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5/20 CHRONOGRAM 1
CLARKSON UNIVERSITY
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may
DOMESTIC PANDEMIC STORIES FROM THE HOME FRONT Page 36
Illustration by Alex Bildsoe
5/20 CHRONOGRAM 3
Stay SAFE in the SAFETY of your home!
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FIND YOUR CENTER AT MARIANDALE From the Center at Mariandale: We’re thinking of you, and hoping for the best for our community, our society, and our center in the future. We want to do everything we can to support the healing and sharing of our people, near and far. Please keep in touch with us. Please visit our website at www.mariandale.org for updates on our programs, center status, and exciting new online programs! We offer writing programs, contemplative prayer, listening sessions with the Dominican sisters, or a group. We welcome you to our discussions and community. Visit www.mariandale.org/onine-community/.
www.mariandale.org 4 CHRONOGRAM 5/20
Find Your Center at Mariandale Ossining, New York mariandale.org (914) 941-4455
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Radcliffe Dunne and his parents’ Eileen Sheppard and Toby Dunne social distance dance with neighbors in Beacon.
FOOD & DRINK
ARTS
12 Farmers’ Market Preview
56 Music
For the 2020 season, COVID-19 changes are afoot.
Photo by Christine Ashburn COMMUNITY PAGES, PAGE 30
may
Reviews of albums by the Gotham Rockets; Pete Seeger; Jonell Mosser; and Paul Bley, Gary Peacock, Paul Motian.
HOME
58 Books
16 (Stay At) Home Office
Jane Kinney Denning reviews Gail Godwin’s novel Old Lovegood Girls; plus a seclusion reading list.
Local designers offer tips on creating a home workspace.
HEALTH & WELLNESS 24 Changes in the Labor Department Pregnant women are experiencing unexpected challenges as the coronavirus hits the heathcare system.
28 The Chaplain’s Job Rabbi Neal Loevinger, director of spiritual care at Vassar Brothers Medical Center, talks ministering under COVID.
COMMUNITY PAGES 30 Beacon: A City Rises Up A city’s residents show resilience in a pandemic.
HOROSCOPES 68 Our Most Needed Resource Lorelai Kude scans the skies for what may come in May.
60 Poetry Poems by Gary Barkman, Charlotte Berwind, Joe Bisicchia, D. E. Cocks, davida, Elizabeth Brulé Farrell, Martha Frankel, Kevin Freeman, Linda McCauley Freeman, Sari Grandstaff, Anthony Hamilton, Tony Howarth, Sharon Israel, Jahnvi Mundra, Christopher Porpora, Brendan Press, Chandramoban.S, Genevieve S., Lauren Salerno, Margarita Serafimova, Ted Taylor. Edited by Phillip X. Levine.
63 Essential Writers A profile of Mark Nowak and the Workers Writers School.
64 Performance Anxiety Local creatives talk about what the future looks like for their arts organizations on the other side of the crisis.
67 Exhibits A gallery of virtual and outdoor exhibits this month.
72 Parting Shot A photo by Carolyn Marks Blackwood. 5/20 CHRONOGRAM 5
on the cover
Chris Buzelli Little COVID Prince Illustrator Chris Buzelli usually starts his day with a few warm-up paintings to get his creative juices flowing before tackling projects for leading publications like the New York Times or Rolling Stone. His surreal oil paintings typically feature gigantic creatures juxtaposed with miniscule figures, often in a world that is evocative of either a children’s fantasy land or a jarring fever dream snapshot. From a Godzilla-sized kitten fighting off an octopus to fantastical portraits of celebrities and politicians, Buzelli’s imagination is a teeming menagerie. Recently, while sitting down to do some routine warmup paintings, Buzelli had one thing on his mind—the coronavirus. Typically, his commissioned work for newspapers and magazines reflects topical subjects in the social or political realm, but it is unusual for Buzelli to channel his own feelings into his work. As he blew
alt covers
through one sketch after another, his paintings began to reflect a stream of consciousness that revealed the effect that the current situation was having on him. “I think I did about maybe eight or nine little tiny paintings of things off the top of my head,” he says. “And then The Little Prince just popped up.” To Buzelli, the classic story of loneliness, friendship, love, and loss was a perfect analogy for our collective experience during this global health crisis. “The Little Prince on a coronavirus planet, in a universe of Coronavirus planets, just standing there all alone. This is exactly how everyone’s feeling right now,” he says. Buzelli and his wife were living in the East Village when the virus gripped New York City. “In the beginning of it, not too many people were taking it seriously, and it was driving me nuts,” Buzelli says. Even now, as the city experiences the full force of COVID-19, it’s hard to
feel safe in such a densely populated area. Luckily, the couple had a safe haven in the Hudson Valley that they could escape to. Although their Saugerties home was not equipped for full-time living or a studio for Buzelli to work in, they were glad to get out of Manhattan. “We’re lucky to have this because it was just impossible to stay safe in New York City. It was like being trapped on one giant cruise ship,” Buzelli says. The coronavirus sketches from that morning have been commissioned by a few other magazines besides Chronogram, as the virus remains at the forefront of everyone’s mind. “You can’t avoid it,” said Buzelli. “It seems odd to comment on something visually without this being a part of it anymore.” Portfolio: Chrisbuzelli.com. —Abby Foster
Chris Buzelli, Working as One; Roy Gumpel, a photo of Jayla Kai; Todd Shapera, a photo of Steve Bates, manager of the Pleasantville Farmers’ Market.
Chronogram
6 CHRONOGRAM 5/20
Chronogram
Chronogram
EDITORIAL EDITORIAL DIRECTOR Brian K. Mahoney bmahoney@chronogram.com CREATIVE DIRECTOR David C. Perry dperry@chronogram.com DIGITAL EDITOR Marie Doyon mdoyon@chronogram.com ARTS EDITOR Peter Aaron music@chronogram.com HEALTH & WELLNESS EDITOR Wendy Kagan health@chronogram.com HOME EDITOR Mary Angeles Armstrong home@chronogram.com POETRY EDITOR Phillip X Levine poetry@chronogram.com CONTRIBUTING EDITOR Anne Pyburn Craig apcraig@chronogram.com CONTRIBUTING EDITOR Phillip Pantuso ppantuso@chronogram.com
contributors Abbe Aronson, Christine Ashburn, Alex Bildsoe, Marge Boyle, Jason Broome, Nicole Clanahan, Ross Corsair, Jennifer Cottingham, Brian PJ Cronin, Marilyn D., Heather Hope Dell’Amore, Jane Kinney Denning, Michael Eck, Judith Emilie, Michael Frank, Martha Frankel, Molly Gamache, Rob Gaston, Roy Gumpel, Jennifer Gutman, Hillary Harvey, Maya Horowitz, Inga Hyatt, Kristopher Jansma, Elmore Kensing, Alon Koppel, Lorelai Kude, Amitava Kumar, Norm Magnusson, Jana Martin, Pete Mauney, Jennifer May, Haviland S Nichols, Will Nixon, Lisa Phillips, Fionn Reilly, Seth Rogovoy, Laure Rose, Seth David Rubin, Jeremy Schwartz, Todd Shapera, Zachary Skinner, Anna Sirota, Jesse J. Smith, Violet Snow, Sparrow, Adrienne Truscott, Sarah Venditti, Franco Vogt, Joe White
NATURE IS RESILIENT. YOU ARE, TOO. BE STRONG & STAY WELL. FROM THE MOHONK FAMILY
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Chronogram is a regional magazine dedicated to stimulating and supporting the creative and cultural life of the Hudson Valley. All contents © Chronogram Media 2020. 5/20 CHRONOGRAM 7
esteemed reader by Jason Stern
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Be thirsty for the ultimate water, and then be ready for what will come pouring from the spring. —Jellaludin Rumi, Mathnawi, translated by Coleman Barks Esteemed Reader of Our Magazine: As of today, we are approaching the fulfillment of the word “quarantine” which comes most recently from the Italian, quaranta giorni, “space of forty days”, referring to “the period a ship suspected of carrying disease is kept in isolation” (1660s). Thanks to the invaluable Online Etymology Dictionary, we know further that “earlier, in English, the word meant ‘period of 40 days in which a widow has the right to remain in her dead husband’s house’ (1520s), and, as quarentyne (15c.), ‘desert in which Christ fasted for 40 days.’” I often look to etymology as a kind of oracle, a compass for guidance on figurative terrain. In this instance, I am finding all three definitions instructive, each in its way. Each has an inner meaning that all of us can, in the midst of our shared ordeal, fathom, or at least give well-tempered consideration. The first: Being kept in isolation, we are granted an opportunity for purification. For me this means holding a tender, inquisitive view of my attachments and their objects and being willing to let things go. We can ask: In the realms of people, material objects, activities, thoughts, and habits, what is so infected that it simply needs to be let go? What can be cleansed of the contaminating agent of identification and be revived in a fresh form? What is essentially good and necessary and should receive the attention that has been withdrawn from the useless? This is not so much an analytical process as much as a sensitive weighing in the realm of being, like the bearer of the scales, blind Lady Justice. In the second definition, this is a time to prepare to depart from the familiarity of a comfortable or at least familiar mode of life in society. Everything has changed, and at the end of the 40 days, we all must leave our dead husband’s house. We have a reprieve to get acclimated to what is to be, to prepare for the unknown, to begin again. The third is perhaps the most elusive and the most important. Jesus’ 40 days in the desert is described as a period of intense purification, fasting, and temptation. In the myth, he emerges a prophet filled with power and clarity of intention, knowing and prepared to fulfill his mission. We can use this time not only to suffer the unavoidable difficulties mechanically but also intentionally, “fasting” to purify and emerge with renewed force and clarity. With regard to fasting, it is a question of the balance between omission and commission. The measure is the question, what is the right amount? For instance, how much news and opinion do I need to ingest to stay informed? When have I had enough screen time, or imbibed enough tequila, or had enough exercise? Can I fast from anxiety, or resentment, or boredom and frustration? What can I put away from myself to interrupt the momentum of habit and pattern, and allow something new and creative to alight within my consciousness? Rumi concludes: Don’t grieve for what doesn’t come. Some things that don’t happen keep disasters from happening. —Jason Stern
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editor’s note
by Brian K. Mahoney
Quaranta
B
etween 1348 and 1359, the bubonic plague killed 30 percent of the population of Europe. By the end of the 14th century, the Black Death is estimated to have caused the deaths of 50 million people in Europe, Asia, and Africa. The practice of quarantine was developed as a way for coastal cities to protect themselves against the Black Death. One can imagine the city fathers of old Venice holed up in a castle and wringing their hands and saying in unison, “Something must be done!” and not having a clue as to just what that might be. (Not that I think less of them for it. They were doing the best they could. I often feel the same way when trying to make simple repairs around the house.) In a medieval mirror of our times, quack cures were all the rage during the Black Death. Bubonic plague treatment fails included bloodletting, flagellation, rubbing onions on the buboes, drinking vinegar, injecting disinfectant, doses of ultraviolet light, and hydroxychloroquine. Actually, I’m not sure about the last three, but I believe they were suggested by a very, very smart, perhaps brilliant man. (What contemporary historian Jean Froissart wrote about doctors in the Middle Ages might just as easily apply to the current occupant of the White House, who has taken to offering medical advice of late: “Doctors need three qualifications: to be able to lie and not get caught, to pretend to be honest, and to cause death without guilt.” But, back to the Venetian city fathers—if all else fails, blame foreigners. Someone must have said, “Look fellas, it’s clear that this plague thing was brought here by outsiders who eat bats and pangolins and stuff you buy at a wet market. Anybody know what a wet market even is? Giuseppe? Giancarlo? Dennis? Somebody make a note to find out. Last thing we need in Venice is a wet market. It’s wet enough as it is. Irregardless. What’s that Guiseppe? Irregardless is not a word? Who says? Webster? Webster Who? Never heard of him. Let’s just move on with fewer distracting etymological discursions. And just to be clear Guiseppe, irregardless is not wrong, it’s just a nonstandard variant. It might be clunky and deeply upsetting to
all who care about “language,” but don’t tell me it’s wrong. Those people can go stuff it in their pangolin and eat it. Anyway. Here’s my big idea: We’ll keep the ships with the anteater noshers at anchor for 40 days before we let them land. No one gets on, and no one gets off. That way, by the time they get off the boat they’ll have exhausted their stores of non-kosher animals and we’ll look like heroes for really doing something about this whole plague problem. Can I get an Amen fellas?” The word quarantine comes from the Italian quaranta, meaning 40. But why 40 days? Why not 45, or 35? Why not a month or a fortnight for this medieval anti-contagion policy? My research indicates it has to do with connecting to a higher power, like running your e-commerce fulfillment through Amazon. If you were a 14th-century city father in charge of creating guidelines for public health, you didn’t have a wealth of knowledge to draw on. Sure, there were the texts of the Greek physicians Galen and Hippocrates. Maybe you had access to some Islamic medical insight by way of the writings of Avicenna and Averroes. But you were pretty much making it up as you went along. And the best way to do that, and invest yourself with supernatural authority, was to root your logic in the Bible, the Wikipedia of premodern life. All the answers you would need could be found there. The number 40 is imbued with massive symbolic and religious significance in the Judeo-Christian tradition, and pops up time and again in the Bible. That said, Howard Clarke, in The Gospel of Matthew and its Readers: A Historical Introduction to the First Gospel, notes that “At the time, 40 was less a specific number and more a general expression for any large figure.” If that’s the case, why bother with overheated symbolism at all? Just sayin’. During the Noachian deluge, rain fell for 40 days and 40 nights. Moses and Elijah both fasted for 40 days and nights during their desert campaigns. (These were separate instances, not a coordinated hunger strike.) The Israelites wandered 40 years in the wilderness before reaching the Promised Land. (As a non-Jew, I have many, many questions about this: Were people not super pissed with Moses after about four hours of wandering? Speaking only for myself, I know how cranky I get when someone
I’m traveling with doesn’t know where they’re going. How did they get deliveries of toilet paper if they didn’t have a fixed address? Did they just write c/o General Delivery, the Judean Desert? Was there no cell service? I hate it when I’m out in some backwoods place—I’m looking at you, Delaware County—and my Waze app won’t work.) The New Testament also leans heavily on the numerical significance of 40 as well. Before his temptation, Jesus fasted for 40 days and 40 nights in the desert. (This leads one to believe that perhaps the J Man was having some kind of malnourishment-related hallucination rather than an actual parley with Lucifer. Just think of poor Tom Hanks in Cast Away. Jesus was probably wrestling a cactus by the end of it, thinking he was giving Satan a thrashing.) The period between Jesus’s resurrection and his ascension into heaven was also 40 days. (I would be remiss if I didn’t just mention the word “zombie” here.) Back, again, to the Venetian city fathers. With the above religious boxes checked off, a 40-day period of containment was enacted as the norm. Now, here’s the fun part: As luck would have it, the bubonic plague had a 37day period from infection to death. European quarantines were highly successful! All the infected would be dead by the end of the quarantine. Sometimes just trying random shit works. Anybody wanna shoot some Lysol with me?
Between 1348 and 1359, the bubonic plague killed 30 percent of the population of Europe. By the end of the 14th century, the Black Death is estimated to have caused the deaths of 50 million people in Europe, Asia, and Africa. 5/20 CHRONOGRAM 11
12 FOOD & DRINK CHRONOGRAM 5/20
food & drink
FRESH, LOCAL, & SOCIALLY DISTANT 2020 Farmers’ Markets Preview By Nadine Cafaro Photos by Todd Shapera
W
ith area outdoor farmers’ markets set to open for the season this month, area residents are excited to see their favorite farmers and purveyors in person and connect directly to local food sources. But “in person” has taken on a different meaning in 2020 as the worlds adapts to COVID-19. The pandemic has forced Hudson Valley markets to adopt new guidelines like creating distance between stands, increasing sanitary measures, and encouraging pre-orders. Some markets, like the one in Beacon, have gone so far as to make their market preorder only. Multiple locations in the Hudson Valley have introduced new rules for people to follow. The Goshen Farmers’ Market, run by the Goshen Chamber of Commerce, would typically push for guests to stay awhile during their season, but now they have to do the opposite. “We are still going ahead with our market, but we won’t be able to have live music, children’s activities, or anything that would encourage anyone to mill around. We’ve had to make it into an environment where you come in, grab, and go,” said Barbara Martinez, executive director of the Goshen Chamber of Commerce. Their market will open on May 22, but like most markets across the Hudson Valley, it will create distance between stands and the guests,
provide signs to encourage social distancing, practice meticulous sanitary measures, offer more pre-packaged meals rather than cooking on site, and encouraging a grab-and-go type of experience. The Kingston Farmers’ Market, normally held on Wall Street in front of the county courthouse, has moved off the street and into the county courthouse parking lot to encourage social distancing. Like markets across the region, Kingston is following strict health guidelines, and shoppers will be required to wear masks. Further, they are offering sign-ups for a 20-minute shopping trip to decrease the density of guests at one time. Kingston’s first outdoor market is on May 9. Kingston also has a monthly indoor winter market which is held in the Old Dutch Church. Market Manager Laura Wilson Crimmins says the indoor market didn’t get its usual turnout. “Our usual winter market sees about 400 people in traffic per day, and lately we’ve been seeing about 250 people coming through each day,” Crimmins says. However, she mentions that mostly everyone is registering in advance for 20-minute slots and vendors are seeing the same or even greater sales since people fear the human density of grocery stores. “We hope this trend will continue and that the boost farmers are able to get during
the spring will help them get through the year,” Crimmins says. There is a fear for farmers financial wellbeing now that COVID-19 is drastically changing some rules for farmers’ markets. Andrea Bartolomeo, Rhinebeck Farmers’ Market manager says that farmers are looking for creative ways to stay afloat instead; like selling directly to consumers and offering farm pickups. “Farmers are trying to be as flexible and accommodating as possible, especially as many of their wholesale accounts are closed or limited now with restaurants not being open,” Bartolomeo says. Bartolomeo says as much as they help the farmers, the farmers help them. “We work cohesively with them and their traffic helps us and our traffic helps them too.” Though COVID-19 has kept most of us staying at home, there is still a need to grocery shop, and for many, the local market is perfect spot for finding fresh, local provisions. Even if starting turnouts for these farmers’ markets aren’t as large as usual, Kingston’s Crimmins predicts that in the long run they’ll be okay. “Sometime in May, or possibly June, the restrictions are going to ease up and there will be a desire for people to come together locally and support local businesses. This might peter out when we start going back to more normal life,” she says. 5/20 CHRONOGRAM FOOD & DRINK 13
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farmers’ markets
On April 4, Todd Shapera went out to document a morning at the Pleasantville Farmers Market, one of the first outdoor markets to open for the season in the Hudson Valley. Vendors and customers followed rigorous public health protocols that are monitored by vigilant market managers. The photos tell the story of our new normal, a glimpse of how we may be interacting with each other in public places for the indefinite future. But being outside with access to farm-fresh food hit the spot for marketgoers. “For many customers, it clearly felt safer to shop in the open air than the narrow aisles inside a grocery store,” says Shapera. “And it felt great to support farmers who are struggling to sell crops with most restaurants closed.” Todd Shapera is an award-winning Hudson Valley wedding and event photographer based in Sleepy Hollow. Portfolio: Toddshapera.com. 5/20 CHRONOGRAM FOOD & DRINK 15
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(Stay at) Home Office DESIGNERS ON HOW TO CREATE A WORKSPACE IN LOCKDOWN By Marie Doyon
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ccording to a March 24 article in the Guardian, 1.7 billion people, or roughly 20 percent of the global population, are under COVID-related lockdown. While mandated business closures and stay-at-home orders have put many—especially service industry employees—out of work, millions of office workers have traded their cubicles and daily commutes for an unexpected new reality: working from home. While many of us spent the first several weeks of lockdown working from the couch in our pajamas, we are now collectively settling into the fact that this may be our new reality for the indefinite future. With this reckoning comes a reassessment of our work setup. “The word ‘office’ is so open-ended right now,” says Jessica Williams, founder of Hendley & Co., a Newburgh-based interior design firm and home goods retailer. “It’s not a physical space, it’s wherever your computer or phone is.” With tools and technology from WiFi to Zoom to Slack, modern companies are better equipped than ever before to make this impromptu transition to remote workspaces
Still, the lack of a formal office environment combined with the distractions of domestic life—spouse, kids, laundry—can make it harder for people to shift into a productive work mode. (Not to mention the ever-stressful news cycle.) We talked with several Hudson Valley designers and architects, all of whom are currently working from home, to get some insight into how they are thinking about home offices. Striving for Efficiency “A home office is a departure from the rest of rooms in your house,” Williams says. “It’s less about being 100 percent comfortable and cozy. It needs to feel uplifting, but the goal is productivity.” With this in mind, when Hendley & Co. designs a home office for a client, the first question they ask is: What is the nature of the work you’re doing? Although you are not embarking on a major construction or redesign project, you can start by asking yourself the same. Do you have frequent video conferences? Do you need a silent space for reading or writing? Do you need ample shelves or surface area to lay out physical materials? 5/20 CHRONOGRAM HOME & GARDEN 17
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The home office of Kate Cummings of Freestyle Restyle.
