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Dear Editor: After 31 years in Miami teaching law, I now live in Ashland OR, a smallish town (it calls itself a city, but for me "city" starts way north of 27,000 people!) It Is very left and very "woo-woo." (My then-partner Derryl and I were having a conversation with someone in a cafe, when she announced she had to leave or she'd be late for the appointment with her dog psychic.) Mostly that's meant people here are careful about masking and social distancing. One can expect at least a nasty look if you don't do that in a grocery store. But I ran into a different type of person a few days ago. (I'd like to think he was an invader from the larger and far more Republican nearby city of Medford, but then what was he doing taking a short cut through an alley?) In any event, the alley is only about 7-8 feet wide. I was going east; two men were going west, walking side by side and taking up about 6 1/2 feet. I moved to the edge and when they didn't move I held out my arm in a "please move over" gesture. The response? I was called a fascist. His attitude was, “how dare you try to limit my freedom and constitutional rights?” I decided it was not useful to explain that constitutional rights only apply against the government; though I did say I was trying to protect myself. I was a bit shaken. On the other hand, when (soon I hope), we develop a vaccine, I fear that its effectiveness will be limited because both the right (like him) and the Ashland left oppose vaccinations. I've been told they must be bad because they are produced by profit-making corporations and because they are not natural. (NOTE: measles is natural, and -- unless the Trumpian idea that it was created by the evil Chinese in a lab in Wuhan is true -- so is the corona virus.) A friend reminded me that masking and social distancing are needed to protect us from each other. But if the vaccine works and I get vaccinated, letting the left- and right-wing crazies turn down the vaccine will mostly just improve the gene pool. Stay healthy, Mary Coombs

One film journalist’s stream-of-consciousness cinematic journey through the pandemic and quarantine, Part 4 By Laurence Lerman It was a late afternoon Thursday four weeks into the quarantine when I popped in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid just to watch the 1969 classic’s half-hour super posse pursuit segment, which ends with the famed “I can’t swim!” “The fall will probably kill you!” exchange between Robert Redford and Paul Newman. I’d seen the passage a zillion times before, but this time it served to remind me that I had planned on checking out the 1967 western Hombre, starring Newman and directed by Martin Ritt, one of Hollywood’s more perceptive and socially conscious filmmakers. He had collaborated with Newman on a half-dozen films over the years, including 1963’s Hud. Time to pop out Butch… One of the first in a wave of late Sixties morally gray “revisionist” westerns, particularly in their depictions of Native Americans, Hombre finds a particularly stoic Newman portraying an Apache-raised white man named John Russell. Embarking on a Stagecoach-like journey across the frontier, he’s quite the “hombre” as he encounters an unhappily married young couple, an unsavory Indian agent and his wife, a gang of thieving bad guys and fiery Aussie import Diane Cilento as an innkeeper. Her primary purpose is to try to figure out what’s eating at the troubled Newman, whose incandescent baby blues are abetted in their glow by the great James Wong Howe’s lush cinematography. Ms. Cilento remains best remembered (by me, anyway) as the first of several saucy damsels to seduce Albert Finney in 1963’s Tom Jones, followed by her turn as the creepy Miss Rose in 1973’s The Wicker Man (which clearly inspired Ari Aster’s 2019 Midsommar nearly a half-century later). Thesping aside, Miss Cilento also made some noise during her 11-year marriage to Sean Connery. Their stormy union—reportedly, of the vase-throwing kind— ended in 1973, having paralleled Connery's rise to superstardom as James Bond. For most late-stage baby-booming males, most roads lead to Bond at one point or another—Connery’s Bond. It began with Dr. No in 1962, directed by Terence Young (who went on to helm 1963’s From Russia with Love and Thunderball in ’65). A fast-forward through the original groundbreaker confirms Connery’s physicality, charisma and skills with a murderous quip ("That's a Smith & Wesson, and you've had your six," he coolly remarks to a failed assassin before emptying his gun into him). Dr. No’s London and Jamaican backdrops are exotic and sexy, Ursula Andress even more so, and Joseph Wiseman is outstanding as the titular baddie, the prototype of all Bond supervillains to follow (not to mention the clear blueprint for Austin Powers’ affectionate Dr. Evil parody). The appearance of Wiseman reminded me that I wanted to check out some of the earlier work of another Wiseman, the incomparable documentary filmmaker Frederick Wiseman, who’s been making his own unique brand of observational cinema examining social institutions for some 60 years. The Wiseman method begins with filming weeks of material without any staged or manipulated actions, and then culling a feature’s worth of material from those archived hours. Wiseman’s most recent pictures include Ex-Libris: The New York Public Library (2017) and Monrovia, Indiana (2018), but