mohawk). Adapted by Dudley Nichols from a 1937 short story by Ernest Haycox, it presents a group of travelers on the move between two frontier settlements. Among those in the coach’s close quarters are Claire Trevor’s driven-out-of-town dance hall girl forced to leave town, Thomas Mitchell’s inebriated doctor, John Carradine’s mysterious Southern gambler, Berton Churchill’s embezzling banker and—last to board—a lean, iconic John Wayne, who’s introduced in a slow zoom close-up as the Ringo Kid, a cowboy who’s recently escaped from prison to avenge the murder of his father and brother. It’s the eighth collaboration of what would be 24 of them between Wayne and Ford, and it’s the one that made the actor a star. A straight-ahead story about American life on the ever-expanding frontier—indeed, the horse-drawn stage’s route travels from East to West—Stagecoach set the template and tone for a zillion movies in its wake, the ones featuring a disparate group of strangers thrown into a unique and possibly dangerous situation where strength, guts, cooperation and good old American ingenuity are tapped to save the day. In this case, the danger comes in the form of an Apache war party attack, a climactic high-speed battle that holds up 80 years after it was mounted, and Wayne’s showdown with the outlaws who killed his family. Great stuff. Twenty years and more than fifty movies later, Wayne saddled up for producer/director Howard Hawks for the 1959 western adventure Rio Bravo. A decade earlier, Wayne had worked with Hawks as a tyrannical cattle rancher on Red River (1948), another classic, but this time out, the superstar’s well-established heroic persona leads the charge. As a Texas sheriff who must hold a murder suspect in jail for days until the U.S. Marshal arrives, Wayne unleashes his Winchester 1892 carbine on all manner of bad guys, aided by newly deputized crippled townie Walter Brennan, town drunk Dean Martin and young hotshot Ricky Nelson. In the saloon, a game Angie Dickinson makes herself available for kissing as a mystery lady named Feathers. Sturdily directed, soundly structured and filled with generous dollops of action, suspense, drama, sadness, romance and a good deal of humor, Rio Bravo is pure entertainment. There’s never a lagging moment or questionable plot point during its nearly two-and-a-half-hour running time, which zips right on by. And it’s shot in Technicolor, so the frontier never looked so zesty. As for Dino (he and Ricky contribute a couple of songs), it’s great to see him taking himself seriously during what were to be regarded as his most fertile years—the ones between Jerry Lewis in the late Forties and Fifties and the Rat Pack and his self-parodying persona in the mid-Sixties and beyond. For a few minutes there, he had me nearly forgetting about Cannonball Run. Or was it Cannonball Run II? Laurence Lerman is a film journalist, former editor of Video Business--Variety's DVD trade publication--and husband to The Insider's own Gwen Cooper. Over the course of his career he has conducted one-on-one interviews with just about every major director working today, including Martin Scorsese, Quentin Tarantino, Clint Eastwood, Kathryn Bigelow, Ridley Scott, Walter Hill, Spike Lee, and Werner Herzog, among numerous others. Once James Cameron specifically requested an interview with Laurence by name, which his wife still likes to brag about. Most recently, he is the co-founder and editor-in-chief of the online review site DiscDish.com.

By Andy Borowitz September 10, 2020 WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—Donald J. Trump’s decision to talk to Bob Woodward demonstrates the downside of never having read a book in his entire life, experts say. While millions of Americans were astonished that Trump would voluntarily speak at great length to an author famous for his takedowns of Presidents, experts believe that a total obliviousness to books and what is inside them might have played a pivotal role. Davis Logsdon, a University of Minnesota professor who studies the psychology of people who have never read a book in their lives, said that such people might be overconfident about how they would be portrayed if a book were ever written about them. “If you’ve never read a book in your life, you might be under the impression that all books are flattering,” he said. “You would have no idea that a book could portray you as a human dumpster fire.” As for Trump, Logsdon said that the President would “definitely benefit” from reading a book someday, but added, “It’s a little late for that now.” Andy Borowitz is a Times best-selling author and a comedian who has written for The New Yorker since 1998. He writes The Borowitz Report, a satirical column on the news.

FRED PLOTKIN is one of America’s foremost experts on opera and has distinguished himself in many fields as a writer, speaker, consultant and as a compelling teacher. He is an expert on everything Italian, the person other so-called Italy experts turn to for definitive information.  Fred discovered the concept of "The Renaissance Man" as a small child and has devoted himself to pursuing that ideal as the central role of his life. In a “Public Lives” profile inThe New York Timeson August 30, 2002, Plotkin was described as "one of those New York word-of-mouth legends, known by the cognoscenti for his renaissance mastery of two seemingly separate disciplines: music and the food of Italy." In the same publication, on May 11, 2006, it was written that "Fred is a New Yorker, but has the soul of an Italian."

By Mary Coombs Dedicated to Derryl Millican, my partner of seven years, and to all those who remember someone who died during the pandemic We are left to face this with what we have: our hearts, beating sadness and love, and our imaginations, this underused magical power. -- Lauren Collins,“Missed Calls,” The New Yorker May 11, 2020 The résumé virtues are the skills you bring to the marketplace. The eulogy virtues are the ones that are talked about at your funeral — whether you were kind, brave, honest or faithful. Were you capable of deep love? --David Brooks, “The Moral Bucket List,” The New York Times April 11, 2015 Introduction I hope you will find here a sense of who Derryl was, and why so many people were so fond of him. First, my memories of Derryl. Second, a historical document. After Derryl died, I found among his papers copies of the letters he had mailed to his mother just about every day from Jakarta, where he worked for two international oil companies. I’ve included some snippets that tell a bit about what Derryl was like in the late 1990s– insightful, funny and a very loving son. Third, Derryl’s own words to me. Shortly after we met, I went back to Miami for a few months, so he courted me by email. I’m sharing some of the sweet or funny lines. Fourth, and lastly the story of how Derryl and I reached our final destination. I hope this story will help you all understand why I feel so fortunate to have had him in my life and perhaps trigger memories of others you have loved and lost. I. My Memories of Derryl Most of these are memories of us. After 40-plus years as an “I,” being a part of “we” was a new and (almost always) wonderful experience. How did we meet? I came to Ashland, Oregon first, in 2012, and was taking a “Building Bones” exercise class through Parks and Rec. Derryl came to Ashland in 2013, and rented a room about a mile away from my house. .Not long after, he saw a woman walking down the street with an exercise mat and asked her if there were a class nearby. She said there was, but it was offered in six-week segments and it was already the end of week two. Then she added that the class was almost all women, and the instructor might be willing to let in another man. Derryl set up his mat next to mine and the rest, as they say, is history. We chatted after and a bit during class, we went out for coffee; I invited him to an Ashland New Plays Festival Reading, he invited me to dinner. Derryl was more playfully imaginative than me. When people asked us how we met, he would tell a story that he was taking part in a protest march against conditions in Dagestan; he was arrested; and I, in my lawyer role, came and bailed him out. I, being far more literal, squelched that story because (1) I am not a lawyer admitted to the bar in Oregon and (2) I liked the true story better. Derryl’s mother, Dolly, had died not too long before he moved to Ashland. He was clearly very close to her and liked to talk about her. She was often in his dreams. I don’t know for sure what would have happened if she had still been alive, and I had had to pass the “Dolly approval test.” Fortunately, I only had to pass the “Derryl’s beliefs about Dolly’s approval test,” and I did. One part of that test was kindness. For Dolly and Derryl, kindness was absolutely a prime virtue. Frankly, I’d never thought of myself as unusually kind. But Derryl thought I was and perhaps, with him in my life,I became both consciously and unconsciously a kinder person. Living with someone was new to me, and at Derryl’s suggestion, we had a pattern. If one (or both) of us thought the other was behaving badly, we would try not to get into a fight then. But soon we (usually he) would suggest that we break out the bottle of Courvoisier and discuss, over glasses, what had caused the upset. It worked pretty well, but I don’t know that I will ever want to drink the rest of the Courvoisier. Odd the tricks you learn to make things easier when you are sharing a life and home. Derryl would get very cranky when his blood sugar was low. So when we drove out, even the 15 miles to Medford, I’d be sure to have a protein bar in my purse and offer it at the first sign of peckishness. On the other hand, I learned that when I got cranky and snippy–and especially when we both did – sometimes the best thing was to go somewhere else until I calmed down and—often--realized that the brouhaha was significantly my fault or not very important. Hence, the impetus for us moving across the driveway to a larger town house with more as needed “me only” space and me heading out for longish walks. Derryl loved to laugh, and could sometimes be very funny. He was almost always appreciative of my puns and silliness. I gave him books from two of my favorite Florida authors, Carl Hiassen and Dave Barry. More than once, he’d be reading Dave Barry and try to tell me the portion that had made him laugh. But he was laughing so hard he couldn’t stop long enough to speak. Derryl had an interesting relationship with universities. He went to the