Or perhaps it’s some combination of the above. If you’re living with one or more working adults, these are questions everyone should answer in order to find a communal solution. “If you are going to be working all day, five days a week, the best-case scenario is if you can find a dedicated space for yourself,” says Maryline Damour, cofounder of design firm Damour Drake. Kate Cummings of Freestyle Restyle adds, “If you can keep your desk set up and not have to break it down every day, it’s a lot easier to get started and jump in in the morning.” Aside from the luxury of privacy, the designers all agreed on one thing: exposure to natural light is a major plus. “If you have the opportunity to choose what space will be your home office, natural light lets you focus more and keep track of the day,” Williams says. If your house or apartment has a spare bedroom, this is the most obvious candidate for a home office conversion or a shared quiet space if there are several of you. No guest room? Fret not, there are still lots of options. “All rules are out the window right now in terms of spaces being defined by their traditional functions,” says Cummings. James Crisp, founder of Crisp Architects, is sheltering in place with his wife, their three college-aged children, and two of their friends in a four-bedroom home in Dutchess County. “It’s all about finding that comfortable spot where you personally can work,” Crisp says. To create his own private workspace, he converted the home gym in the garage into an office. “I
had an old drafting board in there already, so I brought home an office chair and a couple of monitors. In the morning, I just walk out with my laptop and start the day,” he says. When it’s warm enough, Crisp heads out to the porch to work for some fresh air and sunshine. “With my phone, earbuds, and a laptop, the world is at my fingertips,” he says. Several designers pointed to formal dining rooms as potential office spaces. Cummings, who is sheltering in place with two others, has converted her dining table into the “communal library,” a dedicated quiet coworking space, where you can expect to be “shhh’d!” for talking. Other potential areas for work stations include fourseason porches, breakfast nooks, ample secondfloor landings, extra-wide hallways, or basements. Aside from revisioning the function of our spaces, we can be creative about repurposing furniture. In the time of coronavirus, anything flies. As Cummings suggests, “shop your house.” This is the moment when bar carts become standing desks, ottomans become office chairs, and dining rooms become board rooms. “We have labels on everything. Now is the time to shake it up and rethink what these objects are,” Williams says. “Maybe that means taking the console table from the foyer and setting it up behind the couch in the living room with stools. Or if you have two dining tables—a breakfast nook and formal dining room—you might designate one a multiperson workstation, bring all your power packs in there, and get everyone set up.”
An Integrated Workplace Wherever your setup ends up being, Williams recommends adding both personal and professional touches to round out your space and boost your mental health and productivity. “One way to take the temporary part of this away is to really set it up like your office. Have your desktop materials—books, magazines, pens, Post-its,” she says. “And even though we want to be productive, it’s also about keeping our stress levels low. What are those little elements that ease you or calm you? Music, lighting a candle, or for me, having my dog in the room and a bowl of snacks nearby. Little elements to make you feel happy and productive.” The flip-side: if you’ve set up shop in a communal space such as a living room or at the dining table, you need to break down your station and return the space to its normal function at the end of the work day. Damour points out that dining rooms do well in this regard. “They often have bookshelves, sideboards, hutches—closed storage. You can have the whole office still there, just behind closed doors,” she says. Williams adds, “We’re used to leaving work at the office, and however you left it, you revisit it the next morning. But because the office is constantly there, we have to get into some new rituals.” If you can’t set up a single space that fills all the functions you need out of a home office, perhaps you can cobble together a multi-station situation, either just for yourself or in rotation with the other members of your household. “If you have the luxury to create a couple different areas in 5/20 CHRONOGRAM HOME & GARDEN 19
Home office designed by Crisp Architects. Photo by Rob Karosis.
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Home office designed by Maryline Damour of Damour Drake.
the house, I would, because change is good,” says Williams. “It all depends on what your agenda is for the day.” And if you are desperate to find that quiet corner just for you, Damour suggests taking a better look at your closets. “If you have a standard three-foot-wide closet but it’s deeper than average, say three or four feet, you can put a desk in there with filing cabinets underneath and floating shelves,” she says. For this relatively simple DIY project, she recommends going to the hardware store and buying a two-inch slab of smooth wood, such as beech, to use for both the shelves and desk. (Fun fact: This is not the only thing you can do with a deep closet. In the 2019 Kingston Design Showhouse, which Damour created and organizes, she turned a closet into a single-person sauna for the meditation/yoga room she designed.) The benefit of a closet office? “At the end of the day, you can close the door and never see it,” Damour says. “It’s one thing to work from home. It’s another thing when you’re done to see the instruments of work. If you don’t give yourself a visual break, a lot of times you feel guilty because you could keep working.” Healthy Habits Aside from establishing a physical workstation, Damour’s point calls into focus the other major challenge of working from home: establishing 22 HOME & GARDEN CHRONOGRAM 5/20
healthy boundaries, attitudes, and routines around both starting and stopping work. As far as activating goes, Williams shares a fun, simple tip from her past experience working from home: “Obviously getting dressed is important, but there was really something about putting my shoes on that took me from house mode to ‘I’m on a mission.’” But for many, starting is not the issue, stopping is. Damour recalls that when she first began working from home over a decade ago, she had a steep learning curve. “Because people knew I was at home, they would call me all the time rather than sending me an email or waiting until the next day,” she says. “Very quickly I was working 15 to 16 hours a day because I would answer the phone when it rang. So I had to give myself a cut off and let everyone know my schedule.” For Simone Eisold of Reset Your Home, establishing routines can be a helpful way to simulate your office experience and maintain a healthy home/work balance. Ask yourself what things you normally do at the start of the workday—say hello to your boss? Write a to-do list? Make a coffee? Find a way to recreate these daily rituals, says Eisold, who is offering pro bono home office design consults by video call. She also suggests bookending the workday with a walk, a faux commute, if you will, to clearly demarcate the start and stop of working hours. “As hard as it is to separate, you really need
to train your brain,” Eisold says. “Maybe at the end of the day you sign off, take a walk around the block, then come home and change into your casual clothes. There is closure.” Perhaps the lessons, discipline, and boundaries learned in this time will stay with us postpandemic. “The positive aspect of all of this is it’s making you reflect on how you’re treating yourself day-to-day,” Williams says. “It’s a good mental reset.” Fast Forward Between 2005 and 2017, the number of people working remotely in the US increased by 159 percent, and this upward trend shows no sign of stopping. Last year, freelancer platform Upwork published their third annual Future of Work Report, which projected that by 2028, 73 percent of all teams would have remote workers. With these global lockdown orders forcing millions to work from home, we’ve proven the viability of a remote workforce perhaps far before we were ready culturally to make the shift. When the COVID-19 curve finally enters its denouement and companies get ready to return to “normal,” employers, CEOs, and CFOs will almost certainly be reassessing the overhead costs associated with office space through a new lens. Working from home may just turn out to be the new normal.
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health & wellness
P
regnancy can be an anxious time even in the best of circumstances, given the uncertainties of labor, birth looming, and concerns about the baby’s health. Tie in a global pandemic to initial anxiety and expectant mothers can feel a whole new level of angst, compounded by the essence of loneliness that seems to be a sign of the times. It’s feelings like these that Gabrielle Geilman finds herself navigating these days in her third trimester of pregnancy. New safety measures at hospitals and clinics, including strict limits to the number of people who can attend a birth, have made pregnancy more isolating for Geilman, a student from Ellenville who’s planning to deliver her baby at Catskill Regional Medical Center. “I’m disappointed that I’m only able to have one person in the room,” she says. “I understand that it’s for safety reasons, but delivering a baby can be a stressful time, and it would be nice to have my whole support system there.” To top it off, due to health precautions, she has had to go solo to her last round of prenatal check-ups. “My partner is unable to come to my ultrasounds with me or any of my appointments,” she says. Despite understanding, Geilman touches upon the sadness she gets from not being able to share these moments with her partner or family. “They won’t allow anyone in the room with me, so I have to experience these special moments alone.” Coronavirus Adjustments Even though the spread of COVID-19 has virtually stopped the world around us, pregnancies continue their inevitable forward march. In the United States alone, an average of 432 babies are born every hour, according to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC). Now, mothers-to-be must juggle concerns about contagion and new hospital restrictions alongside all the normal end-of-term preoccupations like due date and labor and delivery anxieties in this bizarre and unprecedented historic moment. These pandemic times are prompting a lot of expectant parents to reassess their birth plan, whether they’re welcoming their new baby at a hospital, a birthing center, or even at home. While plans that were definite for months change and global anxiety rises, mothers-to-be also face concern about contracting the virus. Although the CDC has said that pregnancy does not appear to increase the risk of infection in women, mothers-to-be are at a higher risk for severe illness if infected. The risk of passing the infection to a fetus also seems to be very low with the data they have. The CDC encourages mothers-to-be to practice the same preventive measures as the general public, like avoiding gatherings with people, washing their hands often, and disinfecting regularly touched surfaces frequently. However, protective measures don’t always ease anxiety.
On their end, hospitals are developing precautionary measures to protect both the mothers-to-be and the newborns. Sarah Colomello, manager of public and community affairs of Nuvance Health, speaks on behalf of Vassar Brothers Medical Center, Northern Dutchess Hospital, Putnam Hospital Center, and Sharon Hospital about deliveries during this time. “All of us at Nuvance Health are making decisions with the safety of our mothers and babies as our first and main priority. We are well-prepared to care for them and their baby,” Colomello says. “In general, the cleaning substances our birth centers and maternity departments currently use with bactericidal and viricidal properties are adequate for COVID-19. However, we have taken added precautions, such as more frequent sterilization of patient and staff areas, equipment, and hightouch surfaces.” Colomello also mentions that many of new regulations are in place for the mother’s benefit. For example, maternity patients are allowed one support person only if that person drops off the mother-to-be and waits in their vehicle until further notice. Once the patient is in active labor, the support person will be screened for COVID-19 risk factors and if they pass, they’re allowed in. From there, the support person must stay with the patient during labor and after. If they exhibit symptoms and don’t pass a screening, they may have to leave the hospital. With such cases, another support person could be screened and allowed in. Likewise, those who wish to visit the mother at the hospital will have to wait because of new restrictions. To protect the mother and newborn, no visitors are allowed to enter the room besides the partner. At discharge, mothers and their partners now have to wear face masks, the fashion statement of our pandemic times. Mid-Pregnancy Pivot? Still, with hospitals regarded as COVID-19 hot spots, home birth has taken on new appeal for pregnant women previously planning hospital births. Susanrachel Condon, licensed midwife and OB-GYN nurse practitioner of the private practice River and Mountain Midwives, reports that her team saw a spike in inquiries after the state limited the number of people allowed in the delivery room. But she doesn’t advise changing your birth plan mid-course. “Home birth is a paradigm; it’s not just about where your baby comes out of your body,” Condon says. “People who have been anticipating a hospital birth for many months don’t have the same level of education about home birth and they often don’t have a relationship with a care provider.” For parents planning hospital births, Condon recommends researching their institution to understand the regulations so they are not surprised or taken aback by anything. Also, she
CHANGES IN THE LABOR DEPARTMENT PREGNANT WOMEN EXPERIENCE NEW AND UNEXPECTED CHALLENGES IN OUR PANDEMIC TIMES. By Nadine Cafaro
“Home birth brought me such peace. It’s hard to put into words how much peace there was, but it was just nice to be at home and to know that we didn’t have to leave the house when I went into labor.” —Rebecca Azzi 5/20 CHRONOGRAM HEALTH & WELLNESS 25
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advises mothers-to-be to stay home as long as possible—common advice for laboring women that feels even more appropriate these days. Since the start of the pandemic, Condon has already performed several at-home deliveries and explains that the meticulous process includes many precautionary measures. Midwives have all of their equipment in one plastic box that’s easily cleaned; they wash their hands and change their clothes upon arrival and when they leave; and there is individual sanitization of any item that touches a person before it makes its way back into the box. Mother-to-be Jeanne Brooks, a business consultant from Woodstock, is 36 weeks into her pregnancy and has been planning and preparing for a home birth since the beginning of her pregnancy. With the current state of the pandemic and the increased risk associated with going to the hospital, she feels relieved about her decision. However, as with every home birth, she knows there is always a chance of ending up at a hospital anyway. “One of the things that has been scaring me the most about potentially going to the hospital is that you can only have one person in the room with you, so I would either have to have my partner or my midwife in the room,” says Brooks. Because her partner is immunocompromised, a hospital trip has extra risks for her family. “I don’t know that I feel it would be safe for [my partner] to be in the hospital with me.” Some mothers have already had to deliver at home during quarantine. Rebecca Azzi went into labor and delivered her new son on April 13, describing the moments leading up to it as anxiety-inducing. Azzi—a full-time mom and part-time Mary Kay beauty consultant—delivered her first two children at St. Anthony’s Hospital in Warwick and was planning no different for her third child. “The first eight months of my pregnancy, we were very calm and peaceful since this is our third baby,” she says. “We kind of felt like we had an idea of what we were in for, and that there were no complications.” Azzi and her partner had thought about switching to home birth for their third child and discussed a home birth with River and Mountain midwife Susan Rannestad at the beginning of the pregnancy. However, to stick with what they knew, they ultimately decided on a hospital birth. When COVID-19 came spiraling into New York, Azzi was a bit shook up. “Things quickly escalated, and as places started closing and schools started shutting down, my anxiety went through the roof,” she says. “It was really scary to think about bringing a baby into this new world that we had just been thrown into.” At the same time, hospital regulations shifted to only one support person in the delivery room, which led Azzi to have another chat with Rannestad—a conversation that led her to renting a birth tub and delivering in her home. “She was so reassuring and calming, and since we had already met months before and she was familiar with us and our case, she was willing to take us on,” says Azzi. “The home birth brought me such peace. It’s hard to put into words how much peace there was, but it was just nice to be at home and to know that we didn’t have to leave the house when I went into labor.” Azzi treasures the experience because of how much it reduced and continues to reduce her anxiety. Home births allow for postpartum care, so she still doesn’t leave the house for pediatric visits. “The biggest thing for me was how we could protect ourselves while trying to bring the new baby into this,” she says. “I had a lot of anxiety about someone in my family or support team getting sick.” Pushing Through Azzi’s birth plan pivot, while ultimately successful for her and her family, is not recommended by medical professionals. The best thing pregnant women can do is to relax, stick to their plan of delivery, and labor at home for as long as possible. Dr. Kimberly Henderson, OB-GYN with Health Quest Medical Practice, put it simply: “Birth can be very unpredictable in the best of times, and I believe that adding a completely new paradigm [changing your delivery location] to a birth plan late in pregnancy can add even more uncertainty.” Following birth, extra precautions should also be taken to keep the mother and baby safe from infection. “Although friends and family will be anxious to meet a new baby, parents should limit the baby’s exposure to as few people as possible for as long as there are federal and state guidelines in place for social distancing,” Colomello says. Though new precautions and measures create complications for those expecting, they’re in place to provide the happiest outcome of all: both a healthy newborn and mother.
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Q&A health & wellness
The Chaplain’s Job A Conversation with Rabbi Neal Loevinger
I
n the world of coronavirus, the halls at Vassar Brothers Medical Center in Poughkeepsie are quieter than normal. While still accepting non-COVID patients, fewer guests and visitors roam the halls and fill the waiting rooms of the hospital. The day-to-day care of the sick and injured continues as normal, however, as hospital staff care for their patients. Rabbi Neal Loevinger, director of spiritual care at Vassar Brothers Medical Center, and his fellow chaplains also are continuing their work during the pandemic, ministering to patients, patients’ families, and hospital staff. I spoke to Rabbi Loevinger in late April about how he and his fellow chaplains are dealing with the changes to their ministry wrought by COVID-19. —Erica Ruggiero As a hospital chaplain, what kind of services and practices did you provide before the pandemic? How does it differ to how things are now? Rabbi Neal Loevinger: We have an interfaith team of chaplains, Jewish, Christian, and nonChristian who are all trained to meet people where they are in their spiritual need. I happen to be Jewish. I might go in and talk to a Jewish patient who requested a rabbi, but it’s just as likely that I would go in to meet a Catholic family or a Muslim family. In a moment of crisis, what people want to know is: Is your heart big enough to hold their pain and suffering and just sit with them? We have a Catholic chaplain, Father Rick [De La Pena], who delivers the sacraments to Catholic patients. When he’s not here, I or one of the other chaplains might pray with his patients. We talk to a lot of people who have no
28 HEALTH & WELLNESS CHRONOGRAM 5/20
spiritual or religious beliefs but are happy to have someone address their personhood. The chaplain might be somebody who has time to sit down and spend 20 or 30 minutes with someone talking to them about their family concerns, talking with them about what’s on their heart that’s not related to their illness. We often end up talking with people about concerns they have for their family or hopes they have for our country or the world or grieving over a lost pet or who knows what it is.
What are you most concerned about?
Has that remained the same during the pandemic?
What has been the most difficult for you during this time at the hospital?
NL: It’s all the same. And it’s all different. We are doing far fewer in-person visits—there’s a very strict visitation policy. Now we are mostly calling families, especially families of those who may be intubated or unconscious. Sometimes we’re able to pray with the family or counsel them over the phone. Sometimes we listen. Sometimes we pass along requests for particular kinds of information.
NL: I think what’s been most difficult for chaplains is that we are so accustomed to being present with people in a holistic way. We see the tears on their face. We read their body language, we look in people’s eyes, we touch a hand or the back of someone’s arm during prayer. And to try to bring that intensity of presence to an electronic connection is challenging. That’s been an adjustment and there’s been so many times with staff, you just want to put your arm around somebody. But with social and physical distancing, we have to be careful. We have to really think about how to give the fullness of our presence in a different way than we’re used to.
What kind of practices have you been performing as a chaplain to keep safe? NL: We are not going into rooms that have any kind of contact precautions. For the most part. There’s exceptions to every rule. There are still patients in our hospital who don’t have contact precautions, who are coming in for all the usual reasons that people come to a hospital. And we’ve been doing some of those visits in person. We are wearing masks walking around the hospital as are everybody else in the hospital. We’re opening the same kinds of commonsense precautions with masks and frequent handwashing and disinfection.
NL: My personal concern is for our state and country’s health care system as a whole, that this is going to stress the healthcare system financially, morally, physically, and spiritually. And I’m concerned the good people will get burned out, will leave healthcare. I’m concerned that we don’t have the political will to fix the systemic problems in our healthcare system that the pandemic has revealed.
