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By Evelyn Renold Where are you getting your groceries? and What are you watching? That’s what friends most want to know these days (apart from your health status). Actually, there’s quite a bit to watch, though with movie and TV production almost at a standstill, the pickings may get slimmer as time goes on. (On the plus side, filming on Season 4 of “The Crown” wrapped just before lockdown, so we may get to see that later this year.) Below, some Insider recommendations: From “Downton Abby” mastermind Julian Fellows, Belgravia begins in Belgium, just before the battle of Waterloo, then flashes forward 26 years to London’s tonier precincts. Though the miniseries touches on the rise of the merchant class and the acceptance of rich tradesmen in polite society, “Belgravia” is really a genteel, highbrow soap. Which means lots of twisty plot turns, exposing deep, dark family secrets, and spot-on performances from an array of top-notch actors (Tom Wilkerson and Harriet Walter are perhaps best-known to American audiences). With only six one-hour episodes, “Belgravia” proceeds at a much brisker clip than “Downton,” and requires more of the viewer’s attention. Continuity problems and loose ends do surface, but it’s a satisfying experience overall. On Epix; you’ll need to subscribe, but can cancel after you binge. Also from the prolific Fellows: The English Game, about the beginnings of professional soccer in the U.K .of the late 1800s, and its transformation from an aristocratic amusement to a money-making sport. If that makes it sound male-centric and boring, rest assured it is not. “Game” also features a soapy narrative—filled with romance, intrigue and something akin to class warfare--in addition to a number of appealing performances. On Netflix. Bad Education is a made-for-HBO movie based on the true story of a high school superintendent on Long Island (Roslyn, to be precise) who embezzled millions from the district and lived the high life until he was brought down by a student journalist. “Bad” stars Hugh Jackman as the perpetrator and Allison Janey as his assistant/partner in crime. You may wonder how he got away with it all for so long and, more to the point, why there was so much money around for him to pinch. No matter. Jackman is a revelation here: sly and—yes—funny as the unctuous, overconfident administrator. (Janey, alas, overacts.) The real perp, who served four years in prison (and now gets a $170,000-a-year pension from the school district), is nowhere near as dashing as Jackman, but that’s hardly a surprise. There’s too much hysteria in the second season of Dead to Me, the Netflix comedy-drama-mystery, and the ending is limp. Still, there’s fun to be had along the way. The dialogue can be crisp and clever, and the jaw-dropping surprises and reversals keep you absorbed. In fact, most episodes end with a jolt, which is to say “Dead” was born to be binged--good luck trying to watch one at a time. Christina Applegate and Linda Cardellini play Jen and Judy, unlikely friends who get into a heap of trouble in scenic Laguna Beach, CA. Cardellini, in particular, is a hoot—totally believable as a good-hearted but disaster-prone airhead. Niagara is a movie-movie, released in 1953. I saw it on TCM the other day, but you can also find it on platforms ranging from YouTube to Amazon. Though shot in color, it’s almost a classic film noir. Marilyn Monroe plays a shameless hussy, married to the long-suffering Joseph Cotten. Jean Peters and her husband (Max Showalter) meet the couple at a Niagara lodge, and murder ensues. Monroe, only 26 when the film was shot, gives a mature performance: nothing innocent about this beautiful blonde. And yet it’s Peters’ movie in a way. She’s the anti-Monroe—a down-to-earth, sensible brunette; attractive, but in a wiry, athletic way—and the story pivots around her. Director Henry Hathaway, though mostly known for Westerns, had a long and varied Hollywood career; here, he packs plenty of action and suspense into an economical 91 minutes. Niagara’s famous falls play a key role in this atmospheric film, and the stunning bell tower sequence prefigures Hitchcock’s “Vertigo.” Evelyn Renold is a longtime editor with a special interest in arts and entertainment. Her wide-ranging career has included stints at Newsday, The New York Daily News, Lear’s and Good Housekeeping. She currently reviews literary fiction for Kirkus and works with authors at evelynrenold.com

By Merrill Hansen I miss my dad! I miss my aunts, uncles and close friends who have left us over the years. I miss the noise! Sheltering at home has been too quiet for me, even though I talk to my children, my relatives and my friends by phone almost daily. I miss the ruckus of everyday life, I guess it’s predictable under the circumstances: I came down with COVID-19 five days after Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer's stay-at-home order, and have only left the house twice, for short periods of time, with my mask and gloves. I suspect that the other people in my life feel the same way. My discussions with my relatives and lifelong friends over the phone are becoming more nostalgic, because the coronavirus is creating a new world for us that's unlike anything we've ever experienced, or expected, and we don't know what's coming next. When I talk with the adult children of my mom’s two sisters, whose mothers, like mine, are in their 90s, we talk about how small our mothers’ worlds are getting due to health issues, and how vulnerable they are because of the virus. They're the last of a generation in our family that taught my cousins and close family friends how to appreciate noise at our dinner tables. These conversations, which turned into debates and arguments that sometimes got angry and overheated, frightened guests who'd never heard noise at the dinner table. But our noise usually included laughter. Likewise, our goodbyes were always noisy, because as people were putting on their coats, there was always someone who wanted to "get the last word in.” My parents and their families all wanted their children to enjoy being a part of conversations, so they encouraged us, from a very early age, to be comfortable communicating our thoughts and opinions. They taught us the importance of learning about current events, asking questions, having opinions, and being able to explain why we felt the way we did. When we were very young, the conversations were usually age-appropriate, and we could be age-appropriately silly. But what I remember most is that these adults never made us feel uncomfortable. We were nurtured during family discussions. When a cousin and I recently were reminiscing, we agreed that we never felt embarrassed if we answered a question incorrectly. Instead, we were encouraged to continue to be part of the discussion. The only time I recall crying during a conversation was when an uncle didn’t realize how traumatic it was for me to hear him ask my mother a question that apparently was common at the time. He turned to my mother and said, "Ruthie, if there was a fire, and you could only save one person, would you save Phil (my dad), or would you save Marilynn (me)?" When my mother responded that she would save me, I started to cry. I knew I wanted to be saved, but I didn't want my father left behind in a fire. By the time I was ten, conversations included such topics as political campaigns, the Eichmann trial, and the news stories about a woman from Arizona who made the difficult decision to have an abortion in Sweden after learning that a drug she took during her pregnancy contained Thalidomide, which caused babies to be born without limbs. When I was in my teens, typical dinner conversations were about SDS (Students for a Democratic Society), the Detroit Riot, Kent State and the Vietnam War. Occasionally, those conversations got raucous. Years later, my father apologized to me, and told me he was wrong to have defended the Vietnam War. As I began to broaden my social horizons, I learned that there were people who were raised in families that considered certain subjects inappropriate to discuss at the dinner table, if at all. Unfortunately, they were often boyfriends, or young men I hoped to date, or whose friendship I enjoyed. One young man who I was interested in told me that the “deepest” dinner conversations his family had were at Thanksgiving, when his father would go around the dinner table and ask everyone what they were thankful for that year. I couldn't bring myself to tell him that at our last Thanksgiving dinner, we were asked whether or not we would have "named names" during the McCarthy Hearings, to keep from being blacklisted or going to jail. I suggested leaving after dinner. The first time I invited a date to a family dinner, I knew he would be comfortable because the guests included other family friends our age. At some point during dinner, though, my father brought up the subject of marijuana, which I had not expected. He didn't directly ask any of us whether or not we had ever smoked marijuana; instead, he asked whether or not we thought smoking marijuana could lead to experimenting with other drugs, and eventually heroin addiction. After a few seconds of awkward silence, the daughter of close family friends, who was several years older than my date and I, proudly announced that she not only smoked marijuana, she sold it. She followed that with, "I am a single mother and need the money to make ends meet.” My head almost hit the table. Her own father, who was sitting with her mother, was livid, and yelled, "How can you need money, when your mother and I pay for everything, and we know damn well that "JERRY" and his bookie friends pay you to let them use your house so people can call there and place bets?" I couldn't bring myself to look at my date's face, because I knew what was coming next, "MARILYNN, DID YOU KNOW THAT SHE SELLS MARIJUANA? “No,” I answered truthfully. I didn't mention that I knew about Jerry and his unsavory friends. My father believed that everyone is entitled to a fair trial, deserves a rigorous defense, and should be presumed innocent unless proven guilty. But, when my cousin informed him during a family dinner that her husband had been asked to assist Angela Davis' defense team, it became apparent that my father did not presume Angela Davis, a controversial political activist who was charged with murder, to be innocent. The conversation ended with my father pounding his fist on the table, and everybody else grabbing their water glasses so they didn't break. I don't recall the young man, whose friendship I enjoyed, asking to be invited again. As a memorial to my father, on the Thanksgiving following his death, my cousins and I reenacted that discussion, with me pounding my fist on the table. On another occasion, a cousin and I each invited a boyfriend to a big family dinner. Both young men were very intelligent and pleasant, and assured us that they never felt uncomfortable discussing current events. That may have been true, until my father and uncle began the dinner conversation by asking everyone what they thought about Vanessa Redgrave having referred to the Jewish Defense League as "Zionist hoodlums" in her acceptance speech during the Academy Awards. And what did we think of Paddy Chayefsky's response to her comments, saying that he was sick and tired of “people” (referring to Redgrave), exploiting the occasion of the Academy Awards to propagate their personal political propaganda? (“I would like to suggest to Ms. Redgrave that her winning an Academy Award is not an epic moment in history, does not require a proclamation, and a simple thank-you would have sufficed.") My cousin and I couldn't help but laugh when we saw the looks on our boyfriends' faces and realized that they had no idea who Vanessa Redgrave was. But I also learned during one holiday dinner that there was a subject that was never to be discussed. As my sister and my young niece sat down at the dinner table, one of my aunts asked, “Where’s Leslie?’ referring to my sister's husband. My sister looked surprised and replied, "Why would Leslie be here? We've been divorced for over a year. You talk to my mother every week; didn't she tell you?" Then, like a scene in a movie, my mother said, "Nobody ever asked.” I miss the noise. 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.

