Search Results

This week, we hear from Naomi Cohen in Calgary, Alberta and Mitzi Jacobs in West Bloomfield, Michigan, Both are Insider subscribers who live in senior living residences. Although they live almost 2,000 miles apart, they tell similar stories of long days in lockdown, without the company of family, friends and fellow residents. We send our love to our computer-savvy friends Mitzi and Naomi, and look forward to the return of a more convivial lifestyle for both of them soon! Dear Editor, Another lonely day. I've lost track of how long we have been totally isolated--no activities or gatherings. The dining room is closed--all meals are brought to our suites. I lost my beloved husband of 68 plus years two years ago. Never in my 91-plus years have I felt so adrift and purposeless. The staff are all lovely and caring; they bring snacks and games through the day. They also lead guided walks around our building three times a day. We have to sign up early as only four or five can go out at a time. Reading, New York Times crosswords and needlepoint make old eyes tired, but I do enjoy as much as possible. We do have an exercise class every morning. It certainly helps to keep somewhat active. There was a craft activity the other day. I am so NOT artistic and did not participate. My neighbor across the hall is truly an artist and made colorful woven rings, which now adorn the two doors into my suite. What a dear! I watch too much news--none of it good. I’m off to do a laundry before I settle to cuddle with my cat on the couch. Please be well. Love, Naomi Cohen Dear Editor, I’m living at All Seasons in West Bloomfield, Michigan. I really love it! Meals are served, there are movies, programs, and very nice people. Since the latest problems, we are not going out in the hallways, The table I had sat at for my meals was really nice. Friendly people! Now, our meals are brought to our apartment. I don’t know how long this will last. I haven’t been out of my apartment or seen any of the friends I had made here. I haven’t been in the hallways. Weird! Mitzi Jacobs

The Root of All Evil These are difficult days for sheltered Americans, and thoughts about dying abound. But while the coronavirus crisis is serious, these dark musings about dying involved something else, something even more concerning. We are speaking, of course, about hair dying: the shock of looking in the mirror and discovering a skunk line down the middle of the scalp. Who is that ancient crone with the grey roots staring back in the looking glass? Tragically, there is no one behind closed doors to rescue her. At this moment in history, the yearning for one’s beloved hair stylist is overpowering. Of course, there are currently other sources of tonsorial worry than emergent roots on American women. Shaggy hair on men is ubiquitous: you can even see it on newscasters Skyping on-air from their living rooms. There was Maryland Congressman Jamie Raskin on MSNBC this week, holding forth on the politics of the pandemic; unfortunately the distressing rat’s nest on his head marred his otherwise dignified mien. As evidenced by their unshorn sideburns, stubbly beards and knotty locks, American men are having a bad hair day of their own. Such is the calamity of Quarantine Coiffure, a once-in-a-lifetime confluence of raging roots and severe haircut shortfalls. Sadly, it is a malady that your editor knows personally. As the weeks of the pandemic have passed, she has watched her chemically enhanced halo disappear as her real hair color rudely asserts itself. Your editor is embarrassed to admit that in a shopping panic at the beginning of March, she went to Amazon’s website and ordered a year’s supply of L’Oréal Paris Superior Preference Fade-Defying Permanent Hair Color, 6R Light Auburn Hair Dye. (During the same anxiety attack, believing that a retail Apocalypse was near, she also ordered five tubes of toothpaste and a half dozen bottles of mouthwash, but enough about that.) Forget toilet paper: your editor was determined that she would not be caught short when the coming deficit of hair dye began. But after a truckload of hair color arrived, your editor, spoiled by years in overpriced salons, was plagued by doubts about her ability to apply the solution to her scalp properly. After all, nothing stains like globs of haircoloring. When your editor sought counsel from a close friend, another devotee of dye, her friend set your editor’s mind at ease with these wise words: “Who the hell is going to see you?” In the end, dear readers, your editor abandoned her quest for pandemic perfection and decided to let her follicles fester. And no, she does not want to FaceTime with you anytime soon. As always, there are scoundrels in the land who try to exploit the misery of their fellow citizens. One wag had the colossal insensitivity to spray paint a graffito on the side of Clairol’s headquarters that read: “In eight weeks, 88% of blondes will disappear from the earth.” Another ne’er-do-well advertised Zoom haircuts at astronomical prices. Then, of course, there was the administration’s false claim that ingesting Head and Shoulders Shampoo cured coronavirus. Is nothing sacred anymore? In recognition of this national emergency, The Insider is calling for the creation of a Congressional Oversight Committee for the Protection of Americans of (Artificial) Color. And oversight is the operative word: this legislative task force should send drones across the nation to take a national head count, a Style Census, to determine scientifically the size of the problem and its root causes. Objectively, how many men and women sheltering in place are secretly sporting unlawfully awful hairstyles? Testing, testing, testing! Fortunately, there is an army of sidelined stylists and barbers, waiting to spring back into action. At long last, let’s put the Defense Production Act to good use, and order this battalion of beauticians to storm the barricades. Let the shaft fall where it may!

By Frieda Hughes I live an incredibly quiet life with my animals, owls and motorbikes. As a painter, poet, and part-time person-centred therapist, I don’t achieve anything if I have a much of a social life. So, when we in the U.K. were told in early March to distance ourselves from others, my life didn’t change a great deal. In February, COVID-19 had reached the U.K. What took us by surprise was the speed at which the whole country changed. One moment we were thinking “it’s over there (being China, then Italy and Spain),” the next, we were thinking “it’s over here, but they’ve got the guy who has it so….” But the global stock markets were already crashing. With increasing frequency, additional cases were being identified, dotted around England, and we in Wales wished the border was more than just a squiggly line on a map. Then suddenly, coronavirus was over the border; little eruptions appearing on the skin of the United Kingdom now included Wales. Still, we thought we were relatively safe. A young man – one of the regulars at the gym where I work out three times a week – told me that he had a friend who lived in Wuhan; his friend had said that an employee in charge of the incineration of ex-experiment animals at a nearby laboratory had been caught selling them through the Wuhan wet market instead. (Or perhaps it was the aunt of the man who cleaned the toilets in the office block which was serviced by an electrical engineer known to the mother of the woman who sold a bicycle to the courier who took parcels to the experimental lab in Wuhan….) A popular national newspaper showed a photograph of a supermarket shelf that was empty of toilet rolls – this was a mistake; within minutes, all the supermarket shelves in the UK were empty of toilet rolls, pasta, rice, flour, gluten-free flour, bread, gluten-free bread, baked beans, tinned vegetables and anything that would keep for two years in a bunker. In order to do a normal shop – an ordinary shop that would take one visit and allow me to stay at home for a couple of weeks before I thought of entering a supermarket again – I had to go to the local supermarkets in two towns every day for two weeks; shopping became my job. These two small towns are seven miles in opposite directions – fourteen miles from each other. Each has a Tesco’s and a Morrison’s supermarket. One of the towns also has a Lidl, an Aldi and a B&Q. Then there are a couple of additional little shops, like the Spar chain, where one can usually get toilet rolls. Only, not this week – or the next, not for now. Not for a while. Panic buyers had gone in like locusts and cleared almost everything not nailed down. Only the most obscure foods remained. Their frenzied emptying of shelves had turned everyone else into competitors. I tried to become interested in strange-looking pasta sauces, but there was no pasta to put it on. Shelf stackers had spread out the tinned tuna, but I have never been a great lover of that either, although it was beginning to look more interesting on every visit. It took me three days to find a loaf of brown bread and three weeks to find a pack of toilet rolls. I only managed to get Paracetamol because the woman on the till had confiscated some from the shopper before me. Each day I’d come home with a few paltry items; three pears, a cucumber and a packet of cashew nuts. At one point I saw a stack of toilet rolls in a Spar and was so shocked that I had to buy some, even though I thought I was probably okay for a while, since I’m a pack rat even under normal circumstances. At the very beginning of March, COVID-19 cases in the U.K. were still only in double digits, but on the basis of exponential growth I reckoned it wouldn’t be long before it was