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By Andy Borowitz June 25, 2020 WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—In an unexpected turn of events for the former New York mayor, a poll of legal experts has determined that Rudolph Giuliani is no longer the worst lawyer in America. According to the law professor who supervised the poll, Davis Logsdon, of the University of Minnesota Law School, Giuliani’s dethronement from the worst-lawyer championship was all the more shocking because his claim to that title had remained unchallenged for so long. “Giuliani had faced worthy competition from the likes of Michael D. Cohen and Michael Avenatti and dispatched them with ease,” Logsdon said. “But this new challenger left Rudy in the dust.” The new titleholder as the nation’s worst lawyer, who won in a nearly unanimous vote, is so egregious that he may cause some legal experts to reassess Giuliani’s career as an attorney. “Compared to our country’s new worst lawyer, Rudy demonstrated the utmost respect for the Constitution and the rule of law,” Logsdon argued. Reached in the makeup room at Fox News, where he was about to make an on-air appearance, Giuliani took the news of his ouster philosophically. “I had a good run,” he said. 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.

The Insider Review By Madeline Barry Bob Dylan, the illustrious singer and songwriter, who is often described as the voice of a generation (“a colossal accolade” that he has said “can get in the way”), just released his 39th studio album, Rough and Rowdy Ways today (June 19). It’s been eight years since Dylan released Tempest, his last album of original songs. Rough and Rowdy Ways comes at a pivotal point in both Dylan’s life and in history. At 79, the poet and Nobel Prize for Literature winner continues to be a font of prophetic knowledge amidst modern day chaos. Within the first two lines of “I Contain Multitudes,” Dylan acknowledges the precious and precarious cycle of life. “Today, tomorrow, and yesterday, too/ The flowers are dyin' like all things do.” The song, like many on the album, continues to follow this Heideggarian train of thought. Time is finite and the knowledge of our inevitable deaths helps us to understand and contemplate our existence. At 79, Dylan acknowledges this inexorable fact. “I Contain Multitudes” feels like a reckoning of sorts. Dylan is comfortable with his contradictions. He croons about losing his mind if a lover does not come with him; claiming that half of his soul belongs to her. Moments later he demands that she “get up off my knee... keep your mouth away from me.” He is a “man of contradictions… a man of many moods” and he does indeed contain multitudes. He compares himself to Edgar Allan Poe, Anne Frank, Indiana Jones, the Rolling Stones, William Blake, Chopin, and Beethoven. In a rare interview a week ago with award-winning historian Douglas Brinkley in The New York Times (June 12), Dylan speaks candidly about his identity: “’I Contain Multitudes’' is more like trance writing. Well, it’s not more like trance writing, it is trance writing. It’s the way I actually feel about things. It is my identity and I’m not going to question it. I am in no position to. Every line has a particular purpose.” “False Prophet” has a bluesier feel than the hypnotic sounding “I Contain Multitudes.” Dylan’s voice takes on a gravelly tone, akin to the style of old blues singers like Bukka White. He sings, “I'm the enemy of the unlived meaningless life/ I ain't no false prophet/ I just know what I know/ I go where only the lonely can go.” The tone of “False Prophet” is unapologetic. Dylan is a rebel, the real deal: “Don't care what I drink/ I don't care what I eat/ I climbed the mountains of swords on my bare feet." Listen to his voice and lyrics and be transported to a dive bar surrounded by outlaws. In the 16-minute 54-second track “Murder Most Foul”, Dylan speaks rhythmically over a heavy string sound. The first song of his to ever reach Number 1 on Billboard’s rock chart, it begins with a reference to the date of John F. Kennedy’s assassination. The details of that brutal event are laced throughout the lyrics, serving as a kind