
“2001: Redux,” an essay by Lise Haines.
The future will be seen through plates of glass. Did Arthur C. Clarke foresee a day when technology would become a replacement for touch and breath and intimacy across Planet Earth? I never wanted to meet HAL or his ghost. In 2001: A Space Odyssey, which came out in 1968, Dr. David Bowman murders the mainframe computer,...
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“Retail Therapy … Just Isn’t Anymore,” by Eleanor Herman.
Returning to the mall in the age of Covid-19. “I mean, even if nobody sees me, I do have certain standards.” Back to the Tysons mall after four months away! I’ve always loved to look at clothing, shoes, and purses. To try skincare and makeup. I used to slip out of my home office and...

“Everything’s Fine,” an essay by Bea Chang.
31 paragraphs about quarantine and sports. “I figured that by the time I was ‘done,’ some semblance of normalcy would have resumed.” 1. Most of my friends were (are) athletes. After our college careers, they started to do long-distance running, signing up for 10K races and marathons. I did not. I coached basketball; I tended to...

“Waiting,” from the COVID journals of Patricia Smith.
On waiting — and moving forward — in a pandemic. “Experience tells me the world is not always a safe place, and yet — “ I know there should be a holiness in waiting. In learning to be still, to learn the lesson that we are not in control. This is, after all, what advent is all about. We wait and...
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“I don’t know what to do about it,” an essay by Laura Bernstein-Machlay.
On passing time in Detroit. “I’m so sorry, I whisper to the silence all around.” Monet, The artist’s garden at Giverny, 1900. This feature is available, in slightly different format, on Medium, here. Where I live, COVID-19 has landed like a tornado. It staggers and sways through Detroit and beyond, so everyone deemed nonessential stays under cover when...