on the doorstep. I telephoned the organisers of all the poetry readings at which I was to perform this year and asked them if they going to cancel. No, was the decisive answer. Within three days I received emails from all of them cancelling and asking me if I would be happy to have them book me next year. But the friend who was organising a 60th birthday dinner for me at her home in London on the 1st April was adamant that we should wait. Wait for what? I wanted to ask…the inevitable? I’d also organised a dinner at The Groucho Club in London the day after that, and a party at home in Wales the following weekend. Having spent January and February making careful bookings and arranging gatherings of friends, I now began the demoralising process of phoning them all to cancel, in between increasingly frustrating shopping expeditions. By March 10th six people had died in the U.K, with 373 testing positive. By March 16th the U.K.’s coronavirus death toll had risen to 55, with 1,543 confirmed cases, although it was inevitable that many more were infected. Numerous U.K. sporting events and large gatherings were cancelled. At this point we were instructed by the Prime Minister to socially-distance, unless we were over 70, in which case we were to self-isolate for 12 weeks. Self-isolation became the new term for a form of self-inflicted torture that provokes a decline into madness, if not brain death from boredom, lack of human contact, inertia, or too many binged box sets and unregulated alcohol consumption. The hostess of my London birthday dinner party finally conceded defeat in the face of something invisible to the naked eye, and agreed to a postponement of the celebration of my ageing process. As my 60th birthday celebrations had been cancelled, I decided that I would get almost up to the date, the actual 1st of April, and see what the world looked like then, with the idea that I phone as many of my local friends as possible to see who would be prepared to attend a big birthday supper at my home. Over the previous fortnight of several shopping trips, I’d managed to buy minced beef, sought-after tinned tomatoes, cheese and gluten-free lasagne sheets – just in case. On one trip I bought nothing but birthday booze because there were no meat, fruit or vegetables to be had. The following day the supermarkets rationed staples to two items each and everything else to three items each, including wine. The moment they did that, the wine and beer sold out. By Sunday 22nd March we were getting messages from the government in newspapers, and over the television and radio, that we weren’t trying hard enough to socially distance and we must try harder, or else….. the ‘or else’ was not specific, like a threat given to naughty children, and I was concerned that lockdown was imminent. Then on Monday 23rd March I went to buy two boxes of frozen chicks (250 frozen chicks per box) on which I feed my owls – I have fifteen owls that have been given to me over the years, by people or zoos that no longer wanted them; two white faced scops owls, a tiny Tengmalms owl with wonky feet, a snowy owl with a damaged wing, six Eurasian eagle owls, four barn owls and an ageing Bengal eagle owl. At home, I have a designated freezer in which I can store four weeks’ supply of frozen chicks. But today, I had a bad feeling – the shop where I buy my chicks told me that if the Prime Minister put us in lockdown, they would close, despite the fact they didn’t have to. They are the only pet shop I know that sell frozen chicks for all the local falconers, and for me and my owls. Heart in mouth, I raced home, phoned the local electrical goods supply chain, and bought the last three (small, upright) freezers in Wales. Everything else had sold out; I only got these because they hadn’t been added to the books yet. The shop couldn’t deliver until Wednesday – not soon enough! And if they were shut down overnight, that would be the end of it. I have a large van that I use to transport my art exhibitions and my motorbikes, so I hurried off to pick up the freezers, detouring via my chick supplier to buy 20 boxes of frozen chicks on the way home. I was still unwrapping the freezers when the government announced a lockdown and my chick-supply was cut off at the root. But at least I have enough chicks for two more months. And I’ve found a pet shop that sells frozen mice for my Royal python, Shirley….ferret food for my 5 ferrets, chinchilla food for my 5 chinchillas, dog food for my 15-year-old Maltese terrier and my two rescue Huskies, Sam and Meg. Being in lockdown means that everyone is ordered to live pretty much the way I live already. For me, the only real difference has been the fact that I can’t just go for a fun motorbike ride at the end of the working day, something that has always been vital to my state of mind, because that is when I take reference photos for my paintings, and sit and work on poems in trucker cafes, where I can be alone among people – where I can connect with the outside world, but don’t necessarily have to be part of it. Don’t get me wrong, I love a good party if I can put on a fabulous dress, but then I need solitude, or nothing happens; I get no work done. The trouble is, if there is nothing to do BUT work, because that is what surrounds me in every room, then my psychological constraints feel to tighten, my chest aches, my vocabulary withers at its root, my imagination feels as if it is being ground between two slabs of granite, and, in the end, I cease to mentally function effectively. My world all-too-easily shrinks to the size of a dried pea. My daily motorbike rides are both my deadline for work, and my reward. I do my shopping by motorbike with top box and panniers. But now, I mustn’t look as if I am enjoying myself or the police will stop me – they stop bikers on sports bikes who don’t appear to be carting necessary supplies of any kind. My love of motorbikes is so great that any day I do not ride one is wasted; I didn’t pass my test until the age of 48 and I’ve been making up for lost time ever since. The sense of freedom they give me cannot be gained from any other outlet; I have loved them since I first saw a 250cc Suzuki at the age of 15. Since passing my motorbike test I have ridden almost every racetrack in the UK on track days (some of them several times) and I have taken my Hayabusa 1300cc Suzuki around the Nurburgring in Germany. So, without the escape they offer, my mind becomes stagnant – even writing this makes me feel that I’m fumbling for the words and the images in my head are less clear, as are the points I want to mention; I find that working on poems is almost impossible because without stimulus, I am losing my ability to recall words. I need to read more – beginning with the dictionary. There is no conversation that lifts me because when talking to friends, it’s all about coronavirus, and, like Brexit beforehand, I’ve had enough of it now. I’m saturated with bad news updates. Having been locked down for over three weeks, we are now embarking on another three weeks. And then what? The elderly will be the loneliest long-term suffers imaginable of these measures. There is only so much that Zoom, FaceTime, WhatsApp and Skype can do. There is nothing that can truly replace human contact – a proper conversation and physical touch; the freedom to walk into a shoe shop and touch shoes. We took our freedom for granted and now we’ve been made all too aware of that. And while outside the sun shines and the birds sing their little hearts out, some of my elderly neighbours tell me that they are already depressed; it doesn’t matter that we live in one of the most beautiful areas of the U.K. – they haven’t been outside for weeks because they take the government instructions literally, where some others might bend them a bit…., and they are not exercising because the will to do so has been eaten away by indolence and food programs on TV. They are of a generation that doesn’t see the need to exercise as paramount to preventing muscular and mental atrophy. And perhaps even if they did, the effort is just too great when their bones are over 80. When necessary, I run errands for them. If they are not allowed out for many more months, as has been mooted, then it is not COVID-19 that will kill them. With my garden of flowering trees and shrubs and the fact that I can walk the Huskies down my road and see fields of sheep, I have no reason to complain. I am one of the lucky ones. In my mind’s eye is a woman in lockdown with a violent and abusive husband twelve floors up in a high-rise, with three screaming kids under the age of ten. This imaginary woman reminds me of my luck, but it doesn’t stop my brain from fraying at the edges from the lack of freedom of movement. My fingertips are split and bleeding from so much washing of hands and alcohol sanitiser, despite industrial quantities of hand cream. When the 31st March arrived, it was the day before my birthday and one week into lockdown. I was supposed to be standing on stage at the Oxford Literary Festival reading from my two most recent poetry collections, Out of the Ashes and Alternative Values. Afterwards, the organisers and I were going to celebrate the beginning of my birthday week before the London dinner parties and Welsh party. This was to be the week in which I would re-engage with the world and with the people I love and care about, whom I see all too rarely. But now the world was closing down, and not just my world, but the entire world. So instead, I put on the glittering red dress I had intended to wear at my birthday dinner the following day and, as it slipped past midnight into my actual birthday, I recorded an Instagram and