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By Madeline Barry Many musicians have taken to social media this past week to voice their opinions on the recent protests, and to advocate for the Black Lives Matter movement. Instagram is the favored platform for these displays of solidarity. The list below consists of five talented musicians from different musical backgrounds who have all used Instagram to show their support for those who are taking to the streets to demand action. Jon Batiste: The renowned jazz musician Jon Batiste, who is known for his eclectic genre-bending style and his role as bandleader on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, announced the release of his new musical project on his Instagram account. The 30-minute album is called “Meditations”. The songs, which have names like “Prayer”, “Relationships” and “Teardrops,” are meant to encourage listeners to meditate to these themes. Batiste hopes the album will channel feelings of empathy as it relates to “genuine and lasting change”. As for the album’s timed release, Batiste writes on his Instagram page, “It is fitting that we are releasing this album during such a tumultuous time for the black community and I have been thinking a lot about what it means to be a black artist in America. The reality is, no matter how successful or visible you are, you are vulnerable to the same common set of injustices simply because of the color of your skin. I have come to learn that while there is a lot that is outside of my control at this time, when it comes to my art I have the utmost freedom in the worlds I create, the space that I fill and the values I live out with my fellow humans.” https://www.instagram.com/jonbatiste/ Singer Fiona Apple whose new album Fetch the Bolt Cutters was just released in April, protested at a Black Lives Matter rally in Santa Monica on Monday this week (June 1). Photos of the singer appeared on her friend’s Instagram (the singer does not have her own Instagram account). Apple proudly holds a sign that exclaims “Cops: Don’t be White Chauvinists! Arrest the other three!” Oteil Burbidge Musician Oteil Burbidge, known for his work with The Allman Brothers Band, Tedeschi Trucks Band, and Dead and Co., posted pictures of himself marching in his undisclosed hometown on his Instagram page. Burbidge also posted photos of his children decorating homemade “Black Lives Matter” signs. In one particularly poignant photo, Burbidge, who is black, stands beside his young son holding a poster that reads “Is My Son Next?” The caption reads, “George Floyd was another victim in a long line of murders that break the hearts and tests the minds and spirits of people like me who identify with him and his family and friends...It’s been this way here in America since the very beginning. It’s baked in the cake. It’s in our collective DNA...Taking part in this small protest is the only thing that has given me some real relief even if it is temporary. Hearing so many cars beeping in solidarity showed me that right here in Trump’s backyard there are many that oppose this cancer in the body of America.” https://www.instagram.com/oteil_burbridge/ Margo Price Country singer-songwriter Margo Price vocalized her support of the Black Lives Matter Movement by staying silent. Beneath a photo of a young black woman kneeling before a line of heavily armed riot officers, she writes, “In solidarity with the black community and to challenge my own white privilege, I will not be playing any of the live streams I had planned nor will I be sharing my own content starting today through June 7. I will be using my voice solely to bring light to the tragedy and suffering for my black brothers and SHOULD THIS BE SISTERS? Sister.” https://www.instagram.com/missmargoprice/ Cardi B Cardi B, the animated Bronx-born rapper who is known for fearlessly speaking her mind, posted an Instagram TV video in which she addressed looting, the role of social media in police violence, and the importance of voting. “Seeing people looting and going extremely outraged, you know it makes me feel like yes… finally mutha******* gonna hear us now…. It do scare me and I don’t want anyone to get hurt. It’s just really frustrating, you wanna know why?... Police brutality has been more visual since social media really started getting poppin’… Let’s say since Instagram started, how many peaceful protests have we seen?... People are tired...so now this is what people have to resort to.. And another thing, I also want to say this...Another way for the people to take power.. It’s by voting. And when I say voting, I’m not only talking about the President… We have to vote.” https://www.instagram.com/iamcardib/ Patti Smith The punk rock poet, Patti Smith posted a black and white photo of George Floyd holding his daughter, Gianna, as a baby. His hands are wrapped protectively around her tiny body, and his mouth is open, as if he is in the middle of singing her a song. She stares back, wide-eyed. Smith captioned the photo with a poem. “This is/ unblemished love, a love/ that should have been able/ to daily grow. What will this/ child be told of us? Of George/ Floyd’s murder? Banners are/ tossed in the river, words/ that are not magnified by/ deep systemic change are/ but words. I look at this image/ and hear the lines of Blake;/ Little lamb who made thee?/ Dost thou know who made thee.” https://www.instagram.com/thisispattismith/ 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.