I went back a half-century to screen his second directorial effort. There’s great stuff in 1968’s High School, shot in Philadelphia’s Northeast High School, where Wiseman plopped his camera down for five weeks filming in the spring of ’68. Parent/teacher conferences, pep rallies, prom dress code mandates, faculty monitors stalking the corridors to shanghai students without hall passes—most of these fly-on-the-wall observations remain universal. Still, other moments--a hip, young teacher playing an LP of Simon and Garfunkle’s “modern poetry,” an administrator reading a letter written by a drafted former student now deployed to the front line in Vietnam; a leering sex ed lecture—are undeniably relics of the Sixties. Wholly engaging, High School was actually banned in Philadelphia at the time of its release. It has since been selected for preservation in the National Film Registry (in 1991) and prompted Wiseman’s 1994’s follow-up, High School II, set in Manhattan’s Central Park East Secondary School. My journey back to high school demanded a return to my personal favorite high school flick, 1986’s Pretty in Pink, written by John Hughes and directed by Howard Deutch. Star Molly Ringwald, who’s always been on-point in her Hughes films, doesn’t speak to me as much as the film’s shining supporting cast, which includes Jon Cryer, Kate Vernon, Andrew Dice Clay (!), Annie Potts (who makes what might be the only Walter Mondale joke ever uttered on the big screen) and the incomparable James Spader. Cruising the school’s hallways in his designer blazer, shades and a cigarette dangling from his lips like he stumbled in from some Rat Pack movie, Spader’s Stef delights in smarmy abuse at anyone who’ll listen (“When Bill and Joyce are through with you, you won't know whether to shit or go sailing,” he hisses at his buddy Andrew McCarthy). My wife is convinced the reason Spader is free to cut class and roam the corridors is because he looks so old that he’s mistaken for a faculty member. The ubiquitous Harry Dean Stanton is also on hand in Pretty in Pink as Molly’s derailed dad. A little Harry Dean goes a long way and I figured there must be a title on his formidable filmography worth checking out or revisiting. I went with The Missouri Breaks (which I had forgotten he was in), another revisionist Western, this one from 1976, directed by Arthur Penn and starring the formidable duo of to Jack Nicholson as a horse thief and Marlon Brando as a bounty hunter. A weird one that’s grown more palatably entertaining with age, it offers one of Brando’s most bizarre performances, which, as it’s Brando, is saying a lot. He’s actually wearing women’s clothing in the fiery scene where he takes out ol’ Harry Dean in his brief but memorable appearance. The Missouri Breaks was a bad call—the bizarreness, eccentricity and revisionism of the film didn't click for me at that moment.. So, I pivoted back another 20 years to a Brando film I had never seen: the 1954 historical drama Désirée, starring Marlon as Napoleon Bonaparte! Jean Simmons portrays the titular role of Désirée Clary, Bonaparte’s one-time fiancéefrom his days before he was doing his Emperor of France thing (and Josephine, for that matter). According to Simmons, Brando's contract required him to star in the film, which he undertook immediately following On the Waterfront and later went on to describe as "superficial and dismal." Agreed (and Brando’s nasally delivery doesn’t help). But I did enjoy the sets and costumes in director Henry Koster’s uninspired epic as they were shot in luscious CinemaScope by Milton Krasner, who brought home the Oscar for his widescreen work on that same year’s Three Coins in the Fountain. As far as Hollywood portrayals of Napoleon go, my favorite is by Michael Tolkan in Woody Allen’s 1975 Love and Death, wherein the Emperor demands his royal dessert chefs finish developing the Napoleon before the Duke of Wellington completes a prototype of his new meat dish. Second up is Aram Katcher in 1967’s “My Master, Napoleon’s Buddy,” a second season entry on TV’s I Dream of Jeannie. I’m not at all familiar with the late Constantinople-born actor Katcher, but he’s right-on in this fun half-hour where Jeannie and Larry Hagman’s Tony Nelson prove to be the instigators of Napoleon’s disastrous Russian campaign. Watching it again, I laughed out loud when Tony laughingly refers to Napoleon as “The Little Corporal,” earning him a trip to the Bastille and an appointment with the guillotine. Larry Hagman never received his due for the great work he did for five years on I Dream of Jeannie. That’s right. He gave great line readings, had keen, seemingly natural timing and was under-appreciated for his ability to engage in slapstick—maybe not the qualities that made him a sensation as J.R. in Dallas a decade later, but definitely worthy of including him in the pantheon of great unsung comic TV performers. One of several other times Hagman received the opportunity to unleash his comedy chops was in Blake Edward’s scathing 1981 Hollywood satire S.O.B., which I still watch once a year to watch Larry alongside such late, great stars William Holden, Robert Preston, Robert Webber and Richard Mulligan as they drink non-stop and wreak havoc on that most combustible of towns. And as they burn it down, Larry gets run down by a golf cart, a large stack of contracts he’s carrying flying into the air. How’s that for physical shtick?