Have you all developed any new skills or tools that you’re using? NL: Oh yes. I think that how you relate to somebody on the phone is different than how you relate to them on Zoom is different than how you relate to them in person. Imagine paying attention to someone talking with your eyes closed. You’re going to be focusing on hearing every little nuance in a different way
than if you’re watching or staring. You’re using your own voice in a different way on the phone than you would be in person. What’s the most rewarding aspect of your work right now? NL: I think that what’s rewarding about being a chaplain is no different now, which is helping people draw on their own resources and accompanying them through suffering. They already know how to do much of what they need to do in life. They have things that give their life meaning. They have a story that they’re telling about their life and their family and what happened before they came into this world, and what’s going to happen after they leave this world. They just sometimes need someone to help draw that story out to help them articulate that feeling. Sometimes people are greatly comforted by prayer or meditation or a particular verse of scripture. And when you pull out exactly the right thing to comfort somebody, that’s very satisfying. Do you have any particular thoughts or prayers that are helping you get through this pandemic? NL: We just finished Passover a few days ago. Passover recreates the story of the Exodus from Egypt. They went on a perilous journey, and while we know that the journey was accompanied by signs and wonders, they didn’t know that at the time. The people had to overthrow Pharaoh internally and not be afraid of him anymore before they were ready to overthrow Pharaoh externally and leave Egypt. But each step of the way was a step of faith for them. They just had to keep putting one foot in front of another. And in retrospect, we see the meaningful arc of their story. I remind myself that they didn’t know why when it was happening. For me, I just say, “Okay, let’s get through today. Let’s do the best we can. Let’s bring us comfort to the people we can.” Someday I’ll look back on this and say, “Wow, that was an incredible story.” But I’m in the middle of it now and I don’t know how it ends, but I have faith. Do you have any goals regarding your work during the pandemic? NL: I think for all of us, the challenge, the goal is to stay centered, to stay faithful, to stay hopeful, to stay optimistic, to be what’s called a non-anxious presence. There’s a lot of anxiety in our society right now. We’re in the middle of the story and we don’t know how the story ends, although it looks like it’s going to have a better ending than some of the endings we thought might’ve happened. But it’s the chaplain’s job to be the non-anxious person; to be the person who says time is bigger and the world more mysterious than the crisis of the moment. And we will get through this together. And you’re stronger than you know, we all are.
What has your lived experience been thus far in the pandemic? NL: Just walking into a hospital is different now than it used to be. Many routine meetings are now held by Zoom within the hospital. My personal experience is one of much more time staring into a screen. Much less time out and about with human beings and that’s its own kind of shift. It takes some getting used to. I think the hospital is much quieter now. There are fewer patients, fewer visitors. The hospital used to feel like a busy city street and now it feels like a very different, quieter kind of place. How do you minister someone who’s on a ventilator? Someone who might not be able to speak? NL: There are lots of people who can’t speak, but who nevertheless are awake and can react. And you figure out other ways of communicating. People write, or they use facial expressions, or all kinds of different ways, or squeeze my hand once for yes and two for no, that sort of thing. Most people on ventilators are heavily sedated and we’re not interacting with them very much. Just sometimes they’re kind of sleepy and woozy, so they can nod their head a little bit or squeeze your hands. Since you’re focusing more on the families of patients, what are they looking to you for? NL: The first thing we have to say when we call people is this is not a medical call and there’s no emergency. Because people will react when the chaplain shows up. “Oh my God, someone’s dying, right?” There’s a misapprehension that the chaplains are only for the dying or for the families of those who are dying or making bereavement calls. And that’s not true at all. I mean, that’s part of our work. But most of our work is working with families, either in the unknown of waiting for their loved one to get better or helping people navigate changes when they fully expect to be discharged from the hospital. People don’t necessarily have an expectation of us, but rather we have to set the tone very quickly that we’re here to provide a space for them to process their emotions, their spiritual and moral concerns, and just hold the space for them to say whatever they need to say with a safe person who can handle it. If we do that well, the family members will lead us to whatever work they need. For the most part, what chaplains do is hold the space and different families will use it differently. Some people just want to cry. Some people want to pray, some people want to complain, some people want to tell us how scared they are. If a patient is conscious and awake and they want a conversation with the chaplain, how does that work now? NL: If a patient does not have any contact precautions, we can still go visit them, but we’re going to be masked everywhere and probably
try to stay six feet away. If there are contact precautions we could connect with the patient or their family by Zoom. Is there anything that you want to cover that you feel like that I didn’t bring up? NL: The one-line job description of the chaplain is to be the non-anxious presence. On the one hand, everything is different because of COVID-19 and on the other hand, nothing has changed in that people are anxious or afraid. It’s stressful. All of those things were true before COVID. Human beings are the same now as they were six weeks ago. It’s just that the topics are different. The chaplain’s job, while doing it differently, is the same. Which is to accompany, to support, to let people know they are loved, to be with people in their moments of grief or distress and to let them know there’s someone they can lean on. They’re not alone in their struggle. How are you handling being the non-anxious one? NL: I don’t know that I’m always so great at being not anxious, but I think I just remind myself that there’s enough stress floating around the world that I don’t have to add to it. Other people have that covered. If you focus on how you can serve and just take the next step, do the next thing you have to do, then there’s not a lot of need to be anxious about the big picture things. This interview has been edited and condensed for length.
“We don’t know what the future holds, but we do know we will not abandon each other. We never make promises we can’t keep, and the only promise we can make is: We’re going to be there for you.” —Rabbi Neal Loevinger 5/20 CHRONOGRAM HEALTH & WELLNESS 29
community pages
A CITY RISES UP
Beacon Confronts the Virus
Volunteers and the kitchen staff at Beacon High School, led by Karen Pagano, Director of Food Services, hand out 3,000 meals a week.
By Brian PJ Cronin Photos by Ross Corsair
S
o there was this old guy who lived here in Beacon, named Pete. A lot of us looked up to him, both figuratively and literally, since he lived on the mountain. Pete had lived in town longer than most of us, having moved here in 1949, but his early years here were a little rough. He had a reputation as a bit of a troublemaker, and not everyone was happy to see him. One of his grandchildren once told me that for many years only three stores in town would even do business with Pete; all the other ones simply refused him service. If it bothered him, you couldn’t tell. Pete just kept playing his banjo around town and talking to people about what they could do to clean up the Hudson River. They built a boat. People didn’t like that. Some of them went down to the river and told him that to his face. Pete would smile and ask them if they’d like to go sailing. Sometimes they’d say yes. Sometimes they wouldn’t be so mad at Pete after spending a few hours on the river with him and his friends and they’d agree to help them clean up the river. Pete would visit the elementary schools in town to sing and play for the kids. Some parents didn’t like that. They didn’t want Pete putting his wild ideas into the heads of their kids. But the children loved Pete and the songs that he sung, and they grew up into young adults who still loved Pete and saw that he was trying to clean up the Earth and stop the war in Vietnam before anybody else was and realized that he was always on their side.
30 COMMUNITY PAGES CHRONOGRAM 5/20
Pete was on everyone’s side in Beacon no matter if they liked him or not, through the city’s rough years in the `70s and `80s and into its rebirth. Toward the end of his life, someone asked him why he never stopped giving his heart and his soul and his songs to a town that didn’t want anything to do with him at first. “I wanted to turn back the clock to when people lived in small villages and took care of each other,” he said. Pete’s six years gone now. And Main Street is more desolate than it’s been in 15 years, with almost all of its shops closed, its blocks deserted, and the multitude of new construction projects in town dark and empty. It was opposition to those many development projects, projects that Beaconites were worried were destroying the character of the city, that helped longtime City Council member Lee Kyriacou get elected mayor last fall. I asked Kyriacou if he could have predicted he’d be dealing with a global disaster a few months into his first term. “Nowhere,” he said, “in any of our plans, did we think we’d get sidetracked by—” And then he stopped himself. “Actually,” he said, slowly as it dawned on him, “we’re not sidetracked.” The city’s police officers, firefighters, and local EMS workers haven’t missed a beat. Trash is still being collected, the water and sewer departments are on the job. City Hall itself is open if you need it, even though the city council and zoning board are meeting remotely. And with the exception of the main trailhead to Mount Beacon, the city’s parks are all open, something that many other towns haven’t been able to do. They’ve been
Phillipstown resident Ross Corsair, a freelance cameraman, was spurred to document what was happening (and not happening) in the communities of Beacon and Cold Spring following the governor’s lockdown order in March. “I wanted to attempt to show a multifaceted view of what was happening to my communities with this sudden and appalling disruption,” says Corsair. “I’ve never seen the streets of Beacon emptier, yet not even two miles away, at the trailhead for Breakneck Ridge, there were more cars and hikers jamming into the space than ever, with license plates from many states.” Portfolio: Rosscorsair.com.
Nurses at the coronavirus drive-through testing center at Dutchess Stadium.
A deserted Main Street in Beacon. Many businesses were mandated to close by order of the governor.
5/20 CHRONOGRAM COMMUNITY PAGES 31
River Pool at Beacon
Northwest Shore of Riverfront Park in Beacon, NY Open July to Labor Day, Noon to 6pm, closed Mondays Please go to www.riverpool.org to learn about 2020 Summer updates
Believe in the child. DR. MARIA MONTESSORI
Visit our food truck at:
Industrial Arts Brewing Company 511 Fishkill Ave., Beacon, NY Thursday - Sunday www.eatchurch.com
32 COMMUNITY PAGES CHRONOGRAM 5/20
Cars lined up along Route 9D near the trailhead for Breakneck Ridge in early April. What happened to social distancing everybody?
able to stay open because the overwhelming majority of Beaconites have been good about giving each other space when using them. “I think it matters to keep them open,” Kyriacou said. “Because it encourages good behavior. We stick together because we can see each other and we see that we can trust each other.” In other words: The people of Beacon are taking care of each other. A Job for the Many Dara Silverman comes from a background of community organizing and, like a lot of other Beaconites, knew what to do when the COVID-19 crisis hit. On March 13, the day that stay-at-home orders came down from Albany and people began trying to wrap their heads around this new reality, she and a few other Beaconites started a Facebook Messenger group to respond to vulnerable community members who posted status updates about how they couldn’t leave the house to get groceries or medicine, offering to run errands for them or donate whatever was needed. In less than 24 hours it was a public Facebook group called Mutual Aid Beacon, and by mid-April the group had filled over 1,600 requests and had 300 volunteers doing specific assigned tasks like packing donation boxes, coordinating drop-offs, filling in for older volunteers at food banks who now couldn’t leave the house, cooking meals, and making emotional support calls. That’s not counting the hundreds of untold and unreported acts of kindness on behalf of neighborhood
“pods,” smaller mutual aid groups within certain neighborhoods who are taking care of needs without alerting the main group. “Beacon has a lot of people like me who have done community organizing for a couple of decades, and we’re not afraid to put it out there and ask people because we’ve worked on other campaigns and crises like this,” Silverman said. “I think there is something about having a lot of people who are invested and want to support the community but I also want to emphasize that people are doing mutual aid in communities that are directly impacted all the time.” No doubt wherever you live, a lot of volunteers have been putting in a heroic amount of work over the past few weeks to help your community. In that sense, Beacon is thankfully not unique. But I am humbled by how quickly it all came together in Beacon, thanks to people who had been building community bonds and support systems—even across the ever-fraught divide of the “Old Beacon” of longtime residents and the “New Beacon” of people who have moved here since the Dia:Beacon opened—for years. People had shown up and done the work. It’s paying off. Even before the severity of the crisis had really sunk in for a lot of households, Mutual Aid Beacon was working with longtime community groups such as Common Ground Farm, the Green Teens, and Fareground, as well as the employees of the city’s school system, to start weekly distributions of free groceries. Those who wanted to donate something, or couldn’t make it to the drop-offs, didn’t have to look far
for Plan B, thanks to the “tiny food pantries” that Fareground had put throughout the city years ago. The self-serve kiosks make it easy for anyone to drop off food, or pick some up, 24/7. And with one of the pantries currently out of commission since it’s inside the (currently closed) public library, Binnacle Books converted the shelves outside its store into an additional pantry. Beacon to Go Binnacle Books’ storefront may be closed, but if you still want to shop for used books you can. Every day the store posts selections from its shelves to its Instagram account. Customers can purchase the books online, to be delivered to their front doors via bicycle. Binnacle isn’t the only local business that is, for the first time, venturing beyond its storefront and into the delivery business. Artisan Wine Shop, having been deemed an “essential business,” is sending its wines and spirits out into Beacon, along with plenty of advice over the phone or email if you’re not sure what you need to get you through these strange days. Spend enough time walking the empty streets and you’re likely to see Katy and Buddy Behney drive by in their bright orange jeep, their two black dogs in the backseat, delivering their freshly roasted coffee beans or canned iced coffees from their two coffee shops, Bank Square and Trax, or outdoor gear from their Mountain Tops Outfitters. Even the Beacon Theater has gotten in on the delivery game, streaming new releases right into your home. 5/20 CHRONOGRAM COMMUNITY PAGES 33
A fresh and flavorful dining experience!
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brotherstrattoria.com 34 COMMUNITY PAGES CHRONOGRAM 5/20
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The Denning’s Point Distillery had to shut down its bar and concert space, but in early April it was offering eight-ounce portions of 160-proof hand sanitizer for free.
Elsewhere on Main Street, the staff and management at Key Food and Beacon Natural Market—the latter now operating on a preorder and pick-up/delivery option only—have managed to keep shelves stocked with the essentials, negating the need for panic shopping. The calming effect of consistently being able to buy a roll of toilet paper cannot be overstated at a time like this. Denning’s Point Distillery has stepped up, mixing up free batches of hand sanitizer. Those weekly distributions of free groceries sometimes contain a bar of soap made right here in Beacon by SallyeAnder Soaps, a welcome gift considering we’re all washing our hands a thousand times a day. Yet as comforting as it is seeing the lights on at longtime Beacon institutions like Max’s on Main, BJ’s Restaurant, and Sukhothai, as they whip up takeout and delivery orders, there’s the ethereal emptiness that comes from no longer being allowed to while away an evening at these places. I recall an eerily prescient comment that Kate Ryan, one of Binnacle Books’ owners, made to me when they opened in 2015. I had asked her if there was any trepidation in opening a brick-and-mortar bookstore in the age of Amazon. “We’re at a moment where people can do anything they want without leaving their house,” she said. “But what we’re realizing is: We don’t want that. We want physical experiences, we want social experiences.” I think about this as I sit on the steps of our historic post office building and stare at those dark condos and empty storefronts recently
built by outside developers who thought that people should be paying more than they currently do for the privilege of living in such a vibrant city. Those developers are nowhere to be seen now, but across the street the lights are on at Roma Nova and Pizza And Stuff II, our two different combo pizza/Mexican take-out spots: Family run businesses that are still working long hours to keep the city fed and give us some semblance of normalcy. What wouldn’t we give to have an omelet right now during the breakfast rush at the Yankee Clipper Diner, or to sit in the window of Big Mouth Coffee, or in the garden at Homespun Foods? When will we get to see a concert again at the Towne Crier Cafe or Quinn’s? Ordering Quinn’s Japanese fried chicken to-go and then eating it at home while blasting a free jazz record helps, but it’s not the same when you’re by yourself. Will we ever have the privilege of once again sitting in a chair at Barb’s Butchery and watching as Barb and her extraordinary crew break down half a cow? When will we be shoulder-to shoulder up at the bar at Dogwood again? Even complaining about the crowds at Hudson Valley Brewery seems like an incredible luxury now. Who makes Beacon what it is? And will they still be there when this crisis passes? What Comes Next? “This is the big national issue,” said Mayor Kyriacou. “How do we start up again?” Even though he’s coordinating with Dutchess County to find out what options are available to help
small businesses, without significant and sustained help, a lot of Beacon’s small businesses may not be able to survive. That uncertainty also applies to Beacon’s population. Despite its increasing gentrification, the city is still very much a blue collar art town. A study by the United Way in 2016 found that more than 40 percent of Beacon’s population had less than $400 in savings. “There’s a bigger need right now,” said Mutual Aid Beacon’s Silverman. “But what we’re finding out now is that there was always this need. The crisis is just uncovering that.” These are uncomfortable truths, ones that threaten to overwhelm me when I travel through this dark and quiet city. So I think about Pete. Pete, as you’ve probably figured out, was Pete Seeger, the legendary folk icon and activist. When we lost him in 2014, the city’s grief was immeasurable. Barack Obama eulogized him as “America’s tuning fork.” For us, he was always the city’s moral compass. What would we do without him? “We all have to be Pete now,” was a phrase that Beaconites would say to each other in the months that followed. I don’t think any of us feel comfortable at the idea of comparing ourselves to Pete Seeger. We have never marched with Martin Luther King Jr. We did not sit in the chambers of Capitol Hill and stare down those who sought to discredit and destroy us. Our fingers are slow, our voices cracking. And yet: When the people of Beacon take care of each other, when we rise up singing as one, what beautiful music we make. 5/20 CHRONOGRAM COMMUNITY PAGES 35
feature
Domestic Pandemic STORIES FROM THE HOME FRONT In April, we put the call for submissions for first-person accounts of life in the contagion. The frustrations, the joys, the disruption, the boredom. We asked for journal entries, todo lists, letters to dead relatives, manifestos, cries in the dark, homilies—every scrap of it. We wanted to get a snaphot of what it’s like to live right now, during this very strange time. We were a bit (delightfully) overwhelmed by the response: We received over 100 submissions for this section. (Phillip Levine, our poetry editor, put out his own call and received 1,200 poems!) Thanks to all who submitted. Many worthy pieces didn’t make the cut simply because we didn’t have enough room. Here is a collective portrait of life under COVID-19. May we never pass this way again. —Brian K. Mahoney
Sunny Days Ahead, an illustration by Sarah Vendetti
36 FEATURE CHRONOGRAM 5/20
Pete Mauney, DIY Mask
Isolation To-Do List 1. Wake up. Optional. 2. Get dressed. Optional. 3. Coffee. 4. Grunt at family and confirm that elderly cat still alive. 5. News 6. Coffee and amphetamines and Xanax. 7. Eat breakfast. Or not. But probably. Most important meal of the day. (Insert random semi-structured intervals throughout day of child-centered madness and your inability to teach them anything because you can’t even understand how they do division these days or what, exactly, the hell is an adverb again and how long, really, does it take this kid to read a paragraph and thanking the heavens above for your wife who is the brains and backbone of this operation and will certainly get us through the apocalypse.) 8. Coffee. 9. Stare at work computer screen for a while (without checking email because we know what happens then) and think about all the things I really should be doing. Like: designing ventilators in my garage, spending more time with my kids, trailblazing innovative approaches to vaccine
production, dismantling the patriarchy, fabricating an entirely new career from scratch because I am not sure I will ever have a job again and am not qualified for any real jobs, quit sniffing glue, restructuring approaches to national healthcare, attacking income and racial inequalities head on, getting that weird bump on my back looked at, disrupting educational paradigms by designing an entirely new national curriculum and forcing Texas to just deal with it, working on my relationship, getting a responsible non-scumbag elected president, and finally dealing with global warming once and for all. 10. Do Facebook for a few hours instead. 11. Coffee. (Insert really long, semi-manic, rambling FB posts at random points throughout the day, but usually before 2PM. This one counts.) 12. Coffee. 13. 20-30 minutes of actual work, what little you have left, following 2 hr anxiety attack about same. (insert various randomly spaced medical, uh, “infusions” throughout day to help deal) 14. Think wistfully about last cup of coffee you had.