YouTube birthday message in the company of a bottle of red wine and ten packets of chocolate peanuts. YouTube link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tesoX3AXVWU&list=PLBW8V_XpjaAX7Ldv-hEgy43PIQgAck3r1 Then I cooked up four enormous lasagnes from the ingredients I’d earmarked for an impromptu birthday supper and froze them. Eventually I hope to share them with people I love – although I may have to replace the birthday booze. On the 14th April I had a phone call from a friend who had a mallard duck nest against the wall of his house. He’d posted a happy photo on Instagram of the mother duck taking her six ducklings across the field from his garden to the river. Then he discovered that there were four ducklings left in the nest – they hadn’t been ready to leave when the mother realised that she had to save the ones she could; any longer in the nest and the never-ending cheeping of her offspring would have attracted the nearest fox. He took them inside to safety until I got there. When I collected them two hours later there were four ducklings – and one egg – in a small cardboard box. Stopping only to pick up some chick crumbs that another friend left out for me on the way home, I put the egg into the incubator I keep for owl eggs; I thought there might be hope for it because it cheeped at me when I spoke to it. It hatched at 3:30 am the following morning, so now there are five chicks that think I’m their mother: my lockdown ducklings. Whenever I pick up one of the tiny, fluffy marshmallow bodies, with little webbed feet paddling the air, rudimentary wing stumps and a perfectly formed beak, I am filled with gratitude for the distraction. With my poetry readings at various literary festivals cancelled, and my birthday week celebrations cancelled, the only thing left to cancel now is an exhibition of my artwork at the Chris Beetles Gallery in London in mid-November. Chris is optimistic this COVID-19 worldwide disaster will all be over by then, but others believe that social distancing will prevent any gathering until well into next year. So, I am now attempting to work out how to better combine my painting, my poetry, and my training as a person-centred therapist, while fostering my lockdown ducklings. I am trying to think about an ‘online’ future when I am a hands-on person, and when I feel that computer-work devours the hours needed to create anything worthwhile – anything physical that proves a day or a week or a month hasn’t all been wasted. In the meantime, I have friends who have lost their livelihoods, and two friends who are dying of cancer, not to mention others who are living with it – apprehensive of their future if they should get COVID-19. I have friends who have had COVID-19, although I don’t know anyone who has died from it, except twice-removed and at a distance. However, a nearby care home (seven miles away) now has it; it is coming closer. Several of us in my area believe we had it in early December, long before the first mention of coronavirus; I had three days of unbelievable exhaustion and fever, passing out on the sofa daily, too weak to drive a car. I thought I’d been overworking; I was incapable of anything. Then three weeks of a cough so dry that I remember it clearly for thinking ‘why do I have a cough? I’m not coughing anything up…’ We in the countryside look at those in the city and can understand why time outside must be limited – there are too many hundreds of thousands – or millions – of people to keep apart. But, surrounded by space, we walk our dogs or take our daily exercise on miles of almost traffic-free roads between high hedges, beyond which are fields of sheep and cattle, and wonder why it should only be an hour, once a day. And should we pass someone in the roadway, we almost climb into the hedges to keep our distance of oh, twenty feet or more. At first, people wouldn’t even speak to each other, as if coronavirus was caught by sound – the exchange of voices – but now, day by day, people are becoming a little more friendly, although the mean-spirited and self-righteous are becoming noticeable, sticking sourly out of the hedgerows like disapproving weeds….we are also learning who our friends are, when the phone doesn’t ring and the silence is deafening. When I have to shop, queuing two metres apart round the supermarket car park, I see the mothers who have small children at home; prayers are written all over their faces for an end to the torture of togetherness; I see fathers with their new stubble and old track pants, wondering if their life-choice partner is the one they really should have chosen, desperate to escape kitchen duties….all around me people are fraying at their edges, gritting their teeth and fervently hoping that this will be over next week, and next week and next week….. I watch my little ducklings fatten and grow, flapping their wing-stumps as if there is something to flap about, and have to hope that we will be free before they are able to fly in another ten weeks or so, or there is something wrong…. Born in London in 1960, Frieda Hughes is a poet and figurative and abstract painter. She was the U.K. Times Poetry columnist from 2006 – 2008, and has also written a number of children’s books, and numerous articles for magazines and newspapers over the years, about poetry, motorbikes and gardening among other things. Her poetry collections to date include Wooroloo, Stonepicker, Waxworks, Forty-Five, The Book of Mirrors, Alternative Values and Out of the Ashes. Alternative Values became her first illustrated collection when Frieda used the subject of her poems to inform the accompanying abstract images. One of Frieda’s recent exhibitions was in Chichester Cathedral, and included paintings from Alternative Values, and a mammoth project, ‘400 DAYS’, an abstract visual diary of 400 consecutive days painted in oils on 400 canvases. The finished work was approximately 13 feet high and 29 feet long, but is now being sold as individual pieces. Frieda’s most recent poetry collection, Out of the Ashes, is a selection from four of her earlier collections, and was published in 2018 by Bloodaxe Books UK. She is currently working on two new collections and an art exhibition that is scheduled (coronavirus permitting) for the week of November 16th this year, at the Chris Beetles Gallery in London.

Text and Photography by Judith Weinraub Manhattan can be a study in contrasts: in languages spoken; in black, white and brown skin colors; in where people live—in apartments, single rooms, individual homes—even on the street. But this spring the streets themselves can be desolate—devoid of people, cars, even buses and trucks—especially at night. The one life form that seems to be unaffected by the coronavirus is the wealth of tulips springing up next to sidewalks—defying all odds. Judith Weinraub, a longtime features editor and reporter at the Washington Post, is now living in Manhattan.

One film journalist’s stream-of-consciousness cinematic journey through the early days of the pandemic By Laurence Lerman The Northeast COVID-19 quarantine was still a week away in early March when the first “Movies To Watch During the Pandemic” lists began to roll out. There weren’t many surprises in those early breakdowns—Contagion, anyone?—or even in the subsequent tip sheets, which ranged from the obvious (film-fests divided by genre, star, filmmaker) to the outlandish (films that begin with the letter P, sub-genres and sub-sub-genres along the lines of “top hand-drawn animated WWII films,” like Isao Takahata’s 1988 Grave of the Fireflies). For my part, I consciously avoided the lists and prepared myself to be open to a kind of stream-of-consciousness curating should an opportunity for increased movie-watching be upon me. And so, it began upon my wife and I returning to our Jersey City home on the night of March 3 following an evening of jazz at the 44th Street incarnation of the legendary Birdland—our final trip to the city before the shutdown began. Free my mind, I said to myself…and the films will follow. I had recently bumped into a Woody Allen interview on YouTube from 2010 conducted by filmmaker Robert Weide, who asked him to name a film he always has to defend liking. Woody’s response was the Bob Hope starrer Casanova’s Big Night from 1954, which I only knew as a costume romp that was said to be the forerunner to Woody’s Love and Death. This would be a good place to start. A lush Technicolor romp, Casanova’s Big Night finds Hope as a bumbling tailor who impersonates the renowned Italian lover, mostly to woo Joan Fontaine’s dignified, well-coiffed widow. Inked by two of Hope’s regular writers, Hal Kanter and Edmund Hartmann, the film is overflowing with one-liners that include Fontaine cooing to Hope that his lips are on fire and him responding, “I know. Saves a fortune on matches.” I was never all that well-versed in Bob Hope films. Outside of the awful Private Navy of Sgt. O’Farrell, which I saw as an 11-year-old one Saturday afternoon in the early Seventies as part of a local matinee “kiddie show,” along with a handful of Hope & Crosby “Road” films, the biggest impression he had made on me was his cameo in 1985’s Spies Like Us. Chevy Chase and Dan Aykroyd star in the John Landis-directed comedy, an homage to those aforementioned “Road” movies. Spies plays like The Road to the Soviet Union as Chevy and Dan’s decoy operatives bumble their way across the Pamir Mountains and manage to detonate a Soviet ICBM—but not before having sex with a Soviet counterpart and an American spy before the world almost ends. A funny bit here and there and a bunch of inside joke cameos by filmmakers like Terry Gilliam, Sam Raimi and Costa-Gavras