of violent motif. In typical Dylan fashion, he expresses his discontent with the United States, “Goodbye, Charlie/ Goodbye, Uncle Sam/ Frankly, my Scarlett, I don't give a damn” “I said the soul of a nation been torn away/ And it's beginning to go into a slow decay.” Perhaps the most haunting and currently relevant line of all is his declaration that “only dead men are free.” Towards the end of “Murder Most Foul,” Dylan invites the listener to play a wide range of artists. from Jelly Roll Morton to Beethoven to Dickey Betts. The allusions to these figures of the past and present, as well as many others sprinkled throughout the song, are not presented in a linear way; rather, Dylan’s timeline blurs the lines between then and now. “Murder Most Foul” forces us to consider the question, how much of history lives only in the past? “My Own Version of You,” is described by Rob Sheffield of Rolling Stone as a “Bride of Frankenstein’ fantasy.” As a slide guitar twangs hauntingly in the background, Dylan sings about collecting livers, brain, hearts and “blood from a cactus” to create “my own version of you.” Dylan invokes some of mankind’s injustices, such as the Crusades and the selling of Trojan women and children into slavery. The lyrics are pleasingly eerie and the tune is catchy. There is violence, but there is also an emphasis on human connection. “I can see the history of the whole human race/ It's all right there, it's carved into your face.” “I’ve Made Up My Mind to Give Myself to You,” is slow, steady, and romantic. The lyrics call to mind a poem from the Romance Era. Dylan sings, “I'm sittin' on my terrace, lost in the stars/ Listening to the sounds of the sad guitars/ Been thinking it all over and I've thought it all through/ I've made up my mind to give myself to you.” Who is this lover? Chris Willman of Variety, surmises that “I’ve Made Up My Mind to Give Myself to You” is potentially a love letter to fans. In “Black Rider,” Dylan sings to a mysterious enemy whom Sam Sodomsky of Pitchfork believes could be “death itself.” Dylan exclaims, “The size of your cock will get you nowhere,” and “Don’t hug me, don’t flatter me, don’t turn on the charm / I’ll take a sword and knock off your arm.” “Goodbye Jimmy Reed” has a swinging feel. As the title suggests, the song is an homage to venerated bluesman Jimmy Reed. Dylan regards him as a deity of sorts: “Goodbye Jimmy Reed, godspeed/ Thump on the Bible, proclaim a creed.” The lively tune is fun, danceable, and humorous. The themes of identity and death reappear in “Mother of Muses,” with lyrics like “Forge my identity from the inside out,” and “I’ve already outlived my life by far.” Sheffield describes “Crossing the Rubicon” as a menacing tune. He writes, “In the sinister “Crossing the Rubicon,” he sneers, “I’ll cut you up with a crooked knife, Lord, and I’ll miss you when you’re gone.” When Dylan observes that it’s darkest right before the dawn—not the first time this weatherman has made that point—he follows with a throwaway “oh god” that can really chill your bones.” As for “Key West (Philosopher Pirate)”, Sheffield describes this song as “the highlight from an album full of highlights,” while Willman says, “Dylan stretches to find something interesting to say about the title locale before finally throwing in the towel at the nine-and-a-half-minute point.” And what has Dylan been doing during the pandemic? According to the Brinkley interview, the singer has been sheltering in place in his beachfront Malibu home and passing the time by doing a bit of painting and welding. Even though his spring tour in Japan was cancelled and his upcoming summer tour, which was supposed to start in Nevada, traverse the west and south and end in Bethel Woods, New York, is no longer happening, we can still hear the wise Dylan contemplate life, death, and identity by indulging in Rough and Rowdy Ways. Madeline Barry is a high school English teacher at Northside Charter High School in North Williamsburg, Brooklyn. She teaches three sections of senior English and two introductory Latin classes.  Figuring out virtual learning, listening to music, and writing for The Insider has kept her semi-sane during the quarantine.