By Amy Lennard Goehner I had just finished writing a story for a children’s magazine on the NCAA basketball tournament known as March Madness when the actual March Madness took hold. I rewrote my story using the now ubiquitous catchphrases “contain the spread,” “shelter in place” and of course, the dreaded “cancelled.” Three days before filing my story, my 26-year-old son Nate was scheduled to come home for the weekend, as he does every other month. He has autism and lives on a seed-to-table farm which is part of a school-residence in the Catskills. It is a place that is the stuff special needs parents dream of. Nate’s March trip was cancelled. So, instead, Nate learned how to FaceTime, and those calls now replace our regular phone calls. They’ve also increased from 15 minutes to say, three hours. And from three times a week to daily. I am blessed that Nate is verbal, unlike many other individuals with autism, so I can hear him tell me he’s happy. I can’t complain because I have it a lot easier than parents who work at home and have young kids, but may I please kvetch just a little? I work from home too, and while I can do some things while FaceTiming, working is not one of them. Yesterday Nate called to FaceTime. And we did. For three hours. Our conversation went something like this: Me: Hi Natey, what’s up? Nate: I fed the donkeys and sheeps and goats and gathered eggs this morning and worked in the herb garden and ran on the treadmill. I can’t believe May is flying by! [A phrase he heard from a staff member a year ago and now repeats nearly every time I speak with him.] Me: “Yup” I said, while thinking “Flying by about as fast as a root canal.” After our conversation (pretty much the same conversation every day), we will sing together. Before Nate could talk, I sang to him—Gershwin, Cole Porter, the songs from the Great American Songbook. And one day he began to sing those songs, verbatim. He has a photographic memory and had been storing them all up. But he adds a twist to every song. He changes lyrics to include his favorite name “Andrea.” So listening to Nate sing along to Elvis Presley goes “But I can’t help falling in love with . . . Andrea.” On FaceTime we always sing “Baby Face, “My Dear,” (his name for “Our Love is Here to Stay” which contains the line, “But oh my dear”), and “Cheek to Cheek.” Or I point the phone to the digital photos on my desktop, even though I’ve sent him most of them. There must be 400 photos, so that’s good for an hour or so. Or he accompanies me on my walk around the apartment, which replaced my walk in Central Park when it started getting too crowded. He will always mention the name of every relative and friend he’s ever known, where they live, and arcane bits of data no one without a photographic memory could recall. And then sometimes he will say something for the first time. Like when he asked about an elderly friend of mine whom I told him had died. I asked Nate, “do you know where people go when they die?” Nate’s response? “Florida.” Gotta run. The phone is ringing with the words “FaceTime” flashing across the screen. I need my daily reminder of how May is just flying by! I’m a third-generation Brooklynite (when Brooklyn was a place to come from, not go to) but grew up in Newton, Mass. I spent most of my career at Time Inc. as deputy chief of reporters at Sports Illustrated, senior editor at Sports Illustrated Kids, and senior arts reporter at Time. I wrote a lot about autism for Time, as my oldest son has autism. I currently freelance for AARP and the wonderful new kids’ magazine, The Week Junior. I’m in my element ghostwriting online dating profiles or shooting pool and drinking a vodka martini — while listening to Ella, Dinah or Sarah.

One film journalist’s stream-of-consciousness cinematic journey through the pandemic and quarantine, Part 5 By Laurence Lerman Settling into the Times Arts section a few weeks back, I came upon Tony Scott’s appraisal and appreciation of Bernardo Bertolucci’s historical drama 1900, the filmmaker’s “luxuriously long, persistently underestimated 1976 epic” that, with a grand, operatic approach, examines life in Italy during the first half of the 20th Century. I’ve seen the film twice over the years—most memorably the first time, when I attended a 1991 press reception for the newly restored two-part version at the Film Forum and attendees were served both breakfast and lunch over the course of the five-hour-plus screening. Scott’s article and my own memory of the screening (I drifted off a bit during the second part following a delicious cold-cut sandwich) didn’t inspire me to revisit the sweeping work again, but rather moved me to pop in my favorite Bertolucci, 1970’s The Conformist, which he adapted from Alberto Moravia’s 1951 novel. The Conformist’s engrossing story of a sexually confused man in Mussolini’s Fascist Italy on his honeymoon, who’s conscripted to assassinate his former college professor, an anti-Fascist agitator, still delivers as both a potent political thriller and a disturbing personal tragedy. Presenting the idea of a person’s psychological need to conform—to act “normal”—within the social and political world that whirls around him, it offers one stunning image after another, from Enzo Tarascio’s Caesar-like assassination in a mist-shrouded forest to Dominique Sanda and Stefania Sandrelli tangoing in a Parisian dance hall. Great stuff. The film was shot by Bertolucci’s go-to DP, the great Vittorio Storraro, who’s responsible for a number of Seventies stunners, including Bertolucci’s 1972 Last Tango in Paris and his 1900, as well as Coppola’s 1979 Apocalypse Now, which is hands down the most magnificent-looking film of the decade. Like many Italian productions, The Conformist was filmed in part at Rome’s famed Cinecittà Studios, birthplace of some 3,000 films over the past eight decades. And not just for such Italian giants as Fellini (La Dolce Vita, 1960), Antonioni (The Lady Without Camelias, 1953), Pasolini (Mamma Roma, 1962) and Visconte (Bellisima, 1951), but also to numerous Hollywood greats, from Huston (Beat the Devil, 1953) and Wyler (Ben-Hur, 1959) to Minghella (The English Patient, 1996) and Scorsese (Gangs of New York, 2002). A quick glimpse at a Cinecittà IMDB listing informed me that Sylvester Stallone’s bomb-in-the-Holland-Tunnel disaster movie Daylight was also filmed on Cinecittà’s sound stages. (It was produced by Raffaella de Laurentiis, so I guess that’s not a surprise.) Sly’s 1996 large-scale disaster flick reminded me—in title and story—of Short Walk to Daylight, a 1972 TV movie about a bunch of straphangers struggling to escape the more-treacherous-than ever NYC subway system after an earthquake (!) has leveled the city. I remember finding it, as a nine-year-old, to be a tense, claustrophobic and pretty scary excursion, which I re-confirmed after finding it on YouTube. Clocking in at a taut 73 minutes when it was first broadcast on ABC-TV a month before The Poseidon Adventure was released (and condensed to an even tighter 68 minutes online), Short Walk to Daylight focuses on a disparate group of New Yorkers (and one unlucky Iowa tourist) as they contend with crumbling passages, falling debris and the East River flooding through the walls while they make their way down the MTA # 4 line tunnel from Bowling Green to Brooklyn. If that’s not enough, they must also deal with rising racial tensions, sexism, drug addiction (one survivor is a junkie going through withdrawal) and all the other issues plaguing early Seventies New York City. Abetting TV veteran Barry Shear’s controlled direction are the great photographic effects and matte visuals conjured (on a small budget) by Albert Whitlock, one of the industry’s most respected F/X craftsmen who, a couple of years later, would graduate to big-screen mayhem with The Hindenburg, Rollercoaster, Airport ’77 and, of course, 1974’s Earthquake. Co-starring in Short Walk—alongside such TV stalwarts as James Brolin, Don Mitchell and future Battlestar: Galactica “socialator” Laurette Spang—was jazz singer and occasional actress Abbey Lincoln, an artist I wasn’t familiar with when I last saw the film nearly 50 years ago. My dad was a big fan of the great drummer Max Roach, to whom evocative emoter Abbey was married for a time in the Sixties. I had probably heard her singing on several records they collaborated on during those years, most notably the politically charged 1960 album We Insist! Max Roach’s Freedom Now Suite, which they performed en toto at the 1964 Newport Jazz Festival. Though I’ve never attended the seminal Newport musical gathering, I’m always up for revisiting Jazz on a Summer’s Day, photographer Bert Stern and Aram Svakian’s 1959 concert documentary on the 1958 Newport Jazz Festival. Summer’s Day’s method mixes luxuriously colored footage of the city and surrounding yacht races with a front-row seat to the festival’s performances as observed by a fashionable, oh-so-white audience. The lineup and numbers are first-rate, particularly Anita O’Day’s