can’t save this one, which was originally written by Aykroyd and Dave Thomas to star Aykroyd and John Belushi. Chevy’s wiseguy smarm and silliness don’t work in Spies Like Us, not like it did in Season One of Saturday Night Live or his hits Vacation, Caddyshack and Fletch. I remembered how I had never actually never seen one of his notorious earlier entries, that critical and commercial disaster about a bunch of Little People who come to Hollywood to play Munchkins in The Wizard of Oz. I’d heard a lot about it though… Under the Rainbow from 1981 features Chevy, Carrie Fisher, Alan Arkin, Eve Arden and more than 100 diminutive performers who descend on the appropriately named Hotel Rainbow across from the studio where Oz is about to begin production. Chevy is a Secret Service agent, Fisher a studio assistant, Arden a near-sighted Duchess and the great Billy Barty is a Nazi agent on an undercover mission in Hollywood to procure a top secret map of America’s defense system. Would you believe me if I told you that wackiness ensues? Hectically directed by Steve Rash from actor/writer Pat McCormick’s screwball script, Under the Rainbow worked for me—there’re enough frenetic chandelier-swinging, banister-sliding sequences and Tinseltown jokes to make up for the lack of chemistry between Chevy and Carrie. It inspired me to revisit what might be my favorite film to feature little people: Ingmar Bergman’s 1963 The Silence, the third film in what Bergman-ites consider to be the filmmaker’s “Trilogy of Faith” (following 1960’s Through a Glass Darkly and 1963’s Winter Light). Stunningly shot in black-and-white by Sven Nykvist, this one’s a psychological drama (from Bergman—who woulda thunk it?!) that focuses on the troubled relationship between sisters Ester and Anna (Gunnel Lindblom and Ingrid Thulin) as they travel across an unnamed European country on the brink of war. Stopped at a hotel, Anna’s young son wanders about the hotel’s hallways, at one point stumbling upon a group of well-dressed, card-playing, cigar-smoking Spanish little people who are part of a traveling carnival. They’re actually having a grand old time in their suite—far friskier than any of the characters in Bergman’s “Faith Trilogy”—which they try to impart onto the boy. It’s a memorably light moment in one of Bergman’s most intense chamber dramas. But it didn’t feature Max von Sydow, a key player in Bergman’s company who appeared in eleven of his films, including such Fifties landmarks as The Seventh Seal (1957), Wild Strawberries (1957) and The Virgin Spring (1960). If I was going Bergman, von Sydow deserved some attention, particularly as he had died that very week at the age of 90. I then settled on The Passion of Anna from 1969, Max’s penultimate collaboration with Bergman (1971’s The Touch was still to follow) and one that I had never seen. Also shot by Bergman’s go-to DP Nykvist in the muted color palette for which he was known in the 1970s (ever seen Polanski’s 1976 The Tenant or Louis Malle’s 1978 Pretty Baby?), The Passion of Anna finds the emotionally desolate Max living alone following the end of his marriage and meeting Liv Ullman, who’s still mourning the recent deaths of her husband and son in a car crash. Bergman regulars Bibi Andersson and Erland Josephson are also on hand for this one, a sadly engaging tale on overcoming grief, seeking truth and suppressing desire. Like many of Bergman’s films of this period, Passion was produced on the island of Fårö in the Swedish archipelago, where he had lived and worked for years. Though the island is a popular summer resort, there’s nary a beach to be seen anywhere in Passion. Seeking out some sand, I moved on to Hell in the Pacific, John Boorman’s 1968 World War II adventure starring Lee Marvin and Toshiro Mifune. A tropically infused two-hander that could be considered the social distancing event of its day, Marvin and Mifune go to Hell as two unnamed servicemen, an American pilot and a Japanese naval officer, who are stranded on a small uninhabited Pacific island. War might be raging all around them, but after going a few rounds, the two realize that they’re going to have to put their own personal war to the side and cooperate if they hope to survive. As he was to re-confirm several years later with 1972’s Deliverance, Boorman knows what he’s doing when he’s wrangling the manliest of men in the great outdoors—and, in this case, in a largely dialogue-free beach romp. Seeking some more relaxed fun in the sun—I reasoned that a bikini or two wouldn’t hurt after watching two middle-aged actors duking it out on the shoreline—I remembered the 1978 TV movie Zuma Beach starring Suzanne Somers. It first aired as she was on the cusp of super-duper stardom in Three’s Comedy, which had premiered the year before. Written by John Carpenter (!) before he ascended into the horrors of Halloween and The Fog, Zuma stars Suzanne as a rock star (or so we’re told—we never see her perform) in a career slide who looks to clear her head and seek inspiration at the titular sandy playground. There, she enjoys some swimming, sand castle-building, chicken fights, beach volleyball and chilidogs with a slew of hormonal high schoolers played by a number of fresh faces who went on to become familiar in subsequent decades, including P.J. Soles, Tim Hutton, Rosanna Arquette, Steven Keats, Tanya Roberts and Michael Biehn (seven years before he would travel across time to save Sarah Connor in The Terminator). How do the kids know Suzanne is Serious with a capital “S”? Because she’s wearing a one-piece, of course… As a faux Beach Boys song underscored Zuma’s end credits score and eased me out of an hour-and-a-half of the lithe Ms. Sommers and company’s cavorting in the waves, I was reminded of Michael Biehn’s co-starring turn as Demi Moore’s husband in the 1988 apocalyptic end-of-days drama The Seventh Sign. I was about to track it down but just as quickly reconsidered; at this point, a week and change into lockdown, who needs to stream the end of the world as we know it? Right outside the door I can catch apocalypse now. Laurence Lerman is a film journalist, former editor of Video Business--Variety's DVD trade publication--and husband to The Insider's own Gwen Cooper. Over the course of his career he has conducted one-on-one interviews with just about every major director working today, including Martin Scorsese, Quentin Tarantino, Clint Eastwood, Kathryn Bigelow, Ridley Scott, Walter Hill, Spike Lee, and Werner Herzog, among numerous others. Once James Cameron specifically requested an interview with Laurence by name, which his wife still likes to brag about.

By Tony Spokojny I met my client on the first floor of the courthouse. She was there to get divorced.  She was a middle-aged woman, now working for the government.  He was a successful Iranian doctor, who had escaped the country with family riches intact during the overthrow of the Shah.  When they met, she was a kid – middle- class suburban, impressionable, naive.  He was an established gynecologist. They went out and he plied her with sumptuous dinners and wonderful gifts. They were married and, for a while, they were able to make their mixed cultures work.  They had three beautiful boys, 10 to 14.  But after 15 years of hearing about his greatness, feeling dominated and unappreciated and belittled, she'd had enough.  She wanted out.  He couldn't understand it, refused to understand it.  How could she reject him, his success, his wealth, his pedigree. She was nothing without him. As we walked into the court's anteroom, he was waiting with his lawyer and the Friend of the Court attorney, an older, hardened woman, gray hair, who had seen every character, heard every argument, endured every excuse during her career.  She'd had had it, too, with the doctor. Exasperated. At a prior meeting in court, we had placed a detailed, carefully negotiated property settlement on the record before a court reporter and the presiding judge. .The Judgment of Divorce, the actual written document, was prepared to reflect every detail of the settlement, but the doctor refused to sign the judgment. He still couldn't accept that the marriage was over. He wasn’t going down without a fight. He rushed to me as we entered and he began to plead with me to convince her to come back to him, as his lawyer helplessly sat by. "She eez a child," he exclaimed with his prominent accent.  "Tell her to kome beck to me. She kennot do dees. She hez no brains.  Dese women, dey hef no brains, non uf dem, Mr. Spokojny. Belief me. I hef exemint ten tousand vomen, and non uf dem hef brains!" "Doctor," I said in an elevated tone "you're looking in the wrong place." I couldn't resist. Was it that obvious? Did he leave that opening for my quip on purpose? he Friend of the Court attorney ran out, slammed her door shut. From what she apparently believed was the safe side of her door, she could be heard laughing. Squealing. About 10 minutes later, she emerged with tears still in her eyes. She clutched my left hand with both of hers, bent over and looked up and the same time as if to bow, totally out of character. She just nodded, almost gratefully, afraid to say anything that would cause the suppressed laughter to explode, once more, from her lungs. She went to retrieve the Judge. I could tell she explained the events of the prior few minutes because they both entered the court smiling. After a brief hearing, the Judgment was signed and the parties were officially divorced.  I approached the opposing attorney to apologize for my reflexive barb. He stopped me. "I would have said exactly the same thing." Tony Spokojny has been practicing law in Michigan for over 40 years.