A Weekly Roundup of Fiction Recommendations By Gwen Cooper “Hello to All That” Edition Between the boarded-up restaurants, shuttered theaters, abandoned storefronts, and once-bustling thoroughfares now eerily devoid of traffic—not to mention the upper-crust denizens scrambling for their beachside second homes—it would seem as if Manhattan has been brought to her knees, at least temporarily. But the Big Apple has always been as much an idea as a place, which makes it all but inevitable that she’ll rise again. In the meantime, here’s a collection of novels that remind us there’s very little as exhilarating, terrifying, heartbreaking, eye-opening, and downright ecstatic as being young and fresh off the boat (bus/train/plane/et cetera) in New York City. Valley of the Dolls, Jacqueline Susann – “New York was steaming—an angry concrete animal caught unawares in an unseasonable heat spell.” The opening line of Valley of the Dolls is a gloriously incoherent metaphor that every New Yorker nevertheless intuitively understands—and one that strikes me as oddly comforting in these, the days of New York City’s great distress. Via the characters of Anne, Jennifer, and Neely—three starry-eyed young ingénues striking out for fame and fortune in the big city—Dolls will take you in, out, and around the deliciously seedy underworld of Manhattan show biz in the ‘40s and ‘50s, and it’ll keep you thoroughly entertained every step of the way. But when you’re having this much fun, arguments over literary merit seem churlish and entirely beside the point. The Best of Everything, Rona Jaffe – Here we have another mid-century triad of fresh-faced girls new to the city: Caroline, April, and Gregg. Everything, however, takes us behind the scenes in the publishing industry—although it’s every bit as tempestuous, sudsy, and sharply observed as Dolls. The barn-burner of a plot is both titillating and candid as it delves into issues of sex, dating, abortion, and career advancement. The result is a fascinating and canny portrait of female ambition that nevertheless never strays far from its pulpy roots. Everything takes us from Manhattan’s high-rise office towers to its low-rent rooming houses, and brings to vivid life all the dreams, schemes, and heartaches that pave the path from the latter to the former. A thoroughly un-put-down-able read—and far better than the movie it inspired (although Joan Crawford’s performance is priceless). The Group, Mary McCarthy – Norman Mailer famously dismissed this novel in The New York Review of Books as “a trivial lady writer’s novel”—which tells you nothing insightful about The Group, but tells you something very insightful about Norman Mailer (and makes watching Germaine Greer’s public trouncing of him in the 1979 documentary Town Bloody Hall that much more gratifying). This time around we’re following eight, not three, recent college graduates through the Manhattan of the 1930s. Once again we have the kind of frank depictions of sex, contraception, the female orgasm, and lesbianism that caused the book, published in 1963, to be dismissed by “serious” critics as a mere “potboiler”—although it became a runaway bestseller, which would seem to indicate that it struck a resonant chord with a wide swath of the female reading public. The Group turns its gimlet eye on the ins and outs of romance and the inevitable renegotiating of college friendships as the characters move into adult life, yet spends equal time examining the pursuit of career ambitions with razor-sharp wit. Through it all, New York City’s glass-and-steel skyscrapers gleam in the background, as cool and self-contained as the prose itself. Bad Behavior, Mary Gaitskill – It’s a decidedly seedier and more feral Manhattan that we enter with Gaitskill’s collection of nine short stories, which caused a minor literary sensation when first published in 1988. Emphatically leaving behind the comparatively glamorous worlds of theater and publishing, Gaitskill takes us into an Alphabet City populated by prostitutes, addicts, and the nightlife habitués who enjoy taking a walk on the wild side in their company. Through it all, however, Gaitskill maintains a wit and wide-eyed wonder that make her stories feel droll rather than dreary. It’s exactly the kind of book to send shivers up the spines of teenaged girls reading under the covers late at night—in far-flung suburbs from Altoona to Albuquerque—as they half fearfully, half hopefully imagine where their own New York adventures might take them someday. Which is to say that this book is gritty and grungy, and also an absolutely essential New York read. Open City, Teju Cole – Lest you labor under the misapprehension that I consider only female novelists’ takes on New York to be worth reading, I’ll conclude with the most-recent entry on this list: newcomer Teju Cole’s impressionistic, diary-esque recounting of a series of long walks taken over the course of a year by Julius, a half-Nigerian, half-German first-year med student. Julius’s late-night perambulations take us from Central Park to Ground Zero, from Penn Station to Harlem, and introduce us to a kaleidoscope of Manhattanites—most of whom are also recent immigrants, living the 21st Century version of that great and ageless story of New York and newcomers. It’s a heartening reminder now, in what can sometimes feel like New York City’s end of days, that the more things change, the more they stay the same—even in a city as intractable, improbable, and irrepressible as New York. 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.