scatting “Tea for Two,” Thelonious Monk tinkling “Blue Monk” and Louis Armstrong letting loose on “Up a Lazy River.” Seeing or hearing New Orleans’ beloved Satchmo frequently prompts me to dive into an atmospheric piece set in the Big Easy—something like Alan Parker’s 1987 Angel Heart or Walter Hill’s 1989 Johnny Handsome (both starring Mickey Rourke, who definitely jibes with Nawlins’ noirish soul). This time out, I opted for Paul Schrader’s Cat People, the 1982 remake of Jacques Tourneur’s original 1942 version, which remains the perfect embodiment of RKO Pictures’ B-movie horror elegance. While both versions of Cat People have their pleasures, Schrader’s definitely leads the way in terms of nudity (Nastassia Kinski can’t keep her clothes on), violence (lots of bloody limb-ripping), soundtrack (Giorgio Moroder’s throbbing synth score) and the aforementioned New Orleans backdrop. But it’s Tourneur’s subtle, shadowy telling of screenwriter DeWitt Bodeen’s tale that truly delivers on sustained mood and atmosphere. And as the young woman is descended from an ancient tribe that metamorphizes into panthers when aroused, the sleekly mysterious Simone Simon doesn’t hurt, either. Producer Val Lewton headed up RKO’s horror unit in the early Forties and worked with Tourneur on two additional films following Cat People, 1943’s I Walked with a Zombie and that same year’s The Leopard Man. While all three are excellent, The Leopard Man has never received same kind of critical praise that elevated its predecessors to classic status, dark little gem that it is. Based on the book Black Alibi by Cornell Woolrich, it’s a strange story of an escaped sideshow leopard that mauls a young woman to death, setting off a string of copycat (no pun intended) murders that smack of a serial killer (a term that still hadn’t been invented). Again, it’s bizarre, but in the hands of the Lewton/Tourneur team, it’s a provocative, stylish work—a “horror noir,” if you will. Continuing the Southern journey I began above with Schrader’s Cat People, I hopped over to a friend’s recommendation of the offbeat 2015 New Orleans-set comedy-drama Mississippi Grind. Written and directed by the filmmaking duo of Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck, Mississippi Grind takes Altman’s California Split formula of putting two problematic gamblers together and getting them on road. In this case, it’s Ryan Reynolds and Ben Mendelsohn who meet each other in a casino in Dubuque, Iowa and then bop their way onto a gambling trip down the Mississippi River, ending in a $25,000 buy-in poker game in New Orleans. A lively script, excellent production design drenched in Southern atmosphere and a career-high performance from Reynolds make this one a winner, with the rootless protagonists calling to mind such Seventies drifter favorites as Scarecrow (1972) and Five Easy Pieces (1971). Boden and Fleck hit paydirt with last year’s Captain Marvel and have since gone on to executive produce the just-released FX miniseries Mrs. America, for which they also helmed a pair of installments. The outstanding nine-part series takes an extended look at the struggle to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) in the Seventies (a decade that’s all over this week’s column!), the schism between the conservative women’s coalition and the feminist movement, and the era’s leading players. The series offers a bang-up cast led by Cate Blanchett as Phyllis Schlafly, the staunchly conservative Illinois homemaker whose unyielding anger and ambition targeted what she felt was her marginalization by the feminist movement. Hey, if you were up against Tracey Ullman as Betty Friedan, Rose Byrne as Gloria Steinem, Uzo Aduba as Shirley Chisholm and Margo Martindale as Bella Abzug (a role she was born to play), you’d come out swinging, too. Mrs. America is the first television show I’ve binged since the beginning of the quarantine—my wife and I watched the first eight episodes in under 24 hours—and I must admit it wholly informed me on the history of Second Wave Feminism, of which I knew next to nothing. My wife has since fervently informed me that the Third Wave followed in the early Nineties and that we’re currently in the midst of feminism’s internet-savvy Fourth Wave. With all these waves, I’m thinking I should stop watching so many movies and learn how to surf.

Opinion by Jeffrey D. Sachs May 24, 2020   |   CNN.com Editor's Note: Jeffrey Sachs is a professor and director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University. The opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author; view more opinion articles on CNN. (CNN) On this somber Memorial Day weekend, America is approaching the grim milestone of 100,000 Covid-19 deaths in a population of 330 million. Six Asia-Pacific nations -- Australia, Japan, Korea, New Zealand, Taiwan and Vietnam -- have just over 1,200 coronavirus deaths in a combined population almost the same as the US, 328 million. On May 23, the Johns Hopkins coronavirus tracker shows that America recorded 1,208 new deaths, while the six Asia-Pacific countries recorded just 13 deaths: 12 in Japan, 1 in Australia, and 0 in the others. America has failed to control the epidemic while many other countries, and not just the six in the Asia-Pacific, have succeeded. The American political system has not been focused on how to end the epidemic. Our political debates from the first days of the epidemic have taken the bait of Donald Trump's nonsensical Twitter feed: chloroquine, Clorox, China pro and con, WHO pro and con, filling church pews by Easter, the liberation of states, the bailout of the post office, the loyalty of Fox News, and whether or not to wear a face mask at the Ford Motor plant. This is not the politics of problem solving; it is the politics of distraction. Six months into the epidemic and around 100,000 deaths later we still do not have systematic contact tracing across the country. Neither the President nor Congress has focused on the topic even though it is the key to keeping Americans alive and restoring the economy. Our politics are tribal and ineffective. Rather than designing a system of nationwide contact tracing, we debate Trump versus House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. As Americans, we should readily agree that both the President and Congress have failed miserably. Neither has focused on how to stop the epidemic. Both have focused on blaming the other. The truth is simple and grim. If we don't stop the epidemic, we will face many more deaths and a long and deep depression. It would be wonderful if a vaccine suddenly rescues us from our persistent failure to implement basic public health measures. But don't bet on it. The recent news stories on vaccines have the hallmarks of hype, the kind of stories typically followed by long delays and disappointments. That's not a forecast, just an urgent point that we should not leave the rescue of the republic to unproven vaccines still in the early stages of development. Sadly, many state and local governments have failed to compensate for the lack of federal leadership. Yes, there were dire shortages of testing equipment because of shocking failures at the federal level. Yet much more epidemic control could have been achieved nonetheless at the state and local level. New York, for example, failed to note the early spread of the epidemic or to create systems for contact tracing when it was urgently needed. Even worse, New York state health authorities disastrously ordered that convalescing Covid-19 patients should be moved from hospitals to nursing homes, thereby risking mass infections in those highly vulnerable settings. There have been thousands of avoidable and tragic deaths in the state's care centers. And yet some cities, such as Paterson, New Jersey, have innovated and set a crucial standard for the rest. Thousands more preventable deaths lie ahead unless and until we start focusing as a nation on ending the epidemic. Ignore Trump's Twitter feed. It has nothing to do with our real and urgent needs. Our core question should be this: How can the United States quickly and urgently implement basic public health measures -- contact tracing, testing, quarantining, and safe public and workplace practices -- already achieved in the Asia-Pacific and many other countries? Only by stopping the rampant spread of the disease can we be safe and can our economy function once again. In this coming week, Congress should return immediately -- online if necessary -- to consider this issue and this issue alone. By the end of the week, Congress should vote for legislation to finance and otherwise support the urgent and immediate scale-up of nationwide contact tracing and safe workplace practices. The National Governors Association and the United States Conference of Mayors should do the same. Within a few days we could finally have a meeting of the minds and a national strategy, with or without Trump. We have suffered enough from rudderless, distracted and deadly politics.