From Sandy Adler/Scottsdale, Arizona Arizona Governor Doug Ducey today instituted a curfew from 8 p.m. to 5 a.m. across the state of Arizona for the next week. Last night (June 30), there were protesters in downtown Phoenix for the second night in a row. From what I saw on the news, most people were marching and carrying signs. There was some destruction of property and the police in Phoenix seemed to have handled the crowd as well as possible except for some people who really got out of hand with destruction of property. The crowd seemed to be a mix of all ages and all races. The really surprising story is what happened in downtown Scottsdale the same night. There seemed to be very little protesting and just mainly destruction of property. It was mostly young people (the news said teens and young adults). They broke into the Scottsdale Fashion Square Mall and you could see looters running out of the mall with clothing and other items. They broke into the Apple store where most of the store was put away, but you could see some of the intruders damaging the store displays. Many other stores were damaged. There is a Mercedes dealership just across from the mall and giant windows were broken and you could see people inside the showroom. I have heard that the destruction in downtown Scottsdale was in the millions of dollars. Only a dozen people were arrested. I understand protest and I certainly think it is warranted in our country right now. We have the First Amendment right to protest, but I don't believe there is right to trash private property. The mall is closed today. It was just starting to open up after shelter-in-place orders have been lifting here. People were going back to work in those stores. Those retail businesses and their employees have already been negatively impacted by the pandemic. I can't help but think back to the Detroit riots in 1967 when I was 14 years old. It is so depressing that 50 years later, we are still doing the same thing and battling the same inequities in our culture. It has unquestionably gotten worse in the past few years but it wasn't great before then. I worry for my family members who are African American. I worry for my family members who are Jewish. I worry for my friends who are Muslim. I worry for my friends who are Dreamers and their parents who are sometimes afraid to go out and get caught by ICE even though they work and pay taxes. I continue to hope for a kinder, gentler country. And, unquestionably, we need better leadership to get there. From Anita Newman/Scottsdale, Arizona We got this very ominous email from our building’s board of directors late in the afternoon, a couple of days ago. It was the afternoon after the riot, or looting, or demonstration, or protest at the big Scottsdale mall, Fashion Square. That’s where there were protests, and it became looting and breaking windows and et cetera. So the next day, they were concerned. I guess on social media, somebody told me they were targeting malls. It seems to be different groups of people. I think when it first started, they really didn’t know who was who. So we got this ominous email telling us what to do in the event of an emergency, possibly a fire. They were worried about fires, because we are in a mall, and there are shops below us on one side of my building. They were concerned that people would be breaking in, or there would be fires, and that obviously would affect our building. So they went into great detail about what to do if there were a fire. So when I got this email, I went downstairs to the lobby. And the concierge, the person who usually sits there, was gone. There was the property manager of the mall, and they were papering the doors and the windows, so that people couldn’t see in. I was talking to him, and asking him what was going on. He said, there are two police officers parked in every entrance to the mall at night. All the stores were closed. There’s an entrance right near my building, and I saw the police officers. Everybody was very nervous that night, They said, don’t forget your ID. If we have to evacuate the building, we are going to meet in the parking lot. There were protests that night, but not here. That first night, I got a call from a friend who lives in a fancy neighborhood. She was getting alerts and phone calls from the police all night long. She was very concerned; she was texting me all night. She said, “I have glass windows.’ She said she was packing a bag, just in case. It made everybody nervous, including me. It was not good. Since that night, they have been posting police officers, and are on high alert. There have been protests, but not a lot of people, not what is going on in New York City. There has been a statewide 8 p.m. curfew for a week. It has been quiet since the first night with peaceful protests taking place. I believe in peaceful protests. People have every right to exercise their First Amendment rights. But I don’t condone violence or the destruction of property. I hope that the protests will spur more political action.

By Alan Resnick I’m a private person by nature, so my social media presence is minimal. I’ve never moved beyond Facebook and, even now, it’s more as a voyeur than as an active participant. My posts are limited to sharing significant events or milestones in my life or those of my family, photographs from vacations, botanical gardens, or zoos, and articles that I find thought-provoking or funny. And I’ll make an occasional comment in regard to a friend’s posting, but I’m a tough audience and rather tight-fisted about doling out emojis. So there are lots of things on Facebook that I struggle to understand, such as why, back in the good old days prior to COVID-19, some people felt it necessary to let others know where they were dining or what play they were attending. One of the current things that has me perplexed is the phenomenon of what I call “third party” or “proxy” Facebook posts, which I define as posts in which a formal appeal is made to either like, share, or repost a photo and the accompanying caption. However, the person who posts the photo does not even know the people in the snapshot; they are simply serving as an agent or proxy for the subjects in the picture. Here’s an example of what I mean. A couple of days ago, a friend posted a picture of a very attractive, newly married couple who would be classified as “little people.” The caption is in the husband’s voice and indicates that the he believes that people are not sharing this picture because he and his wife are short, and concludes with: “Can we get a share?” Thinking they must be cousins, I messaged my friend to learn about the relationship. But my friend informed me that the newlyweds were complete strangers. They saw the picture on another friend’s post, found it cute, and decided to serve as a proxy for the couple. There are numerous variations of this type of post, such as: “It’s my birthday and nobody wants to share my photo,” “I bet there aren’t 100 people who will repost this,” or “Do you care enough to share this?” The accompanying pictures often are much tougher to look at than the newlyweds, graphically depicting people who have been in horrific accidents, burn victims, or abused pets. They are clearly intended to not just tug at your heartstrings, but rather to reach into your chest and yank your heart out. I’ve been thinking about how others react when they see these types of proxy posts. My noodling has led to the hypothesis that people’s responses reflect one of five personality types, and that the percentage of people in each type roughly corresponds to the bell-shaped or normal curve. I’ve also developed a completely unscientific one-item test to help you identify your type. The test is as follows: Your friend, Sandy, who does not own a dog, posts