By Bill Tynan I got a pleasantly surprising email from the First Selectman of my little Connecticut township last week. (Aside: My town is one of a number of Connecticut towns that have, instead of a mayor, a first, second and third selectman. The first selectman is in effect our mayor.) Lately, his email blasts, sent once a week to every town resident, have understandably been mostly in a grim-but-hopeful vein. His most recent message, however, included a welcome lighthearted contribution from a fellow resident. As the selectman declined to identify its author, I can’t give this contributor proper acknowledgment. But given that our area’s homeowners include a number of people in the arts and journalism, I sort of think it’s one of them who did this merry musing: Half of us are going to come out of this quarantine as amazing cooks, the other half with a drinking problem. I used to spin that toilet paper roll like I was on “Wheel of Fortune.” Now I turn it like I'm cracking a safe. I need to practice social distancing with the refrigerator. I still haven't decided where to go for Memorial Day— the living room or the bedroom. Every few days, try your jeans on just to make sure they still fit. Pajamas will have you believe all is well in the kingdom. I don't think anyone expected that when we changed the clocks, we'd go from Standard Time to the Twilight Zone. This morning, I saw my neighbor talking to her cat again. It was obvious she thought her cat understood her. When I got back into the house, I told my dog, and we both laughed. I'm so excited that it’s time again to take out the garbage. What should I wear? Bill Tynan was the longtime head reporter of Time magazine’s Arts section.

By Bruce Shlain I suppose I am like most fans in loving the harbingers of spring. The Masters. Wimbledon. And March Madness, capped off by Baseball’s Opening Day, with the NBA playoffs looming as the weather finally warms. However, after the first COVID-19 case in its league, the NBA put its regular season on hold, as did the NHL. Soon after the NCAA Tournament was canceled, and baseball was also put in suspended animation. Oh, and then they postponed the Olympics. The best idea for continuing at some point with professional baseball or basketball was to quarantine all the players in one place for months and play in front of…nobody. The TV revenue for finishing their seasons and playoffs remains a powerful lure, even without fans in the stands. Taiwan’s Chinese Professional Baseball League is currently playing with cardboard cut-outs of fans in the seats instead of human spectators. How would ESPN, the MLB Network, and NBATV fill the airwaves? There was nothing going on, no slate of games. Nevada granted unemployment benefits to professional gamblers who had little to wager on besides the weather. The sports networks began showing classic all-time games, of course. But after a month or so of watching Bird and Magic and the great Celtics-Lakers rivalry of the ‘80s, and the re-broadcast of baseball’s greatest games, it started getting pretty old. What’s next? Re-runs of “ABC’s Wide World of Sports” from over 50 years ago, so we can catch up on cliff diving in Acapulco or barrel jumping on skates in upstate New York? Spare me. I missed live competition, athletes under pressure to perform, straining to balance aggression with control under the bright lights. It’s why Reality TV has never appealed to me: I already had my Reality TV, and it was sports. I skipped the Denial Phase and went right to the Anger. I resented how insidiously sports had come to rule our world and establish routines that created a false sense of normalcy. Who needs the team owners, gouging municipal money for their new stadiums, charging 10 bucks for a beer and $25 for parking, and hiking your cable bill to boot? All the decent players make other-worldly money; they literally live in a different world than the fans. Who needs them? I tried to put it in perspective – the lack of televised sports is nothing compared to the body counts and the economy going up in smoke. Still, there was a void. Maybe the experiences I’ve had as a fan could sustain me. During the time I lived in New York, I was in the old Yankee Stadium when Reggie Jackson closed out the ’77 World Series with three home runs, and I was there when Mookie Wilson’s grounder rolled through Bill Buckner’s legs to win Game Six of the ’86 Series. Mookie later said the noise made the ground shake on the field and he felt the vibrations going up his legs. I felt it in the stands at Shea as well, coming up through the concrete. During Mookie’s at-bat, the roar of the howling crowd was filled with pleading, begging, imploring, beseeching – just an unforgettable sound. I do not want to come off so jaded, that I’ve been there and done that, but in many ways I have, and if that makes me a cranky old man, I wear that badge proudly. I have had a few brushes with the famous and notorious in my career. Yeah, I played pepper with Kevin Costner on the Field of Dreams in Dubuque, shared a hot tub with Dennis Rodman in Los Angeles, spent an afternoon with Ted Williams around the batting cage in spring training in Winter Haven. And when I did my first baseball book, I became friends with the ultra-generous prince of announcing, Ernie Harwell, the long-time broadcaster of the Detroit Tigers. I had grown up listening to him as “the sound of summer.” I wound up writing a piece on Ernie and the representatives from Harwell’s home state of Georgia made sure it went into the Congressional Record. I had enough sports memories to last for the rest of my life. But the shutdowns of sports that came with the shelter-in-place orders for stopping the spread of COVID-19 still cut me to the core. They kept baseball going during WWII as a welcome distraction from the hard years of rationing and loss of lives, and now a lot of people are staying home and would surely watch ballgames, as a balm for the stir-crazy. It was nonetheless true that sports had always been more than just the Toy Department of life. When Hank Greenberg came back from the war, he hit a grand slam to clinch the ’45 pennant for the Tigers, giving everyone, at least in Detroit, a moment to feel that life was beginning anew. Likewise, after 9/11, when the Mets played the first game in New York City, Mike Piazza hit a game-winning homer for them. Then the Yankees hit a series of improbable late-inning home runs in New York in the 2001 World Series against the Diamondbacks, and New Yorkers wildly celebrated a very palpable rebirth of normal life. And again, after the Boston Marathon bombings, David Ortiz took the mike at Fenway Park and famously told everyone, “This is our fucking city, and nobody’s gonna dictate our freedom.” And then the Red Sox won the World Series. #BostonStrong indeed. For those of us who thought a global pandemic that made everyone’s health and safety interdependent would ease the polarization of the American people, well, guess again. And yet, the applause for health care workers is communal and inspiring, and New York is planning a ticker tape parade for them when this is all over, whenever that may be. The parade will wind down Broadway, in the Canyon of Heroes, where the world champions of sport – Joe Namath, Tom Seaver, Lawrence Taylor, Derek Jeter – took their bows. Nothing could make you feel better in the midst of crisis than to imagine that glorious day. It will be another kind of celebration when big crowds return to the arenas and stadiums. We really have no idea when that will be. The NFL is waiting to see what happens with baseball and basketball, and college football is problematic as well. Will there even be students on a college campus? Whether the fans can congregate in 2020 (not likely), 2021, or even later, nobody really knows, just as nobody knows about the potential second wave of the virus in the fall. At some point it will happen, people packed together in huge numbers. And there will eventually be another golden moment that reminds us all that the games that we have elevated to such significance are more than just entertainment. When the New Orleans Saints played their first home game after Katrina in 2006 on “Monday Night Football,” it only took 90 seconds before the Saints scored a touchdown on a blocked punt, a moment of revival and hope for everyone in the region. That game is ranked as the greatest in the history of The Superdome. Somewhere, sometime, fans will again feel in unison those vibrations coming up through their legs, and those in attendance, and the rest of us watching from home, will feel the most uncommon commonality, and remember it for the rest of time. Bruce Shlain is a big athletic supporter, and a fair-weather fan of the first degree, rooting for the local team in whatever city he finds himself wasting his time -- in his hometown outside Detroit, Boston, Washington, D.C., San Francisco, or New York. His storied crazy-quilt of a career as a poet, investigative journalist, sports columnist, reviewer, celebrity profiler, editor, television news producer, and copywriter has brought him incredibly paltry amounts of money and fame, but he remains a legend to a few close friends, and in what is left of his own mind. His long-awaited memoir, Wha’ Happened?, is chock-full of the Kafkaesque whimsy that has put many of his admirers into a deep sleep for years.