By Andy Borowitz May 27, 2020 WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—In an escalation of his spat with Roy Cooper, the Democratic governor of North Carolina, Donald Trump is demanding that the 2020 Republican National Convention relocate from Charlotte to Moscow. “North Carolina has been difficult every step of the way, and meanwhile Moscow has always been very helpful to me,” Trump wrote, in one of a series of early-morning tweets. Additionally, Trump argued, moving the R.N.C. to Moscow would save the Republicans millions in airfare. “The most important people working on our 2020 campaign will already be there,” he tweeted. Finally, he claimed, Moscow boasts far better accommodations than “that sad city of losers, Charlotte.” “I have fantastic memories of the Moscow Ritz,” Trump wrote. 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 Class of 2020: In Their Own Words Move over, Baby Boomers! Make way, Millennials! A new cohort has arrived on the scene. Meet Generation P, so named for the pandemic that has scuttled their plans for entering academia, the workforce and card-carrying adulthood in a dignified way. Instead of proudly marching across the stage at scheduled commencements this month, many of the masked members of the Class of 2020 have found themselves quarantined at home with Mom and Dad, facing an historically bleak job market, if not an outright second Depression. What follows are interviews that the editor of The Insider has done this month with ten new graduates of high school, college, law school and medical school from around the country. These members of the Class of 2020 speak frankly about how they have experienced the onset of the pandemic. Admittedly, our definition of Generation P is expansive, since our interviewees range from 17 to 33 years old. But despite the differences in their ages and educational levels, we found that the members of this genus share the common experience of having had their lives upended by the unexpected, ultimately shocking, appearance of the pandemic. But despite the disappointment and turbulence they have recently undergone, our interviewees showed a remarkable degree of resilience and spunk in the face of these trying times. Our journalistic prognosis: the Class of 2020 will come roaring back when the current crisis has passed. In their own words! Celia Bottger Graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Tufts University on May 17 with a BA in international relations and environmental studies. Age: 21 Graduation: It was not much of anything. They basically did a 40-minute-long YouTube video. It was administrators giving speeches. I didn’t really watch the whole thing, so I’m not entirely sure. They didn’t read names, or anything like that. They’ve postponed the graduation celebration until a later date. They don’t really know what’s going to happen. It’s a huge disappointment, obviously, but there’s nothing anyone can really do about it. It’s to be expected. All colleges are doing that. When school closed on March 10: Earlier that day, I had heard about Harvard closing, and I think that sent shock waves. If Harvard was closing, it was very likely that other schools would follow. It was really just a matter of time before Tufts announced that they were also going online. We were waiting for hours, not really knowing what was happening. But when I went to classes that day, all of my professors were just assuming that the next time we met, we would be online, so they were preparing for that. The whole thing was so crazy--pretty unimaginable. In the matter of a few hours, your entire school closes, and everything you planned is just totally up in the air. That was the week before spring break, so we were not sure if we were still able to travel and for a few days, I was still planning on going to Asheville, North Carolina with a group of friends—we were going to road trip there--but it didn’t seem smart to be traveling in the middle of a pandemic. So within a couple of days, we had to cancel everything and get refunds. We finished out that week of classes, and then the school gave a week and a half of spring break, plus two or three extra days for the professors to prepare. Remote teaching. Personally, my professors did a really great job of transitioning online. We only had about a month left of classes, at that point before finals period began. We had already done a lot of learning, and we had established the class; I was comfortable with my classmates; and I was also in mostly small seminar classes, so it was pretty easy just to meet as a group. One of my professors went up and beyond; he met with smaller groups of us. He was really great, and he just wanted us to get the best out of it. All of my professors were very accommodating. Life at school: I lived in an off-campus apartment, so I was able to just stay. At Tufts, almost all juniors and seniors live off campus. So Tufts actually never even said anything about upperclassmen going home. They just said people in dorms had to leave. I was living six other people in a house, and we all decided to basically not really see other people. Obviously, we could see people from a distance, but you wouldn’t be going over to other people’s houses or anything like that. I was pretty much quarantined with six people the whole time. They’re some of my closest friends, so it was really great being with them for our last few months of college. There was a lot of emotion, and obviously a really tumultuous time, A lot of emotional ups and downs and everyone was trying to figure out what to do next. Overall, I felt very lucky to be with my close friends. Summer plans: I don’t really have any plans. My plans were to travel after graduation, but obviously, that’s not feasible anymore. So I’m probably going to try to find some temporary work, if there’s any available. But it’s obviously a pretty awful job market. Obviously it’s pretty impossible to make any plans at this moment. So I’m just trying to take it slow at home, and find some projects to occupy my time. Once it’s safe to travel again, I really hope to be doing that. Parents; They’re working. My mom is a therapist, so she’s doing a lot of tele-health from home, so she’s not seeing patients in person. My dad is a radiologist. He’s actually been working at home for this whole time and he just went back to the office this week. I have a twin brother, so we’re in the same situation. He was at Cornell. He actually came home a few months ago. Any fall plans? I do not. My plans were to travel, so I’m trying to wait it out. I wouldn’t want to do any kind of grad school remotely or online. I was going to take a few years off anyway, so that plan hasn’t really changed. Professional goals: My passion is climate change advocacy. In college, I have done a lot of climate activism, climate justice work, I also studied abroad last year. I was studying climate change in three countries: Vietnam, Morocco and Bolivia. My hope is to continue that work. I’m really interested in sustainable development and community development. Ideally, I would like to be working abroad, But obviously, any kind of international work is not possible right now. Do you think this is a generational turning point? Yes, I definitely do. I think my generation, and specifically people who graduated and were trying to enter the workforce, obviously there’s nowhere for us to turn. Many of us are just going back home, because that’s the only option and I think it will be many, many years before we are able to have stable jobs. I think this needs ti be a wake-up call to change the way that we live, and the way our society is organized. Because clearly, what’s happening now is not working for anyone. Ellie Eiff Harrison High School in Westchester County, New York Will be graduating in June Age: 17 The onset of the pandemic: It was kind of crazy, at least for me. The only class we really talked about it in was my 20th Century History class. My teacher was always on top of the news. Every day, she’d say something about it. I felt like, it’s not a big deal, it’s across the ocean in Asia. It’s not a big deal. But in the span of one week, it was “it’s in Westchester, we’re done.” [New Rochelle, a small city in Westchester County, had one of the first outbreaks and quarantines in the country in early March.] By Friday of that week, there were a hundred cases in Westchester. That was definitely very intimidating and weird. When you think about global news, you don’t think of it being a 15-minute drive away. The next week, basically everyone was freaking out. That was my last week of school—that was it. Remote classes: I’ve been pretty serious about them. I try to get my work done early in the day. My school primarily doesn’t do video conferencing. That’s actually nicer, because I don’t have to worry about what I look like. It’s not audio; it’s like an online worksheet that you do for class. Most of my teachers are pretty creative, which is nice. Last week, we did a virtual Socratic seminar. You typed out a big response to a discussion. We could reply to each other’s comments. Feelings about what happened this semester: There’s definitely a sense of disappointment. I think everyone is kind of struggling with that. The prom was supposed to be in two weeks, and of course, graduation. A lot of people celebrate Commitment Day, when everyone decides where they’re going to college. There are senior awards and saying goodbye and signing yearbooks. There are definitely key moments of high school that we’re missing out on, which is really unfortunate. College plans: I got accepted to Skidmore back in December, because I applied early decision. I’m really excited. They are taking things day by day. They’re planning to open for the fall, but they’re also preparing if that doesn’t happen. I think everyone would prefer them to open, because we all just want to go back to some type of normalcy. Pandemic precautions: Because our area is so heavily affected, a lot of people have a pretty strict idea of social distancing. I usually wear a mask, and most people do. Originally, I stayed in a lot. We thought my uncle had gotten COVID-19, but luckily, he didn’t. That was really