16. Remember all the shit you were supposed to think about doing earlier but didn’t (see infusions). 17. As it is getting dark, think about what you should have worked on outside. 18. Go to bed for a while and ponder your mortality and what has become of you and your role in the world. 19. Get out of bed for dinner. 20. Kid bed time! (Alternatively: Yay, NyQuil Time!) 21. Spend 20 minutes “cleaning studio.” 22. TV Time! 23. Bed Time! Where you spend an inordinate amount of time considering points 1-24 of the day and question all your decisions and vow to use your privilege do better the next day before falling asleep in a cloud of drug induced bliss and fear induced anxiety. 24. Get up and pee. Dammit. 25. Go back to bed. 26. Start all over again. Pete Mauney is a Tivoli-based photographer who can be found on Instagram at Instagram @pete_mauney.
15. Remember that you forgot lunch right before having dinner (see item 6 plus infusions). 5/20 CHRONOGRAM FEATURE 37
Thursday
Back Up Buster
There’s the ebb and flow of happiness and tears here. Lots and lots of both. And there’s also a neat little surprise. First, the happiness. My grown son is home with me here, up from Brooklyn, now for over nearly a month. He smartly, and poignantly, rang me up and said, “I think I want out of here” and out he went, leaving a new apartment and a posse of partners in his music collective with whom he works. He grew up here, in Woodstock, and had been enjoying a robust life (almost ridiculously so) and successful (yes! as we say in Yiddish, I am kvelling!) as a working, self-supporting music producer. Now he’s holed up here in Mount Tremper with me, a few miles away from his childhood home which I sold last summer in a downsizing move, so what serves as my guest bedroom (read: not his childhood bedroom) is now his headquarters. He’s working from here, joining me for walks and meals (so many meals…we’re going to explode) and cuddles with the dog and movie night when he wants to indulge me and puzzles and the rest of it. We are good “roommates”—we’ve done this before, this dance of two people living separately but together. We are wellmatched and he hasn’t whined once from boredom, at least, not out loud to me. I’m a great cook, and he’s a champion sleeper, keeping late-night hours as he works with a writing partner in LA—by the time he’s arisen after noon, I’ve got at least two or three meals or snacks percolating along here in my kitchen…which brings me to the sadness. So...next up: The tears. I stand here, in my kitchen, a kitchen that I designed down to the last detail with my partner who is not quarantined with me. We’re separated, and depending on what time of day it is, that means any number of things, most of them tear- or anger-inducing and I think I’ve cycled through enough personalities on this to rival a remake of the 1970’s psycho-docu-drama Sybil. While many of my friends are holed up with their beloveds, grousing about too much time under one roof, mock- or not-so-mock fighting about who’s doing what chores and are-youwashing-your-hands-enough and “What do you mean, you’re going for a walk without me?” squabbles (along with the companion piece to that, titled, “Thank God she’s/he’s/they’re going for a walk without me; finally some peace!”), I’m jealous of those mini-fights, jealous of how they need to work it out before they collapse into their beds at night, jealous of tender moments of comfort, jealous of meals cooked together. This kitchen in my new house is where so many beautiful moments with my partner took place; I am a ship without a charted course, standing here, stirring pots on the stove or pulling trays out of the oven, thinking, thinking, thinking, and boy, those tears keep coming. When will I be cried out? And the surprise? My front porch. My slanted, sloping, definitely-in-need-of-a-paint-job front porch. It spans the entirety of my still newish small and cozy home, yet it’s large enough that four people can gather here, safely separated by the mandated and dreaded 6+ feet of space—usually my son and I on one side, and one or two pals on the other side. Oh, this adorable covered porch! Who knew you’d be our paradise? We sit outside, wrapped in blankets when it snows (in April) and barefoot, listening to birds when it’s been springlike and dare I say, normal? My guests bring their own glasses, beverages, snacks. Everyone pees outside around the back. We laugh; we wave to neighbors walking by or cars that slow and honk. Sometimes I sit out there alone and those tears come. Sometimes I sit outside with my son and we laugh at the dog’s ridiculous antics (no one is enjoying this pandemic like our lazy, spoiled little dog). Porch as panacea. Sometimes we try to figure out what day it is. The other day, a friend and I were positive it was Wednesday, as we sipped wine. It was Thursday.
In early November I was sitting in a church basement, gathered with like-minded people, listening to each other’s stories. When the meeting was over the guy next to me coughed into his hand and then held that hand out to me so I could hold it while we said the serenity prayer. I didn’t take his hand. Instead I fled that room and didn’t go back to any like it for the rest of the year. In mid-January I went to Los Angeles for 3 weeks. While there I went to another meeting, because, you know, fresh air and sunshine. But people on the west coast kept complaining about a deep woeful cough they had had for months. I skedaddled halfway through. If you know me in real life you know my rules— no hugging from Halloween to St Patrick’s Day. Elbow bumps instead of handshakes, but really, no contact is ideal. I can love you from afar. BACK UP, BUSTER! I know how flu and colds are spread. It’s simple. This has caused huge rifts with friends, even as late as March 7th of this year. I made it clear that I was fine losing those friends. On March 11, I made the heart-wrenching decision to cancel Woodstock Bookfest 2020, which was to take place March 26-29. I had been working on it for months. I let my team and the authors know first, and was surprised by the people who wrote to say I was overreacting. A couple admonished me for panicking. That night I went out for a burger. That burger, delicious as it was, turned out to be the last meal I would eat that was not made in my own kitchen. Early on March 12 I realized serenity was slipping from my grasp. I was walking a fine tightrope between fear and fury, the wire straining to hold my grief. When scrolling through Facebook I saw an old friend was celebrating 20 years in those rooms. I texted her and a mutual friend of ours and we FaceTimed for an hour. We talked about the pandemic, but we also talked about what we talk about in those rooms, and how isolation isn’t good for folk like us. We agreed to meet the next day on Zoom. We would each invite a friend or two, women like us. Live meetings were still happening in real churches, but I knew that was out of my comfort zone. And then, a week later, all the churches in New York State closed their doors, and every meeting went online. By then our little group had grown to over 50 women, some checking in from Los Angeles and Sante Fe, some from Europe. Most mornings I try to show up at 10am to be with the newcomers. It’s hard to imagine what they’re going through, to do this without being surrounded by people who look you in the eye, take you for coffee, reassure you. I also go for the old-timers. And to remember that doing this sober is so much easier than doing it drunk and high. And to laugh so deeply with strangers who remind me what serenity feels like.
Abbe Aronson is a publicist and hopeless romantic.
38 FEATURE CHRONOGRAM 5/20
Martha Frankel is the author of Hats & Eyeglasses: A Memoir and the executive director of the Woodstock Bookfest.
Scarlet Fever I flew from West Palm Beach to Philly on March 14, 2020, worried, like everyone else on the plane, about the air we were breathing. I had read that the window seat might be slightly safer than an aisle seat, so I opted for one. It was a clear, bright day. Even after we leveled off, I could see what was below. For a long time, the blue of the ocean stretched to meet the blue of the sky. Now and then a large, silent ship appeared. I chose to think these were cargo ships and tankers, not cruise ships full of people confined to their cabins. Later, we flew along a jagged coastline for a long time, until we turned in, over fingers of water mixed with land. Some fields were burning. As we began our descent, I reflected on the power of having known, with complete certainty, that this would surely be my last
flight in a long time. What would have been, ordinarily, a cramped flight to endure had become a transcendent experience, full of unexpected beauty, outside time. When I arrived home, I self-isolated for two weeks, my own isolation blending quickly into the mandated one. I imagined I was on a silent retreat, and that I would get lots of projects finished. In the early days, one of my friends said, “I bet, at the end of all this, I will still not have my slipcovers made.” Little by little, I adjusted my expectations, and began living each day, as it came. After three weeks, I searched my files for a story I knew was there of my mother having been quarantined as a child. The details were sketchy; when the family story was recorded, this quarantine seemed a small detail in the larger story of my mother’s life. She’d had scarlet fever at 13, in 1927, and she’d been quarantined with her mother in their apartment in the Bronx, while her father and her sister stayed in another apartment nearby with her grandmother. Her quarantine, with a sign on the door forbidding entry, lasted three months, and the only details I had (oh, why had I not asked for more?) were that her teacher, Miss Delagar, had given her a book, which she treasured, and that her sister’s boyfriend, Francis Eagle, who had only one eye due to a marble accident as a child, broke quarantine to come to see her. I found myself longing for more details. How had she and her mother gotten along those three months? Her father was the light-hearted one. During that long quarantine, when scarlet fever had no cure, when she probably knew that Beth March in Little Women had died of complications of it, and when the Velveteen Rabbit had been threatened with being burned because of it, what was it like for her, my sweet mother? Her sister was the one who played the piano, and her mother did the sewing. What did she do there, those three months? Was she scared, or too sick to be scared? Did she read? Did they even have a bathroom in their apartment? Did she sit at the window and watch the traffic on Grand Boulevard? I, too, was quarantined once, as a teenager. I spent a few weeks in isolation in the hospital, over Christmas. I was told that all my books, cards, and clothes would be burned when I left. Nobody but my parents and the doctor and the priest, gowned and masked, could visit me. My food tray was left on the floor, just inside my door. I looked forward, every day, to talking to the lovely man who came to mop my floor and clean my bathroom. The nurse’s station, a small glassed-in room with green curtains I could see shapes through, was between my room and the room next door. I spent hours hoping to catch a glimpse of my neighbor, to find out what she had, who she was, to talk to her. I knew I was lucky that my room was at the end of the corridor, and that I had two bright windows. Now, antibiotics cure the strep throat that caused scarlet fever, and hepatitis patients are not quarantined. Many diseases have their times when little is known. I wish I had asked my mother about her experience of being in the middle of a long period of uncertainty, of being sick, of being isolated, but I know what she would have said, “It was fine. My mother took care of me. I got better. I’ve had a very good life.” Marge Boyle is a retired English teacher.
Roy Gumpel, Jayla Kai
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A photo by Jennifer May: “My daughter read in a book how to shake cream into butter in a Mason jar. And what do you know, we had some whipping cream at the back of the fridge. She shook that into butter in about 10 minutes, and then she rinsed it in water. It’s a perfect activity to pair with reading the entire Little House book series, which I borrowed from a friend in the days before social isolation became the new normal.”
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A Toilet Paper Tale I was barely aware of the ramifications of the recentlyannounced oncoming pandemic when suddenly there was a stampede for toilet paper. The local government had just announced that, in order to avoid spreading the virus, we “might” have to stay home for two weeks. The schools would close, yada yada yada. I trotted casually to the supermarket to get some extra cans for the pantry. Next thing I knew, there were viral videos of people having fist fights in supermarket aisles. Over toilet paper. A woman on a checkout line leaned her body possessively over her cart piled high with toilet paper while another woman yelled at her that she “Only wanted one pack, you greedy bitch!” And then the “bath tissue” aisles in all the stores were empty. I still didn’t get it. The first time I saw giant packs of Charmin piled high down the main aisle in Target, I ignored them. Other people stared for a moment as if they couldn’t believe it, before diving in to grab one. But as the projected—and mythical—“two weeks” evolved into four, I got it. I didn’t think I would need that much toilet paper. But after I saw the future, I scored a 20-pack one day at Walmart, and two eight-packs at Hannaford a few days later. It was after that that completely empty shelving became the norm. I live with my family—me on the top floor in a separate apartment, the five of them (three grandkids) downstairs. I was pretty well set. But they, with five times as many people, were not set for long. I got a text from their dad: “If you run across any toilet paper, we’re down to our last four rolls.” He and my daughter were working at home, and only shopping on Wednesday evenings (discount night at Adams). The odds of finding toilet paper in a store at the end of a day were zip. Especially at Adams. Adams had never carried toilet paper. And there was no “running across.” And now the supermarkets, when they had it, were limiting purchases to one pack per family per day. It staved off the hoarding. Suddenly a rumor: Sam’s Club had toilet paper! I wasn’t a member so I arranged with a friend who was,
to meet her there. Lo and behold, they still had some at ten the next morning. Gigantic pack of Charmin. But I had to join the Club to be permitted to buy it (“one per member”). Well, I couldn’t just walk away. (“Only four rolls left,” he’d said.) No doubt the most expensive pack of Charmin ever sold. Now the virus was in full crawl so I was only shopping at the crack of dawn on Saturday mornings. The stores were pretty empty then, and I could get in and out before the six-foot rule became impossible. If ever an item was going to be available, that was when. But we all had enough now, right? Third week, Dad texted again. Down to four rolls. They were racing through it. So that Saturday morning, I carefully planned my route and set out early. And the gods smiled upon me. Thirty-four rolls in Target, eight rolls in Walmart, eight jumbo rolls in Hannaford. Does this mean that the suppliers are coming back? No more shortages? Remains to be seen. The government is bouncing back and forth between open it all up next week, or keep it closed down for another month. People are sick and dying all over the world. Who would have imagined that locally the biggest issue would have been toilet paper? Judith Emilie’s writing was recently published in Persimmon Tree, and has been presented in readings around the Hudson Valley.
Crumby I want to be a crumb. I want to be a forgotten piece of bread on the kitchen floor that even the dog doesn’t notice. All I want to do all day of everyday is curl up in a ball and forget. I want to forget the loneliness, depression, anger, hurt, and confusion. My brain hurts as it becomes that dried-up, old piece of food that no vacuum can ever seem to reach, but my body is still here. There is still so much to do. Contrary to my belief, the world has not stopped and I have to keep pushing through. I can’t be the crumb on the ground, I have to be the breadwinner. I still have class, I still have duty, I still have work, I still have to take care of myself. I’m slicing
myself up into rations that should hold me over for the rest of the semester, but it seems no matter how hard I try, I’m starving. My expiration date has long passed, but yet I sit on the countertop waiting for someone to use me, unable to throw myself out because I can’t afford to. I need it to keep going, even if it makes me sick. I’m so close to the end. I have to see it through. It’s not good enough. Everyday gets harder and harder as I get progressively more stale by the hour. I tighten up and shut everyone out. I look for crumbs on the floor to find something that will hold me over to the next day. But I find myself envious of the people who are making their homemade bread. How can they make their own bread when I feel spoiled and moldy? Erica Ruggiero is a senior at SUNY New Paltz and a Chronogram intern.
Day 21 Won’t accept the past tense, lodged in me endless days ago, a woodchuck burrowed into my ribs, a burnt marshmallow down my throat, a dank fog that won’t clear, drums beating between my ears. Sent its fever storming in the front door and took over. Stole away the flavor of coffee, wrung all the bite out of salt. Left me sweating on the couch and went to go grab my cousin by the collar, my schoolmate, my friends. The doctor sent me the medicine, white paper bag of experimental hope, but two pills later my heart panicked and nearly took a header down the stairs. This thing has a wildness, the jungle pulling you back by the hair. Just lately I think it might be losing interest, and next time it gets restless and heads out to roam the neighborhood I’m going to jump up and lock it out of my house. Jana Martin is the author of Russian Lover and Smoke Gets in Your Eyes; is a co-founder of Pendemic and a contributing editor on The Weeklings.
Kaleidoscope photos by David Levy 5/20 CHRONOGRAM FEATURE 41
Benched
Cool as a Cucumber
Elevator Virus
I spent the first few weeks of New York’s COVID-19 epidemic the way I’ve spent the past 18 years, as a working journalist covering the Hudson Valley. It had been that way since 2002 when I arrived at The Daily Freeman with a belated BA in journalism from Brooklyn College, a pregnant wife and a bunch of clips I’d acquired as a police beat and general assignment reporter for a weekly newspaper chain in Manhattan. I’m what people in the business call a “hard news” reporter. Yeah, I can do restaurant reviews, write up an art gallery opening, even write a personal essay if I really have to. But my specialty is the everyday stuff of property taxes and infrastructure programs, drug busts and city council elections. Much of the work is routine, sometimes not much more than fleshing out a press release with a few live quotes and fresh statistics. But the real work, what they pay you for, are the enterprise stories; the ones where you start with a tip, a rumor, a hunch and end up with the best kind of news, the kind that leaves your competitors wondering how they hell you got it and how the hell they missed it. In early March 2020, with COVID-19 just beginning its grim march from “News of the World” to news in your backyard, I was thirsty for that kind of story. Local government officials were practicing a form of extreme message discipline that was equal parts understandable and infuriating. At first, news was doled out at press conferences held at the county office building or the Sheriff’s Office. Then it was “tele-town halls,” where the public got to ask the questions and the press got to write up recaps for anyone who missed it and couldn’t figure out how to access an archived Facebook live event. A journalism professor, and old school New York tabloid type, once told me that you’d never get a scoop standing around a crowd of reporters at a press conference. Now I was reduced to sitting at my kitchen table on a conference call with my sources and the whole damn county. As frustrating as the situation was, it was also invigorating. The stately pace of the weekly newsroom I’d called home for the past dozen years suddenly bustled with a charge of electricity as we worked to keep up with a story that moved at the speed of a sneeze. Deadlines, which used to be Wednesday, became “Now” instead. The rut that everyone gets into when they do the same job for long enough began eroding at the sides until it started to feel like standing on an edge. It felt good. And then it all blew right up. I got a call from my editor on a Tuesday informing me that layoffs were imminent. The next day an email from the publisher made it official, for the first time since the Clinton administration I was out of the news business. In those first days after my layoff, I received a lot of well-meaning encouragement from friends and family to keep up the good fight; start a blog, start a website, start a daily live broadcast from the toilet paper aisle. But, after a quarter century as “the working press” that felt fake and slightly unhinged—like Rupert Pupkin in The King of Comedy putting on an ersatz Johnny Carson show in his mom’s basement, interviewing imaginary guests for an imaginary audience. Instead, I do what everyone else does these days; get a little exercise walking up and down the road, try not to worry about things that aren’t in my grasp and try to stay out of the bourbon until 5pm Eastern Standard Time. And I think a lot about another Martin Scorcese film, Goodfellas. The part at the very end when Ray Liotta/Henry Hill stands on the stoop of his cookie-cutter house in his cookie-cutter subdivision reflecting on his days as a high rolling gangster before the witness protection program rendered him an anonymous everyman. I never had front row seats at the Copacabana or cops or politicians on my payroll, but I did have plenty of both on my speed dial. If you asked me about some local issue, I had an insider’s view I could share with you. I was a newsman and I made the news. Now I have to wait around for it like everybody else. I hope I’ll get back in the news game, but in the back of my mind I worry that I’ll have to live the rest of my life like a schnook.
One fascinating thing for me to witness during all this is the unexpected, placid calm of my divorced, single, aging parents. To be clear, both of them would only accept the objective, practical truth that apparently, with each passing year, they get older. Otherwise, neither of them really cottons to the assumptions that accompany the passing of time. My mother is a natural, gifted worrier of sometimes Olympian proportions. In normal times, when I call her once I’m on the NJ side of the Hudson to let her know my ETA, her response is often, “Well for God’s sake be careful.” In response to her appeals that I “call her as soon as I land” (I do), or “call her when I get home from the show” (I won’t), I regularly joke with her that if I’m dead she’ll be the first to know. I trace this kind of dire, expect-the-worst stance back to her native city, Exeter, being bombed by Germany during WWII, the family waiting the air raids out under the stairs. Her dad had been captain of the Exeter Football team until he had to rid houses of unexploded bombs during the war. Fair enough to be a little uptight on occasion. I wonder and worry sometimes about her growing older and how much of that eventual care and providing of company will fall to me. But, in the wake of coronavirus she’s playing it reeeeaaaaaal cool. When she found out people were hoarding toilet paper she jumped right in: “Godfather Dick! We never had that during the war! We all had to tear up the newspapers and string them along some rope in the bathroom! We didn’t think twice about it. It was just one of many chores.” She’s familiar with rationing; it’s an old childhood memory. She’s used to being alone, not for this long, but it’s not alarming to her. Formerly a bit of a teetotaler, she now enjoys a mid-range chardonnay and that ding-aling phrase, “It’s 5 o’clock somewhere” while watching MSNBC. She talks to and feeds her menagerie of squirrels and birds daily. She plays word games on the phone with Loretta. On March 18, my tour was cut short. I sit or nap, untested, in our tiny cabin, coughing and wondering if this tightness in my chest and loss of smell is it—I had run through the death-germ gauntlet of four airports and a 20-hour, packed flight on my race home from Australia. I wonder if the eight months of steady work and shows that were cancelled will reappear before my small savings run out, if this isolated, psycho-social form of identity theft will change, or reveal, things I didn’t know about myself, if this is the best or worst time to try to write that damn pilot, if art made for live gatherings will transfer to digital platforms too clumsily so we should hold tight and protect it, if Carmine and I will ever have enough money after this to build our little dream house on this lovely piece of property so that my mum has a place to land when she’s ready. That’s all before noon, obviously, and then I remind myself that I should just feel lucky to be healthy right now and be able to step outside if the sun comes out. I’ve been so freaked out and had enough nightmares that I haven’t been able to watch the dark and twisted dramas streaming all day and night and can only deal with re-runs of “Little House on the Prairie” and “The Sonny and Cher Show.” Meanwhile, all of a goddamn sudden, Jeanette Jacqueline Margaret Miller Truscott’s a cool cucumber.