By Amy Lennard Goehner I recently got a wonderful assignment as a contributing writer for a kids’ magazine. My beat? Sports! I couldn’t wait to describe for our young readers the excitement of games where players “blasted a hard and fast sinker into the upper deck” or “slam dunked the ball after snaring the alley-oop.” But verbs like those will have to wait. For now, the verbs I’m stuck with are “postponed” and “cancelled.” For the past six weeks (but who’s counting?), there have been no sounds of cheering emanating from ballparks. Instead, those sounds are heard every evening for two minutes beginning precisely at 7:00 p.m. when Manhattanites open their windows and fill the air with clapping, hollering, whistling, and banging pots — all to honor our front-liners. Our front-liners from healthcare workers to bus drivers to delivery cyclists to sanitation workers, the list goes on. I cheer and cry during those two minutes, and think, “Thank you, fellow New Yorkers, for letting your better angels out to pray.” (Pray loudly, of course. We’re New Yorkers, after all.) And sometimes among all the tragic stories a happy ending appears, as it did yesterday. My husband works in communications for a large city hospital. Yesterday he spoke to a FEMA Emergency Medical Services crew deployed in Newark who had been called to help a woman who had gone into labor three months early. The preemie was born in cardiac arrest — but they were able to resuscitate him and get him to my husband’s hospital. The baby is now stable. Even with stories like that, there is no escaping the ubiquitous sadness of these times, and that is where sports come in, and why I so miss them now. They are an escape the same way the Cary Grant-Katharine Hepburn movie we watched last night was. Sports can transport you miles away, and who wouldn’t like to be someplace far away about now? Actually, living without and longing for sports is a condition I had first-hand experience with before the pandemic. After graduating from college in 1974, I applied to the Peace Corps. When the acceptance letter came and I learned my assigned country was to be South Korea, my reaction was, “Yay, I’m going to the tropics!” “Moron!” was the reaction from my friends, who asked if I had ever watched even one episode of “M*A*S*H”Within days I boned up on my geography — trying to raise it to a 3rd grade level — and learned that Korea was on the same latitude as Newton, Massachusetts, my second hometown, just outside Boston. Only in Boston there was heat. And air conditioning. And indoor plumbing. Nothing tough about my first night in the Peace Corps, though. A group of 35 of us flew to Tokyo where we were put up in a plush hotel with silk bathrobes hanging on bathroom hooks. “I LOVE the Peace Corps!” I remember thinking. Twenty-four hours later we were in Korea. I could live without silk bathrobes for two years, and no heat or indoor plumbing, but no access to Major League Baseball broadcasts? There were U.S. Army bases throughout Korea, so why couldn’t we pick up the military radio station, AFKN, which often broadcast games? If I had watched even one episode of “M*A*S*H,” I’d recall that you couldn’t walk 20 feet in Korea without bumping into a mountain, and mountains and radio signals don’t mix well. Three hundred-plus sportless days later, I turned on my transistor radio for the hundredth time, thinking just maybe, and lo and behold, this time picked up the game on AFKN! Not just any game, it was the seventh game of the World Series! My beloved Red Sox were playing the Cincinnati Reds. The only problem was I was scheduled to judge an English speech competition in a town 45 minutes away. I had my transistor radio glued to my ear as I headed for the bus stop. The bus arrived as did the toughest decision in my life as a sports fan. In Korea, a promise is a promise. Crossing my fingers that I would not lose reception, I boarded the bus. We crossed the mountains. Pure static. I got off the bus just in time to hear Carl Yastrzemski fly out. Game over. Series over. Sox lose. When my Peace Corps stint ended, I knew I wanted to work in sports. I moved to New York City in 1979 (I had extended my stay by working for the U.S. Army and then lived in Barcelona for a year to ease my way back to the States) and found a job that paid the rent, all the while dreaming of becoming a sports reporter. I even wrote a letter to my then-and-forever favorite sportswriter, Red Smith, for inspiration. “Dear Mr. Smith,” I wrote. “Three out of four walls in my office depress me. But that fourth wall is covered in newspaper clips that read, ‘Red Smith, Sports of the Times.’ Thank you, Mr. Smith, for filling in all of those empty spaces.” He wrote back soon after. “Dear Miss Lennard, Thank you. And I think you should do something about those other three walls.” So I did. I networked before that was even a verb and landed an interview at Sports Illustrated, through a friend of a friend of a friend. It was 1984 but the site of the 1988 Summer Olympics had long been announced. It was to be in Seoul, Korea. I concluded my interview with, “Oh, and I speak Korean.” I got the job. My beats at Sports Illustrated were horse racing and boxing. My earliest boxing memories are of my Brooklyn childhood, watching Friday Night Fights with my big brother and Grandpa Abe, who lived upstairs. Years after leaving Brooklyn, Abe had a short-order joint near the 5th St. Gym in Miami, opened by Chris Dundee. I wrote about that famed place upon the death of Chris’s brother, Angelo, the iconic trainer of boxing greats, most famously Muhammad Ali. As I wrote in the HuffPost at the time, in 2012: I rifled through my old boxing tapes, and found an interview I’d done with Dundee during the days he trained Sugar Ray Leonard. Now if I could only find my old tape recorder. It’s probably stored somewhere next to my Betamax. Hey, where was my tape containing the three hours I spent at Mitch “Blood” Green’s mom’s house, just me and Blood? He was a 6’5” heavyweight and I was there to talk to him about his upcoming fight with Mike Tyson. But all he wanted to talk about were issues with his girlfriend. A week later I awoke to a news report on the radio saying that the previous night, Mitch “Blood “Green had been found impersonating a gas station attendant and robbing cars until the cops showed up. Surely that must be some other “Blood,” I thought. And where was my tape with that heavyweight whose name I am still afraid to mention, given that my meeting with him was part of an investigative mission to get the goods on a nogoodnik who was well known in the boxing business? When I arrived at the God-forsaken place the heavyweight had chosen to meet, he was flanked by two equally large men. “Where did you get my number?” Henchman No.1 asked me. I had been told explicitly NOT to reveal my source. So I humana-humanaed, Jackie Gleason style, all the while trying not to picture the New York Post headline: “Day 12: Sports Illustrated Reporter Still Missing.” I survived the Henchmen, in retrospect a lot less scary than this pandemic. And here I am writing sports again. Oh, as Red Sox fans all know, I finally did get to hear those longed-for words, “Game over. Series over. Sox win,” though I had to wait 38 years--until 2004--to hear them. Far more welcome today will be the words that signal we are all-- safe at home. And when we are, we will dedicate games throughout the country and bow our heads in silence to honor the heroes who made us safe. Then the sweetest two words in all of sports will once again be heard throughout the land: “Play Ball!” 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.