By John Rolfe The flickering bulb in my skull recently came on with a realization: Life during a pandemic is a lot like living in a power outage. You keep doing things out of habit only to realize — oh, right — most stuff isn’t working. For instance, during a blackout, while you’re grabbing flashlights, lighting candles, and cursing the darkness, you’ll still flip a light switch and say, “oh, right” when it doesn’t come on. Or you’ll turn on the TV or boot up the laptop. Oh, right, the wi-fi is out. Or you’ll try to bathe. Oh, right, the hot water’s out. Or rustle up some vittles … During my time on this whirlin’ blue orb, I’ve blundered through some lovely power outages like the famous one that paralyzed New York from July 13 to 14, 1977. It struck while I was taking a shower, making it a royal challenge to light a candle so I could see my way out of the pitch-black tub. I’m very grateful that I’ve never had to deal with the prolonged aftermath of a hurricane or tornado. The longest power outage I’ve ever endured lasted several days. Caused by a blizzard and ice storm, it brought frugality, austerity and restlessness to Ye Olde Rolfe Ancestral Home. With stores closed or ravaged by frantic shoppers seeking supplies (snowstorm survival is apparently impossible without milk and bread), we kept a close eye on our stock. We tried not to keep the fridge or freezer door open more than a few moments while choosing leftovers lest they eventually try to exit under their own power. With water dwindling and our well pump unable to replenish the supply, unthinkingly flushing the toilet was cause for a Homer Simpson “D’oh!” moment. Fortunately, our pond is a source of buckets of H2O for flushing and a place to bathe if the clouds of flies grow too dense, though the neighbors will likely be alarmed. After roughing it overnight, we resorted to our trusty generator, though it powers only the water pump, furnace, and some lights and outlets, but not the stove, wi-fi, washer or dryer. Think of it as living in a partial re-opening of a city or state with some stores, services and activities available — a half-loaf of life with a semblance of normalcy. With no place to go and card games and puppet shows losing their power to entertain, an anxious brain on autopilot becomes the enemy. We had to be mindful of how long we ran the generator because it uses gasoline. With roads hazardous and local stations possibly powerless, getting more is a tad problematic. It's kind of like what can happen if you get lax with COVID-19 precautions. You’ll find yourself back in full lockdown. Like the blizzard blackout, the COVID-19 lockdown in New York came on suddenly though with some warning. Blessedly, the power has remained on, so being confined to the house has been pleasant (though I’m sick of losing at card games), but three months in we’re still dealing with store limits on foodstuffs such as that staple of existence, ramen noodles. I’m still setting out for places and discovering I’ve forgotten my mask. Or catching myself acting on the impulse to visit my local library, which has not yet been re-opened. Or suggesting we go somewhere on a jaunt only to have my wife remind me it is not the safest notion. Oh, yeah, indeed. Of course, the big, nagging, eternal question at times like this is when the problem will finally be fixed. If you reside in a rural area like I do, it can take a lot longer to have your power restored than if you dwell in a town or city, though we have enjoyed the special aggravation of seeing the electricity come on across the street while our shack remained dark for another day. With the pandemic, rural areas will probably be fully open before urban viral hotspots, but we shall see. No matter how long a pandemic or blackout lasts, one thing is certain: You never get fully used to living in them. John Rolfe is a former senior editor for Sports Illustrated for Kids, a longtime columnist for the Poughkeepsie Journal/USA Today Network, and author of The Goose in the Bathroom: Stirring Tales of Family Life. His school bus drivin’ blog “Hellions, Mayhem and Brake Failure” is parked on his website Celestialchuckle.com (https://celestialchuckle.com) with the meter running.

By Doug Dworkin As an unrepentant news junkie, I spend a lot of time watching and listening to interview shows. Yes, they are often repetitive and sometimes downright stupid, especially when the interviewees are adhering to a set of talking points previously agreed upon by whatever faction they represent. Often they just wash over me like a robotic torrent of dreck, as when Mike Pence makes multiple appearances on the Sunday morning shows. Occasionally, a sharp and persistent interviewer can break through the wall of bloviation and make some news, but it rarely happens. There is another phenomenon I have observed on these programs, and I am sure this is not unique to me: the unasked question. Usually I say to myself, “well, the next interviewer will nail that down, it’s so obvious.” But it’s exasperating when something gets through that allows some tidbit of misinformation or distortion to pass as accepted fact. An instance of this occurred this past weekend on Fox News Sunday. Yes, I know it’s Fox, but Chris Wallace is an aggressive interviewer who is usually equally tough on everyone. The panel of commentators at the end of the show was bandying about their views on the current controversy over the proposed renaming of U.S. military bases currently named for Confederate generals. During