My apartment building is in Washington Heights. It was built in 1920. It is a proud yet decrepit pre-war veteran of a building, housing 60 units and one small elevator that fits five people, if you’re lucky. This is an elevator story. The elevator is like a tiny prison cell with an automatic sliding door. On each floor there is another door, outside the automatic sliding one, which must be opened to access the elevator. Each door has a small square window about head high crisscrossed with metal slats so one can barely see those outside waiting to enter the elevator. The window, in my prison imaginings, could be opened to slide in food, then quickly slammed shut. Inside, everything is embossed metal and steel. It is like an elevator out of Sam Fuller’s Shock Corridor. It is March 2020 and I am avoiding the elevator at all costs. ‘Social distancing.’ I take the stairs. But on this particular day I have laundry to do and I don’t want to clomp down the stairs with the laundry cart, go outside, open the locked gate to the alley and enter the basement where the laundry room is located. “Middle of the day,” I think. “No one around.” The elevator arrives. I get on. “No one. Whew.” I push ‘B.’ We creak slowly down, 4, 3, 2… The elevator lurches to a stop in the lobby. As we stop, I can barely see a head outside the door window. It is my neighbor on 5. He is a sweet guy with a mild mental disability, round, smiling, Humpty Dumpty face. I am usually glad when I see him. We talk about baseball and he laments his forlorn Mets on our short elevator trips. But today I don’t want to see him. Not today. Social distancing! Before he can open the door, I call out, “Going to the basement, going down,” pointing down with my thumb through the small window. I frantically repeat the thumbs-down gesture like an ancient Roman at the Coliseum, thirsty for blood. He pulls the door open and gets on, smiling, laden with recycled shopping bags overstuffed with food. “I’ll come for the ride,” he says in his jovial, innocent voice. I scoot to the back of the elevator. “We are supposed to be six feet apart, you know,” I say, trying to be amicable. He looks wounded and says, “I’ll go over here in the corner and hold my breath.” He turns away from me and puts his mouth up to the crook in his elbow as if he were going to sneeze into it. There is a huge intake of breath as he faces the wall. He talks through the holding of breath. “You’ll be alright, I won’t breathe,” he says in a strained voice, his back toward me. The next 10 seconds are excruciating as I hear him straining to contain the air escaping from his lips. The elevator comes to a stop. The door opens and I push my cart swiftly out. As I look back through the little cell window I see him, facing the wall, still holding his breath, looking like a child who has been punished and sent to stand in the corner of the room. As I wheel the cart toward the laundry room the lump in my throat grows and my eyes fill with tears. So many tears, I cannot see where I am walking. I cannot see. How I will I ever separate the lights from the darks?
Jesse J. Smith is currently viewing the story of the century from the sidelines. 42 FEATURE CHRONOGRAM 5/20
Joe White is an actor and teaching artist. He is a member of Actors & Writers Theatre Company.
Adrienne Truscott is a performance maker and writer who splits her time between Tivoli, Brooklyn, and anywhere a gig takes her.
Opposite: A photo by Franco Vogt of his dog Maggie.
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Brandon and J.D., lifting weights in Catskill, from Alon Koppel’s photo series “6 Feet Apart.”
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Front-Line Grocer We don’t sell empathy on our shelves. We have organic, free range, all natural, local, antibiotic-free, vegan-friendly, and sustainably harvested versions of nearly every product you can think of here at the grocery store, but we don’t sell community in any aisle. Hot breath pollutes the inside of my mask, the latex of my gloves clinging to my skin as I pull forward olive oils and capers, coconut milk and sesame tahini. I wonder what my family is doing at home. My son is three, my daughter eight, and my wife I’m sure, is exhausted from running a daycare and homeschool while working more than ever. I miss them. I taught my associates that image is everything. In the grocery and retail business, it largely is. Since the virus emerged, a semblance of an image is all that can be maintained. My store has been stripped of structure and organization, the beauty of variety, and the comfort of quantity. It’s been bled dry of courteous customers and replaced by fearful, selfish consumers. The virus has made everyone and everything uncomfortable. I don’t have answers for my clientele on when their brand of sour cream will arrive, I don’t know what time to tell my wife I’ll be home, and I don’t know when I can tell my kids we can go to the playground again. Aisle by aisle I methodically touch each product, exposing myself, my family, and everyone else to an unknown risk. I’m interrupted by requests, by complaints, and hands reaching all around my head. Despite the shortages of paper products, the disappearance of disinfectants, and the specter of hand sanitizer, I try to be thankful for what I have. Today, I am grateful for the cover my mask provides, as my customer service smile is no longer sure of itself.
figuring out when we will work and what we will eat. What is it like? We ask ourselves. Will it be like the last time the markets tanked, or the time before that? Will it be like waiting to be drafted into war, or like waiting for a hurricane to change paths? We solemnly declare that nothing will ever be normal again, but we remember saying that the last time too. We reread the library books that were due weeks ago. We change our Zoom backgrounds. We have all seen that meme, by now, but just in case we send it to someone who might not have, yet. We sew facemasks. We remain distant, socially. We wave to our neighbors from our windows. We wonder what we’ll remember of this, in the end—when it ends. When the skies are clear we go out for long walks in the woods, stepping off the paths when others approach. We are more aware of springtime than we’ve been in years; the air has never been clearer. Everywhere there are signs of nature, happily filling the voids we’ve left. The sunsets are
spectacular; we chart the phases of the moon before bedtime, because she at least keeps changing. At night, when the children are asleep, we unmake their pillow forts and clear their art projects from the table. We enjoy the first silence of the day. But soon we’ll fill it, talking about the children and everything they said and did all day long. What else can we do? We drink whatever’s handy. We call a friend who “has it” and lives alone; we sit up together until they can take Tylenol again. We check in with people we haven’t talked to in years, and sign every email, ‘hope you’re well’ in a way we’ve never really meant before. We lie in bed, rotating through the dark and silent night, waiting for sleep to fall over us, and to dream, again, of a world waiting for us to return. Kristopher Jansma is the director of the Creative Writing Program at SUNY New Paltz and the author of, most recently, Why We Came to the City.
Elmore Kensing is a register ringin’, price gun slingin’, two-kid totin’ father in the Hudson Valley.
Why We Stayed Home We are staying home, we are staying safe, we are #flatteningthecurve. We are waking up to beg the children to go back to sleep—just five more minutes. We make strong coffee and divide the day on whiteboards. We color code to distinguish who needs to be working and who wrangling. We wait for the homework that the teacher sends each morning to rescue us. We look at our phones to reassure ourselves that other people are still there, that everyone we know and all the celebrities we love are all also sitting around with their hair too long and their eyebrows gone rogue. Someone has made bread! Someone has seen something delightful on a walk. Someone has illustrated a daily inspiration. Someone has organized their closet, their garage, their pantry, their freezer, their junk drawer. We are bored. We are terrified. We are running low on toilet paper, which we joke about without ever actually addressing what we are preparing to do in its absence. We keep calm. We carry on—though, what, exactly that means we don’t have any idea at all. What should we carry? And to where? We have our worries, our lame jokes, our muted rage, and our insistence that this could all be worse. We hide in the bathroom to read the news because it’s the only privacy left. In there, we can read the email from friends who work in medicine. There is nothing we can do to help them but listen and stay home— which we are mostly doing. We know that we are lucky, incredibly lucky, to be so far behind the front lines. Sometimes we go outside to verify that the world still exists, that our towns and city blocks are waiting for us. Hang on, we think, as we pass by. We are trying to get back to you. Every day we are losing uncles and grandparents and mothers and colleagues. We are furloughed, we are laid off. We are stranded in hastily rented vacation homes. We are sitting, and watching, and waiting. We make cakes for each other’s birthdays and eat them together on a video chat. We spend most of our time
Photos by Michael Frank from his series of business signs in Kingston and New Paltz.
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All This Difference
Every Scrap of It
Dog’s-Eye View
I’m awoken by a different kid each day. There are three of them so maybe there’s a system in place, maybe there are bribes to get out of it. I’ll leave Scott sleeping as he has mid-life insomnia and I’m sure I kicked him once or twice or thirteen times last night, as I have the opposite. Kids will get breakfast; I will get coffee. They will get an episode, I’ll start scrolling. None of this is different from before. Without a job, I have no alarm clock, save for the rotating human roosters. Without an eventual place to be, coffee counts adequately as breakfast. But the children—they stay now. The spouse, too. And that (as they say) has made all the difference. I left a job in October one which I had to heal from and grieve for, simultaneously. There was no new one in place; there was only time. So, I used the time like anyone who has too much time: I picked up a planner I’d never write in. I started rearranging furniture in my house, reorganizing closets and drawers and toy bins. I watched a six-episode docuseries on a collegiate cheerleading squad. I read a single book. I sunk deep into my sofa, deeper still in depression. But, each day, from 8:46a.m. through ‘til 4:18pm. I was, at the very least, alone. I had a good excuse for every vice. If I organize this house—once and for all—it will never again be a distraction. This docuseries is relevant to my past, and my past surely needs healing. Sofas were meant to sink into; therapy happens here. I had seven hours and thirty-two minutes a day (less chores, and/or errands, and/or what people refer to interchangeably as “life” and “shit”) to fix myself so I could move forward. First, I’d freeze, in spring I’d thaw. Spring came and I was told to stay in the place I was working toward leaving. For me, it didn’t seem a change from the usual. Wouldn’t I still be unemployed? Wouldn’t I still have nowhere to be, no time scheduled to be nowhere by? Am I being asked to remain frozen? Last year, we were rendered homeless by a house sale gone sour. Time didn’t freeze for us. Though we had no roots, life kept on. There was fear, sure, in the moving parts that we couldn’t control (finding a new place, receiving a closing date, and, well, moving), but everyone went to school each day—the teacher/spouse, too. And I went to work. And the calendar alerted our appointments. And we were taken in by friends. And we had a plan. And we had a basic understanding that even amongst all this difference we were four walls away from our normalcy. I see no normalcy now—even within these four walls. At our home, a stay-in-place looks like Scott overhauling the way he teaches science. It also looks like he and his colleagues holding multiple meetings having much more to do with mental health than curriculum. It looks like playing cards and doing puzzles for the first four days until it devolves into fighting. There is constant fighting. It looks like our four-year-old holding playdates on FaceTime and melting down when they end. It looks like another child shattering a mirror and remaining, still, at that level of intensity, as if in a healthy steady-state. It looks like deep grieving. It doesn’t look like a full calendar, or a plan, or staying with friends, or going to work or school or anywhere, for that matter. And I fear this is the difference I’m not so good at. Not desert-island-stranded good, anyway. The hurry is what rooted me when we were rootless. Doesn’t routine root everyone? Though I won’t spoil the ending for you, routine can’t even root the Navarro College Bulldogs. There’s a new projection written each day on when this will end. There are new ideas reported on cures and causes, too. There are so many fears, some antithetical and simultaneous. There is so much noise and little to no routine. Some people’s lives have become exponentially more dangerous than others, than before. Everything has changed for everyone. My kids, the spouse, they’re home now. I’m finding comfort in, at the very least, not being alone. Maybe we are all learning how not-alone we are. I wonder if we can root ourselves in all this change, all this difference, together.
The lamp post on my street finally flickered on as I’m confronted with stacks of ketchup packets, over 15 different salad dressings, a rogue expired yogurt, four different half used bags of frozen peas, and an anxious heart. All my food from my fridge and freezer was sprawled out on my kitchen counter, sweating in condensation. Relatable. Life was going as usual, but an impending storm was on the horizon. It was as if I was being force-fed news through a tube, 24/7, by every refresh on Twitter. The air was stale and I could feel the storm getting closer. It was early March. Quarantine hadn’t happened yet. Business shutdown hadn’t happened yet. I was still going into work, perusing the grocery store, stopping at Stewart’s to get an ice cream cone, and planning my weekend brunch. With apocalypse on the brain, I decided a late-night organization session of all the food in my tiny studio apartment was necessary. As I pulled out items I had forgotten about or had expired, I was met with deep guilt. I was reminded of the privilege to have food, money to splurge on that expensive pure maple syrup, and never in my life had I been worried about if I could afford to eat. Ashamed of the food I had let go to waste, I picked up a sad bag of wrinkly grapes that were jammed in the back of my fridge, just waiting to be thrown away. Jammed. Jam? Is it that simple? I threw the grapes in a pot with some sugar. With a hot flame and a couple of minutes, each shriveled fruit had its 15 seconds of fame, bursting at the seams only to join the growing pool of deep moody purple lava. Thick like molasses, I spooned it into jars. As the weeks progressed, the earth stood still, and my time in my apartment outweighed my trips to the grocery store, I began to think more about my food. More than just up cycling my food but could I make my food regenerative? I started simple with hacks I saw on Facebook. Skeptical, I placed the cut-up end of a romaine heart into a shallow cup of water and waited. Overnight my little food scraps grew. Every morning they appeared taller and taller, leaning a little more towards the window as if they wanted to break out. I would join them with my morning coffee thinking familiar thoughts. The need for new growth fueled my creativity, as space on my windowsill dwindled. Glasses of water that housed a sprouting avocado seed, rejuvenated parsley, and spring onions that never ended, gave me some sense of control. I called my mom in excitement when I got my first sprout from some slices of tomato I planted in some dirt. Each day seemed like a new venture. Sell by date milk turned into creamy greek yogurt which turned into whey that was used to feed my plants. Stale bread became croutons as monster-eyed potatoes and a little bit of flour became pierogis that tasted like home. The more I created, the more I felt like I was doing something purposeful. It felt like I was more than just surviving, I was growing. Day 20 and my avocado seed finally sprouted a little root. I may not have written a world changing novel, learned how to do a yoga handstand, taken up painting, or developed chiseled abs, but I did get out of bed today and remembered to water my little scrap garden. That might be enough for me right now. I see my tomato sprouts grew a little higher today. They must be watching spring bloom outside. Maybe it’s a sign of change, but for now it’s just me and the scraps.
I’m really worried because something doesn’t smell right! I wouldn’t normally do this, but this might be pretty big news, and you are quite literally the closest publication. I live up 32 steps between the morning pastry and coffee, and the evening mixed meats and eclectic vinyl collection sounds with Monty Badnobark and our tall human guy. I am called Iloveyou Biscuit Jones and I’m quite sure that something very strange is going on. I know this because we all go down 32 steps to pee and poop and pick up snacks. My human doesn’t but he comes along anyway. Anyway, so the thing is, there are no snacks! No pastry smells. No mixed meat smells. No people on benches dropping snacks for me to enjoy. No pizza with meat. No cheesesteaks, no deli sandwiches, no falafels, no fries, not even an impossible burger, which is actually quite nice by the way if you like a meat substitute alternative, oh and no steak smells either at that place with the steps and the steaks. Not even a darn fancy taco or a chunk of chocolate with stuff in it. By the way it’s totally not true what that say about chocolate killing me because I’ve found plenty, and it’s really, really good, and I’m quite clearly not dead! That’s not really news I guess but I thought you should know. Oh, and another thing, this might be news, also our tall human is acting strange. Confused maybe? Like, get this, he has been putting on head coverings like it’s the middle of winter and cold outside, when it is quite clearly not winter or cold outside. But it did rain a few days recently. Monty Badnobark doesn’t like the rain because his feet get wet, but I don’t mind the rain much at all. Please could you let somebody know about this and fix the situation please. The sooner the better. I mean I eat still, kind of, it’s dog food. It’s okay in a pinch I guess, but it’s not like before. Please find all the people who drop food on the sidewalk for me to eat and bring them back. And please find the people who make all the foods that the people drop on the sidewalk and bring them back. And for goodness sake, would somebody please make some noise, it’s so quiet around here like we are visiting our friends Bugsy and Timmy in the woods who live two songs away in the car, or like that pool place with all the plants and the cat. Way, way too quiet. Thank you for listening and fixing this for me at your earliest convenience or today please. You don’t need to write me back ‘cause when you get this sorted out and it smells like my home again, I’ll know. Ok, bye.
Heather Hope Dell’Amore is a freelance writer, aspiring comedian, and ex-cheerleader (though not collegiately) luckily living through this in the therapeutic Hudson Valley. 46 FEATURE CHRONOGRAM 5/20
Iloveyou Biscuit Jones lives in Kingston with Monty Badnobark and his tall human, Rob Gaston.
Molly Gamache is a local video editor and part-time food blogger residing in Beacon.
Opposite: A photo of turkeytail mushrooms near Byrdcliffe by Fionn Reilly.
5/20 CHRONOGRAM FEATURE 47
An Excellent Grocery Store This will sound odd, perhaps, but when this crisis began my real worry wasn’t that I would fall sick. My greater fear was that I wouldn’t be able to get food for my kids. It was perhaps irrational, this fear. When I went to the large grocery stores in Poughkeepsie, I saw that people were tense. Some appeared to act in a near frenzy. I blamed myself when I saw that there was no chicken to be found on the shelves and no canned beans either. Not even any tofu, which baffled me for some reason, and certainly no wipes or gloves. For a few days, I felt all my fears had come true. I began to think I would have to serve my family canned sardines for a few weeks. I’m exaggerating a bit, but not by much. Then I stopped by my neighborhood grocery store, My Market, at the corner of Raymond and Fulton in Poughkeepsie. I live across from Vassar College campus and this grocery store is a five-minute walk from my house. In the past, we would go there to pick up ingredients we were missing. More than once I went there just to get ingredients for cocktails—lime, an orange, mint, soda, sugar—if friends said they were coming over for drinks. This was my routine: I would enter the store, and Ali, who usually works at the deli counter there, would ask me how I was doing.
A photo by Madeline Cottingham: “The other day we made masks. The first batch were made out of vacuum bags. We quickly learned they were not breathable. Eventually, we came up with a simple mask made from T-shirts. Here is my mother, Jennifer Cottingham, trying one on.”
48 FEATURE CHRONOGRAM 5/20
‘Excellent,’ I would always answer. Sometimes, even without the exchange, Ali would see me enter and begin the chant. ‘Excellent, excellent.’ Now, maybe in the third week of March, I stopped at My Market and found there all that I had been looking for. Chicken, a variety of beans, greens, even tofu. The only thing I couldn’t find were gloves. I mentioned this to Mohsin who was behind the counter and he took some gloves out from the box behind him and put them in my bag. He didn’t accept any payment for them. Over these last two or three weeks, I have returned there often and the store has been a source of comfort to me. It would be accurate to say that I have come to regard the store as a refuge. All these years, 10 at least, I have been seeing the same four people working at the store. They are three men and one woman. I talked to them today, asking questions I had never asked before. I learned that all of them are from a town called Rasht in northern Iran. I discovered that the lady behind the cash register, a pleasant woman with a bird-like voice, is named Minoo. She said that business is down; they only have onefourth the usual number of customers. Most Vassar students, eager customers of breakfast food and chips, are no longer around. Those items are not selling now. Nor are items like medicine or shampoo. But toilet paper sales are up.