a picture of a young black and tan German Shepherd lying on the grass, curled up with its head propped up on its rear haunches, limpid eyes looking lovingly up at the camera. The accompanying caption reads: “I’m so sad no ever loves me. I don’t think I’ll get any likes.” Which of the following best matches your reaction to this post? A. Sandy would be so upset if I didn’t like this picture. B. What a sweet doggie. Of course I’ll like your picture. C. My neighbor had a German Shepherd. D. I wish my dog could type that well. E. Not from me, you won’t. People who answered “A” fall at the far left end of the bell curve. I call this personality type avoiders, the roughly 3% of the population who respond to these types of postings as requested, but not because of their emotional content. Instead, avoiders respond either out of feelings of guilt or out of fear of some interpersonal confrontation. They dread that Sandy may ask them what they thought of the posting, and don’t want to lie or simply be honest and say that the picture did not move them. Avoiders don’t want to appear uncaring or unfeeling, so they take the bait and preempt a possibly uncomfortable conversation. People who answered “B” are empathizers. These are people like my friend, the 13% of the population who are simply good, decent, kind, caring, and compassionate individuals. The picture resonates with them at an emotional level, and they readily share, repost, and/or give it a “like.” For an empathizer, responding as requested is a gesture of sympathy and support and only takes a few seconds, so what’s the big deal? People who responded “C” are in the middle of the curve. They are consumers. They are in that 68% of the population who look at the picture, read the caption, and move on to the next item on their Facebook feed. There is minimal, if any, either intellectual or emotional reaction. For them, this type of post is nothing other than a visual Skittle or popcorn kernel, simply another tidbit of entertainment or information to be consumed. Moving on to the right-hand side of the curve, the people who answered “D” are cynics. They are the Jerry Seinfelds, the folks who have more of an intellectual, detached, somewhat jaded view of these postings. Cynics wonder if the German Shepherd is being presumptuous in asking for affirmation. They struggle with the existential question of whether directly asking for approval in these types of posts is even necessary because, if the post is funny or impactful enough, people will respond without prompting. But they enjoy the irony of a dog or toddler being able to type or speak. And out on the far right end of the curve are those people who answered “E,” the crazed. If the cynics are the Seinfelds, the crazed are the George and Frank Costanzas of the world. They look at these posts and begin to mutter and sputter, pacing back and forth, mumbling to themselves questions like: “Who is a complete stranger to tell me what to like?” or “You bet I won’t share your photo? Well, you win that bet.” They start to scan their mental hard drive of snappy responses to perceived slights, so that they can put these emotional extortionists in their rightful place. “You want 100 likes? I hope you get 99.” In the spirit of transparency, I fall somewhere on the right-hand side of the curve. My typical initial reaction to such proxy posts is to ask myself: “Why would I do this?” So I guess I’m between types, not really cynical, but certainly not crazed. So, that’s my theory. Take a minute to complete the test and identify your type. Then, of course, feel free to like, share or repost. 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.

By John Rolfe Unless you’ve been working from home during the lockdown, job-related rust and cobwebs have probably accumulated in your cranium. This inconvenient truth hit me like a ton of apples when I returned for my first day of toil after a long hiatus. Now, I should mention that fruits (and vegetables) are not my stock in trade. I’m a professional writer, editor and website producer, but industry-wide downsizing has moved me to lay down the fat beets at a farmer’s market and work as a child trafficker. (I drive a school bus.) School may not resume in my district until January, but the farmer’s market recently opened. Because words come to my mind more naturally than produce, the challenge of getting back on the farm stand ball was compounded by the fact that I’m woeful at identifying apples and greens. I have terrible trouble telling a Mutzu from a Macoun from a Winesap, and I feel like a Winesap when I keep confusing Tuscan kale with broccoli rabe. If you have a gig outside of your main interest area, you’ve probably discovered that staying sharp is mostly a matter of mental muscle memory built by sheer repetition. But mental muscles atrophy from disuse, so I arrived for work intent on leaning on my two college-age assistants, who had already handled a market or two. Old details and procedures were waiting to trip me. I took a cash bag designated for another market and forgot to double-check the inventory against the invoice. To my relief, the entire operation was still creaking back to life. For one thing, the truck hadn’t been fully loaded. After locating a large pallet’s-worth of stuff in a storage refrigerator, we got the hand-truck’s wheels wedged between the loading dock and the back of the truck, forcing us to pull 30 crates off and re-stack them. An auspicious start. Setting up at the market, my colleagues (I’ll call them Beulah and Titus) deferred to my years and alleged wisdom — to their regret. Arranging the tables based on my vaguely-remembered display principles, we ended up with no space for the apples and washed greens, so the second cash station I insisted on setting up had to be taken down. I added decorative insult to injury by using old, ratty tablecloths from last year. Beulah discreetly removed them before the public’s senses were affronted. I was on a roll and so were my colleagues’ eyes when they discovered I put bok choy among the spinach and bok choy and spinach among the lettuce. Having consigned the rhubarb to a far-off corner with the pompously confident pronouncement that it rarely sells, I was quickly proved wrong as it became one of our most popular items. It was soon politely suggested that I make myself scarce and fetch things from the truck when requested. Unfortunately, I couldn’t hide from customers when my colleagues were busy. “Excuse me,” a lady asked, holding up an apple I could not identify. “Are these good for baking?” “Maybe,” I helpfully replied. “I know they’re good for throwing, but perhaps Titus here can speak to their efficacy in pies …” “What’s the difference between wild arugula and mild?” another woman asked while staring directly at me. “Um, the mild has been sprayed with sedatives,” I replied to her bemusement. “But Beulah here can probably clear that up for you …” “What are these?” a gentleman asked. “Parsnips, I believe,” I replied, feeling reasonably certain. “Oh, really? What do you do with them?” “Well, they make great stocking stuffers,” I blurted in another pathetic attempt to mask my ignorance. “They’ll keep until Christmas and all the little children love parsnips!” Suffice it to say I have valid concerns about resuming my bus driving several months from now. While doing my end-of-the-school-year bus cleaning two days after my triumphant return to the market, I vowed to run through my pre-trip inspection routine in my mind several times a week so I’ll at least be able to tell one end of the vehicle from the other when I finally go back. Hopefully my cautionary example will help you better prepare for your own return to the workplace. Good luck and Godspeed. 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.