University of Oklahoma, majoring in petroleum engineering. It was, I think, in large part a choice driven by a felt need for an adequate income, both in the summers, where oil companies would hire people like him at way more than the rest of us made in our college summers, and upon graduation. His view of himself was that he was a good enough engineer, but his talents lay more in the business end of things and human interactions, with the people who worked under him and with the people from other companies that he interacted with. He was always intensely interested in a wide variety of things and, I think, sometimes regretted not having taken a more academic turn in his life. He had been encouraged by a college professor to shift his major to psychology. And he always liked being near a university. When he was more mobile, he would regularly walk up to the Hannon Library at Southern Oregon University, where he would read various periodicals. He had a small library of books on how to write well and on anthropology, statistics and economics. Among his favorite people were those who had been academics or were involved in intellectually interesting pursuits, like Phil Newman, a retired anthropology professor. Derryl loved to walk and talk with Phil, when he could still participate in the Hillclimbers walking group. And, of course, that meant that he let me natter on about the law at great length and, I like to think, I was not as irritatingly “let me tell you what this is all about, peon” as I would have been with most people who weren’t lawyers. Derryl loved watching sports. First and foremost, Oklahoma football. Saturday mornings in the fall, he would be in front of the TV. He wasn’t much interested in professional sports, or most college games not involving Oklahoma.. But he had (and seemed to develop more of) a delight in the success of college women’s sports, again with a tilt toward the Oklahoma teams. He really loved that women were athletes, using their bodies as men had traditionally done. And to the extent he openly admired other women’s looks (at least to me), it was the athletic, fit bodies of women soccer, softball and basketball players. Generally, he was more the TV watcher. He liked rom-coms, on TV or sometimes at the theater. He enjoyed some of the traditional network series: “Star Trek,” “McGyver”, “NCIS” and its spinoffs. An evening often found us both curled up on the couch in front of the TV. He was watching, and sometimes I watched with him; sometimes I read. Fortunately, though my eyesight was better, his hearing was more acute, so he could set the TV volume loud enough for him and quiet enough for me. And as we sat there, he rubbed my feet. Am I selfish that that is one of the things I especially miss? He was more spiritual than me. He had abandoned his Baptist upbringing, but in his 12 years in Marin just before he moved to Ashland. he was part of the Sausalito Presbyterian Church. He was always happy when he talked about that, and when he introduced me to Pastor Paul when we went to San Francisco. I’m not sure how much of it was a commitment to Presbyterian doctrine as opposed to a community. He didn’t connect the same way with the Presbyterian Church here. But while he was well enough, he manifested his deep kindness as he participated in preparing their monthly community dinners. He worked hard at thinking about what foods he wanted to prepare, purchase and cook. And he always stayed and visited with the people who came to the dinners. There was, he told me, a woman who brought her children there; he understood that this was a rare opportunity for them to “go out to eat.” I think his inability to keep up with that was one of the real emotional costs for him as his health declined. Perhaps I can best explain what he meant and why I miss him by walking through a “day in the life.” We always woke up in the same bed. Sometimes I would fall asleep in the TV room or the living room but often after Derryl would call out for me, I’d move to the bed. (Part of our relationship rule, from the beginning, was that I could continue to engage in the various activities I’d done in Ashland during the day, but I’d always be in bed with him at night). One of the ways his kindness manifested itself was by his encouraging me to go on trips that he couldn’t take for health reasons: to Italy on my own, on Overseas Adventure Travel tours to China and to Costa Rica, on a quick weekend jaunt to Montreal with my daughter, Karen. Whenever I did travel alone, I called him every night to check in. We never got the chance to travel abroad together. We did go to: Also to Los Angeles, to Santa Fe and Taos and to North Reno (with his brother and sister-in-law). He came to Miami twice during our first year together, when I went back for my final semester of teaching law school: at the beginning to help celebrate my January birthday and in May to help me pack and move permanently to Ashland. He developed a really bad allergic reaction to pollen from the tropical plants, so my later trips back to Miami were on my own. I remember especially the trip we took to New York City together. He enjoyed a Broadway play and the nice dinner at the Red Rooster in Harlem, but what he remembered most fondly was our morning coffee. We were staying at the apartment of a friend who was away. Each morning, we would head out to a nearby Dunkin’ Donuts, sit at the counter at the front window and watch Manhattan wake up. What of our usual days together? We woke up. I went downstairs and made a pot of coffee (good coffee, medium blend as he liked it, in a French press) and brought it upstairs. We sat on the two bedroom chairs. (I always appropriated the comfortable green leather chair and ottoman that were part of his “dowry,” while he sat in a straight back, no-arm wooden chair. As he got weaker, I could justify this by how difficult it would be for him to get up from the green chair, but it really started because I claimed it.) We would look out at the sunrise or at the tops of the trees and smile. We would talk about the news, especially when the New York Times came and I brought it upstairs with the coffee. Our political views were different but “adjacent,” and each of us would sometimes shift our positions as we worked through the argument. I really loved to discuss contemporary political issues with him; sometimes I now find myself having an internal discussion between my first instincts and what I guess he would say. I have adopted his habit of reading every David Brooks column, though I probably agree with Brooks less than Derryl did. Before we went downstairs, we would make the bed. He was a restless sleeper and the covers were thoroughly disorganized by morning. And he wanted nice sheets and pillows. I claimed that he had aspects of a princess, being bothered by the pea under the mattress. (Though he complained only intermittently and gently about my habit of eating pretzels in bed.) We would talk about our plans for the day. Often I would be off hiking or working at various organizational tasks I had taken on. In the earlier times, we would take a walk or drive together into Medford for various errands. He always noticed and was made happy by how beautiful our surroundings were, though he complained about the traffic on Main Street once the Oregon Shakespeare Festival was underway. Frequently in things I do, I remember Derryl and I have a moment of saying to myself that I need to tell Derryl X, or show him Y. He was always interested in Judaism (he had told me this and I bought him a short biography of Maimonides that he treasured). More at his urging than mine, we attended Temple Emek Shalom for a few months, but I think his interest in Jewish thought and the discussions of Torah could not overcome my lesser enthusiasm, and the sense that the synagogue members were polite but somehow never became warmer than that. I now hope that there is a truth in the teachings of the various religions, so that some spirit of Derryl is out there at peace and waiting for me, someday, to join him. Derryl enjoying life in Ashland He went along, as a good sport, with my plan to march in the Halloween parade: being silly but not having to create amazing costumes Having fun in Lithia Park II. Derryl’s Letters to His Mom 1997-1998 I always knew how much Derryl loved his mom and how much he felt loved by her. After he died, I found in his papers his copies of the letters he had sent her almost every day for the little-over-a-year when he lived in Jakarta. In the letters he often speaks very directly of their relationship. “I think my stay in Indonesia will end when I get fed up with missing my mother” “The greatest gift you ever gave me is the complete confidence that I was loved” Sometimes he talks about life in Jakarta as a relatively well-off Westerner. As an employee of an international oil company, he was entitled to have his own cook and driver, but often frustrated by trying to make the relationships work fairly and effectively, One employee was a good cook but only knew how to cook Indonesian food and training her to make things he likes “is a struggle because she is also illiterate. And she hasn’t got the hang of tuna salad yet.” He recognizes the downsides of his inability to communicate with drivers and cooks and his expectation that they be fluent in English: “I definitely have to work on learning Indonesian or I am going to be traveling in circles and eating pigs’ intestines.” He was an expat himself, of course. One day, he bought the fixings and wrote, “a ham sandwich is heaven when you have been on a diet of strange tasting foods.” And one story is classic Derryl: “A Texan (note: given Derryl’s Oklahoma roots, this guy is not likely to be the hero of the story) said he really liked having servants and wouldn’t mind taking a couple back to the states. Then he decided that he might have to pay them better and they might leave him for someone else. He thought it would be hard to control them unless you brought them in illegally and threatened to send them back if they misbehaved. I suggested chaining them to their beds at night and hiring off duty cops to beat them occasionally. He doesn’t realize that he wants the return of slavery.” He spent some time in Singapore, and kept most of his money there, safe from Suharto. When I knew him, Derryl was always quite positive about Singapore; it probably started here. He liked that the rules were all strictly enforced, so it was always safe. But at the end of one comment, another side of Derryl peeks out. “It tends to get