the discussion, Republican analyst Karl Rove asserted “they were named after these confederate leaders as a means of national reconciliation.” As the discussion continued, moderator Wallace, said, “well, let’s move on to the larger question of racism.” But, for me, an unasked question hung in the air: Isn’t racism, in fact, exactly the reason why these bases have their current names? Such a question could have prompted deeper thought that might lead more people to inquire into the history of the century following the Civil War and Reconstruction. Of course, in the limited time available, a whole history was not possible. (Henry Louis Gates, along with other experts like Eric Foner, took four hours to cover it on PBS). But how about this: “Isn’t it true that bestowing these names was not about reconciliation, but a sop to southern politicians who for a century propped up the discredited ‘Lost Cause’ yarn about the Civil War?” I’m not sayin’—just askin’. 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 Andy Borowitz June 16, 2020 WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—One day after it issued decisions on L.G.B.T.Q. rights and the Second Amendment that provoked his ire, Donald J. Trump said that he would overrule the Supreme Court by creating a “Supremer Court.” “Right now, if the Supreme Court makes a bad decision, quite frankly, you’re screwed,” he said. “The Supremer Court fixes that.” Trump said that his Supremer Court would be a “beautiful, perfect court” that would make the Supreme Court “look like exactly what it is—a sad bunch of losers.” Trump said that the Supremer Court would be housed in a “giant, gleaming building” overlooking the Supreme Court, enabling the Supremer Court Justices to “look down at those pathetic little Supreme Court jerks and laugh.” As for choosing Justices for the Supremer Court, Trump said that there were no Supreme Court Justices worth promoting, “except maybe Brett Kavanaugh and Clarence Thomas.” “Judge Roberts is the beauty who gave us Obamacare, and Gorsuch is a total snake,” Trump said. “At least with Kavanaugh and Thomas you’ve got two terrific people.” 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.

A letter from Jeffrey Sachs, SDSN President To the Members of the SDSN Community, These are deeply troubling days for the United States, which is a country of deep contradictions. The nation was born in soaring hopes of freedom and the harsh realities of genocide against Native Americans. It champions the inalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, and yet built a society on the basis of mass slavery and mass discrimination. It champions diversity for the “huddled masses yearning to breathe free,” and yet its officers of the law kill African-Americans at will on our streets and rip children from the arms of mothers desperately seeking refuge in the U.S. Our nation has passed through repeated paroxysms of protest and violence related to the scourge of racism. As a child in the 1960s, my early political awareness was shaped by the murders of the Kennedys and Martin Luther King, Jr., the primary-election victory of racist George Wallace in my home state of Michigan in 1972, and the wanton and gratuitous violence of the Vietnam War, itself stoked by ignorance and anti-Asian bigotry. The Detroit area, where I grew up, was wracked by widespread and persistent bigotry and violence against African-Americans. Thanks to brave and remarkable champions of social justice, our nation has made important and crucial advances in human rights, but it has also suffered cruel reversals, including the current disastrous and dangerous presidency of Donald Trump. Our job and responsibility is justice for all, whenever and wherever we can pursue it. The lines of Deuteronomy in my daughter’s Bat-Mitzvah reading summarized it perfectly: “Tzedek, Tzedek, Tirdof,” meaning “Justice, Justice, shall you pursue.” This is our highest calling as individuals and as citizens. We are blessed in our work and in our collegial life to be dedicated to the Sustainable Development Goals (blessed in the original sense of being happy and fulfilled). The SDGs are based on the core injunction of justice: “Leave no one behind.” We therefore act on behalf of a universal agenda grounded in the great moral charter of the United Nations, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It is good to recall the first article of the Declaration: “All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.” Today’s brave fighters against police brutality towards African-Americans speak to the highest calling of equality in dignity and rights. With Trump as President, America is perilously close to despotism in the service of racism and hate. The world is perilously close to a new cold war deliberately stoked by racism and nativism. And yet the very brave protestors throughout the U.S., who have inspired activists for racial justice around the world, are bearing witness to the overwhelming desire of humanity to 2 live in peace, social justice, and sustainability, and give us great hope for progress on these shared aspirations. I thank you, colleagues, for your daily efforts for global justice. This work never stops, and it is obviously more urgent than ever. Let us together do our part to honor the memories of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, Tony McDade, and all who suffer wantonly and unnecessarily because we have not yet achieved the soaring aspirations of the United States, the Sustainable Development Goals, and Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Your grateful colleague, Jeff Sachs