A Weekly Roundup of Fiction Recommendations By Gwen Cooper “Of Riots and Revolutions” Edition We here at The Insider pride ourselves on being zeitgeist-y, so this week “What’s the Story?” looks at a very (very!) small sampling of novels that take riots, uprisings, and revolts as at least a portion of their plot and/or backdrop. This list is by no means exhaustive and simply represents a few of the novels on this theme that I’ve enjoyed over the years, presented in chronological order. A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens – In some ways, Tale is the least Dickenesque novel in the Dickens oeuvre. It’s comparatively slim, for one thing, at a mere 340ish pages, and it takes Dickens’s roving authorial eye from England—to which he was otherwise as devoted in his work as Woody Allen once was to Manhattan—to France for roughly half the book’s action. And it’s a work of historical fiction, to boot. (Most, although not all, of Dickens’s novels were set in his own present day.) Nevertheless, it remains his bestselling novel, and one of the bestselling novels of all times. Tale does an excellent job of both making the causes of the French revolution explicable—the grinding poverty, the ruthless exploitation of the poor by the wealthy—while also making it clear that the Reign of Terror was…well…pretty terrifying. It’s also a grandly sweeping novel of love, honor, and redemption, and it’s pretty much a guarantee that you’ll be openly sobbing by the time you get to that famous ending: “It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known.” Les Misérables, Victor Hugo – Once again we visit revolutionary France, this time against the backdrop of the 1848 Paris Insurrection (also known as the February Revolution). Les Mis is a great whopping doorstop of a novel—one of the longest ever written, in point of fact (my Penguin Classics edition weighs in at more than 1,300 pages)—but still every bit as captivating as one would expect from the beloved musical adaptation, and well worth every second of the time it will take you to read it. Catch up once again with Cosette, Marius, Eponine, the doomed Fantine, the villainous Thénardiers, the dogged Javert, and the eminently humane Jean Valjean—plus hundreds of pages of digressions on politics, justice, the monarchy, moral philosophy, history, human nature, and more. Trust me, it reads a lot better than it sounds. Futility, William Gerhardie – Gerhardie, a Russian-born Brit, gets somewhat lost in the shuffle among his more well-known contemporaries (Waugh, Wharton, Mansfield, et cetera), who nevertheless admired him greatly. And Futility, his first great comic novel (actually his first novel, period) serves as an excellent introduction to his work. Its protagonist and narrator is Andre Andreich—also a young Russian-born Brit—who becomes an intimate in the household of one Nikolai Vasilievich Bursanov and his Chekhovian three daughters: Sonia, Nina, and Vera. Nikolai’s sprawling family—and list of financial dependents—includes not only his daughters (now in their late teens/early twenties), but also the estranged wife who left him years ago for a dentist yet refuses to divorce him; the German-born retired actress Fanny Ivanova who’s been living with him and helping to raise his daughters ever since; and the seventeen-year-old Zina who’s recently caught his eye—plus her sprawling clan of parents, siblings, and cousins holding their hands out to the perpetually cash-strapped Nikolai, who’s waiting for some gold mines in Siberia to finally pay off. And all this is before the Russian Revolution arrives to make the family’s life even more complicated. Through it all, our narrator pursues Nina, who is also being pursued by an American naval officer. That all this—and more!—is packed into a mere 220ish-page novel is further testament to Gerhardie’s underappreciated gifts. Invisible Man, Ralph Ellison – One of the greatest novels of all times, and certainly one of the greatest protest novels ever committed to paper. It’s also gorgeously written and a compulsive read, which is all just icing on the cake. I won’t take up too much space with this one, as so much has been written about it by others who’ve done a far better job than I could ever do. Suffice it to say that the unnamed black narrator’s journey from the Jim Crow South to riotous Harlem to self-imposed exile—and the rogue’s gallery of segregationists, lackeys, rabble rousers, revolutionaries, and limousine liberals (not to mention the occasional horny housewife) he encounters along the way—feels as urgent and timely now as it did in 1952, when the book was first released. This was a novel that completely blew my mind when I first read it back in college and, revisiting it a year or two ago, I found its effects no less incendiary. Bodily Harm, Margaret Atwood – This is the novel that immediately preceded The Handmaid’s Tale, which may be why it’s one of Atwood’s lesser-discussed novels today. Nevertheless, it’s a canny examination of the overlaps between economic exploitation, racial exploitation, and gender exploitation—all wrapped up in a slender book that’s both an exquisitely observed character study and a taut, propulsive thriller. Travel reporter Rennie Wilford is recovering from breast cancer, a mastectomy, and the recent demise of a long-term romantic relationship when she’s assigned to cover the fictional Caribbean island of St. Antoine—where amenities for well-heeled tourists are anemic as compared to other “luxury” island retreats, but still worlds better than the miserable conditions locals are forced to live under. Rennie ends up being drawn further into island politics than she’d like by her fling with a local bootlegger named Paul—and further still when the island finally erupts into violence and revolution. The Meursault Investigation, Kamel Daoud – Hailed as an instant classic upon its 2013 publication, Meursault is both companion and retort to Albert Camus’ 1942 existentialist novel, The Stranger. Narrated by Harun (Aaron), younger brother of the Arab man killed by Meursault in the original novel—nameless in Sartre’s book, but here named Musa (Moses)—Daoud’s novel is a searing portrayal of the long-term effects on a family when one of their number becomes famous for having been murdered senselessly in an act of racist violence. Jumping back and forth in time (and beginning with the perhaps inevitable first line: “Mama’s still alive today.”), Meursault also covers the chaotic and bloody 1954 – 1962 Algerian War—which began as street-level protests and ultimately concluded with Algeria’s independence from France. Gwen Cooper is the New York Times bestselling author of Homer's Odyssey and My Life in a Cat House, among numerous other titles. Her latest book, The Book of Pawsome: Head Bonks, Raspy Tongues, and 101 Reasons Why Cats Make Us So, So Happy, is now available for purchase on Amazon.com. Gwen will donate 50% of the first week's proceeds to Meals on Wheels.