By Alan Resnick It all happened so suddenly. My wife and I were having dinner last week and she asked me: “Do you miss sports on TV?” I immediately blurted out: “No, not really.” And now I’m feeling a little sheepish and slightly unpatriotic about admitting this in such a public forum, especially after reading the recent beautiful essays by Bruce Shlain and Amy Lennard Goehner in this publication on the importance of sports in their lives and in the broader American society. But, upon deeper reflection, it remains my feeling that I’ll survive and find other things to occupy my time. I grew up loving sports and actually have some pretty solid bona fides as both a fan and an athlete. My prized possession as a kid was a Detroit Tigers uniform with Al Kaline’s number 6 on the back. This was not one of the modern polyester uniforms; mine was made of wool, and I’d begin to sweat immediately as soon as I put it on. And it usually left me with rashes. But I loved that thing. My father took me to my first Tiger game when I was six years old. We were playing the New York Yankees. Tiger Stadium was constructed in such a way that all you could see was foul territory when walking though the main concourses underneath the stands. But when you began walking up the corridor to your seating area, the field would emerge, and it was absolutely stunning, a sea of emerald green with a giant scoreboard in the background. Our seats were located along the first base line, a little past the Yankee dugout. The usher seated us, and I looked up and saw Mickey Mantle, Whitey Ford, and Yogi Berra, Hall of Famers all, standing at the rail chatting and laughing. Not a bad first game at all. I was there when Mark “The Bird” Fidrych pitched against the Yankees on June 28, 1976, a game broadcast on ABC’s “Monday Night Baseball.” That game remains the most electric atmosphere that I have ever experienced. I was at the Lions’ Thanksgiving Day game on November 25, 1976, when O.J. Simpson set the then single game rushing record of 273 yards. And I was in the stands on Sunday, October 24, 1971, the day that Chuck Hughes, a receiver for the Detroit Lions, died on the football field in a game against the Chicago Bears. I can still visualize Dick Butkus, the terrifying middle linebacker for the Bears, frantically waving for medical support to come onto to the field as he stood over the fallen Hughes. I would watch any sporting event on television growing up. It didn’t matter who was playing, home team or not. I wanted to see it. And my interest wasn’t limited to baseball, football, basketball, and hockey. Back in the day, the CBC (Canadian Broadcast Corporation) used to broadcast sports such as curling and snooker on Saturday afternoons. Some would label these arcane, but they were absolutely must-see TV for me. Baseball was my game of choice to play. I was a dead fastball hitter, and I could rake, if I do say so myself. In fact, Reno Bertoia, a former third baseman for the Tigers who became a scout for them, came out to watch me play one evening. (Truth be told, he was actually there to scout the pitcher on the other team, but my coach walked over to him and asked him to take a look at me, so it counts in my book.) My hardball career ended when my peers learned to throw the curveball, and I went on to play softball for another ten years. So, I’m a fan, but not a true fanatic. Fantasy sports hold no interest for me, nor does sports trivia. Frankly, I could not care less about the player on the 1929 Philadelphia Athletics World Series team with an undescended testicle who had a root canal before Game 3 and hit a triple in the sixth inning. Part of my current indifference is that I simply don’t consume sports in person or on television like I did when I was younger. I go to a couple of baseball games a year, haven’t attended a football or basketball game in a few years, and last attended a hockey game several years ago. And that was more out of curiosity about the new arena than the game itself. Going to a game is expensive, and my backside begins to ache by the sixth inning or halftime; on the other hand, watching on television provides great viewing angles and, if something spills on me, it’s my own fault, A second reason for my apathy is that my home teams are miserable. The Tigers and Lions both finished last in their divisions in 2019, and the Red Wings had the worst record in all the NHL at the time the current season was suspended. Relatively speaking, the Pistons are the crown jewel of the local sports teams, in that they were one game out of last place in their division when the NBA shut down. So, I don’t watch much regular season action, and only turn into the playoffs as they move toward the finals. I’m struggling mightily with the idea of watching sports in empty arenas, golf courses, or tennis courts. I understand the economics and the athletes’ desire to compete, but so much of the thrill of watching a sporting event is the atmosphere, the cheering, the booing, the chants, and the groans of anguish. I’d much prefer listening to a baseball game announced by Mel Allen, Ernie Harwell, Harry Caray, or Vin Scully to watching a game with no crowd. And I worry about the health of the athletes and the support staff needed to produce and broadcast an event. Of the four major sports, baseball seems to be the one that poses the