dull after about three days. Maybe a little chaos creates the things we find interesting.” He reports that the Singaporean government “makes Saturday a day off for domestic help and Sunday the day off for construction workers. They don’t want the [foreign] men and women to have a chance to meet, marry and ask for citizenship.” In one letter he notes that “the people of Hong Kong and Singapore may not be concerned about democracy but they are passionate about the rule of law,” and that Indonesia has neither. (One of the many topics I wish I could talk with Derryl about is the current events in Hong Kong, as the people resist the attempts – unfortunately likely to succeed – to suppress the freedoms that Hong Kongers have and mainland Chinese do not.) He sometimes talks of other aspects of life in Indonesia, usually with good humor. Apparently, as a result of the detergents and the poor water quality, his underwear came out grey and dingy. “Next time I am going to buy underwear in the color Dingy so I won’t experience a color change.” When he started working for a new employer, he didn’t yet have his ID card “so I put on my best silly foreigner grin and ask the guards to let me through. I am sure it violates company policy – but this is Indonesia.” And, one of my favorite stories: “Across the street from my apartment I saw two sheep waiting with their owner at a covered bus stop. I wonder what fare you charge for sheep? Do they get a seat or crowd the aisle? And what if someone wants to get on with their dog at the next stop? Clearly I don’t understand everything I see in Jakarta.” He has stories and insights from his work world, about the locals, the management, and himself. He notes that he is working on a project to double production which “is silly because we can’t dispose of the waste water from current operations, the contract is unfavorable for this type of work and Pertamina cannot pay its bill. I will do one more study to prove the obvious. Don [his older brother] and I both suffer from management that does not listen.” He indicates that one senior co-worker was incompetent, stupid and obstructionist. Why did they keep him? Question answered by an announcement of the death of the Governor of Jakarta--said co-worker’s father! At one company, little of the work was documented so “much of my learning comes from debriefing other people, which I am good at. The challenge is to quickly build enough of a relationship with coworkers to justify their investment of time in me. I am succeeding as I meet more people and convince them that I am a good guy.” He intervened once as a consultant was making a report and an Indonesian guy was asking questions that didn’t make sense to the consultant. “I translated for both of them. I call this my English to English translation service. I reworked Z’s questions so they weren’t foolish and restated B’s answers so they were in plain English. This is a skill I developed in Russia and China. I have no skill at foreign languages, but I am good at English to English translation.” Finally some odds and ends, self-reflections and funny asides: “Sorry I was so whiny. My letters must sound like a kid at summer camp. It was cloudy today, the world is awful; the sun is out, the world is rosy. Just discount the Bad Jakarta days. It mostly comes from being so spoiled for so long before I got here.” He apparently gained a lot of weight in Indonesia (like me, he ate when depressed and didn’t exercise). He occasionally refers to this in his letters. After returning from a visit home, he says “the airline imposed an overweight passenger fee for the weight I gained over Christmas,” Another comment: “I have decided to become a Buddhist. They revere fat guys. I had briefly flirted with the idea of sumo wrestling but I am not that committed to being fat.” He sometimes tried to learn and use Indonesian. In Indonesian you make a plural of a noun by repeating it. “I learned that gula means sugar, so I asked a young girl at the coffee stand saya gula gula (I want sugars) and she turned and walked away. . . A coworker explained that there is not a plural for sugar, so the expression gula gula is used for a mistress. She thought I was propositioning her.” And sometimes his deep kindness shows through. “I now give lovingly to each beggar I see on the street. I have lost the image of them as cheats and try to see them as fully human. I try to see the Christ in each of them. I give a thousand rupiahs to each, but more importantly, from my viewpoint, I smile and think of them as whole capable people. Most of them now beam back a smile at me. It may be the money, but I had never seen them smile at others who gave them money. It doesn’t matter to me what is really going on. To me, I am giving the gift of a smile and I feel better for it.” Derryl and His Family III. Derryl in his own words to me In the first few months after we met and fell in love, I had to go to Miami twice. In both cases, he sent me frequent emails. I want to share some of them that reveal things about him that are appropriate for a G-rated publication! He quoted Kierkegaard (I was frequently amazed by the breadth of his reading and interests): “Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.” He then added, “When I pray, I ask only for illumination for the steps in front of me. I no longer pretend to understand very much, but I know it feels right to be with you.” He liked words and dictionaries, as in this email, “Word of the day: canoodle: Canoodle is an old-fashioned word that I think we should explore” when you get back. Although he grew up in Oklahoma, he was a New York Times fan and also an Economist fan, though after a couple of years, he concluded that the balance of Economist pages actually read to cost of subscription didn’t work. He commented more than once about the pleasure of us together with coffee and the Times in the morning, talking about big and little things. At one point I told him that I had planned to get a dog when I moved to Ashland. Something to love and-–if chosen and trained with care—to love me back. Something to ensure that I got out of the house even if I got into a funk and didn’t want to. Instead, I got Derryl, who met all those criteria. His response? “Yes, and I don’t shed.” (I sometimes wish we had gotten a dog. I think, when I do get one, however, I should NOT name him Derryl.) “I fantasize about us walking hand in hand on a beach somewhere with twenty-somethings looking at us. Some think ‘what a corny old couple,’ but the smart ones think, ‘I hope I have that when I’m their age.’” He even wrote poetry, not, I suspect, a common avocation for petroleum engineers: Shadows Walking East at sunrise I see no shadow What occurs behind is not known to me Near my beginning many shadows cross my pathway Some interesting, pleasant, exciting but all provisional As my shadow grows, it blends with other shadows Some persistent but never the complement of mine Near my destination a unique shadow appears This shadow has clear edges; a substantive texture My shadow joyfully joins with hers in a dance Long shadows – always touching; always dancing Can one feel cathexis for a shadow? And he sometimes responded with delight to poems by others, such as this excerpt of Adrienne Rich’s “For Memory”: The past is not a husk, yet change goes on Freedom. It isn’t once, to walk out Under the Milky Way, feeling the rivers Of light, the fields of dark Freedom is daily, prose-bound, routine Remembering. Putting together, inch by inch The starry worlds. From all the lost collections. Perhaps this is too personal, but it really captures an aspect of who Derryl was: “I want to become more attractive for you. . .more brave in facing my failing, more loving in my relations and more kind in dealing with people I find offensive.” I think a lot about the current controversies over how to respond to past “heroes” who had some distinctly unheroic thoughts and actions. Derryl had read a bio of Jefferson and said that it led him to think about “Jefferson’s failure to equate kidnapping whites by the Barbary Pirates with chattel slavery. Jefferson was a complex man, but always a Virginian.” He reported that he was listening to Cole Porter’s lyrics for Anything Goes (“In olden days a glimpse of stocking was looked on as something shocking, but now, God knows, anything goes”). “Pretty racy for 1934. I am struck by each generation’s assumption that they discovered sex.” At one time in his career, Derryl was a landsman (going to places where there was land that might well have oil under it and persuading the landowners to sell the mineral rights). One story from that time: “All of the landsmen used me as a personal Google asking me a bewildering range of questions, exceptions granted for hunting and fishing, because I was clueless about them. They would ask me questions as a game of Stump the Chump. One day, one man asked me which was the largest Indian Tribe. When I told him I didn’t know, he looked dumbfounded and then said, ‘Well, make something up.’” (When I got this email, I Googled: Navaho and Cherokee.) He was a sort of redneck, and he claimed to understand the redneck approach to life. A Derryl original for the category: “Redneck Humor: I don’t know why gays make such a big deal about homophones. I mean occasionally I spell dear deer and bear bare, but most folks don’t get upset.” He reported one day, “At the Y today, I saw a woman wearing a big backpack on a treadmill set at low speed and a steep angle. Backpacking season is near.” Finally, his last email, sent when I was on a trip out of Ashland “Your puppy has been watching the front door. He seems depressed and started howling at night. I considered Prozac, but instead put ice cream on his kibbles. This made him happy, but is just a stopgap until you return. I hope you get home before your puppy gets fat.” IV. End Times When I met Derryl in 2013, he was taking 15 pills a day. Despite that, he seemed healthy and energetic. The first time we went for a hike, he had to slow down for me. But his health slowly declined. His first serious health issue was his end-stage renal disease. In 2015, shortly after he was diagnosed, we went up to Portland to learn about kidney transplants. I was willing to be a donor, but ineligible because I was over 70 —2 ½ years older than Derryl. I rather blithely assumed he’d get a transplant, but as his other health issues came to the fore, it was clear he would never be transplant-eligible., I couldn’t avoid seeing the seriousness of his kidney issues when he started going into