scary, because we’d been with him a week earlier with my grandparents. So we stayed inside. It was hard for us to be in a very scared state for a little while. We’re definitely taking precautions. I have seen my friends on social distancing dates—we sit in our own cars and wear masks to see each other, which is really nice. The beginning was harder for me. My grandparents could have been exposed. My family could have been exposed. I think a lot of people realize how important this is. This summer: I was originally going to work at Sandbox Theater, which is in Mamaroneck, a town over. I’m pretty into the arts, so I was going to be a counselor for a camp there. But we don’t know if that’s still happening. My family and I were planning to go to Italy for a graduation gift, but we won’t be doing that anymore. I look at it as though everything is getting pushed back a little bit. Graduation is going to be a little bit different. It’s harder for me to look at it like, “There’s so much disappointment,” because it makes me feel like it’s never going to be resolved. I think things are going to be made up for. Shaina Ginsberg Harriton High School in Rosemont, PA Graduated on May 27 Age: 17 Her Graduation: They are giving each kid a time to go into school, then walk the stage and get their diploma. You’re allowed to bring two guests. No other kids or their families will be there. And then they’re turning that into a virtual graduation. It’s very different. They put a lot of thought into it. People were kind of upset. People were hoping for them to postpone it to have a real graduation sometime next year. But I guess the administration just didn’t want to do that. Some people are happy, and some people wish it could be different. The closing of school: It was on March 13. I remember the day really clearly. An elementary school student, a kid in our school district, tested positive for coronavirus. It was immediate—they called the parents; they didn’t even tell our principal. The parents told the kids. At this point, we were kind of happy, because we thought it would just be two weeks off. It was very chaotic; people were running around screaming; some people were really happy. Myself, I knew it would be longer, but I didn’t think school would be canceled totally. Remote learning: Our transition was kind of weird. First we did go to remote learning. At first, it was just teachers emailing us. There wasn’t really much guidance. It wasn’t clear whether they’d be grading us. We didn’t know when deadlines were. It was very loose. Three weeks into it, they changed the system to include real-time online classes. I know that my school district was struggling, because not everyone had computers. I really didn’t learn anything. Even when we were viewing classes, the actually learning was very minimal. College acceptances came out a week later. I’m going to Boston University, and considering a major in international relations. Summer Plans: I will be staying at home. People are trying to find work in whatever they can. People have been really resourceful about finding things to do to make money. News about the fall semester: Nothing definitive. B.U. was one of the first schools to release a plan for canceling the fall semester. It was just a hypothetical, but there were a lot of mistaken media reports that they had cancelled it. It was really just a plan. Their plan as of now is to return to in-person classes. However, if for some reason they can’t, they will not do online learning. The university will cancel the fall semester. I like that. I think that’s the better way to do it. We would come back in January. Things I missed: I am definitely upset about graduation. That is something that I had really looked forward to. It’s kind of weird to be in this transition. I’m done with high school now, but I’m still not sure where I will be going in the fall. We don’t want to be disappointed again. I know that a lot of people were upset that the prom didn’t happen. Personally, I learned about the limitations of technology. I’ve been hearing a lot of talk that this shows we can transition to technology, but for me and a lot of my classmates, we feel the opposite. It’s really not the same and we would much prefer to be in person. Breanne Greaves Nassau Community College in Long Island, New York. Graduated on May 21 with an Associate in Arts in Human Services and Social Welfare Age: 26 Commencement: Initially, I was excited to go to the graduation, then the pandemic happened. So when we found out that it was going to be a virtual graduation, we didn’t really have our hopes up. At that point, we were just exasperated. There was so much going on that the last thing we cared about was the graduation itself. On graduation day, nothing was working, nothing was up yet. It took almost an hour and a half. By that point, I didn’t care anymore. It was hard to navigate it. Millennials and Gen Z’s, we’re very tech-savvy, so imagine us not being able to navigate a website! We were frustrated. Effects of the pandemic on her life: I had more time to study. To work on my classes. Before, I was working full-time as a shift leader at Planet Fitness, a gym, training the staff members how to operate the systems and do customer service. When the gyms closed, and I was at home, it gave me more time to just study. I kind of miss high school, when all you had to do was go to school and come home and study. It was really good, actually. We got furloughed. We didn’t know we were closing at all, and then Cuomo announced it March 16. Our jobs are still available; we can still file for unemployment. Plans now: I’m thinking of moving out of state. I might move to Georgia. I had applied for the Transportation Security Administration a long time ago. The process is extensive—there’s a background check, a credit check, a medical exam, an eye exam. I’m actually in the last stages, so I’m waiting for a phone call. I’m also looking into other jobs down there in the social work realm, just in case that doesn’t work. That’s the plan. I want to move down there and work a few years. That way, I’d get residency, so I can go to Georgia State University. There’s a $10,000 difference between in- and out-of-state tuition. I’m thinking of sociology, just so I could broaden my range. Depending how I feel when I finish, I may get my master’s degree in social work. Do you know people who have gotten sick? A security guard from my high school passed away. The father of one of my friends from Nassau Community College passed away. Because I lost my father last year, she knows that I empathize. She knows I’m here for her. Personal changes because of the pandemic: You realize that life is too short to put your energies into things that won’t matter in a couple of years. It’s definitely humbled me in that way. I don’t have to fight for every single thing. To finally finish and not be able to celebrate with our friends, now that we can’t go outside, now that we can’t see our loved ones in the way we want to, makes me want to take every opportunity I can to do so when this has subsided, to the extent it’s safe to do so. I basically want to go see my friends, and to go see my cousin I haven’t seen for awhile, and call all of my aunties. I wasn’t really the one to always go out, but I might have to be that person now. Hemani Kalia Nathan Hale High School in Seattle Will be graduating in June Age: 18 Commencement: Graduating high school is our first big accomplishment. Not having a ceremony, a usual one, is tough. We’re trying to have something as close to that as we can. I’m trying to stay positive about it, but if we don’t have the graduation, there will be no sense of closure. I’ve spent four years with these teachers and students and administrators but won’t get to say goodbye and thank you. I really hope that we have some kind of in-person ceremony. The end of school: It was a Wednesday. At first, we were going to be out of school for two weeks. That’s what we were told. We found out at lunch, so we all left. This is the time of year we would usually have had our last activities: the prom, the last pep assembly, Spirit Days, Senior Breakfast. It’s bigger than just graduation--there are a lot of things that happen during this time, so at first, that was the thing we were most distraught about. Then, as time goes on, you know you’re going to be missing more and more activities. Tomorrow, we’re having a drive-through at Nathan Hale so we can pick up the caps and gowns that we ordered. It’s going to be exciting. Our teachers plan on being there; they’ll wave and cheer as we stop. It will be the first time to see everybody since high school got out. Remote learning: None of our teachers were prepared to do online schooling. We’re learning as we go. I think they tried to do their best. At first, it was nice to just see everyone on Zoom. But as time has gone on, we’ve been doing this for two months now. It’s not the same as being in a classroom. You don’t have that kind of energy. It’s kind of disheartening, the fact that this is what it’s come to. At the present: I call people up, take care of my family, work out and go on runs, and go to nearby parks that are still open. That’s all with social distancing. I’m trying to make the most of my days, staying strong physically with racing and strength, but also academically. For me, school in general is like an outlet for me from everything else in life. That’s where I see all my friends and my peers and the staff. Not having that, is kind of sad. Yeah, you can stay in touch with your friends and your people, but it’s not the same, because there’s no actual physical social interaction. It’s time to focus on yourself, I guess, and make sure you’re doing okay too. Try checking on your people. Future plans: I’m going to Clackamas College in Oregon to play basketball. Lasting impact of the pandemic: On a certain level, I hope that maybe my generation will start to appreciate the life around us a little bit more, because it can go away just like that. You know, being able to hang out with your friends, or go to movies, go to the gym, everything. A lot of us just go through the motions. We all kind of take for granted some of the