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“Nobody came close to breaching the fence. If they had they would have been greeted with the most vicious dogs, and the most ominous weapons, I have ever seen…[Democratic Mayor Muriel Bowser], who is always looking for money & help, wouldn’t let the D.C. police get involved. ‘Not their job.’ Nice!” --President Donald J. Trump, May 30 “There are no vicious dogs & ominous weapons. There is just a scared man. Afraid/alone.” --Washington, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser, May 30 “We need a voice against racism, we need many voices against racism and against brutality. And we need to stand up and say that black lives matter.” --Utah Senator Mitt Romney, June 7 “I should not have been there. My presence in that moment and in that environment created a perception of the military involved in domestic politics.” --General Mark A. Milley, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, June 11 “Donald Trump is the first president in my lifetime who does not try to unite the American people—does not even pretend to try. Instead, he tries to divide us. We are witnessing the consequences of three years of this deliberate effort. We are witnessing the consequences of three years without mature leadership. We can unite without him, drawing on the strengths inherent in our civil society. This will not be easy, as the past few days have shown, but we owe it to our fellow citizens; to past generations that bled to defend our promise; and to our children.” --James Mattis, Former Defense Secretary, June 3 “I thought General Mattis’s words were true and honest and necessary and overdue,” [Will she support Trump for reelection?] “I am struggling with it. I have struggled with it for a long time.” --Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski, June 4 “Few people know where they’ll be in two years from now, but I do, in the Great State of Alaska (which I love) campaigning against Senator Lisa Murkowski. She voted against HealthCare, Justice Kavanaugh, and much else... ...Unrelated, I gave Alaska ANWR, major highways, and more. Get any candidate ready, good or bad, I don’t care, I’m endorsing. If you have a pulse, I’m with you!" --President Donald J. Trump, June 4 “We are not fighting some disconnected incidents. We are fighting an institutional, systemic problem that has been allowed to permeate since we were brought to these shores and we are fighting wickedness in high places. When you can put your knee on a man’s neck and hold it there 8 minutes and 46 seconds, that’s not even normal to a civilian, less known to a police officer. Try it when you go home to put your knee down on something and hold it there that long. You got to be full of a lot of venom. Full of something that really motivates you to press down your weight that long and not give up, and to think that you’re certified by the state to carry a badge and a gun and you got all of that in you means that we have permitted people to become officers of the law that ought to be somewhere else in society.” --Rev. Al Sharpton, eulogy at George Floyd's funeral, June 9 “Little Gianna, as I said to you when I saw you yesterday, you’re so brave. Daddy’s looking down. He’s so proud of you. I know you miss that bear hug that only he could give, the pure joy riding on his shoulders so you could touch the sky, the countless hours he spent playing any game you wanted because your smile, your laugh, your love is the only thing that mattered at the moment. I know you have a lot of questions, honey, no child should have to ask questions that too many black children have had to ask for generations. Why? Why is daddy gone?” --Former Vice President Joe Biden, June 9 "They lynched my brother. That was a modern-day lynching in broad daylight." His voice rising, he said, "I'm tired. I'm tired of pain, the pain you feel when you watch something like that. When you watch your big brother who you looked up to for your whole entire life die, die begging for his mom. I'm here to ask you to make it stop. Stop the pain. Stop us from being tired." --Philonise Floyd, brother of George Floyd. appearing in front of a House Judiciary Committee oversight hearing on policing and law enforcement accountability, June 10 "The presence of the Confederate flag at NASCAR events runs contrary to our commitment to providing a welcoming and inclusive environment for all fans, our competitors and our industry. Bringing people together around a love for racing and the community that it creates is what makes our fans and sport special. The display of the Confederate flag will be prohibited from all NASCAR events and properties." --NASCAR statement, June 10 “We, the National Football League, condemn racism and the systematic oppression of black people. We, the National Football League, admit we were wrong for not listening to NFL players earlier and encourage all to speak out and peacefully protest. We, the National Football League, believe black lives matter.” --NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell, June 5