the dialysis center for triweekly treatments in 2018. Because he had terrible night vision, I would drive him there, wait and then drive him home. Some of the other patients looked so ill and weak. Over time, I began to realize that he was among them. His other big health problem was his increasing inability to move his body with full control. By 2017, he used a walker (one for home, one to keep in the car for moving between the car and the dialysis center). By 2018, he couldn’t manage the stairs in our two-story house. He was afraid of falling, and I was afraid for him. So he went upstairs in a kind of hands-and-knees crawl. I think I resisted recognizing how much his health was declining and how serious it was. He was younger than me --how could he be so much sicker? I though sometimes that it seemed unfair that of all the health problems we both suffered, he got 90% of them. Mine were all short-term and resolvable, such as emergency gall bladder surgery, which didn’t even interfere with my ability to eat junk food. The weakness of his muscles and balance was a consequence of Parkinson’s. I didn’t even know that until less than a year before he died. I suspect he knew, but he didn’t want to burden me. Things got really bad in January of this year. He fell four times. He didn’t injure himself much in the falling, but he couldn’t get up, even with help from me. Each time, we called 911 and a team of EMTs came out. They were very professional, and took him to the hospital. There was never a simple answer to what had happened, or a treatment to make it not happen again. The last time, at the end of February, our local hospital had him transferred to a bigger hospital that could provide him with the needed dialysis treatments. He was in there for several days, then moved to a rehab-assisted living facility in Ashland. He never left. I think I knew as little as I did, both because I didn’t want to know and because he didn’t want to worry me. Derryl passed away on March 26, 2020. The official cause of death was the flu. The facility went into lockdown shortly after he went there, so there were no visitors, When it was only their corporate policy, they made an exception for me because I came so much and they could see how it improved Derryl’s mood. When he was still going to dialysis, using a special bus for people needing transport for medical needs, I would meet him outside of the rehab facility and wait with him for 20 minutes or so until the transport arrived. But when Oregon imposed restrictions, I couldn’t go there. Phone calls didn’t even work. Derryl didn’t remember to charge his phone, and the staff was, I suspect, overworked and didn’t do it either, so I frequently couldn’t even talk to him. Then Derryl stopped going to dialysis. In the facility (versus being in a hospital), they have a state-mandated end-of-life exception, so I got to be with him on his last day, and his son flew out and got to be with him too. In an odd way, Derryl’s death created a stronger bond between Sean and me. I'm sure Derryl would have approved. Why didn’t they ever give Derryl a COVID test? I don’t really know, but I’m glad they didn’t. I suspect if it were COVID, I couldn’t have come into the facility to be with him at the end. And that loss of the last hours together – which so many other families have had to endure – is at least one loss that he and I avoided. Mary I. Coombs earned a B.A. in 1965, an M.A. in sociology in 1967, an M.A. in library science in 1970, and a J.D. in 1978, all from the University of Michigan. Following graduation from law school, she served as law clerk to Judge Henry J. Friendly of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. She was in private practice until she joined the University of Miami School of Law faculty in 1983. She was a professor at the law school for 31 years, until retiring in 2014

What Can Happen When a College Reopens Too Early I have to admit that I never wanted to put myself in harm’s way as a journalist. That was evident from my first days at Columbia J-School, when I decided to write my master’s thesis on celebrity journalism. Later, I used to joke with my friends at Time magazine that I would rather be the Bloomingdale’s correspondent than be posted in a war zone. Don’t get me wrong--I have nothing but admiration for reporters who risk everything to tell the story, but that wasn’t my path. So while I was in awe of CNN’s Anderson Cooper when I interviewed him in 2006 about his new memoir, Dispatches from the Edge: A Memoir of War, Disasters, and Survival, let’s just say that we didn’t swap stories about outrunning the Taliban. Rather, one of my proudest journalistic coups came in 2004, when I managed to report from inside of the National Enquirer’s Lantana, Fla. newsroom. In the belly of the beast! But unexpectedly, last week I found myself doing an assignment that might have sickened or killed me if I had done it in person. An Insider reader (thank you, Albert Naglieri!) mentioned that his niece, Ava Alicanti, a 19-year-old sophomore at SUNY-Oneonta, a public college in central New York, had returned to school in person on August 20th. Naturally, because of the ongoing national debate about whether colleges should reopen yet, I was interested in talking with Ava. When I reached her last Saturday (8/29) we agreed that I would interview her by phone on September 8th, when enough time had passed for her to form an impression of pandemic student life. Imagine my surprise, then, when Albert sent me a message on Monday, only two days later, saying “I just found out my niece Ava has Covid.” I was stunned; she had been fine 48 hours earlier. When I texted Ava, she told me that not only did she have Covid-19, but that she was in a strict quarantine with her three roommates. By then, I had learned that there was a huge Covid outbreak on the campus, with more than 500 students infected. Ava, probably bored as well as sick, was eager to tell me about her situation. We proceeded to do a long, unorthodox, on-the-record text interview over the next five days -- me, sheltering in place for the sixth month in my Manhattan apartment because of an underlying health condition, and Ava, quarantining because of her illness in a group house in Oneonta. To give you a sense of the urgency of the situation in Oneonta (pronounced oh-nee-on-tuh), we’re publishing, with Ava’s permission, a shortened but unedited selection of texts from our long conversation. It’s hardly the Pentagon Papers (if anything, it’s the Pandemic Papers), but it reveals the thoughts of one card-carrying member of Generation P whose youthful plans have been upended by the Covid crisis. I am grateful to Ava for her time and her upbeat openness, and I look forward to meeting her in person someday—but not now. Move over, Anderson Cooper! The Insider: Before we start, I want to make sure that it’s okay with you if I publish this interview. Ava Alicanti: Yes no problem! The Insider: Great! People really want to know what’s going on at college! How did you find out that you have Covid? Ava Alicanti: I had been seeing a few friends in small doses since I had moved in on the 20th of August. My roommates and I had some of our friends over certain days to eat dinner with us at our house and check out the new pad; things like that... so when people began talking about a rise of cases in Oneonta, my roommates and I began to feel anxious about potential exposure; however, we did not rush to get tested because we were afraid of being exposed at the testing site. A few days later, we learned that basically everyone that we had been in contact with either tested positive for covid or had symptoms. So we decided as a household that for each other’s sake the responsible thing to do would be to get tested. We went to our local doctor’s office, wellnow, and waited in the car for 7 hours to receive our rapid test. My fourth roommate did not get tested as she had the virus in June, so we assumed that she still had the antibodies and could not catch it again. One of my roommates tested positive and me and my other roommate tested negative. It was hard to believe, as there was no way to deny that we had been exposed. We were literally living with the coronavirus in our own home. We assumed a false rapid, but took precautions around the house anyways. Quarantining our positive roommate, disinfecting surfaces, etc. So believe it or not I never actually tested positive. A day after testing, I started to feel symptoms such as light sensitivity, a headache, coughing, sinus ache, body aches, and a fever. So I assumed that despite what the test said, it was covid. It seemed impossible for me to not have it. The Insider: That sounds right! So you have 3 other roommates, and 1 tested positive, and 1 tested negative and 1 had it before and wasn’t tested? Ava Alicanti: Correct! The Insider: Are all 4 of you sick now? Ava Alicanti: No. My roommate who had it previously is still perfectly fine. Me and the rest, however, all have symptoms. Even the other who tested negative as well. The Insider: What was the actual test like? Ava Alicanti: It hurt! They put a swab up our noses. The Insider: Which day did you get the tests? Ava Alicanti: We were tested on August 30th. The Insider: Sunday? And you started feeling sick on Monday? Ava Alicanti: Yes. The Insider: Do you know why it took 7 hours before you had the test? Ava Alicanti:: Office was absolutely packed. Parking lot flooded with students. Testing was extremely slow. Complaints all around. The nurse herself said that she saw an overwhelming amount of positive results that day, almost all of them being students! The Insider: So dangerous to sit in a car with three people who might be sick! I bet you left the windows open on purpose, right? Ava Alicanti: We assumed that one of us at least would already have it and that we have already been in contact and living together. We wore masks and kept the windows down The Insider: That’s true! I didn’t think of that. How many students would you guess were waiting to be tested? Hundreds? Ava Alicanti: Probably almost a hundred. The testing was scattered. People had gone the days before and the days after. That’s what I’ve heard from speaking to other students about it. The Insider: Let me catch up on what you’ve been doing since the pandemic began at the beginning of March. Were you at school then? Did school close down? Ava Alicanti: The pandemic started to escalate in March while I was still at school. That month, I went home for break, and that is when things got really serious. We were