things that we have. Dr. Casimir Klim Graduated from the University of Michigan Medical School in May Will be doing his residency at the Mayo Clinic Age: 33 Current situation: I’m living with my wife in our apartment in St. Paul. I’m also renting a little studio apartment in Rochester where the Mayo Clinic is so that I can be there during weird hours and also if I end up being in a self-quarantined situation. It’s a 90-minute drive. I’ll start working in the hospital the first Monday in July. It’s kind of a tradition All the new interns start on July 1st historically. A good time to stay out of the hospital if possible! (Laughs.) His graduation: It was on May 15th. For me, ceremonies have always been more about family, for their benefit. I’m not a huge fan of the pomp and circumstance. In this case, it was kind of nice, I could email my mom the link. My wife watched a little bit of it. She was working, but she had it on her phone for a minute. It would have been nice to be there to see my friends and see everyone, but because it was virtual, it took off a little bit of the pressure to be there. I sort of clicked through some of the highlights, but I haven’t watched the whole video yet. Missing Match Day. It’s sort of an antiquated, but sort of cool part of the medical profession. It’s a bizarre thing where everyone opens up an envelope and you find out where you’re going to spend the next several years of your life. And some people end up going to some amazing hospital system, and they’re super happy. Other people end up somewhere they didn’t like, or somewhere across the country from their spouse. It’s a mishmash of emotions. Everyone’s there, everyone’s dressed up, their families are there. It sounds like total chaos but at the same time, I wouldn’t have missed it. I think it would have been pretty great to have everyone in a room, meet their families, find out where they’re going. Not being able to say goodbye to his classmates: The ceremony stuff is not a huge deal to me, But medical training after the first year is pretty fragmented. It depends which rotations you’re doing, or what specialty you’re pursuing. Especially in a big medical school class like Michigan—there are 170 of us. So having everyone together and reconnecting, and finding out what they’ve been doing these last few years--it was sad not to get to do that. The professional impact of the pandemic: It was interesting for our class, because we had already ranked all of our choices and decided on what specialty we were going into. I’m going into psychiatry. I think our mental health system in this country is already pretty insufficient and overloaded. I’ve been thinking about this huge national trauma that people are going through, both first responders and people who are losing family members. The ripple effects—I can’t even imagine what that’s going to mean for psychiatry. On possibly treating COVID-19 patients. Psychiatrists are full physicians, so we do an internal medicine rotation our first year, and an emergency medicine rotation, a pediatrics rotation. So that’s treating general patients. That got me wanting to stay up on the more traditional side of my training that I didn’t think I’d necessarily be using. But people of other specialties are getting pulled in to work on the wards if there are big spiking cases somewhere. So that’s been on my mind more than it would have been. Hetali Lodaya Graduated in May from the University of Michigan with a JD from the U-M Law School and an MA in Educational Leadership and Policy Age: 28 The end of classes: We heard on a Wednesday that the Thursday and Friday of that week were cancelled, to give professors time to develop their online classes. Starting on Monday, we would be moving online. I remember it feeling very surreal, because we were still all there, we were around our friends, and it was this weird thing where you knew things were going to change but they hadn’t yet. It felt like the world was almost holding its breath and you were waiting to see what it was going to be like. I also remember feeling like March went on forever. March was a very long month. We were constantly learning new things that we didn’t really know—Is it safe to do this? Is it safe to do that? Departing from school; There was definitely a lot of confusion at the beginning for people who lived in the Lawyers Club. The directives kept changing. So first, it was, you can stay in the Lawyers Club, it’s fine. Then it was, if you’re going to stay, you need to tell us why. And then it was, at some point, if you really don’t have anywhere else you can go, then you can stay, but you should really try to go if you can. Even the way they were serving food in the dining room changed. At first, everything was open. Then at some point, it changed to just being takeout. It was a similar story with my friends. I knew very few people who left right away. But as the weeks went on, more and more people went home. I went home to North Carolina at the beginning of April and I’m still here. Being at home: My parents are here, my younger brother is here. He actually just graduated undergrad. He didn’t get a graduation ceremony or this, that, and the other thing. I’ve described it to people as [surprisingly] mundane. We’re very lucky that that’s the way it is. We’re at home, we do our work during the day, I’m studying for the bar now, We make dinner, watch “Jeopardy” or play card games at night. Aside from some negotiating and figuring out about how we’re going to do things like get groceries, it feels like—other than watching the news—we’re sort of just kind of doing our own thing. Wearing a mask outside? Yes, and anytime we think we’re going to come into contact with people. Not necessarily on walks in our neighborhood, where it’s pretty easy to avoid other people. The same when I go out for runs—it’s easy to stay away from other people. But anytime we go to the store, or things like that, we do. Fellow law students: Everyone is dealing with some kind of uncertainty or another. For some people, it’s “Do I go home or not?” For some people, it’s trying to figure out what bar exam to take. For some people, it’s their jobs—it’s unclear when they’re starting. Are they starting on time? I know some people who had their start dates pushed back so much that they needed to find in-between employment because they couldn’t wait until they were going to get their intended-job paycheck. I know people who have lost their summer internships, but I don’t know anyone personally who has lost their job. Job: I’m going to be clerking for a federal judge in the Eastern District of Michigan, in Detroit. I again have that feeling of privilege that being at home is so mundane and routine: I feel so privileged of so much job security in having a federal government job. My start date got confirmed a couple of weeks ago. There’s still some uncertainty--the courthouse is closed right now, so we don’t know when we start work if we’re going to be working remote or that kind of thing. But I think that I’m a lot better off than a lot of my friends. Morgan Matthews Graduated on May 17 with a BS in marketing from Western Connecticut State University Played field hockey as a forward Age: 22 School after in-person classes ended: I spent most of my time sitting at my desk in front of my computer, doing schoolwork. All my classes were remote. Only one of my four classes used video-chat; my other classes, it was just discussion boards and answering questions occasionally. It was interesting, but I definitely don’t like [remote learning]. I could never do all of my education online. It was challenging at times, especially having group projects. I could only reach out to some people in my group so many times to do something, and not having that fact-to-face talk. Moving home: I lived on campus, so I had to move back home, and move all of my stuff out of my dorm. I brought as much stuff as I could. We weren’t going to be back until April 6, so I tried to bring home a lot of stuff. I tried to be hopeful, but I brought home a lot more stuff than I would have, probably because I had an insight that we probably wouldn’t be going back. Living with her parents: The first month and a half were rainy, cold and grey, which really didn’t help at all. Basically, most of the time I did my schoolwork. There wasn’t much else for me to do. Sometimes I really wasn’t bored because I had schoolwork to occupy me, but sometimes it was frustrating. Sometimes I realized it shouldn’t have ended this way; then, I got sad. My dad is a self-employed electrician, so he’s still been going to work. My mom’s working from home. It’s just the three of us here. I only went to the grocery store a few times, just quickly. Now I don’t go to the store that much. We’ve kind of assigned my dad to do that. My mom and I go on walks when the weather’s nice. I’m trying not to feel that we’re locked up in the house, but it’s hard. I haven’t seen anybody but my parents and dog in two months. Commencement: We had our virtual graduation Sunday, May 17. On September 27, we’re having a commencement recognition ceremony. I’m not sure it’s going to be a typical graduation like it would have been. How friends have weathered the pandemic: Some good, some bad. Depends on the people. I have friends who don’t live in the northeast and they seem to be better off. COVID-19: I know a few people that got sick. Family friends, one in her fifties. One thing she said is that her smell and taste were gone, and that it took her a while to get it back, even after she was recovered. Other people that I know in my town have gotten it. There was a girl that I knew from school who had coronavirus. She mentioned that her dad and her mom had it. They were living in separate parts of the house so she wouldn’t get sick. This summer: There aren’t many plans in place. I’m trying to find a job, but it’s kind of hard. Most of them are online. That takes away the purpose of having an internship or a job. Other than that, it’s up in the air. It’s so weird. It wasn’t how I thought my college career would be ending. Future plans: I’m going to Sacred Heart in Fairfield, CT, in the fall for grad school. I’ll be getting a Master