By Madeline Barry A new brand of sound has appeared on the Internet since the onslaught of the Coronavirus. This particular genre of music is rather niche, in that it focuses entirely on the current pandemic. Some songs are angry; calling attention to frayed political parties and crooked leaders, while others are lighthearted parodies. Nevertheless, while the tunes differ in tone, they all seek to memorialize the feelings experienced by many during this crisis. DAVID ROVICS Corona Virus Climate Catastrophe Fascist Empire 2020 Blues Massacree Proud anarchist and indie songwriter David Rovics, who advertises his “Songs of Social Significance” on his personal website and YouTube page, takes protest music to a new level with his numerous pandemic-related songs. In the video to his song, “Corona Virus Climate Catastrophe Fascist Empire 2020 Blues Massacre,” released March 2, Rovics, with a stained black hoodie and an acoustic guitar, lambasts capitalism and the response from certain politicians to the virus. He sings, “As if the end times weren't right here/ Just go shopping, do not fear” (De Blasio anyone?), and at one point invokes a dictator, “Reactionaries on the rise / Mussolini reprise.” In the song description on his YouTube page, Rovics explains “Listening only to NPR's relatively sugar-coated version of the news on the way to take my teenage daughter to school recently, she dryly commented, ‘we are so screwed.’ This certainly would often appear to be the case.” He reiterates this dreary outlook in the song’s chorus, “It’s 2020 – the decade's just begun/ With any luck, we just might make it to 2021”. Other Coronavirus related material streaming from Rovics’s YouTube account include the song, “Once this Pandemic is Over” and an hour long “Pandemic Songwriting” video. BENJAMIN GIBBARD Life in Quarantine Benjamin Gibbard, Seattle resident and lead singer of the Grammy-nominated indie band, Death Cab for Cutie, and also of The Postal Service, released his new song “Life in Quarantine” on March 20. The song was released on the website of Seattle newspaper The Stranger as part of its “Message to the City” series, which features videos contributed by well-known Seattle residents ranging from small business owners to local activists. In the song, Gibbard, accompanied by his guitar, sings slowly about desolate Seattle streets. “The sidewalks are empty/ the bars and cafes too/ the streetlights only changing because they ain’t got nothing better to do.” A familiar scene, indeed. About halfway through the song, the lyrics take a darker turn: “People have a way of going crazy/ when they think they’ll be dead in a month”. He calls these the “days of no guarantees” and repeats “No one’s going anywhere soon”. The song is available to stream on Spotify, and according to the online publication, Vulture, Gibbard will be donating proceeds from the song to various Seattle-based organizations. One of these is Aurora Commons, a nonprofit organization that aids the homeless population of the city by offering them a space to eat, commune, and connect. For more Benjamin Gibbard tunes, check out the Death Cab for Cutie Instagram page. Gibbard is very active on the page and frequently streams his music via the app’s Live Stream option. THE ROLLING STONES Living in A Ghost Town The Rolling Stones have released their first original song in eight years. Titled “Living in A Ghost Town,” the song was actually written in 2019, but because of its eerie relevance as well as the cancellation of the band’s upcoming tour, it was released on April 23. The original lyrics were modified to be more sensitive to the times, Jagger explained in an interview with Zane Lowe for Apple Music. The final version of the song was recorded in isolation. In typical Rolling Stones rock and roll fashion, the song laments being unable to go out, have fun, and party. “Living in this ghost town/ Ain't having any fun/ If I want a party/ It's a party of one.” PARODIES CORONALOLA: A CORONAVIRUS KINKS PARODY CoronaLola: A Coronavirus Kinks Parody On the opposite end of the pandemic song spectrum are the variety of Coronavirus parodies that have appeared on YouTube. One such parody is “CoronaLola: A Coronavirus Kinks Parody” written and produced by Hugh Fink, who is known for his work on This Is 40 (2012), and Saturday Night Live (1995-2019). The video was released on his YouTube account, Hugh on First, on April 16. The song, sung to the tune of the Kinks song, “Lola”, as the title suggests, features funny lyrics (Fink brilliantly rhymes vaccine with Hydroxychloroquine) and multiple samplings of familiar news clips. These include guest appearances from a number of Coronavirus skeptics such as Jesse Watters, Sean Hannity, and Rush Limbaugh, as well as snippets from President Trump’s speeches. At one point, the music plays and Trump’s voice declares, “I don’t take responsibility for this at all” and “What do I know? I’m not a doctor.” You’ll recognize a few more familiar faces, including a segment taken from the interview with a proud Florida spring breaker who determinedly said, “I’m not gonna let it stop me from partying.” Even the Charmin bear makes an appearance. Look out for the images of homemade hazmat suits, and parents picking up their kids from school (pre-school closures of course) spraying their children with Lysol. But it is Governor Cuomo who steals the show. “I’m not the world’s most political man/ But I know a good man who should be President/ His name is Cuomo/ Cuo, Cuo, Cuo Cuomo”. ANDY RAINBOW ANDY! - A Randy Rainbow Song Parody Andrew Cuomo is the star of another pandemic parody video by YouTuber Randy Rainbow. “ANDY! A Rainbow Song Parody” is sung to the tune of the Grease song “Sandy”. This time however, instead of watching John Travolta sulk at the drive-in movie theater, we see Randy Rainbow grace the screen in a variety of fun 1950’s themed costumes. He praises Governor Cuomo, “Oh Andy, baby, someday, when COVID’s not a thing/ If we’re on Earth, for what it’s worth, I hope they make you King/ You run my state/ While I gain weight/ With grace and dignity/ Oh please, be my dad/ Oh Andy!” It’s worth mentioning that Andrew isn’t the only Cuomo that Randy appreciates. Chris makes a cameo, too. CHRIS MANN Hello (from the Inside) An Adele Parody CHRIS MANN My Corona Adele fans will enjoy Chris Mann’s song, “Hello (from the Inside) An Adele Parody” streaming from his YouTube page, Chris Mann Music. The video begins with an image of Mann peering out of his window, palms pressed against the glass. He sings, “Hello it’s me/ I’m in California dreaming about going out to eat/ just a burger/ with cheese/ or a shaken margarita, baby back ribs from Chile’s. As the song continues, Mann’s desperation increases. His face gets closer to the window; his nose practically flattened against the glass and his palms claw at the thin layer separating him from the outside world. “Hello to Corona Life/ They’re saying stay home till July/ Jesus Christ, Almighty/ Can you please send me strength/ I’m so sick and tired of my own goddamn face.” Perhaps the best part of this video is Mann’s ability to hit the high notes (watch out, Adele!). In addition to this pandemic parody, Mann has a song and video titled, “My Corona” sung to the tune of— you guessed it— “My Sharona.” ROY ZIMMERMAN The Liar Tweets Tonight “The Liar Tweets Tonight” is the most recent of these satirical videos. Roy Zimmerman, leftist singer and songwriter, released the tune on his YouTube page on April 21. The video stars Zimmerman and The ReZisters, a crew of vocal folks of all ages. It was made in collaboration with the Raging Grannies of Mendocino, whom the Mendocino Voice described as “a group of mature female musical activists who show up and make fun of political hypocrisy wherever they can.” Sung to the tune of “The Lion Sleeps Tonight,” “The Liar Tweets Tonight” features Zimmerman and the aforementioned groups replacing the famous chorus, “Ohi’mbube, Ohi'mbube ” with “Vote him away, vote him away”. The anti-Trump sentiment is strong in this one. “In the White House, the mighty White House, the liar tweets tonight/ In the West Wing, the self-obsessed wing/ the liar tweets tonight.” Fans of the Netflix series “The Tiger King” will appreciate the comparisons of Trump to Joe Exotic, aka Don Exotic Lyin King.” Zimmerman invites anyone who wants to participate in the next virtual sing-in video, to sign up for his mailing list: http://www.royzimmerman.com Madeline Barry is a high school English teacher at Northside Charter High School in North Williamsburg, Brooklyn. She teaches three sections of senior English and two introductory Latin classes.  Figuring out virtual learning, listening to music, and writing for The Insider has kept her semi-sane during the quarantine.