not allowed to return to campus. It was really unfortunate because I had my textbooks and a lot of other things left at school. Professors had to figure out a way to make online class work in the middle of a semester, and we as students had to adjust while being at home; we were not used to being home and in school. The library was a really great resource for me and I spent a lot of time there studying. I no longer had that resource. It was difficult to learn through the computer screen and upsetting not to sit in a classroom with a professor teaching directly and with my peers. A few weeks later, the school notified us that we could begin returning to campus to get our things and move out. So campus was now shut down but we all needed to return to retrieve our items. We had to sign up for a time slot online to ensure that there were not too many people in the same building at the same time. My father and I went together for me to move out my things at the end of April. Campus was absolutely empty. It was super strange. I was upset to reenter my dorm. It hit me that my second semester as a first-year student was really over halfway through. I was devastated! I loved being away. The Insider: Yes, that must have been very difficult! I know that you probably don’t have a major yet, but what kind of classes have you taken at school? Ava Alicanti: I do! My major is Early Childhood Education with a concentration in Liberal Arts. The Insider: That sounds interesting! Ava Alicanti: I have taken one education class even though by now I should have taken two. The classes fill up quick. I have taken Spanish as a language and a few electives. The school requires students to fill some General education requirements, one in each subject. So I have been filling a lot of those credits. I have also taken history, English, and math classes as well. The Insider: So when school closed because of the pandemic, you lived with your parents and finished the semester remotely, right? Ava Alicanti: Yes. The Insider: Just before you left school, were you living in a dorm? Ava Alicanti: Yes with one other roommate. The Insider: Had any students at the school gotten Covid before it closed down? Ava Alicanti: No, there were no cases in Oneonta at the time. The virus was only starting to get bad once we were home. The Insider: What did you do during the summer, after your remote classes were over? Ava Alicanti: I didn’t do much. It was super boring and frustrating but me and my family remained in quarantine. I spoke to friends and relatives over the phone, facetime, etc. I normally work during the summer as a lifeguard, but this year I decided I wanted to find a restaurant to work at instead. I applied at every single restaurant in my area once things started to reopen in about mid-july, and not one place in my area would hire me. It was scary because I assumed I would be going back to school and that I should really start to save money. At the end of July, I found a hostessing job at a restaurant in Massapequa. I was super grateful that they hired me during such a rough time. I plan on returning to work there when I go home in November for break. The Insider: Over the summer, did you know anyone personally who got Covid? Ava Alicanti: Yes I did. I knew friends of friends who had it and a family friend. The Insider: Bad cases of it? Did anyone die? Ava Alicanti: No. My family friend was my age and had a very mild case. Friends of friends were my age as well and had mild cases. The Insider: Did your school communicate with you in any way over the summer about what their plans were about reopening? Ava Alicanti: Yes. The school updated us multiple times telling us that they were working with New York State to find a solution. They finally told us in early August that we would be returning. The Insider: What was your reaction? Were you happy about it, or nervous, or a combination? Ava Alicanti: I was super happy to return to Oneonta. I had been home for so long that I felt like I needed a change. At the same time, though, I was nervous. I had been so readjusted at home, which made that change scary for me. I also knew that this semester would be different because of online class and would probably be a bit weird. The Insider: Was the plan at school for you to return completely to in-person classes? Ava Alicanti: There are no in-person classes. We were told in advance that a majority of classes would be online, aside from classes like art, dancing, and acting. Campus resources, such as Starbucks and the library, were open. Students in dorms are not allowed to go into each other’s dorms. However, because of the recent upsurge in cases, campus is now shut down. Campus resources are no longer open and students are being required to quarantine in their dorms. Campus is requiring covid testing for all on campus students by cheek swab. Their food is delivered to them from the dining halls at their door in to-go packages. Students who test positive are sent to a dormitory hall that is reserved for COVID positive students. The Insider: Are you living an an apartment now, or in a dorm? Ava Alicanti: I live in a house downtown. Me and my current roommates were planning on living in a dorm for 4 on campus, until we heard of a bunch of other sophomores deciding to move off-campus. We decided that with all of the regulations and the risk of being in the same hall as other students who could be spreading covid, that we would be happier off-campus. The Insider: Tell me more about your return to school. You want back on Saturday, August 20, right? What was it like on campus when you got there? Ava Alicanti: Yes. I actually did not go to campus at all. I got all of my textbooks online as supposed to the school bookstore, and all of my classes are online. I really haven’t had a reason to go to campus. I miss it, though. The Insider: Describe your life in the week when you got back to school, before you got tested. Ava Alicanti: Our first week back was super exciting but super hectic. Moving in was really stressful because we weren’t necessarily prepared for that big of a move in, meaning a house compared to a dorm, since we only knew about a month in advance. It was really exciting though. My friends and I were very excited to live in a house together and to get that experience. Classes began on the 4th day after moving in. The first day of online class felt weird as being in class would anyways because of being out of school all summer. It felt similar to quarantine. It was like I was back in my room at home “in class” on my laptop. Online isn’t terrible, though. I like being in the comfort of my home while doing all of my schoolwork and being in class. It also eased that anxiety of showing up to class for the first time. I always had butterflies in my stomach walking to the first day of class. I usually make myself something to eat before class or sit at the table with a cup of coffee and headphones in during lecture. It’s pretty nice, actually. I like having my roommates. It is comforting and we motivate each other. We sit at the kitchen table together with relaxing music playing and do our schoolwork together which is awesome. The Insider: Are the classes on Zoom or something similar? Ava Alicanti: My classes are on blackboard collaborate. Blackboard is a website that our school uses for basically everything. Each student gets a login and has access to their schedule, their grades, their transcript, their billing and financial aid into, and all links and information needed for classes. So blackboard includes a feature that allows each professor to open a chat room for students to enter for class with audio and video. They are able to screenshare contents and we are able to tune in. The Insider: So when was the last day you “attended” class? Ava Alicanti: The last day that I was in class was Friday before I got tested on Sunday The Insider: I know that all of this is brand new, but what are your plans now? Will you stay in your apartment with your roommates? Will there be any classes at Oneonta? Your parents must be very worried! What did they say when you told them you had Covid? Ava--do you want to stop until tomorrow? That would be no problem! Ava--I’m worried. Are you okay? Ava Alicanti: Hi Andrea I’m so sorry!! I fell asleep. I am going to go back to sleep so I will answer soon. The Insider: Later! Ava Alicanti: Hi Andrea! My apologies I have been sleeping for hours I can continue whenever you are ready To continue with your questions from last night, online classes will continue at oneonta and I plan on staying in my house with my roommates. I love living here with them and doing online class from the house so I have no intentions of leaving. My parents are very worried. When I first told them that I was afraid that I had been exposed, I think that they were a bit in denial. They both assured me that I would be okay and to keep being cautious - washing my hands, wearing a mask, keeping my distance, etc. I had been really anxious about the virus prior to returning to school because the whole idea of it and just the severity and how it was affecting everyone and the world really scared me. My parents knew that I had that mindset, so when I tested negative and told them that I was not feeling too good only a day later, they told me that it was probably all in my head, until my symptoms worsened. They were both really upset to hear and really worried. As much as covid can be compared to the flu, this virus has affected people in all different ways all over the world, so knowing that your child has it hours away is probably really scary as a parent. My father was super alarmed. He wanted me to know that he would do anything that would make me feel better. He himself felt lost - he asked me on the phone “what can I do, Ava?” My mother reacted the same way. She immediately offered to come and get me and told me that if it got bad, she would come and pick me up and take me home. As much as I wanted my mom in that moment, I knew that the last thing that I wanted was to get anyone in my family sick, especially my parents. I told my parents that I would be fine and that me and my roommates would take care of each other. They have been calling me nonstop, checking on me, telling me what to do to get better. I can tell that they are really worried and eager for me to get better. The Insider: I can understand their concern! Did your roommate without Covid go home, or is she quarantining with you? Ava Alicanti: We are all quarantining in our bedrooms. She is still in the house with us. The