I asked Ali what the news was from Iran. That country has been particularly hard-hit. He said he has family there and he checks in with them on FaceTime. Things there are just like it is here. I didn’t press him for details. We were both talking with our masks on. I then asked Ali if any customer had been rude or said anything racist. He said no, everyone has been nice. I’m glad that My Market is open for us. And that the four friends who work there are wearing masks and gloves. Today I saw that they had erected a plastic sheet in front of the cash register for protection. The people who are providing most of the essential services to all of us are hardest hit by COVID-19; they are also, overwhelmingly, working-class people of color. As I was writing this, I read of a 27-year-old grocery store clerk in Maryland, Leilani Jordan, who has died from the coronavirus. Earlier, she had complained to her mother that her employer, Giant Food, didn’t provide masks or gloves. Jordan was forced to bring her own handsanitizer to work. After the young woman’s death, Giant Food gave her mother a certificate for Jordan’s six years of service and a paycheck for $20.64. Amitava Kumar is the author of the novel Immigrant, Montana and, most recently, Every Day I Write the Book: Notes on Style.
Hillary Harvey, Quarantine Bicycle Gang
Insomnia It could be worse. I could be 17 and quarantined with my two younger siblings, my parents, and my grandmother. Like my oldest daughter, Z. She sleeps all day and stays up all night. When she goes outside, I ask if she has her mask. On the twenty-third day of quarantine, we decide to go for a bike ride on the rail trail. Z was up last night, opening and closing the bedroom door. Maybe she’s getting lonely or depressed. I wake her up twice because the first time doesn’t take. I tell her she should come; it’ll be fun. I give her an hour to get ready. We tie bandanas and scarves (her brother, a tiger hat) around our faces. Z puts on headphones and cycles away. When we stop on a bench for a snack, I text Z to meet us. “I was just riding and listening to music; it was so nice,” she sighs. “You see?” I say, “We all just needed to get out.” “Did you stay awake all night again?” her little sister asks. “I can’t say anything without everyone attacking me.” Sometimes Z comes to dinner angry. Sometimes she’s smiles generously at her siblings and suffers patiently through her dad’s jokes. Sometimes after everyone has left the table, Z tells me about her friends and her problems and her dreams. Z was the friendliest baby. Her first word was “Hi.” We debated having more children. Z’s dad is one
of 11. He grew up with 13 people in a three-bedroom house. He wanted Z to travel and to play an instrument and take an unpaid internship. A working-class man’s dreams for his daughter. I just wanted Z to stay confident and unafraid. But junior year has been tough, even before school was canceled. We started to tour colleges early, this past January. I thought it would give her some perspective for the remainder of 11th grade. One day, Z comes into the living room after going out with her friends for a walk, which was really a drive in one friend’s car. “Are you going to cyberbully me if I post a photo on my Insta of me and Mo hugging?” she asks. I look at her. “I’m just kidding. But can I post a pic of me and Mo hugging?” “Someone will report you,” I say. “They’re looking for young people who aren’t social distancing.” Last fall, Z and I went to the climate strike in New York City. The speakers asked what kind of future could there be in a racist, homophobic, capitalistic patriarchy bent on ruining the planet? The phrase that stuck with Z was when Kevin Patel, an activist from LA said, “We will not be the last generation.” Z fast-forwarded 50 years and wondered if that would prove true. I could blame the Boomers for leaving their grandchildren a worse world, but it’s the fault of everyone who participates in the way things are. I wanted Z to have siblings so she wouldn’t be alone. Z goes to a Zoom movie watch party in her room. We
hear her laughter as we get ready for bed. 102 years ago, Z’s great-grandmother was born during the Spanish flu. She was 11 when the stock market crashed, initiating the Great Depression. Just before she was lost to dementia, she watched through her apartment window as thousands of people fled the Twin Towers by foot over the 59th Street Bridge. I stayed up all night when I was 17, too. I would stuff eight kids into my Subaru hatchback. We’d hide in the parks, then sneak home at four am. I would have had no trouble climbing down Z’s balcony. But Z hasn’t tried to escape; she thinks there’s nowhere to go. “There’s a meme going around,” I tell Z one day. “The pandemic is a movie and we’re all just waiting for a 17-year-old girl to come and save us!” Z laughs. “Oh, sure,” she says. “I’ll just get my quiver and bow.” Everything in my lifetime indicated that toilet paper has always been used and would never be hard to buy. But Z’s adulthood begins with a post-apocalypse. Z does not know what it’s like to pay off her student loans finally, or to tell her friends that she’s having her third baby. While my quarantine has been about loss, her quarantine is about the way things will never be. Hillary Harvey was Chronogram’s Editor-at-Large from 2017-2018 and its Kids & Family Editor from 2015-2017. She lives in Kingston with her college sweetheart and their three muses.
5/20 CHRONOGRAM FEATURE 49
A Day in the Life Under Quarantine I wake up. Should I have tea or coffee? Can’t make up my mind. Should I have a shower first? Can’t make up my mind. Such are the existential dilemmas brought about by life in quarantine. I skip the shower and have tea. Should I take a walk or do yoga? I try not to make plans too far ahead—that’s one of the tips they tell us about life in quarantine. Live in the moment. But one does need some form of exercise every day. I roll out my yoga mat. That’s enough for now. Baby steps. I remember I have a wife. She is quarantined in a city 120 miles away. I send her a text message. I stare at my phone and await her reply. Such is the drama of life under quarantine. She replies. What she says is personal, so fuck off. I look out my window. A mime is being arrested*. My goodness, they are rounding up the mimes. Who’s next, I wonder, the jugglers? Bob Dylan releases a new song. It’s 17 minutes long. Perfect timing on his part, since no one has anything else to do now but listen to 17-minute Bob Dylan songs. Time for another cup of tea. Should it be PG Tips, Yorkshire, or loose leaves of Assam? It’s so great how even in quarantine one has choices. I choose Assam. “Good choice,” I say to myself. I remember I have two children. I call my daughter. She says she’s busy having a party with her friends on Zoom and she’ll call me back tomorrow. Is that a millennial thing? I don’t even know if my daughter is a millennial. Maybe she’s a Generation X or Generation Y. Who makes up this shit? I make a video call to my son. We have a father-son book club. Every day we read a chapter of the new book, Hitler’s First Hundred Days, and talk about it in a video chat. This was my idea, and he fell for it. Now he can be as obsessed about the parallels between then and now as I am. I look at my yoga mat. It calms me. The Bob Dylan song is about the JFK assassination. I search for a connection between that and our current situation. I can’t find one. Wait. Yes. I have it. Kennedy did not want to die but he was killed. We do not want to die but we might be killed by the novel coronavirus. Now I get it. Brilliant. Epic genius, that Dylan. I send a text message to my wife letting her know what the Bob Dylan song means. She doesn’t reply. Coffee time. My choices of method are automatic drip, pour-over, French press, or Moka pot. I choose tea. The sun is shining, and the temperature is in the high 60s. It’s the kind of day that draws everyone outside. Everyone but me. I know that everyone is going to be outside, which means it’s not safe out there. I stay inside where it’s safe. Maybe I’ll have a lie-down instead of a walk. I look at the calendar and see that today is our second wedding anniversary. I call my wife to wish her a happy anniversary. “Remember Rome?” I ask rhetorically. “Remember when Jemma disappeared?” I ask not rhetorically. I look at the New York Times online. Boris Johnson is in intensive care because of the virus. You know as well as I do what we are all thinking. I stop thinking that and instead I think, well, there’s a Brexit for you. I look out the window. Only about half the people are wearing masks. Maybe the others do not keep up with the news. Not everyone is a news junkie, I remind myself. I often wish I weren’t one. But whenever my mind goes there, I remind myself how important it is to stay well-informed. But in the end, is it really? You know the old saw. It’s 4pm, which means it’s time to start thinking about what to make for dinner. I have no fresh vegetables left. I haven’t set foot in a store in three weeks. That’s the only reason I am still alive. I finally break into my stash of frozen vegetables. I have pouches of mixed vegetables, broccoli florets, and green beans. I choose mixed vegetables. Go big or go home. It’s 4:05pm. Too early to start cooking dinner. I put the mixed vegetables back in the freezer. It’s too late for a cup of coffee. If I have one now, it will keep me up all night. I have another cup of tea.
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I lie down on my yoga mat. I close my eyes. My mind drifts. Maybe, I think, I should write a brief essay about a day in the life during quarantine. Instead, I play Bob Dylan’s new song again. Wow, that’s a long song, I think. But I’ve got time for that now. Seth Rogovoy is a writer in Hudson. *This really happened.
Closing Time It’s a few minutes before six, the new early closing time at my local market. The lines are not long. Everyone knows by now not to go to shopping late, when everything’s picked over and the air is filled with other people’s exhalations. There’s only one woman ahead of me. She’s packing her groceries so slowly that I’m sure my face shows what begins as frustration and quickly intensifies into anxiety. The more time I’m here, the more risk I’m in. I have never been good at controlling my face. A favorite college professor once told me my stern expression intimidated my classmates so much they reported it to her. I’m wary of this now because checkout lines are the new judgement gates. They expose the toilet paper-hoarding sinners and the hedonists indulging in high-end treats, as they illuminate the saintly cashiers who risk their lives for pittance wages. I’m not sure what circle of hell my jittery impatience puts me in, but I do have a four-pack of West Kill Pale Ale in my basket so I’m already a marked woman. I think of the yoga class I used to go to and try to make my face soften. I start to put my groceries on the belt, then stop myself because the woman still hasn’t paid, and I have to keep my distance. She hesitates at the credit card machine. “What’s the round up charity this month?” she asks, as if closing time and the virus weren’t upon us. I flush hot. She’s lingering on purpose! Haughty words for She Who Tarries lodge in my throat. The cashier is patient and tells the woman the money goes to educate children with autism spectrum disorder. “That’s good,” the woman says. The cashier announces the rounded-up figure. The woman fumbles in her purse and pulls out a large wallet, which requires more fumbling. She carefully counts out twenties and hands them to the cashier. I realize that there is a very good chance that this may be the only time this week —this month?—when this woman is not alone. She’s clinging to her moment, lingering in the spotlight of the cashier’s attention, and mine. With effort, she lifts her groceries into her cart. She’s packed her reusable thermal bags tightly. In another time, a bagger would step in to expedite the line, thinking nothing about grabbing the handles of her bags and hoisting them in her shopping cart. Now, it’s all up to her. Lisa A. Phillips, author of Unrequited: The Thinking Woman’s Guide to Romantic Obsession, is the chair of the Digital Media and Journalism Department at SUNY New Paltz, but has the soul of a troubadour.
Essential Service I don’t think I’m so original as I once was. Or maybe I never really was, only tried to be. Now it just seems to matter less. Maybe because I’ve been reading Grace Paley. She writes lines like, In memory of him and out of respect for mankind, I decided to live for love. I decided to buy a hammock, one of those parachute eyesores that sag between trees. I knew I had to after seeing a guy strap up in one behind my damp square of bedsheet. He was gone in no time at all, disappeared into cocoon-oblivion between the oaks. It struck me as the self-quarantine holy grail, a most essential service. So I ordered one soon as I got home, itching at ant bites around my ankles. A couple days later, I’m swinging in suspended bliss.
There are some birds that hang out near the railway tracks. They talk to each other, call and response. Birds are known to sing. But these two are old pals, kibitzing like Brooklynites in a Grace Paley kitchen scene. By 4pm the April sun’s about eyeline. The red bandana I wore as a mask to the post office, like some accomplice in a hipster stick-up, slips easily over head—a protective impulse that feels suddenly old fashioned. I flay my book out across my chest and lie there legs askew, skin full of heat. It smells like baking. The birds talk shop. I think: I have no business being this content. And I think again how that story ends: goodbye and good luck. Jennifer Gutman is a doctoral candidate in English at Vanderbilt University and a former assistant editor at Chronogram.
Brushing and Flossing Daily Of course, it started on Friday the 13th. I awoke to a series of missed calls and endless group texts from my colleagues and within the course of a few hours, I went from working 12 hour days to unemployed for the unforeseeable future. As did many, I went to the grocery store to stock up but the aisles were packed with crazed, angry shoppers and the shelves were bare. I got home with a few cans of soup and had a meltdown. I can’t recall ever feeling so alone or hopeless and it happened within 4 hours. And it was bad. The kind of bad that resulted in family members vowing to never speak to each other again and subsequently rejecting my pleas to come home for a while and eat their food. How was I going to function with no food and no income? I slowly emerged from the initial shock after a few days with the help of my friends, but then what? My job entails home visits and interaction with people as I specialize in human communication and that includes close contact with many people in a variety of settings. Now my days are spent attempting to provide services through teleconferencing, but ultimately, I’m alone in 700 square feet. I miss hugging friends and petting random dogs on walks. Panic often sets in after one too many gins. Prior to the pandemic, I was drowning in student and medical debt. With two more jobs set to start in April, the goal was to work as many hours as I could to dig myself out of the hole. However, I knew the threat of the shutdown was looming back in February, so I was already feeling a higher level of anxiety, knowing that my income would most likely abruptly stop and that $485/week of unemployment wouldn’t even be enough to cover rent. And I hate to say that I was right, but I’m kind of always right about these things. Not that I win any points for that now. My great backup plan has always been to marry a wealthy older man and lounge on his yacht with a martini somewhere in the Caribbean. That goal is impossibly unattainable. Online dating during a lockdown seems futile. When is it going to be safe to physically meet? And have you ever had to help an elderly relative set up a video chat while not in the same room? Now try finding a rich, (relatively) healthy elderly man who’s proficient at Zoom. That might be a full-time job in itself and frankly, I’m too tired of doing mostly nothing all day to even try. Since March, I’ve not become an expert baker. I’ve not cleaned my entire apartment. I’m not writing an epic novel. I’m not taking countless online courses to better myself through exploring meditation and wellness. I’m not plotting my great reinvention for when this nightmare ever ends, because that’s frankly what rich people do when they don’t spend all day panicking over how to buy toilet paper. What I am doing is reaching out to people I care about and then getting pissed off when they don’t return a text message. I’m brushing and flossing daily. I’m keeping at least six feet away from people when I am outside and still waving and smiling as I pass people, because I still believe in etiquette. I’m trying to keep my head out of my ass and not become so selfish that I won’t be able to relate to humans if and when this does end.
Zachary Skinner, Exercise Bike Escape Raft with Spinnaker
When I moved to the Hudson Valley, it was the first time I’d lived alone in my entire life. I relished not having to share a space with randoms I found on Craigslist and being able to leave my dishes in the sink. Living alone brought a sense of calm. I didn’t wake to my roommate playing the guitar at 3am or run into strangers emerging from the bathroom when I had to get ready for work. But I can hear my mother saying, “You got what you wished for. Now you’re alone forever.” I can’t help but let that anxiety and paranoia creep in. Am I not cheerful enough and optimistic when I chat with friends? Will anyone want to physically see me ever again? Am I a failure at this whole pandemicking? And yes, I made up a new word. At least I’ve accomplished something for today. Inga Hyatt is a (sometimes) actress/filmmaker/speech language pathologist who now spends the majority of her day developing meaningful communication with the woodland creatures that visit her windowsill bird feeder.
My Seder There was relief in not having to fight the traffic to get to my aunt’s house in Staten Island for Passover. As Brooklyn natives (neither of whom still live in Brooklyn;) why she ever moved to that unspeakable borough is one of the many perennial topics of discussion I could have expected to have with my cousin Leslie, had we all met there, as we do every year. The house would have been crowded and noisy with familiar people and yet another new puppy (to which I am allergic.)
My aunt’s home is filled with her impressive artwork and an excess of cut glass that rings a bit as many come in, first walking through the kitchen to give kisses hello, and then into the dining room to visit, and perhaps help set the table. My mother would have opened the wine immediately upon her arrival. There would be the sound of the gold and crimson-edged china being taken from its protective covering and placed in a stack on the hand-stitched tablecloth and the sound of clattering silver coming out of the case it lives in, in large clumps. My sister would be deciding on the right order to put the silver in around each plate. The living room would already be full of people, and more would arrive. Eventually we’d assemble around the beautifully laid table to start our Seder. It would be raucous, as we went around the circle, taking turns reading the familiar text with energy. Contentious, as we wrestled with the implicit patriarchy in the language of the Maxwell House Haggadah; some changing God to Goddess and he to she and they—to the irritation of the more traditional among us. We would make much of the math of Adonai’s fingers at sea, and have a great time with the Plagues, and the singing of Dayeinu. My heart would stop as ever as, with our glasses raised we read: “For not only one enemy has risen against us to annihilate us, but in every generation, there are those who rise against us” and we put those glasses back down, untasted. I would have spent this night, both the same and different from other nights, at my mother’s and spent the next day with her too, (at wracking labor), cooking and preparing to do it all again at her place the second
night. But this year, pestilence. As I walked the circle of my driveway, the day before Passover, in the early morning quiet, reminding myself to count my many blessings, I looked at the spring greens and bitter herbs coming up in my yard. And I remembered the Seder plate I’ve never used, that once was Tracy’s mom’s. I thought about what was in the fridge and pantry and realized I could do this. I could make my own Seder. And so I did. I became very busy! I researched Haggadahs online. I engaged with the texts, thought about what they said, looked things up. I worked on my Seder plate, chopped apples, pecans, and dates for charoset, and walked around the yard, picking spring greens and bitter herbs. This part was really fun. I rendered chicken fat and made kneidel with matzoh meal left over from last year. They came out so good I was annoyed I couldn’t enter them into the “who makes the best kneidel?” family discussion. (Not that I would have won, ever, no matter how good they were.) Near sunset on the first night, with the promise of wine, I convinced my not-so-willing and not at all Jewish significant other to sit down with me. We performed the rituals and I read the story of Passover aloud to him. He repeated the Four Questions after me. He toasted Cthulhu, he complained and he heckled, and he did an amazing impression of the Simple Child. And somehow it was very right. Next Year in Staten Island! Laura Rose is a retired teacher and the broker at Laura Rose Real Estate, in Gardiner.
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A photo by Seth David Rubin, Roberta and the Button Wheel, from the “Pieces” series.
The Full-Time Quarantine Amidst boastful homeschooling parents and social media broadcasts of hikes and outdoor adventures, I reflect upon the sobering reality of what my week looks like and I feel ashamed of its stark comparison. Monday through Friday I hide from my children behind a computer screen and then I race to make up for such actions by feverishly cleaning my kitchen and squeezing in condensed school lessons Saturday and Sunday. Of course, I’m grateful to still have a job during this disaster, but a job during a disaster is not a job during normal times, just as a day working from home isn’t that same in such a crisis. Some days, the guilt I feel over the self-perceived neglect of my children weighs so heavily over my shoulders I feel it push me down like a weight. My husband, an essential worker, goes to brave the masses every day, so I wake up at 4 am to get a head start on the endless race against the clock and the race against my children’s list of needs. I encourage myself to push through the afternoon hours when fatigue sets inalmost there, almost there. Every hour is a step closer, but a step closer to exactly what isn’t clear. A step closer to another day? As this new reality began to unfold, I had intentions of rekindling old friendships, writing letters, calling my grandparents more regularly. Where did those intentions go? I was uncharacteristically unprepared for how fast the minutes and the chances would slip through my fingers. While days are challenging, light always breaks through the cracks. The sun still rises in the morning where it always has, the birds still sing with the same tune they used to. My children don’t understand “pandemic”, they still smile when they wake up in the morning, still play and dance with the same passion as before. My mother and I made a promise on the first day of endless quarantine to share four pieces of gratitude every day. The first month has finally passed, 52 FEATURE CHRONOGRAM 5/20
I’m proud to say we are still going strong. While each and every thought of gratitude shared has been beautiful, a few favorites stand out. Friday, March 20: The feeling of doing things with awareness and purpose, to not be mindless, but to at least have an intention, no matter how it all turns out. Yesterday I found myself considering how much cream to put in my coffee, being so grateful to have it. Tuesday, March 24: How my husband interacts with our children. I’m sure I take that for granted. It means the world to me. I was listening to him talk to them in the other room this morning and I don’t know if I ever stopped to really appreciate that. Friday, March 27: I’m feeling really grateful for my cat’s health. I’ve never really loved cats, but she brings a lot of joy to the family, and a vet bill would really be a drag right now. Sunday, March 29: People who smile (at a safe distance). I swear there is something in that that acknowledges a unity among absolutely everyone, and it is so palpable, so comforting. Monday, April 6: Feeling at a greater place of acceptance and trust in my life that all things work together for good, but I have to let the birthing process happen. Sometimes I just need to step back and let things be. I am not orchestrating the greatest at-home science projects of all time, I am not hiking a different state park every morning. The sink is full of dishes, the kids have been eating more snacks than vegetables, and occasionally I have to step out to sneak a cigarette and catch my breath. This is reality when you’re living through a disaster. As the sun washes over the plates, crumbs, and juice boxes left over from the night before, I close my laptop and my eyes, for just a moment, and I am grateful. I am so grateful. Nicole Clanahan is a woman learning to appreciate the finer things in life—gratitude exchanges, messy kitchens, and sneaking cigarettes.