From Operavore, the WQXR Blog Apr 22, 2020 · by Fred Plotkin I began drafting this article of ideas about musical connections to the 50th anniversary of Earth Day months before the coronavirus turned the world upside down. I will mention, just in passing, that while the pandemic is cataclysmic in human and economic terms, one silver lining is that, with most of humanity sheltering in place, the natural world is getting a break from our ruthless depredations. Much of the world’s air is cleaner because plane travel is down 90%. Historically polluted waterways seem cleaner and fish are returning, including the canals of Venice (where the sediment is settling due to minimal boat traffic, making the water look cleaner). Deserted beaches from Costa Rica to Thailand are seeing record high levels of egg-laying by leatherback sea turtles, which have been endangered for at least two decades. It is not all positive though: a disturbing number of discarded face masks and gloves are ending up in some oceans, and we must deal with that immediately. How we see the world informs our values about how we treat it. I have been “green” since I was a small child, influenced by the Native American folk tales that impressed upon me the idea that Earth is our mother and we are her custodians. This made more sense to me than the Bible’s command in Genesis 1:28, “God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.’” I have always seen myself as one of the many creatures that share the planet, rather than one who would want to fill it with humans and dominate other species and exploit natural resources. Over the course of my lifetime, the warning term of choice, and its inherent implications, has changed — ecology, environmentalism, greenhouse effect, global warming, climate change. A new one will surely follow. We are talking about the survival of our planet, as well as all of the species that inhabit it and share it. There is no more important cause. The person I most admired as a child (and still revere) was Rachel Carson(1907–64) whose book The Silent Spring should be required reading for everyone as the guide for developing a sensibility about our world and keeping it safe. Her earliest writing was about oceans and, even though she did not see or smell an ocean until she was a young woman, her work on this topic is equal in quality to the greatest literature. Almost all of my life choices and behaviors (apart from a regrettable carbon footprint due to too much air travel) have been determined by my desire to tread lightly and leave the planet better than I found it. As someone who has had opera in his life since I was in a playpen, I have had its music in my imagination and it became a soundtrack to envision imagery and action in its stories. To understand what I mean, listen to the Forest Murmurs from Wagner’s Siegfried. Close your eyes as you listen and see what imagery floods into your mind’s eye. In fact, no work in all of music is so rich in references to the Earth in all of its beauty, fascination, and raw power as Der Ring des Nibelungen. I wrote about this last year. My concept of a “green” Ring is hardly new. On April 10, 1993, just before the Metropolitan Opera embarked on a presentation of the four-opera cycle, I wrote an op-ed article in The New York Timespositing that the environmentally-minded Al Gore would be my Siegfried. I was an adviser to Arizona Opera in 1995–96 when that company did a Native American–influenced Ring in gorgeous outdoor settings in the northern part of the state. The Ring as a cautionary parable about protecting the environment speaks to audiences today as well. The current Frank Castorf production at Bayreuth is perhaps too literal in its depiction of gasoline (petrol) as the gold that is so coveted, but whose theft from the Rhine river creates chaos in the world. Much more subtle and effective is Francesca Zambello’s vision that sees greed and disrespect for our planet as the inevitable path to our destruction and, perhaps, renewal led by wise and courageous women. In it I am reminded of Carson’s words: “There is something infinitely healing in the repeated refrains of nature — the assurance that dawn comes after night, and spring after winter.” Zambello’s production is shared by the Washington National Opera and the San Francisco Opera, and I would gladly see it again. The biggest caution about what happens when the gold is stolen from the Rhine and laws of nature and society are not followed comes from Erda, the Goddess and Protector of the Earth, who rises from the ground to admonish chief god Wotan: “Weiche, Wotan, Weiche!” (Be very careful, Wotan!) I think of 17-year-old Greta Thunberg, the Swedish climate crisis activist, as the Erda for our times as she sounds the alarm on the disaster we face if all nations (but especially the industrial powers) do not act immediately and courageously. In 2019 she was named Time magazine’s person of the year. A piece of wisdom I have always adhered to came from pioneering naturalist John Muir (1838–1914): “When you tug on a single thing in the Universe, you find that it is attached to everything else.” It’s an elegant way of saying what we know but do not always acknowledge — we are all connected in palpable ways as well as unexpected ones. Which brings me to the superb Swedish opera singer Malena Ernman. I have adored her artistry since I first heard her in 2008 in Paris in Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas. Here you can watch the whole opera but, for now, look at her perform “When I am Laid in Earth,” popularly known as “Dido’s Lament.” You might not know that Ernman’s daughter is none other than Greta Thunberg. When your child has that level of fame and scrutiny (which includes being dissed by the President of the United States), even accomplished parents must adjust. Thunberg has asked her mother not to fly anymore. The consequence of this means that Ernman must seek work closer to home. Well before COVID-19, I was reflecting on how opera companies can reduce their environmental impact and, especially, the carbon footprint that comes with people who fly many thousands of miles per year. Materials used to make scenery and costumes have been made cleaner and healthier than the past. Different kinds of lighting now reduce energy consumption. But the most important component of an opera company, of course, are the people who make the music. The orchestra and chorus typically live locally. The big question, and Malena Ernman is the most conspicuous example, is whether we want to think seriously about using mostly singers who are locally sourced or live within a manageable range. The New York area and the northeastern United States is a good place to start. We have so many fabulous singers nearby who could appear at the Met, other New York companies, and at those in Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington, and New England. There are excellent conductors, coaches and conservatories as well. Other nuclei can form elsewhere. Atlanta, for example, has become the home for many fine singers in recent years. They can work in much of the South. Texas has the resources to do this as well, as do a collection of Midwestern cities including Minneapolis, Des Moines, St. Louis, Chicago, Indianapolis, Cincinnati, Detroit, and Pittsburgh. Most of the Midwestern states have outstanding music schools, especially at the universities of Indiana and Michigan, as well as the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music. Europe, with its excellent rail service, can have a similar arrangement. An artist can live in Paris, Geneva, Verona, Munich, Prague, Vienna, Amsterdam, or Copenhagen and get to most theaters on the continent in a day. The United Kingdom and Ireland can do this as well, with the benefit of having superb trains to bring artists to and from Paris, Brussels, and Amsterdam. I recognize that there are questions, adjustments, and compromises that need to be made. The first is that we Americans must finally step up and fulfill the promises long made by politicians of both parties to improve our infrastructure, starting with high-speed railways. This could be part of a 21st Century New Deal to stimulate economic rebirth from the ashes of our pandemic. These trains could zoom up the Pacific Coast, all over Texas to Oklahoma and New Orleans, and link the Midwestern cities I named above. This will benefit all Americans, not just music lovers. Then there is the obvious fact that audiences want to hear the finest artists from everywhere. The Met and other top American companies regularly feature wonderful singers from Europe, and our great singers are much in demand in Europe. My answer is that we can adapt by learning from the past. A century ago, Mahler, Toscanini, Caruso, and many others would arrive in North America by ship for a season (not necessarily a whole opera season, but what the musician would call his own season). A more recent example was Renata Tebaldi, who would sail from Europe for her American season, complete with clothes and other things she wanted. Tebaldi would do several roles in her Met season rather than just coming to sing Tosca or Aïda. I know that Cecilia Bartoli does not like flying, and I think it is time for her to come by ship for a North American season. This might mean adjusting when companies perform. Singers with children want to stay close to home during the school year, but a European artist can come to the States with their families in early summer when the children are on vacation. Yes, I know, ship travel is not always kind to the environment (though some cruise lines are responsible world citizens). This needs to be completely revisited, as does hygiene post-COVID, but I assure you that will happen if that industry is to survive. What I am suggesting about opera can also be applied to orchestras, chamber music, dance, theater, and all forms of live performing arts. Form local and regional consortia of companies, productions, and performers, and also encourage artists who live far away to consider creating “seasons” every year or so on another continent. This cannot all happen right away, but I am thinking about the long-term health of the industry. We can and must be nimble and flexible, and that goes for audiences too. Stay home for part of each summer and patronize local and nearby festivals. I invite you to make suggestions about how to better protect our planet while also filling it with all forms of inspiring, soul-gratifying beauty. As Rachel Carson said, “those who dwell among the beauties and mysteries of the earth are never alone or weary of life.” FRED PLOTKIN is one of America’s foremost experts on opera and has distinguished himself in many fields as a writer, speaker, consultant and as a compelling teacher. He is an expert on everything Italian, the person other so-called Italy experts turn to for definitive information.  Fred discovered the concept of "The Renaissance Man" as a small child and has devoted himself to pursuing that ideal as the central role of his life. In a “Public Lives” profile inThe New York Timeson August 30, 2002, Plotkin was described as "one of those New York word-of-mouth legends, known by the cognoscenti for his renaissance mastery of two seemingly separate disciplines: music and the food of Italy." In the same publication, on May 11, 2006, it was written that "Fred is a New Yorker, but has the soul of an Italian."