By Merrill Hansen “You know what maintenance is, I’m sure. Maintenance is what they mean when they say, “After a certain point, it’s just patch patch patch.” Maintenance is what you have to do just so you can walk out the door knowing that if you go to the market and bump into a guy who once rejected you, you won’t have to hide behind a stack of canned food.” --Nora Ephron, “On Maintenance” It took a few weeks before Michigan’s March 23rd shelter-in-place order really entered my consciousness. I had bigger fish to fry: five days later, I came down with coronavirus, and was too fatigued to be bored, or even think about what life used to be like in the outside. I did miss my children, who live out of state, and I worried that they could have been exposed to someone who had the virus, before they started working from home. I worried about them going into stores to buy groceries. I wondered how long it would be before we could spend time together. But as the weeks passed, while I still missed my children, I thought more and more about Inna, the woman who has given me manicures and pedicures for twenty years. I couldn’t think of Inna, without thinking of Lena, who for twenty years has colored my hair the natural color it was until I was in my thirties, and Irena, who has waxed my eyebrows and given me facials for twenty years. They have helped me prepare for trips, weddings, bar mitzvahs, holiday dinners, dates, concerts, and every other special event, aside from making me look presentable for everyday life. I have seen them almost every three weeks during those twenty years. But it was just my luck: days before my next scheduled appointments, it was ordered that hair and nail salons be temporarily closed I soon not only missed my guardian angels, I began to worry about them. I wanted to make sure they were safe when they left home, and were practicing social distancing. One night, as I looked at my hair, my fingernails, my toenails, and my eyebrows. I almost had a panic attack. I thought, "Oh g-d, what if something happens to them? What if they decide they're not going to go back to work? What will happen to me?" These three women had not only become my friends, they had seen me without make-up; they'd seen me on days, when I looked in the mirror and thought I'd found Jimmy Hoffa. I looked forward to seeing them. As I thought of Inna, I recalled the many times when friends, clients, and even strangers, standing next to me in the grocery store or in an elevator, would compliment me on the color of my nail polish. I thought about how I used to suffer from PTSD when I tried to polish my nails, because it brought back painful memories of being the only child in kindergarten who couldn't color inside the lines. When I tried to remove the smudges of polish around the nails, I would accidentally remove the fresh polish I'd put on my nails. Thinking about Lena also brought back vivid memories: I thought of the magic potion she mixed to color my now-white hair, and make it look dark and shiny. I recalled the one time I tried to color my hair myself, when I was in my twenties, and bought a hair painting product to put highlights in my hair. I painted my hair according to the directions, and waited for the beautiful auburn highlights that were supposed to magically appear when I went out into the sun. Instead, about a week later, while on a camping trip out west, my hair turned orange in the hot sun. Thoughts of Irena’s wizardry also came back to me, I thought about how friends would tell me they liked how she arched my eyebrows because it made my eyes look bigger, and I had "pretty eyes.” I recalled that when I tried to pluck and wax my eyebrows myself, I wound up with one arch higher than the other, and a huge painful red mark from pulling off the hot the wax I'd applied between my eyes. So whenever one of the threesome sent me text messages during my days barricaded at home, I was relieved, because that meant they hadn't forgotten me. If one called, while I was on the phone with my kids, I would tell my kids that I had to take an important call and would get back to them. I knew there was going to be fierce competition from other clients who would also want to schedule appointments for manicures, pedicures and to have their hair colored, and eyebrows waxed on the first day that salons were allowed to reopen, and I needed to ensure that Inna, Lena and Irena looked forward to seeing me as much as I looked forward to seeing them. By the beginning of May, the situation started to get dire. My nails were getting so long, they reminded me of a story I’d once read in the National Enquirer about Howard Hughes having 3-inch long nails when he died. When I looked at my eyebrows, I thought of Jack Nicholson in The Shining. When I looked at my hair, I knew that on the first humid day, I would look like I had a frizzy skunk on my head. Well, mirable dictu, it has finally happened. Michigan’s governor just announced that beauty salons can reopen on June 15th. Within several heartbeats, I contacted all three and scheduled my appointments for opening day. This was major. I was finally going to have the relaxing, carefree day of luxury that I had been looking forward to for weeks: a day without any worries. That is, until I started talking with my friends, who all said the same things: "Are you sure you want to be the first one to go to the salons?" "Even if everyone wears a mask, do you think it will be safe?" " Don't you think you should wait a couple of weeks to see if anyone gets sick, or if the virus spikes again? " And most ominously, "I would be worried if I were you." Damn them. Now I am worried. But, the Jack Nicholson eyebrows, the Howard Hughes fingernails, and the frizzy skunk hair have got to go! But, then again... hmmm. 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.