least health risk, especially since the Tigers get so few men on base. I just don’t see how basketball, hockey, and particularly football can be played in the midst of the pandemic, even with no fans. And, if the sport has to suspend action again when athletes test positive--and I believe that is a when, not an if--it will be for much longer. If pressed, I would say that the Masters is the one sporting event that I’ve truly missed so far. There is something about the beauty of the course, the tradition, and the overall stodginess that I look forward to every year. But another large part of why I enjoy the Masters is that I used to watch it with my daughter and now, since we reside in different states, we text back and forth with each other during the broadcast. I miss that interaction as much as the golf itself. Maybe I’m in denial or just fooling myself about how much I miss sports. Or perhaps the time away from sports has resulted in a form of withdrawal. I do know that I did not relapse yesterday when the skins game charity golf even was broadcast on TV. I worked on a jigsaw puzzle instead. 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 Sandy Adler (Phoenix) It was a real sign of the times. This week, I was out showing a few homes to my buyers. A vacant home we looked at, staged with furniture, had signs around the house asking us to touch as little as possible while we were viewing the home. My buyers and I drove in separate cars and wore face masks. I had wipes with me so that I didn't have to touch surfaces. And I used hand sanitizer after leaving each property. Wearing a mask while showing a home and talking to my buyers is uncomfortable and hot. Being in a separate vehicle while showing my buyers neighborhoods is inconvenient. We sometimes talk on the phone while we are driving, so I can point out things to them about the area. All in all, it is a more time-consuming process than it was pre-COVID-19. And it is more exhausting than usual! But if we want to work with a modicum of safety, it is necessary. Here in Arizona, real estate services were considered “essential” from the beginning. Maricopa County (metro Phoenix) is the fastest growing county in the country with a very robust job market. Many realtors have continued to work, albeit with extra precautions that were not in place before the pandemic. We have continued to show and sell homes. New home builders have changed how they do business as well. Agents and buyers must have appointments to look at models. Buyer demand dropped, especially from mid-March to mid-April, but it is picking up now. What has the pandemic done to real estate overall? Property showings have started to increase again but have not yet reached the pre-shutdown level. I'm sure this will happen as states open up more. Most interestingly, most homeowners have at least 60% equity in their homes. While home appreciation is predicted to slow because of the pandemic, there is no prediction that it will go negative. Two strong reasons for this is that inventory of resale properties is low and mortgage interest rates for home purchases are at all-time lows. So the real estate business continues. Like other industries, we are finding ways to continue our business using technology that is easily available to us. I “met” with some new clients the other day via Zoom, doing an introductory meeting remotely instead of in my office as was usual before. We have done Zoom or FaceTime calls to show property to buyers who cannot come to see the property in person (we had done this occasionally and successfully before). I think these extra precautions will stay in place in the real estate industry until there is a vaccine for COVID-19 or a much greater comfort with reduced infection levels. That being said, I’m sure there are agents and buyers who do not follow these protocols just as there are people who are already happy to congregate in restaurants here without social distancing. Sandy Adler has been a residential real estate agent in Arizona for 19 years, working throughout metro Phoenix. She works with many buyers who are relocating from other parts of the country often, so she has helped many families move to the Valley of the Sun over the years. Adler’s son, Rob, and daughter-in-law, Michelle, are her business partners. They are very active agents, helping buyers and sellers with all sorts of residential real estate transactions. Says Adler, “We make a great family team supporting our clients and each other.” www.bestarizonahomes.com

How One Tech Star’s Ingenuity is Helping Pandemic Parents Cope By Andrea Sachs Once upon a time, there was a pandemic that made mincemeat out of parents’ work schedules and childcare plans, and left millions of squirmy locked-down kids in its wake. Across the country, an impassioned refrain could be heard: “I’m on the phone with my boss! I can’t play right now!” With schools closed and restless kids at home, what were stressed-out parents to do? Enter Miral Sattar, a busy New York City mother of two and tech entrepreneur. Sattar is the founder and CEO of Bibliocrunch, a literary services marketplace that connects would-be and current authors with other book publishing professionals. Sattar was born in Karachi, Pakistan, “loving classic fairy tales.” When her two children, Zara and Reza, were old enough, Sattar began to read those