Insider: Tell me more about how you are quarantining, How do you know what to do? Are you getting advice? Ava Alicanti: We haven’t really gone to the kitchen to prepare ourselves food so we aren’t really worried about infecting downstairs. None of us have much of an appetite so we mostly get a bowl of soup delivered each day. We wear a mask any time we go downstairs or to go to the bathroom and we disinfect anything that we touch. That is really the most that we can do unfortunately. We do not leave our bedrooms unless it is necessary. Our parents all strongly encouraged us to do so. The Insider: Do you have enough food for all of you in the apartment? Ava Alicanti: Yes. We did a very big food shop when we moved in and bought everything in bulk. We have plenty of food. For fresh food we use instacart, an app similar to a food delivery app but for groceries. A driver is picked to food shop and drop groceries at your door. They leave groceries on our doorstep. It is really convenient The Insider: That’s great! I use Fresh Direct. Instacart is very popular in Manhattan right now. Ava Alicanti: Yeah it’s awesome! The Insider: Do you each have your own bedroom, or are you sharing? Ava Alicanti: We each have our own bedroom! The Insider: That’s lucky!!!! How have you been spending your time right now? Ava Alicanti: I’ve mainly just been resting. I have not had much energy since my symptoms started. I am absolutely exhausted. I have been sleeping for hours on hours. Thankfully I haven’t had much to do since being here so I have basically spent all of my free time getting ahead on my schoolwork, so I actually finished all of my work for this week which took a lot off of my plate. I tried to do some work on the day that my symptoms started and I had to close my laptop because it hurt to even look at the screen, so I decided that I would give myself a little bit of time to just heal. In those moments where I can’t fall asleep I have been binge watching netflix, I just finished season two of my current favorite Netflix series “You” The Insider: I’m not sure about your classes now. Is there a break in classes now? Ava Alicanti: No, classes are still in session online. In person classes like acting, dancing, and art were switched to online as well as a result of the rise in cases. School did not stop completely campus is just shut down. Meaning that on campus resources such as dining halls or the library are no longer open. Classes are still online though. The Insider: Do you know other students now at Oneonta with Covid besides your roommates who have Covid? Ava Alicanti: Yes. Basically every single one of my friends here has it. I have more friends who have it than friends you don’t. It’s rare to reach out to a friend and find out that they don’t have it this point. It is everywhere. The Insider: Wow!! Are they all quarantining at school like you are, or did some of them go home? Ava Alicanti: Everyone that I’ve spoken to who has it is staying at school with their roommates quarantining just like we are. Nobody wants to bring it home to their families. I think that everyone just wants to get past it and then continue to live normally here, but safely, of course. The Insider: Do any professors have it? Ava Alicanti: I haven’t heard of any professors who have it, thankfully! The Insider: I’m curious about the financial part of this. Are any students paying for their Covid tests or treatments? Ava Alicanti: No. Tests are required for on-campus students and are not paid for by students. We were not charged for our test at the doctor’s office as off-campus students nor were other students who went. The Insider: That’s great! But I guess people are losing money because they can’t go to their jobs. Ava Alicanti: That’s right! This has really taken a toll on people financially. However, I think it is good that students are not paying for tests. I don’t think that students who need to get tested would be as willing if they needed to pay. Also, not every student may have the money to get tested, so I think it is only fair that tests are free, considering the fact that they are necessary The Insider: Absolutely! Do you and your roommates have enough money to get by now? Ava Alicanti: Yes! We all worked over the summer and set ourselves up for our return to school. I was stressed before leaving though because I only began work in July, so I lost a month of work. I complained to my parents that I did not want to rely on them and that I was worried that I would not go back to school with enough of my own money. I like to be independent and I don’t like to ask my parents for much. My mom told me, though, that she understood that this is a hard time and that she knew I would have been working if I were able to. She told me that she would support me with whatever I needed and that calmed a lot of my nerves. The Insider: Great mom!!! Ava Alicanti: Yeah I really appreciated that from her. The Insider: What are the city and campus of Oneonta like? Ava Alicanti: Oneonta’s campus is what I would consider the perfect size. Everything is walking distance which is really nice. We have a starbucks on campus next to a beautiful pond, which is one of my favorite spots. It is really gorgeous in the fall. I loved my time on campus. Snow days were always the best. I loved to look out my window and see the entire campus covered in snow! The Insider: Sounds beautiful! Ava Alicanti: The town is really small. There are a few houses in the area right outside of campus. Pretty small houses that are somewhat close together. There are some apartments in town and there is a strip of restaurants and stores. We have a really good pizza place called Tino’s that is very popular. They are known for their famous cold cheese slice. It’s delicious! We also have The Yellow Deli which all students are crazy about! I love their sandwich. We have some great sushi and sandwich places as well. We also have a few nail salons, tattoo shops, small stores, etc. That basically describes downtown. Outside of town towards the highway there are some bigger stores and franchises like Walmart, Wendy’s, Taco Bell, Applebee’s, Mcdonald’s, Buffalo Wild Wings, a Lemon Tree hair salon, and things like that. The Insider: What are the school buildings like? Ava Alicanti: The Oneonta residence halls have about 3 floors each, with 50 rooms on each floor. The dining halls are about 5 minutes walk each from the residence halls, and right next to class buildings, which are also about 3 stories and pretty close together. The Insider: Tell me a little more about your own family. What cities do you parents live in? You have sisters, right? Ava Alicanti: I grew up on Long island in Melville, New York. My mother and father are divorced so I live with my mom and my two sisters in Melville still. My dad lives on Long Island as well and I see him very often as he is not far. My older sister, Alexa, is 22 years old and my younger sister, Victoria, is 17. The Insider: Is Alexa in college? Ava Alicanti:: Alexa graduated college, she went to Oneonta as well! We were together there for a year. The Insider: Nice! What is she doing now? Ava Alicanti: She is at home working! The Insider: What kind of job? Ava Alicanti: My mom is a real estate agent so right now she is just helping my mom with open houses and stuff. The Insider: Is Victoria in high school? Ava Alicanti: Yes she is. She is going into her senior year. The Insider: What kind of work does your dad do? Ava Alicanti: My father owns an electric company. He does some work in the city as well as on Long Island The Insider: And how old are you now? Ava Alicanti: I am 19 years old. The Insider: Are your roommates the same age? Ava Alicanti: Yes, we are all the same age. The Insider: So nice that you can be together through such a difficult time! Ava Alicanti: Yeah it is really nice that we have each other. The four of us are super close. I would not want to go through this without them. The Insider: How would you describe your mood right now? Are you at peace with being sick or depressed or worried or all of it? Ava Alicanti: I am hopeful that everything will return to normal soon. I am sure that everyone is. I am happy to know that other students had it and that it passed for them and to know it will pass soon for me too. I am definitely upset that covid got me but I know that I will be okay really soon. I am thankful to be healthy enough to get through this. The Insider: Yes, you sound very strong and healthy! After all, you were able to answer questions until the middle of the night! Do you have a temperature right now? What is the highest temperature you’ve had? Ava Alicanti:: I sure was! My highest temperature was 102 and my current temperature is 99. This is the lowest my temperature has been since Monday. The Insider: Wonderful! That’s a good sign! Do you plan on going outside for walks, or staying inside 100% of the time? Ava Alicanti: Prior to getting sick my roommates and I were going outside for walks around the neighborhood. We will probably get back to that in a few weeks when we heal completely. The Insider: Hi Ava--I just saw the news! Will this affect your plans? Ava Alicanti: Nope! Everything staying the same for us since we r off campus we don’t have to leave. The Insider: Great! Are friends of yours in the dorms leaving? Ava Alicanti: Yes :( The Insider: Have you been talking to them? What are they saying? Ava Alicanti: They are really upset that they are leaving. The Insider: So school is completely over for the semester, right? Ava Alicanti: Online classes are still happening The Insider: And you’re still studying, even though you’re sick, right? Ava Alicanti: Yes The Insider: Wow! They should give you a Ph.D. for that! Are you able to concentrate? Do you have homework? Ava Alicanti: Yes I have some stuff due next week since they moved some deadlines because of all that’s going on. I am now able to focus The Insider: That’s amazing!!! Good for you! Are you able to see your roommates at all? Ava Alicanti: We haven’t really left our rooms but we will eventually when we are all feeling better Thank you! The Insider: Are you feeling better today? Ava Alicanti: Yes I feel a lot better. Thank you for asking! The Insider: Which symptoms do you still have? Ava Alicanti: I just have a cough and I’m congested The Insider: Pretty good! Are your parents feeling calmer about the situation now? Ava Alicanti: Yes definitely! The Insider: That’s good! The Insider: Hi Ava--The New York Times has been writing about parties on the Oneonta campus before the outbreak: “ In late