One film journalist’s stream-of-consciousness cinematic journey through the pandemic and quarantine, Part 6 By Laurence Lerman I was reading an article on doubles and doppelcängers in the cinema, highlighting movies like Cronenberg’s Dead Ringers (1988), Lynch’s Lost Highway (1997), Kieslowski’s The Double Life of Véronique (1991) and a large chunk of Brian De Palma’s filmography (beginning with 1972’s Sisters), and I noted one I wasn’t familiar with—a European production by Italy’s Lucio Fulci that was partially shot at Rome’s renowned Cinecittà Studios, which I wrote about last week. With dozens of writing and directing credits to his name, Fulci, over one two-year period in the late Sixties, banged out a comedy (Operation Saint Peters, 1967), a spaghetti western (Massacre Time, 1967), a crime thriller (Double Face, 1969) and a historical drama (The Conspiracy of Torture, 1969). Into this mix came the 1969 mystery tale One on Top of the Other, Fulci’s first giallo, that uniquely Italian thriller-horror-mystery genre hybrid he later became strongly identified with (along with such genre stalwarts as Mario Bava and Dario Argento). Set in San Francisco, One on Top of the Other (also known on these shores by the considerably more lurid title Perversion Story) concerns a not-so-scrupulous doctor (Jean Sorel of Belle du Jour fame) who may be behind the death of his asthmatic wife (lusty genre queen Marisa Mel) in an insurance scam that will set him up for the rest of his increasingly good life. It’s when the good doctor’s dead wife reappears in the form of a blonde-tressed stripper and working gal that things really get tricky… A not-bad mystery with a satisfying resolution, the Italian import is feathered with a healthy dollop of nudity and erotica set to a seductive San Francisco vibe that’s reminiscent of Hitchcock’s 1958 Vertigo, the ultimate in doppelgänger films. As my cinematic stream aimed Italian—and Cinecittà—I decided to sample something from one of the country’s bigger hitters. Allowing for the wave of tension and anger everyone’s going through, I swung for the fences with something even more potentially upsetting than our current reality: Luchino Visconti’s The Damned. Made the same year as Fulci’s considerably lower-budgeted effort, writer/director Visconti’s The Damned chronicles the downfall of Germany’s Essenbeck family, a wealthy industrialist clan that has begun doing business with the Nazi Party in the early Thirties. (They’re fictionalized stand-ins for the country’s Essen-based Krupp family.) The film opens with a large gathering in the family’s baronial mansion on the night of the 1933 Reichstag fire, and it all goes downhill from there, with two more hours of family backstabbing, murder, suicide, child molestation, incest and—let’s not forget—the rise of the Nazis. Most of the action is set in a mansion, which despite its sprawling luxuriousness, increasingly feels like a claustrophobic deathtrap. At the film’s center—and away from the residence—is an extended sequence of the infamous “Night of the Long Knives” purge, which is here depicted as an SA officer homosexual orgy ending in a machine-gun massacre. Serious stuff, yes, but coming from operatic stylist Visconti, it all looks rich, handsome and lascivious, as do stars Dirk Bogarde and Ingrid Thulin. The decadence of The Damned gave me a hankering for a little bit of the Weimar Republic by a homegrown film and filmmaker who needed only to walk down the street to pick up the flavor. I passed on the era’s most popular actresses in their signature roles—Louise Brooks in Pandora’s Box (1929) and Marlene Dietrich in The Blue Angel (1930)—and decided to lighten up the mood with 1933’s Victor and Victoria. A German musical comedy written and directed by Reinhold Schünzel (a prolific Jewish filmmaker who worked for some 20 years in Germany until leaving in 1937 when things turned really ugly), Victor and Victoria begat the simultaneously shot French-language version George and Georgette (1934), the 1935 English version First a Girl, a 1957 West German remake and, of course, the beloved 1982 Victor/Victoria and subsequent 1995 stage musical, both directed by Blake Edwards and starring his wife, Julie Andrews. Schünzel’s Victor and Victoria is a lot of fun, with superstar German actress Renate Müller starring as the lovely Berlin cabaret singer whose circumstances inspire her to pretend to be a man pretending to be a woman. As I grinned at how many sequences in the film were directly lifted by Edwards for his Victor/Victoria (particularly the flavorful musical numbers), I remembered that my wife had told me she’d wanted to check out the 1989 Sylvester Stallone/Kurt Russell buddy-cop movie Tango & Cash, which contains a scene in which Russell disguises himself as a woman—an exotic dancer, no less—to avoid getting busted. Perfect. I could synch up my stream with V and V’s cross-dressing storyline. We were only about five minutes into Tango & Cash when my wife realized that, oops, she had actually been thinking of 1988’s Tequila Sunrise. Well, they both came out around the same time, they both starred Kurt Russell, they both had “T” in the title—it could happen, I reasoned. So, we zapped Tango & Cash—which is filled with the kind of homophobic cracks that today’s screenwriters wouldn’t be caught dead writing, alongside its frenzied gunfights and chases—and poured ourselves a Tequila (literally and cinematically). Tequila Sunrise’s “childhood friends on opposite sides of the law” story is tried and true—it probably goes even further back than James Cagney and Pat O’Brien in 1938’s Angels with Dirty Faces, an early favorite. This time around, Russell is a Los Angeles police detective, his high school buddy Mel Gibson is a former coke dealer keen to go straight, and Michelle Pfeiffer is the stylish restauranteur who digs them both. This very cool, very good-looking L.A. neo-noir about a trio of very cool, very good-looking L.A. people was written and directed by Robert Towne and gorgeously shot by Conrad L. Hall. The challenge to the boys’ friendship and the ensuing romantic triangle works better than the film’s law and order angle, which brings co-stars J.T. Walsh and Raul Julia into the fray. What works best are the three leads savoring some of Towne’s most crackling dialogue this side of his screenplay for Polanski’s 1974 Chinatown. (“Just looking at you hurts,” Russell admits to Pfeiffer at one sexy juncture.) Well, my wife liked Tequila Sunrise. The same battling buddies theme—and one that has a similar Eighties drug wars backdrop—features in my next choice, 1987’s Extreme Prejudice. Walter Hill’s rugged action thriller stars a lean Nick Nolte as a tough Texas Ranger and a slithery Powers Boothe as his childhood friend, a former police informer who’s crossed into Mexico and become a major cocaine trafficker. Though it’s not without its complexities—there’s a parallel plot involving a black ops operation run by a rogue Army major plotting to snatch some drug cash—Extreme Prejudice is more of a meat-and-potatoes affair than the sleekly restrained Tequila Sunrise, ending with a climactic showdown in a Mexican village filled with more automatic weapon, rifles, pistols, coke and casualties that you could shake a kilo at. Mounted for maximum mayhem, director Hill, who penned Peckinpah’s 1972 favorite The Getaway, does an admirable job of updating the explosive finale of his one-time mentor’s classic 1969 The Wild Bunch for the Eighties. An aside: Years back, I was at an industry party and had a drink with the fine character actor William Forsythe, one of Extreme Prejudice’s featured badasses. I asked him about the film and distinctly recall him ordering another bourbon before responding. “Are you kidding? Shooting a Walter Hill film in El Paso? With heavyweights like Nolte, Boothe, [co-stars] Rip Torn, Michael Ironside and Clancy Brown?” He laughed. “I can tell you we drank a helluva lot more at the end of the day than we’re drinking now.” He was right—I must have been kidding. Come to think of it, I think I’ll have another drink, too. 