stories to her children. But she became alarmed that many of the fairy tales were “sexist and archaic,” not to mention overly violent. Recalls Sattar, “reading these tales of passive princesses, damsels in distress and torturous witches made me realize how woefully out of sync they were with modern times.” So she set out to rewrite and update them, and merchandise them as audio stories. Sattar’s kids were the first guinea pigs, er, beta users. In pre-pandemic times, recalls Sattar, her kids resisted staying put after bedtime: “My daughter would be thirsty for her third glass of milk. My son would be “super, super hungry.” But she found that both children loved listening to stories and as part of their bedtime routines she would stream the audio stories to each one’s bedroom. After nearly two years of planning, Sattar was ready in February to raise money to develop, manufacture and distribute the Bearily Bear Audio Stories; with them, she planned to offer a plush stuffed bear. But then came the pandemic, the ultimate Big Bad Wolf. It was clearly the wrong time to introduce a new product in the marketplace. Instead, Sattar and her husband Haider Akmal, who is in finance, found themselves working at home and homeschooling their daughter, six-year-old Zara, and their four-year-old son, Reza, What to do with the Bearily Bear project? From her own experience, Sattar could see the need for keeping kids stuck at home busy. Zara, a kindergartner, was engaged by remote learning. But Reza was more fidgety: “I love Mommy school,” he told her, “but when can I go back to my real school?” So for the sake of homebound parents and kids everywhere, Sattar decided to give away her library of stories as a gift to other parents. The whole collection of stories is available free at https://bearilybear.com. Sattar is a champion multi-tasker: as well as working at home and home-schooling her kids, she is seven months pregnant. She admits to being pooped at times: “I often want to take a nap after home schooling.” And after their third child arrives and the health crisis abates? Miral and Haider’s pandemic fantasy is to “move to a less densely populated area, where we could live in a house with a yard.” Where they could live, pandemic-free, happily ever after. Andrea Sachs is the editor of The Insider.

By Jeffrey Sachs (China Television Global Network) Editor's note: The United States has a strong economy, first-class healthcare and experts, but it has been the worst performing country in the fight against COVID-19, with one third of the world's infected people living in the United States. Why does the world's most powerful government behave so badly? Jeffrey D. Sachs, professor and director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University shares his ideas with CGTN in a Skype interview. The following are some quotes from the interview. They reflect the interviewee's opinion, and not necessarily the views of CGTN. Unfortunately, in my part of the world, we didn't take seriously the threat of the coronavirus. Maybe there wasn't enough experience, because of SARS impacting China and the other countries of Asia and the Pacific more intensively and more psychologically. Europe and the United States were unprepared. But even after it became known how dangerous this is, the United States leadership has been completely incompetent. Trump is unable to have a logical approach to this, and unfortunately his government is filled with corrupt business people, who are in the government not because of their talent or their experience or their expertise, but because they want to make money from the government. And they are professionally what we call lobbyists. They spend their time trying to get money out of government contracts, and our political system became very corrupt. And the experts were either thrown out, or suppressed, or kept away, and then we elected a president who is unfortunately completely incompetent. So, every day the deaths are now rising, 2000 or more a day. We don't have a national policy until this moment. Every day I say in the U.S.: "Look at what China accomplished, look at what Korea accomplished, look at what Vietnam accomplished. Look at what New Zealand and Australia accomplished. They speak English too, they're like us, why don't we learn from them?" But because of our very poor politics and incompetent leadership, we're not learning from the successes of other countries, and the epidemic continues and its very dangerous. And Trump is especially dangerous, because he incites bad behavior. He tells people "go out, don't listen to the warnings of the experts!" It's incredible irresponsibility by a national leader. In my experience, he's the worst president in our history, certainly in my lifetime. So this is a very bad situation. We need countries to learn from each other. China after all did something amazing. Even after the epidemic had spread and was very dangerous, China got it under control, which is a remarkable experience. Some public health experts believed it would not be possible to contain an epidemic once it was out of control, but China proved that it is possible to do it with COVID-19. But we should learn how, rather than just making attacks, or being in the silly season of politics when so many people are dying. I've never seen anything like it in the U.S. experience.