August, less than a week after classes started, the State University of New York at Oneonta suspended five students who, officials said, had organized parties in the upstate town that might have led to a coronavirus outbreak on campus.” Do you know anything about this? Ava Alicanti: Yes we were told about it in an email from the school But I don’t really know what happened The Insider: You didn’t attend those parties, or know any of those people? Ava Alicanti: No me and my friends were not there and I don’t know any of the students who were suspended The Insider: Understood! I’m curious--do you think those students were to blame for this, or that the university should not have brought students back at all? In other words, what do you think about the reason for this outbreak, and who, if anyone, is responsible? Ava Alicanti: I think that the university definitely should have tested all students that were returning to campus for the fall. People brought it from home for sure and that spread could have been prevented if they had tested positive and been sent home. Many other schools did this. If we had the resources to test students and staff now, why did we not use those resources prior to avoid this becoming an issue? It was inevitable that people would have it so we should have been testing in the first place. The Insider: So there was no mandatory testing for students when they came back to school? Ava Alicanti: I think that students, though, should have been responsible as well and kept their distance. I think colleges and parents knew, however, that students were going to do this. Nope. Nothing The Insider: That is surprising! Are your friends mad at those students for ruining things for everyone else? Or are they more mad at the school? Ava Alicanti: Yes people are upset about the parties but people also think that students should have been tested The Insider: So it’s a combination. Have you talked to anyone who went to a party? What did they say about it? Ava Alicanti: Yep! I have not really spoken to anyone that was at the parties or heard much about them. The Insider: Are you still ordering in food? Ava Alicanti: Yes we are. None of us have had the energy to make anything ourselves The Insider: What kinds of things are you eating now? Ava Alicanti: Just really bland foods like toast, cereal, rice, soup, crackers, etc. The Insider: Sometimes people with Covid say they have lost their sense of taste and smell. Has that happened to you? Ava Alicanti: It hasn’t happened to me actually! I thought it would and it hasn’t. The Insider: How often do you talk with your parents? Ava Alicanti: Every day. The Insider: What is your dad’s advice? What is your mother’s advice? And what do your sisters say? Ava Alicanti: My parents just want me to keep to myself and continue to take care of myself the way that I have been. Eating the right foods, staying hydrated, resting, etc. My sisters as well. The Insider: Did the University send you a message yesterday or today? Jim Malatras, the SUNY chancellor, said that it was “the actions of a few individuals who didn’t comply.” Is there a dorm that is all students with Covid? Ava Alicanti: Yes they are all in a separate dorm. I can send the email! The Insider: I would love to see that. Ava Alicanti: I just forwarded two of them to you! The Insider: Got them. Thanks! Are you and your roommates in touch with the university individually? Do they know you are sick? Are they telling you to get retested or anything? In other words, do you feel as though you’re part of the campus tally? Ava Alicanti: No, we haven’t been in touch with the university since we are isolated off of campus The Insider: So there may actually be more people infected in Oneonta than school officials know? Ava Alicanti: Yes The Insider: How are your friends other than your roommates reacting emotionally to this? Are people upset? Ava Alicanti: Everyone is super upset and just wishes that things would go back to normal. We all miss the way that things used to be. We miss having fun and spending time together. The Insider: I can understand that! Nobody wants to go to college with this happening. What amazes me is that you are still required to study while this is going on! I never could concentrate! The Insider: Hi Ava--Just checking for the last time! Your story will be published tonight! How are you feeling? Ava Alicanti: Yay so exciting! I am feeling much better. The Insider: What are your remaining symptoms? Ava Alicanti: I just have a cough and a stuffy nose The Insider: Whew! That’s a relief! Are your roommates doing better too? Ava Alicanti: Yeah i’m glad :) we all feel a lot better The Insider: Has your appetite returned? Ava Alicanti: Yes 😊 The Insider: Are you all out of your individual rooms now? Ava Alicanti: Yes The Insider: Are you planning on leaving the apartment? Ava Alicanti: No not any time soon. The Insider: Do you plan to get retested? Ava Alicanti: We probably will after the two-week mark. The Insider: What do you think about the fact that out of three of you, two had negative tests? Seems like the tests don’t work that well. Ava Alicanti: I definitely don’t think the rapid tests are reliable. The Insider: Is everyone who has Covid supposed to stay on campus? Are some people leaving anyway? Ava Alicanti: Yes they are supposed to stay there for two weeks and then go home but some people are leaving anyways. The Insider: Aren’t they afraid of infecting their families? Ava Alicanti: They should be but I’m not sure. The Insider: I want to thank you so much for being such a good sport! Ava Alicanti: Of course!!!! No problem :) The Insider: I’m really glad you’re feeling better.

An Exclusive Insider Report from Wisconsin By Joseph Schulz On August 23, seven gunshots rang out in the city of Kenosha, paralyzing a man, likely traumatizing his children and pushing my home state to the center of a national dialogue surrounding policing. In a cellphone video of the shooting that went viral, two officers follow Jacob Blake, a 29-year-old Black man, with their guns drawn as he walks from the sidewalk around the front of an SUV to his driver-side door. As Blake opens the door and leans into the vehicle, Kenosha police officer Rusten Sheskey grabs Blake’s shirt from behind and fires. The shooting sparked a series of protests throughout Wisconsin’s fourth largest city that devolved into violence, as storefronts and vehicles throughout downtown were damaged. When unrest in Kenosha began overwhelming local law enforcement on August 24, Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers deployed the National Guard to assist first responders. He also accepted federal assistance to help quell the unrest. In the mayhem, two protesters were killed and another injured on August 25. 17-year-old Kyle Rittenhouse, who crossed state lines from Illinois to Wisconsin with an AR-15 style rifle, was arrested the next day, and charged with first-degree intentional homicide and five other charges for the shootings. While the protests are now more peaceful, Kenosha remains in the national spotlight as President Donald Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden both stopped in the city this week with starkly different messages. Leading up to Trump’s visit, local officials feared it could fan the flames of division, and re-intensify the unrest. “From our perspective, our preference would have been for him not to be coming at this point in time," Kenosha Mayor John Antaramian told NPR on Sunday. "All presidents are always welcome and campaign issues are always going on. But it would have been, I think, better had he waited to have for another time to come." During his visit on Tuesday, Trump did not meet with Blake’s family, refused to acknowledge systemic racism in law enforcement, accused the media of sensationalizing bad officer interactions and described the unrest in Kenosha as “domestic terror.” "[The police] are under tremendous pressure. And they may be there for 15 years and have a spotless record and all of a sudden, they're faced with a decision,” Trump said. “They have a quarter of a second to make a decision. And if they make a wrong decision, one way or the other, they're either dead or they're in big trouble.” When Biden stopped in Kenosha on Thursday, he met with Blake’s family, listened to input from the community and vowed to work towards ending systemic racism. “We’re finally now getting to the point where we’re going to address the original sin in this country … slavery, and all the vestiges of it,” Biden said. “I can’t guarantee you everything gets solved in four years. But I can guarantee you one thing, it will be a whole heck of a lot better, we’ll move a lot further down the road.” While Blake’s death put Kenosha at the heart of a larger discussion surrounding police reform — which began with the May 25 killing of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer — public opinion has largely split along partisan lines, due to rhetoric from conservative commentators and the President. For example, several right-wing pundits and Trump himself came to Rittenhouse’s defense, portraying him as a vigilante who was acting in self-defense. "He was trying to get away from [protesters], I guess, it looks like," Trump said at a press briefing Monday. "I guess he was in very big trouble. He probably would have been killed." At the same time, conflicting narratives of what happened before the video of Blake’s shooting have arisen. The Kenosha Professional Police Association claimed Blake “was armed with a knife and ‘forcefully fought’ with the officers who tried to subdue him. Civil-rights attorney Ben Crump, who is representing Blake, says Blake was de-escalating a domestic incident when police drew their weapons and Tasered him. Governor Evers’ initial statement from the night of the shooting night expressed condolences for Blake's family, while also acknowledging that he didn’t have all of the facts. “While we do not have all of the details yet, what we know for certain is that he is not the first Black man or person to have been shot or injured or mercilessly killed at the hands of individuals in law enforcement in our state or our country,” Evers said. Those inconsistent reports have led local law enforcement officials to decry Evers’ statements surrounding Blake’s shooting as “premature, judgmental, inflammatory and only add to the anger and divisiveness of an already dangerous situation.” But Evers was not wrong. Black Americans are killed by police at more than twice the rate of white Americans. He was also accurate in terms of the sheer number of people killed by police in this country. 