of Arts in strategic communications and public relations. Reconsidering career choice? I know that nurses are in high demand in some places. But I cannot handle blood. That definitely wasn’t a career path for me. I’m happy with my choice. Jared Stern Rogers Nathan Hale High School in Seattle Will graduate in June Age: 19 The closing of classes in March: “They told us would just be two weeks. Suddenly, two weeks became a month. And then a month became indefinitely. I thought it was a good thing for the sake of preventing the spread of the pandemic. But the Seattle public schools weren’t really ready to support students immediately. I have many friends whom I’m very close with who get school lunches because they can’t afford it on their own. It was a couple of weeks after we were sent home that the district actually started to send out proper food for the people who rely on them. “When the first reports of COVID-19 were coming out in America, it was right in our neighborhood. I think people were worried before we went into shutdown. I had to stay late that day to comfort some of my peers who were crying because they have anxiety disorders. For the first couple of weeks, teachers were also caught off guard, Remote learning: I took it seriously, but it’s a different skillset to study at home. The six-period day at school is extremely structured, and when you’re used to that structure dictating how you get work done, it throws you off to suddenly have it all gone. I studied the best I could, but I was not as efficient as I would be if I were in the school building. And I’m a weird student who likes to stay at school until 5 pm, until I have all of my homework done. Sheltering in place: There is probably a large percentage of the student body at our school who were still going out and seeing their friends. But I took it pretty seriously. I haven’t really left the house in a couple of weeks at this point. I’m not sure you can say it’s getting better, because cases are still going up. They’re just not going up at the same rate. Summer plans: It’s strange, certainly, because my family likes to go to the Pacific coast and take a week or two up there to relax. But we can’t do that. So my plans for the summer are to see if I can develop some writing skills, work on finishing my guidebooks for the clubs I’m leaving behind at school, and just find a way to live in our new status quo. The pandemic experience: It’s a bummer. There are certainly people who can’t handle being inside for long periods of time, but at heart I’m a bookworm. I’m pretty okay with things inside for long periods of time. Of course, I would prefer to go out as much as the next person. But I can handle it. I imagine as we come closer to half a year of being indoors, I will be remarkably worse for wear. But right now, I feel pretty good. Fall plans: The Class of 2020 is the first class that gets to take advantage of a new Seattle pilot program, guaranteeing anyone who graduates from a public Seattle high school two or three years of free community college. So I will be taking advantage of that before going on to a four-year college. My dream school is Amherst College in Massachusetts. They have a great English program. Whether the pandemic will change him: It’s hard to tell. One or two years of being stuck indoors is a significant percentage of my life so far. But I hope it won’t be a significant portion of my life overall. I’d be lying if I said it wouldn’t change who I think I am. I think I may need to retrain myself for face-to-face interaction. But I hope I can stay true to my passion.” Allison Russotto University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh Graduated on May 16 with a BS in journalism Age: 22 Her Graduation: It was virtual. They recorded each of the commencement speeches. After all of those, you could scroll down to your name and submit a power-point slide with your picture on it, You could write a little caption if you wanted to as well. I think they did it the best they could, with everything that’s happening. The end of classes: The first few weeks of the second semester, people were talking about the pandemic, but nobody thought it was going to happen. We thought, oh, they’re just warning us that classes might be cancelled, but we didn’t think it was going to happen. When I found out, my first reaction was gosh, I don’t know how I’m going to handle five classes online. That was a big adjustment for me. It was my biggest worry, I guess. Before, I had only taken a summer class online. How were the professors going to handle this? How organized was it going to be? All of that was rushing through my head. Remote Learning: It’s hard to get people to communicate through the phone and email. Not everybody was responding. I actually didn’t have that many professors who wanted us to “meet” in real time. I only had one class that used Zoom. It was really all discussion boards, turning in assignments. A lot of students didn’t want to use Zoom because you have all be on it at the same time, and a lot of students had gone home. There were a lot of other circumstances. I’d usually be on my computer for four or five hours a day. I think it was just as flustering for the professors as it was to us. It was hard on them as well. Plans: It’s been a little bit of a rough ride looking for a job. I was torn between going back to Illinois and staying here in Oshkosh or in the surrounding area. In the past month, I’ve received a lot of emails from companies saying that they just aren’t hiring anymore due to the pandemic. Or that they’ve postponed hiring. I was looking for a summer internship to get some more experience. My parents have been very helpful. They’re just letting me come back home and enjoy my summer, and also keep looking for jobs. Hopefully, things will start to open back up. There’s definitely a lack of closure. I don’t really feel like I’m done with school yet.

James Joyce wrote lying on his stomach in bed, using a large blue pencil and wearing a white coat. Wallace Stevens wrote his poetry on small slips of paper while walking. Truman Capote wouldn’t begin or end a piece of writing on a Friday. While the habits of writers vary greatly, many authors believe that creativity and inspiration are sparked by their own distinctive (idiosyncratic?) behavior. We asked the Insiders’ talented columnists about their own tried and true writing habits. Madeline Barry Mad for Music "I couldn't imagine, and I don't say this with any pride, but I really couldn't imagine writing without a desperate deadline." --Hunter S. Thompson This declaration, taken from an interview in 2000, and spoken by one of my favorite writers, deeply resonates with me. My writing process begins as a series of small, early to mid-morning energy bursts fueled by coffee, good music, and positive affirmations. "I can do this! This is great! I feel good and ready to go!" I set up my space (laptop, water, music and the aforementioned coffee), jot down my initial thoughts and form a loose outline of some sort. If I'm really focused, a paragraph or two emerges. "I'm in the zone! It's coming together! This is what productivity looks like!" Then the coffee cools and the morning wanes, and the positive affirmations I chanted only an hour or two ago reveal themselves to be frauds. I look for any excuse to wander. And so, I do. Pre-pandemic this might have meant getting out of the house and running an errand or two. Now it involves bothering whichever family member happens to be closest to me at the time. If that's not an option, I will badger my family dog, Ruby. When I finally return to the page, I'll usually find that there's a bunch of crap to sort through. After some knuckle-cracking and perhaps one last lean-back in my swivel chair, I sort through this wreckage. I remind myself that there is a deadline. I remind myself again. I look desperately at the clock and power through. If it all goes according to plan, I finally reach my favorite phase: the revision phase. The high school English teacher in me thrives on revision. “Nix it! Re-phrase! Syntax, syntax, syntax! It's glorious!” As for those final touches? Well it often feels as if a piece is never really finished. But sometimes, ya just gotta press send. P.S. For the sake of transparency, I do not own a swivel chair. Gwen Cooper “What’s the Story?” I have the love/hate relationship with writing that I suspect most writers tend to have. In general, I'm more of a morning writer than an evening one--typically I start working on first drafts at 6:00 a.m. and then spend the afternoon reworking them. Having said that, though, if I'm up against a deadline, I'll work around the clock. I definitely tend to work right up until a deadline. I used to get very frustrated with myself for waiting until the clock was really ticking and my stress level was super high--but now I realize that the extra adrenaline seems to fuel better writing, so I lean into it. My "What's the Story?" columns usually come to me pretty quickly with minimal editing or reworking, and are the kind of work that I typically do whenever I have time for it over the course of the day. Laurence Lerman Reel Streaming Like many entertainment writers who hopscotch between projects—a movie review here, a set of production notes there, the occasional outside-industry gig (Hello, Hoop Magazine!), I’d like to think I’ve had a set routine, but the fact is one has never taken root for me. So I’m churnin’ 'em and burnin’ 'em while keeping an eye on the deadline. I don’t know that I’ve ever been down to the wire before filing, but neither have I wrapped anything up with days to spare. Black coffee? Sure. Espresso? Even better. For my "Reel Streaming" pieces, the m.o. is directly inspired by the nature of the column itself: an accounting of the stream-of-conscious trail of the movie-viewing habits I picked up during the early days of the pandemic and subsequent quarantine after a good deal of my regular assignments were delayed (Goodbye, Hoop Magazine!). The streaming quickly extended to creating each week’s column—after making each cinematic connection and watching each film, I would write about just that—and then start again. John Rolfe