The Unemployed and Single Lockdown Manifesto Mandatory daily walk, even if it’s just around the block. Sit outside and watch things for a while. Longer. Longer still. When you clean your space, pretend like your apartment is a bed and breakfast and you’re preparing for a special guest to arrive. Get dressed (out of PJs) at least every other day. Do not let your thoughts dwell on the possibility of touching another human (because it ain’t happenin’), unless you have just taken zzzquil and you’ll be unconscious soon anyways. Make fancy foods for yourself, like a pie. However, if you make a large quantity (like a pie), make firm plans to get rid of at least half of it…like leaving it for a non-immunocompromised neighbor or putting it in the freezer (the single person’s secret food hiding spot). Failing to do this will ultimately result in resentment towards the food, i.e. “Oh god, I have to eat that pie again today. Day 8 but I cannot waste it because this is a crisis.” If you have the option to do something in a short amount of time or a longer amount of time, always choose the longer one. If you feel a cry coming on, get off of Instagram Live first, and then let it all go. Never, under any circumstance, listen to the White House briefings. Make a real effort not stare at yourself in Zoom meetings. Plan out your following day the night before. Any activity besides sleeping can go on the schedule. Start growing anything you can get your hands on; avocado pits, sprouts, celery stubs, random branches, succulents from CVS, etc. Seeing plants grow will remind you of the passing of time. Dance at least once a day.
If you get cold, dance. Your apartment isn’t cold, you just haven’t moved in nine hours. When in doubt, start soaking some dried beans. By the time they are ready, you will know what to do with them. Listen to your thoughts like you are listening to a friend. Hear them out, then move on to a new subject gently and mercifully. Seriously, forget the idea of “making the most out of your quarantine.” It is an extension of the productivityminded rhetoric of grinding capitalism. You do not need to be productive to have worth. Read anything you’ve got. Make low-key art. If you feel like taking a nap, go ahead. No need to set an alarm. Look at as many flowers as you can. Look closer. Closer still. Rearrange things and decorate your space. When you do this, pretend like you are in quarantine for an indefinite period of time and this space is your whole world. Wait… yeah.
From my bedroom window, I watch the endless activity. The funeral home owner and funeral director are often covered from head-to-toe in blue protective gear. I see a family coming to make arrangements for a loved one who has passed. I watch a truck pull in to drop-off a casket. I spy the owner and the livery driver speaking to each other from six feet away. And often, late at night, I am startled by the sounds of heavy doors’ slamming as bodies are brought in from a hospital mortuary. When I head downstairs to retrieve my mail, and I run into the owner or director, they tell me how difficult it has been. Of course, they are mostly getting Covid 19 calls, and the primary question is always “cause of death?” because the procedures are different. Covid 19 victims cannot be embalmed. No one wants to take a chance because no one knows for sure what we are dealing with. So, bodies are either directly buried or cremated, but the crematoriums are backed up. Sometimes they have to be at a cemetery at a specific early hour. If they are not, they’ll be shut out for the day. The funeral home owner just hopes he doesn’t have need for the refrigerated truck he has on hold.
Alex Bildsoe is an artist/writer/illustrator from Minnesota who is currently making and distributing zines from her cozy hobbit hole in Kingston.
Marilyn D. is a veteran media professional who often sidelines as a clown in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.
Above the Funeral Home
A New Day
Since being directed to shelter in place on March 16, I am mostly home alone. Home just happens to be an apartment on the top floor of a funeral home. The chapels are on the main floor, and the office is on the second floor, just on the other side of my bedroom wall. It’s been a calm winter. If there are no services, there’s usually no one around, and I have the building to myself. My first two weeks home were really quiet. I actually wondered if they were going to reduce operating hours because the funeral home owner and the funeral director were hardly ever here. When I’m in my bedroom, I sometimes hear noises on the other side of the wall coming from the office. I can hear the phone ring and the muffled voices of the staff when they take a call or speak to each other. Once the Covid 19 numbers started to climb, the phone began to ring more, the staff was spending more time here, and I started to realize that my home sanctuary was anything but. Now, the phone’s constant ringing and the muffled voices on the other side have become my morning alarm clock.
Just after waking at dawn I was inspired to begin my day by replanting my begonia cuttings back into their old/new home of soil in the pot which has been waiting for them to return. For months, theirs had been an altered, wet reality, reincarnating by sprouting new roots in small perfume bottles and glasses of water. Striving to be strong enough to be reborn. They should have been re-planted back into their previous life weeks ago, but I couldn’t face them. I just couldn’t garner the gardener within I needed to facilitate their rebirth, despite the joy I’ve felt rebirthing hundreds of cuttings from water over decades. I’d been living a new life myself, but its facets didn’t include the mama gardener in me. I was too busy reading and educating myself about the pandemic and the asinine words, acts and non-acts coming from the asinine person who lives in the White House. But last night I learned my younger sister was able to say a few words from the ICU and today I felt my reality alter yet again, and the gardener within me reborn. Being newly awoken from her 14-day intubated,
induced coma, she had begun working with a speech therapist and yesterday a nurse held a phone to my sister’s face in the Covid-19 ward in Richmond, VA (where she’d been air-lifted to three weeks ago from her local ER because the hospitals in her DC suburb were all full), and she was able to say “I love you” to her husband. My sister the Barbie Doll Dream House inheritor, pink/orange/gold bedroom sharer, mother to twin teenaged son and daughter (and two dogs). My sister the loving, sensitive, compassionate, kids school volunteer, crafty (as in art), Obama “Hope” symbol pumpkin carver, Halloween grey wigged bespeckled Harry Potter wizard, and gardener extraordinaire; is awake, cognizant, and relearning how to talk after having a tube down her throat for days. We almost lost her. It’s a new day. When the ambulance took her to the original ER and her kids and husband couldn’t accompany her (no families allowed to join patients in our new paradigm), her husband told their kids who were in despair, “Mom won’t die, she’s too stubborn.” She’s back in her local hospital now, where she will remain for 2 months. There are no guidelines yet for recovery from this easily inhaled molecule. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for to invent those. The soon-to-be released yellow plasma test the gold ring for ending the pandemic, clarifying whether we’ve had COVID, or the flu this winter. So we cultivate hope, remembering we susceptible humans are also the ones who invented the machines which allow women and men to live in space for a year, cause audiences to be astounded by great dancing and moved to both delight and tears by great music. And we are the ones who invented cures for other diseases, but those were mostly done in laboratories over long lengths of time. This ain’t no party, this ain’t no disco, this ain’t no fooling around. No time for dancing, or lovey dovey. (We) ain’t got time for that now. So it is the stories of those stricken and recovered who will be delineating our new health paradigm. Maybe one in which our bodies adapt to living with some form of COVID, (By our hand? By CRISPR manipulation?) To a new paradigm of understanding the molecular world of viruses that jump species. And to infected, yet strong, stubborn sisters around the world. Especially the younger ones. Maya Horowitz is a modern dance historian and holistic health researcher living in Woodstock.
A photo by Will Nixon
5/20 CHRONOGRAM FEATURE 53
Neil Young for Dummies I find myself listening to America, the mediocre soft-rock band of the 1970s. (Though like many old-time groups, it still exists!) Their optimistic, Californian, “mellow” sound—they should have called themselves Neil Young for Dummies— is the exact opposite of today’s anxiety-dosed daily vigil. On YouTube I play: “Ventura Highway in the sunshine / Where the days are longer/ The nights are stronger/ Than moonshine.” For decades I’ve hated America, but now I need them. Walking along my road, I notice that the yellow coltsfoot flowers—among the first blooms of spring—have contracted in the cold. I say to one: “O brave coltsfoot flower, pulling your petals in for warmth, may I be strong as you!” Heard in A Dream “Everything I own just got heavier.” Theology Lesson Is kindness enough? Yes, kindness is sufficient. Sparrow is the author of, most recently Abraham: A Novel, an exploration of the life of the 16th president through the eyes of a Stone Ridge chiropractor.
Trapped My husband usually spends a third of his time in New York City, visiting his father, who is 101. I enjoy his company when he returns, but my hermit tendencies make me relish having the house to myself for a week at a time. Therefore, we were apprehensive about being cooped up together in quarantine, but it was going fine. We were cooking together, watching movies online, taking nature walks in which I taught him bits of plant lore from my past life as an herbalist and forager. I felt we were lucky to have each other’s company when so many people were having to live alone. It took a few weeks for our peaceful coexistence to unravel. I was growing weary of fixing his daily computer crisis. I was ready to explode if he asked me again to set the timer for cooking the rice, a measure designed to avoid aggravating his carpal tunnel issue. When he wasn’t trying to tell me about the latest Twitter meme, he was walking around the house, shouting into the phone. Finally, I said, “If only you could go to the city for a few days.” He was hurt. We had to have a long conversation, in which I apologized for not keeping up with my irritation, for being in denial about the discomforts of quarantine. “I’m sure if I expressed my frustrations on the spot, I wouldn’t sound so aggressive when I ask you to live in the garage. I’d be gentler when I tell you to go build a doghouse in the yard and—” I am not known for my sense of humor, but at this point, I began laughing so hard, I couldn’t finish the sentence. Luckily, he took it the right way, and we both laughed helplessly as I added, “No, maybe I’ll move under the bed. I can take a flashlight—no, I’ll use my iPhone. I can plug it in right at the head of the bed. Or I could live in the crawlspace under the house. It’s nice and warm down there. Or I could send you out to live in the woods, now that I’ve taught you the wild edibles.” The rest of our day went just great. We took a walk under tall, silent pine trees, and then had a cozy session watching back-to-back episodes of an Icelandic TV murder mystery. It’s called “Trapped.”
A sign by Norm Magnusson
54 FEATURE CHRONOGRAM 5/20
Violet Snow has been published in the New York Times “Disunion” blog, Civil War Times, Woodstock Times, American Ancestors, Otter Magazine, and many other periodicals.
Resignation, a photo by Anna Sirota
Letter From Buenos Aires Every day starts the same. The beep of the thermometer while I sit on the toilet peeing. I don’t bother working out the math anymore. Less than 37 Celsius, I’m good. No coronavirus today! Sometimes after my pissing temperature routine I stand on the hot pink scale I recently had delivered from the local pharmacy chain. This math I usually do, even though it’s useless. Less than 60, I’m good. Without a way to run, 50 kilos is not getting any closer, and the siren call of Zoom Zumba has yet to enchant me. Even though I’m on the other side of the equator riding out the tail end of summer, I’ve been cooking up heavy, heavy winter foods—pork roasts and butternut bisques, creamy saffron risottos, bean stews, and four-hour bolognese sauces—as if anything lighter and I would just float away. Foods for grounding, foods for comfort. Foods for Fuck the World is Breaking. I make coffee and walk the dog. Or walk the dog then make coffee. I can never figure out which is better. Then I sit on my patio, with its swimming pool blue walls, roll a cigarette, and check the numbers. The daily dread rodeo.
Though the streets are hauntingly quiet and everything screams NOT NORMAL, the sun chariot still makes its daily commute from east to west (although across the north here, which never ceases to befuddle my hippocampus). I compulsively trace its movement in shifting patches of light. The ray that falls on the kitchen floor at 9:20. That unreachable patch in the top right corner of the patio wall at 1:30. That time in late afternoon—5ish, I think—when its rays soak the upper floors of the buildings in front. The red one, matte like adobe, feels warm to the sight. I yearn to feel that primordial heat on my skin. The white one next to it casts a secondary brightness onto the patio walls. Sun reflected its better than no sun at all. Being outside has become a deep craving, a maddening addiction. And what a temptress nature has been. By and large, these days in quarantine have been exceptional. Big shining blue skies glimpsed through the cookie cutter of my walled patio. And the couple days of rain, necessary, right. A collective wail. Somehow—magically—the seasons still know to change, even though everything else is broken. Maybe the trees didn’t get the memo, because
every day they strew the streets with golden leaves. Sycamore mostly, and ash too, which hasn’t yet met its emerald borer here. God praise the dog. The big, waggy, goldness of him. A hall pass in the time of corona, when cops patrol every second corner, managing to blend menace and disinterest in a single gaze. One exasperated Sunday morning, I tried to take him for a jog, and we both got sent home, tail between our legs. Bad girl! I am tired of being alone. I want to be hugged. I want to stand on Santa Fe Avenue on a warm sticky Friday night as the yellow cabs zoom by and the girls in miniskirts traverse the crosswalks in packs, leaving contrails of raw sex appeal in their wake. I want to rub elbows with strangers on the bus as we lurch down Las Heras. I want to dance, pouring sweat, in a sardine can club full of beautiful unfamiliar faces. I ache for the city to come alive again, to feel its vigorous thumping pulse. La ciudad de la furia. The city of fury, silent. It’s all wrong. Marie Doyon, Chronogram’s digital editor, is the world’s youngest snowbird; she lives in Argentina half the year.
