A Year to Forget

Drop 2020, and live in a year worth remembering

Shrugging Off the End Times

I live in two worlds, and people in one of them feel safe from the coronavirus

God Enraged

The Bible’s many catastrophes see the divine as a source, not a solution

Sepia-toned image of army trainees ill with influenza on twin-sized cots in a large, crowded room. Doctors and nurses sit or stand nearby.

The First Wave

Remembering the Influenza Pandemic of 1918–19

Our Fifth Extreme Isolation

Why we’re thankful that we’re all here to shelter in place

When Parents Work

A bit of advice by way of a Russian master

Can You Hear Me Now?

Especially now, telephones offer an intimacy that texting cannot

House Call

In this time of quarantine, the comfort of escaping into fictional spaces

Taking It to the Street

The pandemic as seen from my front porch

A Century-Old Immune-System Booster?

One widely used TB vaccine might be offering some protection

Realizing My Grandfather’s Sailing Dreams

When Covid hit, we already had the boat, so we only had to throw the lines

Inside the Burns Unit

How Scotland’s national poet brought solace at a time of pain and isolation

Reading Thucydides in a Time of Pandemic

What the Athenian historian’s insights predict about the future of our own democracy

Wave to Me

There’s one thing I won’t relinquish to a pandemic that’s claimed so much

The Plague Year

The more things change, the more they stay the same

On Hugging

What we lose when we can’t get close to the ones we love

The Pandemic Mood

Who created it and how it is maintained

Mad Dogs and Transcendentalists

How the individualism of Emerson and Thoreau differs from today’s libertarianism

Back to School

A return to reading as a private and a public act

Facing Death at the Ends of the Earth

The discovery of the world’s oldest rock offers a hefty dose of perspective

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