1,098 people were killed by police last year, according to mappingpoliceviolence.org, an advocacy group that claims to have “the most comprehensive accounting of people killed by police since 2013.” While no one likes to see cities burn or businesses ruined, the refusal to acknowledge systemic racism, coupled with incendiary remarks from Trump and conservative pundits show a lack of fundamental understanding of the issues the nation has been facing since the 1960s. In the late ‘60s, social unrest swept poor African-American neighborhoods. Buildings burned, stores were ransacked and in 1967 President Lyndon B. Johnson appointed an 11-person commission to determine the cause. When the Kerner Commission released its findings the next year, it reported that white racism — in the form of bad policing, a flawed criminal justice system, inadequate housing voter suppression — was the cause of the social upheaval.  “Our nation is moving toward two societies, one black, one white — separate and unequal. White racism is essentially responsible for the explosive mixture which has been accumulating in our cities,” the report said. “White society is deeply implicated in the ghetto. White institutions created it, white institutions maintain it, and white society condones it.” In terms of the role policing plays in worsening racial disparities, the report said: “The police are not merely a ‘spark’ factor. To some Negroes police have come to symbolize white power, white racism and white repression. And the fact is that many police do reflect and express these white attitudes. The atmosphere of hostility and cynicism is reinforced by a widespread belief among Negroes in the existence of police brutality and in a ‘double standard’ of justice and protection — one for Negroes and one for whites.” Most police officers are good, hard-working people who truly care about their communities, but we as a society must hold those who dishonor the badge accountable just as they are meant to hold us accountable. Just as we cannot judge every officer based on the actions of a few, we can not judge the majority of activists, advocates or protesters based on the actions of a small number of rioters. But increasing transparency and training in policing alone will not alone fix systemic inequities in society that disproportionately impact our most vulnerable communities. We need to be willing to look at both sides of an argument as we begin to rectify the inequities in our society because racism affects every system within our society — housing, education, employment, and more — and all of these factors are collective drivers of health outcomes. To fix what is broken, we must help our most disadvantaged by providing a living wage, access to quality education and access to affordable healthcare. When we go to the polls this November, we must remember to choose the candidates committed to solving these problems and providing equal opportunity to all Americans. If we don’t, we will continue to repeat that sad history. Joseph Schulz is a senior at the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh, where he studies journalism and Radio, TV, Film. He is a reporting intern at the Ripon Commonwealth Press, where he covers the Green Lake City Council, School Board and business. Schulz also serves as the managing editor of The Advance-Titan, the official student newspaper of UW Oshkosh, and as a freelance reporter for the Oshkosh Herald community newspaper. He will be graduating in December.

By Alan Resnick Like millions of other people with too much unanticipated free time on their hands, I’m participating in online educational activities like Ted Talks, Coursera programs, and free cooking demonstrations. So, when a friend told me recently about an upcoming class on great humorists over the last 50 years, I was all in. This was my first Zoom-based educational program. But I think I’ve seen enough. After logging on Monday (August 31) using the meeting entry key that been emailed to me earlier in the morning, I saw that over 300 people were participating. The instructor introduced himself and announced that the session would be focusing on three humorists, Mort Sahl, Art Buchwald and Fran Lebowitz. He explained that our microphones had been turned off, and unwisely encouraged us to use the “Chat” button at the bottom of the Zoom screen to either ask questions or to respond to queries he would be posing during the presentation. He began with Mort Sahl, the political satirist. As the instructor began an overview, a picture of a young Sahl being interviewed by a young Regis Philbin appeared. The “Chat” button on my screen quickly became illuminated. I was expecting to see questions like when was Sahl born, was he still alive (he’s 93), or what led him to political satire. I was wrong. Instead, the following comments began to pop up: “Is that Regis Philbin?,” “How old do you think Regis is in that photo?,” and “I never cared much for Regis Philbin.” It got better (worse?). “Does anybody remember Sam Levinson? Why wasn’t he included among the humorists being discussed?” (Sam Levinson was a schoolteacher turned humorist whose heyday was in the 1940 ’s and 50’s.) “I remember Sam Levinson. He once came to my sixth-grade class.” Finally, one of my classmates got us back on track: “I once bumped into Mort Sahl in a restroom.” Please, tell us more! I felt myself beginning to twitch and had to restrain myself from reaching for my keyboard before posting a comment that I would likely regret. Fortunately, our instructor found these remarks equally distracting and irrelevant, and announced that he would appreciate it if comments were restricted to the subject matter. Surely this admonishment would keep my fellow learners more focused. We moved on to Art Buchwald, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author best known for his column in The Washington Post that was syndicated in over 500 newspapers. Our instructor showed one of Buchwald’s columns and mentioned that it was published in 1968. It was a satirical column about the Women’s Liberation movement. Part of the column was devoted to bra burning. Once again, my screen lit up as participants began to chat. “Women of a certain age hate bras.” “Bras cost too much to burn.” “This is so dated.” Well, yes, perhaps because, as mentioned at the outset, Buchwald wrote the article more than 50 years ago? This was like being in a movie theater and finding yourself sitting in front of a couple who just won’t stop talking. Over-the-shoulder dirty looks and shushing noises have absolutely no impact on their conversation: “Isn’t that Seth Rogan? I really liked that movie that he was in with Katherine Heigl. What was the name of it again?” (Knocked Up. Can you please lower your voice now?) Our attention then turned to author Fran Leibowitz, known for her sardonic social commentary on American life. We were shown a snippet from an interview with Ms. Leibowitz in which she commented that, although she hates musical theater, she loved the play Hamilton. As she began her explanation for purposes of setting up her punch line, my screen became flooded with commentaries. “I’ve seen Hamilton five times.” “I’ve seen it six times, twice with the original cast.” “I don’t have the money to afford tickets.” While heartbroken to read of this classmate’s financial plight, I was thankful that her comment served to bring this competition to a screeching halt. In the hopes of sparing others the frustration I experienced, I have created a basic etiquette guide for participating in Zoom educational sessions. Alert: these suggested rules are appropriate for educational meetings in which the majority of participants do not know one another; they are not applicable to Zoom-based family get togethers or gatherings organized by mutual friends. Don’t apologize for being late – It’s not required to announce your arrival, particularly so if you happen to join the session after it started. Your tardiness will go unnoticed unless you choose to bring it to everyone’s attention. There is no door to the auditorium that will creak open, and light from the hallway will not stream into the room. The only distraction is your statement itself. It is not necessary to announce you are leaving the meeting – This is a corollary to the first rule. If you want to leave the session early, be it from boredom or a conflicting activity, just do it. One participant in my session, either out of courtesy or self-importance, announced: “Sorry, but I have to run.” I wonder if they expecting other participants to acknowledge their departure with comments like “Take care” or “Is everything okay?” Simply hit the “Leave Meeting” button on your screen. You won’t be disrupting anything. It’s not as if you’re getting up from your seat and asking the people sitting next to you to stand up so you can pass in front of them. Hide your screen shot – This is particularly important during sessions that occur around typical eating hours. It’s not terribly appetizing to watch others eat, brandish a toothpick, or floss. Your commitment to oral hygiene is laudable, but best done privately. Keep side conversations offline – It was clear that, in my class, there were a number of “regulars,” or people who had attended other sessions hosted by this particular instructor. This apparently created a certain bond among these participants, and resulted in them having side conversations with one another via “Chat.” Either they forgot, or perhaps simply didn’t care, that their exchanges were being witnessed by the whole class. While it was certainly interesting to learn of one participant’s harrowing struggles with restless leg syndrome, it left me feeling something like a voyeur. So, if enrolling with some friends, carry on your private conversation via a text thread. Respect the “Chat” button – It is intended to be used for asking content-related questions or responding to them. It is not intended to serve as a depository for random thoughts. I sincerely hope that these simple tips will help you both model good student behavior should you enroll in a Zoom educational event, as well as keep your own sanity. I think I lost a good portion of mine before I logged off. Alan Resnick is an industrial psychologist with over 40 years of professional experience. He and his wife are sheltering at home in Farmington Hills, Michigan. He is passing the time by cooking, exercising, catching up on friends’ recommendations of must-see TV and writing.