“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,...
“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...
“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...