Aggravation is a Full-Time Job At best, writing for me is a joyous romp, an eruption of something I can't wait to let out. That's usually when something has tickled my sense of humor or stirred my convictions and moved me to want to weigh in with an opinion. The verbiage pours out in a torrent. Other times, writing is like the old saying that you just stare at the blank page or screen until little drops of blood form on your forehead. That's when I'm sweating out one of my social-political columns that I know will draw howling, torch-bearing mobs to my lawn. Gotta choose my words very carefully and make sure I've got my facts straight. Either way, I like to write a first draft by just spilling the thought bucket and letting it percolate in my mind overnight. I start cleaning it up the next day and polish the piece right up to deadline. I'm a better editor than writer, so I suspect that's a plus. I'm most definitely a morning-midday writer with a serious java habit. After two p.m. the fog machine in my brain goes off, the automated window grate comes down and my creativity is closed for business. Thankfully, I've kicked my procrastination habit since cutting it too close to deadline means I'll kick myself later for not saying something more effectively or leaving out a major point. I have been known to go to my editors after the fact, stovepipe hat in hand, to request a fix or addition. I charmingly call them "tweaks." My editors charmingly call me a pain in the caboose. Tony Spokojny Anecdotally Speaking I do most of my writing on my laptop, laying in bed. Chester, the cat my daughter dropped off for me to watch eleven years ago, fights the laptop for position, so he sits on my chest, obscuring my view of the screen. I have many anecdotes from my unconventional upbringing and extensive travels as a young adult, extending into my later years. The humor seeps into my everyday life as a father, friend and companion, and I love regaling anyone who will listen. Unfortunately, for my adult children, they have, too often, been the victims of the retelling of those stories and they are quick to ward off yet another version of a previously told tale before I’m too many words into it. The Insider has given me an opportunity to spin my yarns anew. And, although I try to stay as close as possible to the original, I’ll occasionally take a small measure of license with background to keep the story as simple and as relevant as possible to the present. I hope that they are as fun to read as they have been to tell over the years. So, if I see you and start to tell some story marginally related to our conversation, please don’t hesitate to tell me, as my children are quick to do, “I’ve heard it.”

Opinion by Jeffrey D. Sachs May 18, 2020   |   CNN.com Editor's Note: Jeffrey Sachs is a professor and director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University. The opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author; view more opinion articles on CNN. (CNN) Instead of an imagined "tradeoff" between reviving the economy and safeguarding health, President Donald Trump's policies are delivering both a great depression and tens of thousands of deaths at the same time. That's because a tradeoff between economy and health doesn't exist, except in Trump's fantasy. Unless people are confident about their safety in the midst of the pandemic, they will not resume normal life. By allowing a premature reopening, which ensures that the epidemic will rage, Trump most likely has condemned America to economic collapse. The fantasist promotes magical thinking, and perhaps even believes it himself. Trump said that the virus wasn't a threat. He said that it would go away by April. He said that it was fully under control. He said in March that we have all of the testing we need. The epidemic is controllable when government is serious. Australia, China, Japan, South Korea, New Zealand, and Taiwan, among others, all have kept deaths below 10 per million population, compared with 271 per million in the United States. Those other countries implemented public health policies at national scale; the US did not. With US reported Covid-19 deaths nearing 90,000 -- and almost certainly higher based on a comparison of deaths this year and last year -- Trump now tries to discredit the death count. In Trump's fantasy world, there are no deaths if they are not reported. Trump's maneuverings also won't save the economy, which is in a free fall. States can open now and thereby spread more disease and death. But again, economic fantasy won't replace reality. Consumers will not suddenly start buying. Builders will not suddenly build buildings when so many stand to be empty or underutilized. Some of Trump's followers may head to crowded places -- and if so, many will contract the virus -- but most Americans will not. Of the record 20.5 million jobs lost in April, most will not come back any time soon, whether or not states declare their economies open. The continued spread of the virus itself will block any meaningful rapid recovery. So too will deep structural changes that will cause a significant, albeit unknowable, proportion of today's job losses to be permanent. Here are some of the jobs that are not returning: E-commerce will displace many brick-and-mortar retail jobs. Big name retail chains are now going bankrupt week after week. The result is that many retail jobs, down 2.1 million comparing March and April 2020, will likely not return. Jobs created as a result of online shopping won't equal those lost in brick and mortar stores. Many business firms will reorganize their workflows to allow for far more work from home, and this will leave office complexes sparsely populated. Many companies will downsize their space, meaning new commercial construction will remain depressed for years to come. New oil and gas drilling has collapsed and will not recover to past levels given the long-term glut in world oil markets and the collapse in oil and gas prices. Travel and tourism will remain depressed as long as the epidemic is uncontrolled, keeping down employment numbers in accommodations, leisure, entertainment and restaurants. Trump's remaining idea is to force companies to return home from China and rebuild their supply chains at home. This is yet another fantasy. By intensifying the attacks on China -- including new measures to cut off Chinese companies from American semiconductor technology -- Trump will crush the growth prospects of much of America's high-tech industry, whose business includes international markets, including China's vast population. Trump's moves will invite Chinese retaliation and hasten the day when China competes with the US in various dimensions of semiconductor manufacturing and design, such as specialized chips for artificial intelligence and 5G. One obvious area of retaliation will be for China to buy planes from Airbus instead of Boeing. Even before the pandemic, Boeing was in a very deep crisis because of its flagrant mismanagement of the 737 Max. Trump's failure to contain the epidemic and his intensified attacks on China will deepen Boeing's woes. Boeing stock fell 2 percent on May 15, the day after Trump's new anti-China measures, and Boeing stock is down by more than 70 percent from the peak on March 1, 2019. Trump will try to save moribund companies, no doubt including his own family business. He will try to save the oil and gas sector, though no banks will touch it. He will prop up the failing companies of friends, cronies and campaign contributors. He will lie, try to hide data, blame others, and produce a deepening disaster. But there are three true steps out of the new great depression. First, and most urgently, we must end the epidemic through the public health measures -- testing, tracing and quarantining -- that Trump has consistently neglected. Second, we must work with other countries, including China, to stop the epidemic everywhere in the world so that trade and travel can safely resume, and so that the millions of jobs dependent on trade, transport and tourism are at least partly restored. Third, we must build new industrial and service sectors, not prop up the old and moribund ones. Recovery will come not through oil and gas fracking, but through a boom of US companies producing solar panels, wind turbines, advanced batteries, advanced electric vehicles and the hardware and software of smart grids; combined with a service industry boom based on new models of low-cost healthcare, education and office work, that combines online and in-person service delivery. By being smart and fair, we could look forward to new high-tech industries, more shared leisure time, shorter commutes, cleaner skies, universal access to affordable healthcare and higher education and a guaranteed living wage for all workers. For all of this, we need a new administration and Congress and a new approach for our nation. Until then, Trump's fantasy world is our nightmare. Hang tight. A new dawn is coming.

By Andy Borowitz May 18, 2020 WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—A new test of the drug hydroxychloroquine suggests that it may cause delusions, Dr. Anthony Fauci warned on Monday. In a conference call with reporters, Fauci indicated that his findings were based on a preliminary test involving one white male subject in his seventies. “It’s too early to be definitive about this, but the evidence suggests that, if you are already prone to delusions, paranoid fantasies, and a generalized detachment from reality, taking hydroxychloroquine may only make those symptoms worse,” he said. Fauci said that, if someone you know is taking hydroxychloroquine, “Broach the subject with him very carefully and diplomatically. Based on my findings, this person will not like being contradicted and is likely to fly off the handle.” Additionally, because of the mind-altering effects of the drug, “It’s important never to do what someone taking hydroxychloroquine tells you to do,” Fauci said. “The only thing as dangerous as taking hydroxychloroquine is listening to someone who is taking hydroxychloroquine,” he said. “Therein lies the road to madness.” 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.