By John Rolfe The husband in Le Chateau Bow-Wow (dog house) is a hoary cliché of marital discord, so for the sake of fresher fare I present the husband in Le Chateau Chickadoodle. The husband is me. Chateau Chickadoodle is our henhouse, the rustic residence of six chickens who found themselves cooped up with your humble narrator one recent afternoon. It’s no secret the COVID-19 lockdown is fueling discord in marriages. Happily, after two months of being underfoot, I remain on reasonably jovial terms with my spouse, though on occasion we have joked – I think she was joking – about her locking me in the henhouse for a respite from my less than endearing behavior. Well, she finally did it. I was busy with my housekeeping duties cleaning the ladies’ nesting quarters. My wife served their afternoon snack and departed. When I tried the door, it wouldn’t open. She’d slid the bolt latch out of habit. I think. There’s no way to unlock it from inside and no other exit. Forlornly gazing at our house, I waved frantically in hope of catching my wife’s eye when she looked out the window. Alas, she did not. So I stood there, a literally henpecked husband as Peggy, one of our Rhode Island Reds, gave my leg the what-for with her beak. Stuck inside indefinitely with a bunch of squabbling chickens. If this wasn’t an apt metaphor for life in America these days, what is? Oh, I’d survive but the novelty would wear off pretty quick. For one thing, the grub leaves something to be desired. I’m not big on a steady diet of raw eggs, pelletized grain and roughage by-products, and water. I’d have to fight the ladies for scraps of bread and the cramped sleeping arrangements would surely be in dispute. As I contemplated my fowl fate it seemed that we aggrieved Americans aren’t much different from my chickens. They are on permanent lockdown due to a permanent pandemic of predators – foxes, hawks, raccoons, coyotes — who will very possibly put a worse crimp in their existence. But if they really think about it, our hens have it pretty darn good with catered treats (served on a platter!), luxe dust bath, maid service, and intellectual stimulation — a “Learn German” DVD on a string they apparently only use only as a pecking toy. (I’ve yet to hear a word of Deutsch out of any of them.) Like it or not, there is a balance between freedom and safety in this world, but the lure of green grass and open space is irresistible to us all. Our ladies try to make a break for it when the door is open but at least they haven’t accused us of tyranny when all we’re doing is looking out for their well-being. After a half hour or so, it occurred to me that I would need to heed the call of nature at some point, the same challenge I faced the time I got trapped on the garage roof, where peeing on such a conspicuous public stage was not an option unless I was willing to accept the indecent exposure arrest that would accompany my rescue. I surely wasn’t about to live by “When in the chicken shack, do as the chickens do” and drop my business wherever it falls. The most logical course of action — caterwauling for help — had failed me on the garage, which is much closer to the house. I eventually got out of that fine mess by creating another — tossing the nearly full paint can I couldn’t set anywhere or hold while perilously climbing onto a rickety ladder. This escape would require breaking the door of the Chateau. What to do? With my Honey-Do list long and nothing getting done, my wife’s attention would surely be drawn in my direction at some point. So I sat on a hard wooden chair and took a little snooze that was finally interrupted by her voice. “How long are you going to sit in there?” “Until you let me out, dear,” I replied. “You locked me in.” “I was wondering why you were still out here. Why didn’t you yell?” “I wasn’t going to shred what’s left of my dignity by yelling,” I explained. “I waved but you didn’t see me. I figured this would be the quickest way to get you out here.” Like chickens, indolence does not fly around here for long and that proved to be my salvation. The experience taught me to be grateful for things like chores and the blessings of sheltering in place, though I’m still working on a taste for chicken feed. 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.

Little pandemic pitchers have big ears. That’s what Insiders Lisa Sachs and Matt Beck, seven-year-old Sienna Beck’s parents, discovered this week. There was a spirited discussion going on in Sienna’s home about the fact that baking the family’s favorite dishes was tricky, since flour is in short supply right now. As the New York Times reported this week: “Baking supplies — yeast, flour, baking powder — have become particularly prized finds as people stuck at home have time to perfect their challah bread or knead out their anxieties. “Everybody’s becoming a mini-Martha Stewart,” said Joseph Viscomi, a supervisor for Morton Williams, which now limits customers to one yeast package each and has waiting lists at many of its 15 New York City supermarkets. Five-pound bags of King Arthur Flour have been so hard to score that they were selling this week on eBay for $26.49, five times the store price. “There’s a black market for flour right now,” said Cristen Kennedy, 38, a college health educator who has scoured a dozen grocery and baking sites since flour disappeared from her grocery store in the Bronx.” Sienna took the culinary bull by the horns. The budding junior scribe surprised her parents by appealing to a higher authority to provide the much-treasured ingredient to her flour-strapped family. Bring on the chocolate chip cookies!