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 June 7, 2020 WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—MOSCOW (The Borowitz Report)—Vladimir Putin has rejected Donald J. Trump’s request for ten thousand active-duty Russian Army troops to guard the perimeter around the White House, Administration and Kremlin sources have confirmed. After Trump’s call for U.S. troops was rebuffed by Defense Secretary Mark Esper and General Mark Milley, Trump reportedly snapped, “I’ll call Vlad,” and stormed out of the meeting with the two men. Much to Trump’s disappointment, however, his request for Russian troops met with a chilly response. “The optics would be terrible,” Putin reportedly told him. “Worse than that crazy thing you did with the Bible. Really, you need to get a grip.” According to White House sources, Trump has subsequently phoned the North Korean leader, Kim Jong Un, but his calls have gone straight to voice mail. 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.

Geography, Technology and Institutions New book by Jeffrey D. Sachs https://cup.columbia.edu/book/the-ages-of-globalization/9780231193740 Preface: The COVID­19 epidemic hit as this book was going to press. A most global phenomenon—a pandemic disease—was suddenly provoking the most local of responses: quarantines, lockdowns of neighborhoods, and the closure of borders and trade. In just three months, the virus spread from Wuhan, China, to more than 140 other countries. In the fourteenth century, the bubonic plague spread the Black Death from China to Italy in the course of some sixteen years, 1331 to 1347. In our time, the pathogen arrived within days by nonstop flight from Wuhan to Rome. This book is about complexities of globalization, including the powerful capacity of globalization to improve the human condition while bringing undoubted threats as well. The interconnections of humanity across the globe enable the sharing of ideas, the enjoyment of diverse cultures, and the exchanges of diverse and distinctive goods across vast geographies. I savor my morning coffee, which arrives not from the coffee shop across the street but from the sloping tropical hillsides of Ethiopia, Indonesia, and Colombia, thousands of miles away. I delight in having visited these places as well, and have enjoyed their rich cultures and great natural beauty. I have learned from such visits and my work that human kindness, our aspirations for our children, and our enjoyments of life are common to all humanity, no matter how diverse our backgrounds and our material conditions. The new coronavirus reminds us yet again that the benefits of global trade and travel have always been accompanied by the global spread of disease and other ills. In this book, I will discuss how Adam Smith, the father of modern economics, viewed the voyages of discovery of Christopher Columbus and Vasco da Gama. He wrote that the discoveries of the sea routes from Europe to the Americas and to Asia were the most important events of human history, because they linked all parts of the world in a web of transport and commerce, with vast potential benefits. Smith also wrote, with dismay, that the new sea routes occasioned a massive repression of native societies by European conquerors and colonizers. Because Smith lived a century before Robert Koch, Louis Pasteur, Giovanni Grassi, Ronald Ross, Martinus Beijerinck, and others who elaborated the bacterial and viral transmission of disease, he did not realize the key role that Old World pathogens played in devastating the Native American societies. Columbus brought to the Americas not only conquerors but also a massive biological exchange. The Europeans brought horses, cattle, and other plants and animals to the Americas for farming, and also many new infectious diseases, including smallpox, measles, and malaria, while bringing back to Europe the cultivation of the potato, maize, tomatoes, and other crops and farm animals. This “Columbian Exchange” united the world in trade while dividing the world in new kinds of inequalities of wealth and power. The excess mortality of Native Americans caused by Old World diseases was devastating. The native populations were “naïve” to the Old World pathogens, and hence unprotected immunologically. In the same way, the world population today is immunologically naïve, and hence vulnerable, to the new coronavirus sweeping the planet. It is highly likely, thank goodness, that the illnesses and deaths caused by COVID-19 will be far less severe than the epidemics that ravaged Native American societies in the sixteenth century. Nonetheless, the current pandemic will influence global politics and society as other diseases have in the past. In fact, we don’t have to go back to the fourteenth-century Black Death or the sixteenth-century Columbian Exchange to recognize the profound role of diseases in shaping societies and economies. Until late in the nineteenth century, Africa’s heavy burden of malaria created a kind of protective barrier against European imperial conquest. West Africa was known as the “white man’s grave,” since European soldiers succumbed in such high proportions to malaria. This barrier fell when the British learned to extract an antimalarial treatment, quinine, from the bark of the Andean cinchona tree. Gin and tonic (containing quinine) thereby became the beverage of British imperial conquest. Since then, Africa’s malaria burden has stood as an obstacle to child survival and economic development, though new drugs and preventative measures are enabling humanity to fight back against this age-­old scourge. More recently, another killer pathogen circled the globe and caused devastation and havoc: the human immunodeficiency virus, HIV, the cause of AIDS. HIV, like COVID­19, is a zoonosis, that is, a pathogen of animal populations that jumps to human populations through some kind of inter­ action and perhaps genetic mutation. AIDS entered the  human  population most likely from West African apes that were killed for bushmeat. COVID­19 entered the human population most likely from bats. In the case of AIDS, the virus apparently spread among Africans for decades in the middle of the twentieth century, then was transmitted internationally in the 1970s and early 1980s. HIV/AIDS was diagnosed for the first time in San Francisco in the early 1980s, decades after its first introduction into the human population. By that time, many millions of Africans were already infected by, and dying from, the HIV virus. AIDS marked another major event of globalization, at both its most devastating and its most inspiring. The deaths from AIDS quickly mounted into the tens of millions, with vast attendant suffering. Many of those with HIV infection were from socially marginalized groups: the very poor, ethnic minorities, the LGBT community, intravenous drug users, and others. This delayed the response of many governments, but civil society groups, led first and foremost by people infected with HIV, demanded action and step by step moved the world’s governments, although after costly delays. Impressively, the scientific community sprang quickly into action, making rapid and fundamental discoveries about the nature of the virus, the causes of disease, and the ways to fight both. Within roughly a decade of the identification of HIV as a new zoonotic disease, scientists discovered a number of antiviral medicines that could turn the HIV infection from a nearly certain deadly ailment to a chronic and controlled infection. In these breakthroughs and the subsequent distribution of the new medicines, globalization played a huge role. The science of discovery was global, with new scientific knowledge moving rapidly across all continents. The distribution of the new medicines was also a coordinated global effort. A notable initiative was the launch of a new Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB, and Malaria, in which I was thrilled and honored to play a role during its early formulation and development. The speed of policy implementation and health interventions was greatly spurred by rising public awareness and the crucial activist leadership of civil society. COVID­19 similarly provokes the reckoning of the balance sheet of globalization, and the policy challenge of promoting the positive sides while limiting the negative consequences. The early steps in fighting COVID­ 19 have involved closing down international trade and travel, and even restricting the movements of people between and within cities of single nations. Quarantines are back, the word itself referring to the forty days (quarantagiorniin Italian) that Venetians held ships away from the port when the ships were suspected of carrying plague. The policy of quarantine dates back to the late fourteenth century. As did the AIDS crisis, the COVID­19 pandemic will require great attention and sensitivity to social justice in implementing measures to confront the disease. Some concerns are being raised once again in our own time: that open trade is simply too dangerous, that we should revert to closed borders and national autarky (self­-sufficiency). This is an illusion. While quarantines may indeed limit the spread of disease, they rarely stop the spread of the pathogens entirely. And their successes surely come at very high cost. Closures of trade bring their own kinds of miseries, starting with the massive losses of economic output and livelihoods. Throughout history, it has been important to understand the threats arising from globalization (disease, conquest, war, financial crises, and others) and to face them head on, not by ending the benefits of globalization, but by using the means of inter­ national cooperation to control the negative consequences of global­-scale interconnectedness. This has entailed the invention of new forms of global cooperation, one of the most important themes of this book. From the late eighteenth century onward, philosophers, statesmen, politicians, and activists have sought new ways to govern globalization in order to promote its benefits while controlling its many potential harms. The fight against pandemic disease has loomed large in the efforts at cooperation. Indeed, the International Sanitary Conferences that began in 1851 and continued until 1938 were among the first modern efforts at intensive global scientific and policy cooperation. These efforts at disease control gave rise to the World Health Organization in 1948, one of the first major agencies of the new United Nations, which was founded at the end of World War II in 1945. WHO, of course, is currently at the center of the global fight against COVID­19. WHO has helped to coordinate scientific information about the pathogen and how to control it, and to coordinate and monitor the global push to contain and end the pandemic. Globalization enables one part of the world to learn from others. When one country shows successes in containing the spread of COVID­19, other parts of the world quickly aim to learn of the new methods and whether they can be applied in a local context. The development of new drugs and vaccines to fight COVID­19 is also a global effort, as was the case with HIV. The clinical trials to test the new candidate drugs and vaccines will involve researchers spanning the world. The distribution and uses of the new drugs and vaccines will also require cooperation on a global scale. Disease control is not the only area where global cooperation is vital today. The case for global cooperation and institutions extends to many urgent concerns, including the control of human­-induced climate change; the conservation of biodiversity; the control and reversal of the massive pollution of the air, soils, and oceans; the proper uses and governance of the internet; the nonproliferation of nuclear weapons; the avoidance of mass forced migrations; and the ever-­present challenge of avoiding or ending violent conflicts. All of these challenges must be confronted in a world that is too often divided, distrustful, and distracted, and now, preoccupied with a new zoonosis that has suddenly become a new pandemic. This book will not provide simple answers or antidotes to these ills and threats. The history of globalization is a history of humanity’s glorious achievements, cruelties, and self­-inflicted harms, and of the great complexities of achieving progress in the midst of crisis. Globalization, we shall see, involves the intricate interplay of physical geography, human institutions, and technical know­how. COVID­19 is at once a physical phenomenon, a sudden intruder into our politics and social life, and a target of scientific discovery. It is, therefore, the kind of phenomenon of globalization that has been part of human experience from the very start of our species. I hope this book will shed light on that long experience of global interconnected­ness, and on the role of globalization in shaping our humanity and lives. Excerpted from The Ages of Globalization: Geography, Technology, and Institutions Copyright (c) 2020 Jeffrey D. Sachs.  Used by arrangement with the Publisher. All rights reserved.