By Marty Barry Dear Insiders: The investment professionals at Tarot Capital Partners hope you are all surviving the Covid-19 lockdown with your health and sanity intact. Remember to wash your hands and wear your masks! Formalities aside, we acknowledge that we faced some uphill challenges in the first four months of 2020. Recent aggressive investments in edgy, disruptive startups imposed rather severe losses on our portfolio, as we encountered unforeseeable downturns due to the Covid-19 pandemic and subsequent social distancing measures. For the sake of full transparency and disclosure we will review them here. Handshake Bootcamp Sensing high demand as the country geared up for the 2020 elections, we set out to save the great American handshake with these intensive weekend handshaking bootcamps for up-and-coming politicians and lobbyists. We recruited dozens of award-winning professional hand-shakers from across the country, and locked in great rates by booking six months of nonrefundable event space at top corporate hotels for our seminars. Initial registrations have been softer than expected. Silver lining: we were able to pull the plug on our baby-kissing subsidiary before we had committed much capital to its expansion. Survivor: Subway It seemed like a no-brainer that people were getting bored of the exotic and remote locales featured in this long-running TV franchise. Our pitch to the network bigwigs: we sponsor a season that takes place entirely on a crowded 7 train shuttling back and forth between Manhattan and Queens. We outfitted two subways cars with cameras, lights, fire pits, and outhouses. Taping, originally set to begin in March, is on hold indefinitely. Gesundheit ™ Group Sneeze Therapy This avant-garde emotional relief therapy gained traction in Italy in 2018 and exploded in popularity among people looking to let it all out in a sympathetic group setting without handkerchiefs or social judgment. We immediately grasped the natural synergy with our popular Pop-It-Forward group zit-squeezing therapy, and won a savage bidding war to purchase expensive intellectual rights to expand into the United States. Negotiations with Dr. Anthony Fauci to serve as our spokesperson stalled when he served our Chief Marketing Officer with a restraining order. Wipeout! Free Toilet Paper Our market studies showed that toilet paper was such an abundant commodity we could just give it away for free by printing advertisements on each square. Marketers of natural foods and health supplements lined up to get in on the ground floor of this program. Things looked good until we hit some recent supply chain hiccups, and our advertisers slapped us with millions of dollars in lawsuits for breach of contract. Hot Twister Yoga Studios In retrospect we may have been pushing the envelope a bit when we invested in a national chain of studios where traditional yoga lovers get to mix with fun-loving Twister fanatics for a sweaty contact-yoga experience. Right foot chataranga! Warrior pose on yellow! Unfortunately we bet the farm on exclusive rights for five years from Hasbro. It’s not clear at this time when we can legally open our doors again, or whether interest in the concept will revive among our target audience. The I❤︎NY Tourist Kissing Booths Staffed by attractive twenty-somethings, these kiosks are strategically positioned throughout bustling tourist districts like Times Square and the High Line. Instead of posing with a grubby Elmo or Spiderman, visitors can pay $10 for a wholesome old-fashioned county-fair kiss. Although currently shuttered by the Health Department, we are investigating the possibility of renting the kiosks out to evicted millennials who can’t stand another day of living at home with their parents. CraftMail ® Artisan Envelopes and Stamps A year ago, predicting that technologies like Zoom and FaceTime had peaked and would likely fade into obscurity, our savviest trend analysts foresaw the rise of retro letter writing with the comforting tactile enjoyment of lickable stamps and envelopes. Our stationery is handcrafted by artisan papersmiths in a workshop in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, using recycled sandwich wrappers and doctor’s office magazines. Each stamp and envelope has a hand-applied natural adhesive with exciting natural flavors for licking enjoyment. The market for these upscale products has not developed as we hoped, and we have currently renting the workshops out to a company that stores unused tour-guide batons and selfie sticks. Infectious™ Perfume. The the idea began with a tagline: “Your smile is infectious. Your laugh is infectious. Why not your scent? Infectious perfume: spread the fever.” You have to admit it’s catchy. We had just begun taking advance orders from retailers when, well, you know the rest of the story. We plan to re-introduce this product again in a few years, after we convince U.S. Customs to release the first shipment of 50,000 bottles that they confiscated and locked in their secret hazardous materials warehouse. In closing, remember that past performance is no guarantee of future results! We are adjusting to the market conditions, and have already entered discussions with the developers of an app that will calculate estimates of your pasta inventory, hair length, and checking overdraft based on daily news updates of when the lockdowns will end. Marty Barry is a business manager living in Harrison, NY with his wife and children, who all came home for lockdown.