From Mary Coombs/Ashland, Oregon (Photo credits: Mary Coombs) So, what could drive a pandemic off the front pages of the paper? Racial disturbances reminiscent of the 1960s. The trigger, of course, was the appalling behavior of a Minneapolis cop leading to the death of George Floyd – and, likely, the series of other racial incidents, mostly involving the police killing African-Americans, around the country in the last several weeks. How to respond? Here in Ashland, an almost all-white city, the response was protest rallies and marches. Entirely peaceful, if often angry. And – our local police chief came to the rally in uniform not to patrol but to join us on his knee. The really hard question for me is how to respond to the events elsewhere – often a similar mix of protest marches and violence: burning a police station, breaking windows and looting big box stores. (Fortunately Ashland doesn’t have a Target or CVS or Walmart to loot.) If I were just to go with my gut, I’d be concerned about the looting/burning as counter-productive for any change. But it also feels like I should look to the responses of engaged, thoughtful African-Americans. The refrain of one of the great songs from Hamilton is “who lives, who dies, who tells the story.” I want the perspective of people who are closer to the story; who can more easily understand the experiences and emotions of the young black men who appear to be most of the violent demonstrators. On the other hand, I’m a retired law professor. So my instinct may be to recognize the emotional charge, but to come down on the side of “what is most likely to lead to public policy changes that we (should) want?” And my race and gender and age incline me to see violence as counter-productive, while recognizing that peaceful marches and protests haven’t exactly led to serious wide-spread change that makes life safe for African-Americans from racist violence by cops and others. Anyway, again as a law professor, I end up saying that my “job” is to raise questions and inspire thoughtful discussion, not to provide (or even have) the “right” answer. From Patsy Swartz/Seattle, Washington I was in downtown Seattle on Saturday (5/30), participating in the 3:00 p.m. protest. It was a very peaceful, respectful protest march with people of all colors and ages, including families. It was an extremely rare sight to see anyone without a mask. My friend and I decided to leave the march that had stopped at the Municipal Court House on 5th & Cherry around 4:30 p.m. to walk down to 3rd & Union to catch the bus back to the Northgate Park & Ride. It was shortly after our departure from the group that destruction and chaos took over. We waited at the bus stop for over an hour but there were no buses or traffic whatsoever except police cars flying by. We finally realized that we were stuck downtown but eventually we did make it back home by a stroke of luck and a circuitous journey. This is the short version. I am so appalled that this very peaceful expression of injustice ended in desecration and looting of our community. Seems to me this has nothing to do with justice!

May 29, 2020 Greetings from Minneapolis, Minnesota where summer has blissfully descended upon us and….. wait, WTF?!?! Minnesota not-so-nice is suddenly on full display and I struggle to find words to fully describe what is happening here and how we are feeling about the murder of George Floyd. Undeniable, straight-up, homicide and yet the killer and his accomplices remain uncharged and at large. “Sickened” and “horrified” come to mind. What the hell were these cops thinking?! How could they possibly have thought what they were doing was okay?! As our mayor, Jacob Frey, said, if it were him or me who had been filmed with our knees on the neck of a man who died we would be behind bars. Why are there still no charges? The subsequent rioting is now taking our attention away from the murder of yet another unarmed, subdued, black man. What is happening is horrible. It is unfortunate that the story has become the reaction to the murder. The story is now about the rioting, the destruction of small businesses and “their community.” It is really hard to watch the fires and the looting and to make sense of what is going on. And here is where I will propose that perspective is everything. I am a privileged white woman; safe, with a home, food and my own security net. I am horrified by the murder, sickened every time I see the footage and hear Mr. Floyd calling for his mama. My heart breaks. I do wish that the protests had remained peaceful. But I also wonder: what have peaceful protests done to change the narrative? People of color are still seen as "less than" by many. Many lack food security, home security, job security, health security, protection from their local law enforcement, respect, opportunity and equality. Peacefully talking has garnered promises to do better and commissions to look into solutions. A part of me understands how we have gotten here. Interestingly, who knew there could be anything that would push the horrors of the coronavirus pandemic from the front page of our newspapers and from the top spot of our news reports? Minnesota is poised to top 1,000 deaths by this weekend; a small number for more populated states, perhaps, but pretty significant for us. Masks are actually being handed out to protestors who do not come wearing their own. Also worth noting: many of the cracks and fissures that have been exposed in our society by the virus are the same as those being amplified by this senseless murder. Bottom line: riots or no riots, these cops murdered George Floyd and should be behind bars. My heart is heavy. I wish I could leave you with something enlightening or uplifting but I’ve got nothing. Be safe everyone. Stephi Tikalsky/Minneapolis, MN