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music Pete Seeger Think Globally, Act Locally (Turktunes Records) Turktunes.com I was remarkably lucky to have become friendly with Pete Seeger toward the end of his life, spending many hours talking with him on the phone and in person—even performing with him—while researching a long, multi-part story on his legendary long neck banjo. Hearing his well-burnished tales, told privately, in that reedy, ragged, and beautifully human voice was a gift in every moment that it happened. Whether they realized it or not at the time, the Dobbs Ferry South Presbyterian Church children singing with Seeger on Think Globally, Act Locally, were receiving that same gift. And so was Seeger, who was never more alive than when he was leading a group of willing voices in the power of song. As a listening experience, as an album, Think Globally is not compelling in the way, say Mingus Ah Um or London Calling is. What it is, is a document, a treatise, one that says, “This is who we can be as a people. This is what we can do if we simply allow ourselves to truly communicate with one another.” You can see Seeger’s smile as these songs unfold; picture his arms in the air as he leads his sweet choir through a hopeful “Somewhere Over the Rainbow,” bridging Yip Harburg and Woody Guthrie; imagine that bobbing Adam’s apple as he cuts up like a comedian in “English is Cuh-Ray-Zee.” And you can feel a pure American spirit the absolute antithesis of the current administration. Make America Pete again! —Michael Eck
Paul Bley/Gary Peacock/Paul Motian When Will the Blues Leave
The Gotham Rockets Blast Off
Jonell Mosser with John Hall Little Black Dress
(ECM Records) Ecmrecords.com
Rum Bar Records) Gothamrockets.bandcamp.com
(Independent) Jonellmosser.com
Although they recorded in a quartet setting with saxophonist John Gilmore in 1964 and crossed paths with each other in other projects over the decades, the influential configuration of pianist Paul Bley, bassist Gary Peacock, and drummer Paul Motian only entered the studio twice as a proper trio: for 1970’s Paul Bley with Gary Peacock (which is partially comprised of 1963 recordings by the threesome) and the 1998 reunion Not Two, Not One. When Will the Blues Leave, a live set recorded in Switzerland during a tour in support of the latter album, arrives with an added luster of poignance now that Bley and Motian have passed and left local resident Peacock as the band’s sole survivor. Weighted equally between lively workouts and reflective moments, it’s a beautiful summation of the shared history of this unique unit and the artful communication between its legendary members. —Peter Aaron
Looking for a dose of maximum rock ’n’ soul? Look no further than the debut four-song EP from this gang of four, whose individual resumes include stints with New York City stalwarts such as the Fleshtones, Waldos, and Swingin’ Neckbreakers, amongst others. Driven by the just-the-right-side-of-frantic vocals of guitarist Matt Langone, the Rockets tear through these four songs like a runaway train. “Bad with Girls” delays the irrepressible, surging energy with a “Leader of the Pack”-esque spoken intro before the guitar crashes into the breach. New Paltz’s Steve Greenfield (an activist and Green Party congressional candidate) is superb on saxophone and keyboards. The sax breaks on these songs are reminiscent of Clarence Clemons, but with some serious caffeine. “Rip This Night” briefly quotes the Ramones classic “Rockaway Beach” and is a showcase for the powerhouse rhythm section of drummer Mighty Joe Vincent and bass player Scott Kitchen. Dig it! —Jeremy Schwartz
This small silver platter comes at a distressing time in human history, though the original recording is from a simpler era, a quarter-century ago. Nashville soul singer Jonell Mosser took the Bearsville Theater stage in 1994, belting over Orleans front man, activist, and former congressman John Hall’s zealous guitar, “We all share a circle, all we give comes back again…” Now with internet communities banding together and clandestine comrades gathering in arms-length arcs of unity, Mosser’s sentiment rings true more than ever, as we cherish our circles and yearn for days of theater throngs. She recently unearthed this live gig, and thanks to engineer Julie Last and celebrated songwriter Johanna Hall, we’re gifted with these stripped-bare, blood-stirring compositions that echo the vocal boldness of Bonnie Raitt or Janice Joplin. From crooning ballads (“Ordinary Splendor”) to walloping powerhouses (“Bad Habit”), the blues never sounded better or came at a more urgent moment. —Haviland S Nichols
56 MUSIC CHRONOGRAM 5/20
BETHEL WOODS CENTER FOR THE ARTS
More than. a destination
Step into the 1960s : Hear the music, experience the vibes, feel the pulse of the generation who decided change was long overdue. Rosendale, NY 1 2472 | 845.658.8989 | rosendaletheatre.org
The Rosendale Theatre has temporarily suspended operations. We are actively monitoring the situation and keeping up on all developments. STAY STRONG AND
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5/20 CHRONOGRAM BOOKS 57
books SECLUSION READING LIST Between following the news, scrolling through Instagram, and working on your computer, you’re probably racking up the screen time during lockdown. When you’re ready for a break and want to settle in with a good old-fashioned book, we’ve you covered. We chatted with Hudson Valley bookstore owners and employees to get their top book recommendations for quarantine. Many bookstores are offering online ordering, curbside pick-up, and free local delivery. Support yours today! The Monster at the End of This Book Let’s all take a moment to reflect on the greatest book of all time. First published in 1971, this simple story by “Sesame Street” writer Jon Stone with kinetic, lived-in art by Michael Smollin was meant to introduce kids to the concept of finishing a book. But it’s a masterpiece of plot and pacing, dovetailing with the main character’s anxious personality traits as the reader, through the broken fourth wall, insists on bringing him closer to a feared monster waiting on the last page. It’s been a cultural touchstone for three generations now (and counting!) for good reason, and it’s perfect entertainment for a family at home together for a while. And spoiler alert: There really is a monster at the end! —Jesse Post, Post Mark Books
Enter the Aardvark I’d pick Enter the Aardvark by Jessica Anthony, which went on sale last week. This hilarious story starts with an up-and-coming (closeted gay) young Republican congressman discovering a taxidermied aardvark on his front stoop. How did it get there? Why? Jessica Anthony weaves this tale along with the story of the taxidermist who stuffed the aardvark in Victorian England. This book is so smart and funny—it’s my top recommendation for reading during quarantine! One of my favorite novels of 2020 so far! —Suzanna Hermans, Oblong Books & Music
A Tale of Two Cities / Essays One I don’t usually re-read books, there is too much I’ve yet to read, but right now I am revisiting A Tale of Two Cities. I think this is a great time to tackle a classic because for some people the language requires a little more concentration. You find yourself exerting forgotten mental muscles when you are no longer quite fluent with 19thcentury writers. I’m also reading Lydia Davis’s essays about writing, which, in a way, are as much about reading. I’m kinda always falling in love with reading! —Jessica Dupont, Half Moon Books
The Year of Magical Thinking This Joan Didion classic is a transcendent memoir about life and death and human resiliency. We are all so much stronger than we think. —Kristi Gibson, Magpie Books
The Mirror and The Light We’re settling into The Mirror and the Light, the final entry in Hilary Mantel’s trilogy about Thomas Cromwell, Henry VIII’s right-hand man and convenient historical villain. Mantel, whose first two Cromwell books, Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies, each won the Man Booker Prize, brings us a more sympathetic version of Cromwell: a self-made man of the world who, for all of his very real faults, is the greatest political minds of his age—and just a darn fascinating person. It’s maybe the most immersive, engrossing historical fiction you’ll ever read—the kind that’ll have you reading Wikipedia articles and listening to podcasts about the protagonist well into the night. For an extended quarantine, nothing beats reading this whole, 1,700-page trilogy, and pairing it with the splendid 2015 miniseries on the BBC starring Mark Rylance. —Amanda and Anthony Stromoski, Rough Draft
If I Die Tonight / A Three Dog Life / Clearcut Alison Gaylin won the prestigious Edgar Award last year for her Hudson Valley based thriller If I Die Tonight, which chronicles the inter-connecting lives of a high school outcast and a faded pop star.” For some guidance and comfort in challenging circumstances, Abigail Thomas’ memoir A Three Dog Life relates her own experience caring for her husband after a tragic car accident. And finally, long before Richard Powers’s Overstory, Nina Shengold created a page-turning love triangle set among trees and logging in her thrilling novel Clearcut. So stay home and read a great local author’s book! —James Conrad, Golden Notebook
In Search of Lost Time “Life is short and Proust is long” is an apocryphal quote attributed to Anatole France. In Search of Lost Time is indeed one of the longest novels ever published, a fact that makes it seem a forbidding undertaking. However, many of us now have more free hours than we ever anticipated. Proust himself knew a long solitude; his severe asthma led to isolation within a cork-lined room. In this solitude, he wrote a massive Künstlerroman that crystallized his wisdom regarding memory, love, and art. He’s also hilarious and the plot is full of witty gossip. There are worse quarantine companions. —James Frauenberger, Barner Books 58 BOOKS CHRONOGRAM 5/20
OLD LOVEGOOD GIRLS
Gail Godwin BLOOMSBURY, 2020, $27 This beautifully crafted and cerebral new novel from local literary treasure Gail Godwin is the story of a decades-long, complex, and deep friendship between two women from very different circumstances. Using literary analogies, repetition, philosophical debate and letters, Godwin masterfully presents the ebb and flow of the events and years that define and deepen their powerful friendship. When the dean of Lovegood College, a prestigious women’s junior college in 1950s North Carolina, pairs Feron Hood and Merry Jellicoe as roommates, her hope is that Feron, who recently lost her alcoholic mother, fled from an abusive stepfather, and barely escaped her troubled past, will find comfort and companionship in Merry’s steady and optimistic presence. Feron, (whose great grandmother was one of the earliest students at Lovegood) is reserved, competitive, and secretive with a sly sense of humor. Merry, the beloved daughter of prosperous tobacco farmers, is warm and welcoming and possesses a strong moral compass that defines her life and impacts those around her. The girls do indeed form a strong and lasting friendship; bonding surrounded by the rich academic traditions of the college and as they become writers under the guidance of Maud Petrie, their much respected and mysterious literature and composition teacher. When Merry’s parents are killed in a plane crash (the day before Feron was to visit the Jellicoe family), their time together as roommates is abruptly ended. Merry has to leave Lovegood to run the family tobacco farm and to raise her young brother and the friendship between the two young women takes on a whole new trajectory. Feron’s remaining year and a half without Merry at Lovegood leaves her “feeling both overexposed yet more hidden. No longer part of a pair, she had to be seen as herself alone.” It is 10 years before Feron and Merry see one another again, and life has led them to vastly different places. Feron, who married and was tragically widowed within the same year, has moved to New York building a successful career as an editor at a large management consulting firm, albeit putting her own writing to the side. When she discovers the story, “The Curing Barn,” published in the Atlantic, she realizes that it is Merry’s story written under the pseudonym “MG Petrie”. Feron’s old feelings of competitiveness, admiration, as well as the longing to be a published writer, surface. They meet at the legendary Algonquin Hotel where Merry is staying while in town to meet with her literary agent—something that simultaneously impresses and makes Feron a bit jealous. Using their time together to catch up on each other’s lives, they realize that even though they have not been in touch regularly, they remain fondly in each other’s thoughts and hearts. Over the next several decades, it is Feron who becomes a successful author while Merry continues with life on the tobacco farm and putting her writing aside. The passage of time with all of life’s trials, joys, and tribulations, is portrayed through their letters, sporadic encounters, and the many infinitely human, nuanced characters Godwin so beautifully weaves throughout their stories. This book is literary fiction from a master whose own remarkable literary life is evident in these pages. It is a book to be savored, pondered, and enjoyed. —Jane Kinney Denning 5/20 CHRONOGRAM BOOKS 59
poetry
EDITED BY Phillip X Levine
The Pandemic A time of doubt, Fear, Weirdness? But somehow it feels normal, Like it was meant to be. In the blink of an eye We just had to do it A feeling of relief, Nothing to stress over,
No grades But also missing them, Because they have a purpose. Oh, and the pain of not being able to see dear ones, Miles away Waiting And waiting… For some good? Is this the new normal? Or should we expect something more… —Jahnvi Mundra (13 years)
Phillip here. Phillip at the top of the stairs. Phillip at the bottom of the stairs. Phillip looking through windows at other people’s windows. * For this issue, I received over 1,200 poems from over 400 poets. I would have liked to have printed them all. I hope this finds you and yours safe and well. Be safe. Be well. Be compassionate. Be creative. —p
Personal Day
Many-Hued Lament on The Quarantined Times
Meanwhile
Today, I get to feel what the rest of the world feels. I get to be home, be safe, feel bored.
1) The ozone-layer is healing. We stay indoors and mend its hole.
first-time father holds his new-born
2) In the autobiography of my corona days, The four walls of my room un-fold into Blank-pages for me to write, I open the door only to open my mouth.
walks with his wife shoulder to shoulder
Tomorrow, I am essential again. I will hold back my tears again. Remind myself to breathe again. But when this is over, I don’t want to be essential anymore. —Genevieve S. Nursing Home Pantoum I call to hear my mother’s voice She eats so little, drinks Ensure So sorry I can’t visit now we say I love you at the end She eats so little, drinks Ensure I keep disaster from my voice we say I love you at the end She worries that I’m not all right I keep disaster from my voice I hear fear in every word she worries that I’m not all right Everyone’s so strange here I hear fear in every word I’m in a hospital, she thinks Everyone’s so strange here nursing staff wear bunny suits. I’m in a hospital, she thinks friends disappear from the dining room nursing staff wear bunny suits the dead visit her in dreams Friends disappear from the dining room I call to hear my mother’s voice the dead visit her in dreams so sorry I can’t visit now —Sharon Israel Who are these people Infesting every room? Family by name —Kevin Freeman
3) In my calendar, there is a string of red-digits from Mid-March till we see light at the burning end of a cigarette. It is not an eternal Sunday. 4) This too shall pass but for the time served I seek parole To loiter the pages of The Plague by Camus without learning any lessons. 5) In the story of evolution, I back-pedal a retreat into the shelters Of self-isolation and one-arm distancing. 6) After getting tested, I saw the coordinates of the tip of an ice-berg. Track the trail of your shadow if you contract the virus. 7) Exhaled panic may spread like wildfire. Quarantine the nightingale in your mouth. 8) The timeline of retreat of the virus is Like the contours of a receding shadow. The darkness persists. 9) Break the chain like scissoring a Suez Through the crowd. 10) The night sky is cleared of celestial debris. The swan has docked at a sea-port. —Chandramohan.S Bathing Suit Five days in a row it has been hanging on the line. Fresh air and sun light drying it in the place between winter and a troubled spring. It is my prayer flag, my reminder of how everything changes, the pool suddenly closing due to the virus. Eating breakfast the cough began, the breathless strain to finish sentences, your eyes filling with alarming concern. I see the forgotten suit swinging in the afternoon breeze, shadow and light falling on the deck. A pendulum of slowed down time. It has gone through a heavy rain storm, a lull of drying out again, and still intact as I carefully unpin it, needing to believe it will be worn again. —Elizabeth Brule’ Farrell
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at the mailbox they trade mail for baby, baby for mail I join them stand six feet away welcome their son and wish them well watch them on the footpath back the baby in his mother’s arms the sun seems brighter than a minute ago —Tony Howarth
Hindsight The thing is, you can’t know You’re watching her last dance recital, dizzy with vertigo at the Fisher Center, gazing at the stage from the second balcony. What would you do if you knew? Would you linger forever in this moment? —D. E. Cocks Bad Bargain What the f**k? She just coughed in my face? Really? And isn’t he standing too close? What the f**k does he think he is doing? Why is he here at this time anyway? He’s not a senior. I wish I had a hazmat suit. I feel like I’m in a very bad movie. My husband was flipping through Netflix choices and asked if I wanted to watch a movie called Contagion, F**k no. We’re living that movie. So surreal. Who’d ever thought? My car wouldn’t start this morning, but where did I think I was going, anyway? I made a bargain with God. I told him I would believe in him if Trump got the virus. God hasn’t done his part. F**k. —Linda McCauley Freeman
Essential Worker
Eye All Bloodshot from the Drought “Someone that has nothing better to do ought to write a letter pro bono publico to the papers about the muzzling order for a dog the like of that.” —James Joyce, Ulysses
One sheet of glass separates me from them. A mask approaches, with bimbo white bread and canned gravy. I ask them if they want a paper bag or reusable. They sigh, “You really don’t have any more plastic bags?” They think I am Cuomo.
My poems are getting ugly & I’m sorry where sorry is sympathy & not remorse
Toes tap anxiously waiting for me to hand them change, Passing the money over and under walls With a gloved hand. Attached to the mask, There should be a person. Attached to the glove, There should be a hand Behind the wall, There is a cashier. —Lauren Salerno Empty seat. Empty boots. The hoax hits home. —Charlotte Berwind
Where’s Carl I took my brother’s ghost to the river for a beer. To the spot we fished. He is the one I miss. I drink until he slowly disappears. —Gary Barkman By the window this morning, light flooding through. And what do I make myself available to? By the window this morning, light flooding through. And what do I make myself available to? By the window this morning, light flooding through. And what do I make myself available to? By the window this morning, light flooding through. And what do I make myself available to? —Christopher Porpora
The Entrant Perhaps life is a gate, and we are always passing through, and it is always open, until it’s shut. —Margarita Serafimova Sweet Slime
in last night’s dream unmasked and bare-handed I hug you close once again —Sari Grandstaff
We’ve been conserving. Being less wasteful. I use less toilet paper. We ate a salad without lettuce last night. Water, electricity, less of everything. We learn how much we don’t need when we don’t got it. The banana experiment was a failure though. Freezing them just turned them into slime when we took them out for breakfast. But I’m thankful even for mushy bananas, for their sweet slime. Around the house there’s been talk of banana bread. We’re making a plan. —Brendan Press Reminders Books to avoid: The Stand, Journal of the Plague Year, Childhood’s End Also films: Mad Max, Waterworld, I Am Legend, On the Beach Wash every surface. Wash self. Rewash surfaces. Choose between ski mask and scarf. Persuade self that Lysol smells like pine. Phone someone. Anyone. Enemies are eligible. Nurse’s Rounds Sort shirts in closet by color. …patient Pet the cat. Pretend she welcomes it. love is Keep six feet from everything save the keyboard. kind love Wash the keyboard. is patient Wash the cat. love is —Ted Taylor kind love is… I’m an atheist And yet each thought ends the same— Thank god I’m sober
—Joe Bisicchia
—Martha Frankel
grey geese returning moon of equilibrium fill these dreams with pink
Full submission guidelines: Chronogram.com/submissions
—davida
I too wish they were pretty again I too wish they might sing again . . . and open my eyes . . . and love your amber skies But there is not time anymore for lines such as these Now is a time for lines torn from bus routes Now is a time for lines torn from power grids & supermarkets lines torn from supply-chains suddenly unable to feed the world’s hopelessly hungering mouths Now is a desperate time demanding lines torn from rotten grounds—
forgotten field in a scorched starved dogs cry — they wait beneath cracked insecticide sprayers tasting the chemical blood dripping as a joke they pray for rain for water Now is a time for starved dogs’ tongues held out under broken lines & for all mouths held expectantly open & upward under broken skies forever Now is a demanding time of broken news and of saline drips feebly nursing feeble bodies in turn only nursing hopes yet feebler Now is an intravenous time of dispensations Delivered in slowlove torn from the disparate mass Now is a late time dripping drop by broken hope & sorrylove itself has lately gotten ugly line by hopeless line alone forever now
forever now alone
—Anthony Hamilton 5/20 CHRONOGRAM POETRY 61
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Take a virtual Byrdcliffe tour until we can welcome you back!
woodstockguild.org 34 TINKER STREET, WOODSTOCK, NY • 845.679.2079
JOURNALISM
Mel Bochner Barry Le Va on view
IS A NECESSITY During this crisis, The River is collaborating with journaists throughout the region to report on the fast-moving coronavirus. Our team is working around-the-clock to gather reliable information to keep you informed about the latest regional developments.
therivernewsroom.com
Dia Beacon 3 Beekman Street Beacon, New York diaart.org
62 THE GUIDE CHRONOGRAM 5/20
Essential Writers
The Worker Writers School By Abby Foster
T
axi drivers, childcare workers, and subway booth attendants are all considered essential workers in New York City. Some of them are also writers. The Worker Writers School helps low-wage workers transform their working lives into lines of poetry while also trying to inspire social change. The group’s founder, Columbia County resident Mark Nowak, began the revolutionary literary group in 2011, in a Ford factory in Minnesota, before bringing it to New York. Typically, workshops are held on the first Saturday of the month, but since the COVID-19 outbreak has put meetings on a digital platform, the workshops are now held twice a month over Zoom. “Our last workshop where we met in person in America was on March 7,” says Nowak. “Usually we handshake or hug, but that time we elbow-bumped with a bottle of hand sanitizer.” Given that the students were focusing on haiku, a centuries old Japanese art form that consists of three short lines, Nowak decided that the group should try their hand at their own coronavirus-themed haiku. In three lines, these laborers are painting a sobering glimpse into the life of an essential worker in a city ravaged by plague. It was important that the group understood the history of this genre of poetry, as well as its potential for political significance. “People have a tendency to think of haiku as a little poem about the seasons,” he said. “It actually has a really long and important history.” Nowak and the workshop participants studied haiku written by Japanese-Americans held in internment camps during WWII, prisoners who were a part of the Attica Prison rebellion in 1971, and those written by poet and activist Sonia Sanchez. Using these examples as inspiration, the group then wrote their own haikus about their experiences as essential workers during a global pandemic in one of the worst-hit cities in the world. In only 17 syllables, these poems paint a picture of the stress, trauma, and harassment at the hands of ungrateful passersby that essential workers face while doing their jobs. “These are written by nannies and domestic workers, home health workers, taxi drivers, the people working in the subway booths,” says Nowak. Nowak values the artistic perspectives of underrepresented groups, especially during times of change. His new book, Social Poetics (Coffee House Press), focuses on the history of poetry workshops from the perspective of working-class people who attempted to spark social change despite being largely overlooked by society. He analyzes the work of those who participated in the Watts Rebellion in Los Angeles in 1965, the Attica Prison riots, and the anti-apartheid protests in South Africa to explore the many possibilities for solidarity and change that exist within poetry workshops.
A selection of haiku from participants of the Worker Writer School. Lorraine Garnett The world in labor cervix dilates—water broke swaddling stillbirths
We are one, be kind Collectors leave gold behind Open garage door
Rainbow is lurking rattlesnakes hibernate—rejoice solitary ends
Death ventilators Pneumonia discriminates Hearts, lungs—equal beats Lorraine Garnett is a domestic worker in New York City.
Seth Goldman $2.50 an hour Corona Cabbie Wages April 15 Looms
D train to Coney I need to see the ocean First time this year
Strong April Showers Will bring Cabbies dead flowers Workers, not Wall St
My wife makes our bed Feel so warm and smell so good Leave at 4AM? Seth Goldman is a taxi driver in New York City.
Alando McIntyre Corona Virus, Covid-Nineteen’s sharpshooter Re-con-figures lives. Lies and truths converge As unburied bodies roam Corona City.
Alternative Life— gloves, body bags, face masks crown Corona king. Devine creations Becoming undone by Rona-Vi. Birds c’est la vie! Alando McIntyre is a former Golden Krust Jamaican fast food restaurant worker, current New York City public school teacher. 5/20 CHRONOGRAM THE GUIDE 63
Ted Barron
Quinn Wharton
artists
Performance Anxiety
Hudson Valley Creatives in the COVID-19 Era By Peter Aaron
L
ike everyone, I’ve watched in horror as the COVID-19 death toll has mounted. And like far too many others, I’ve also seen the avalanche of its economic aftereffects tumble and tumble until it finally reached my door. But as your arts editor, my particular cocktail of coronavirus concern also contains an added layer of anxiety, one that’s intertwined with my job and my life as a creative type: I worry about the plight of artists, especially Hudson Valley artists. After the initial alarm about the safety of my family, friends, and myself had cooled down some, my first thought was “I want to help the artists.” This is the community that I love, reside in, and have served for nearly 15 years with Chronogram (and for three years before that, as the music columnist of the Daily Freeman). I can’t help but take the predicament of its arts scene personally. Being a writer is, by its nature, a solitary game. Like others who do this stuff, I’m used to being cooped up for long stretches of time, sitting here in front of my sad computer as I try to make decent shit come out of my head. Those working in other mediums, however, have suddenly found themselves thrust into a tough spot—as if most artists don’t have it tough enough to begin with. Any stage performer will tell you how getting people out for live other events has turned increasingly difficult in the age of YouTube and Netflix. During the current social distancing directive, more and more artists have been taking their art online as we all weather the storm, connecting with audiences virtually via “from isolation” performances and showings, which is comforting and inspiring. As bleak and insane as things are now, we’ll get through this together. My hope, though, is that once we do, collectively we have a wider appreciation for artists and what it is they do; a realization that reminds us of the connection that comes only with experiencing
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creativity in the physical realm. That more people will have learned not to take artists for granted. Because we really, really need them. Perhaps even more now than we did before. And right here I also want to a massive thanks to medical staff and essential workers everywhere. To get an idea of how Hudson Valley arts scene figures and facilities are coping with the crisis, I checked in with a few of them. Here’s some of what they told me. Wreckless Eric, singer-songwriter Like Shadowland Stage’s Brendan Burke, Wreckless Eric was himself stricken with the coronavirus. “I haven’t actually been very well in the past three or four weeks—chest and rib pains, cough, low-level fever, intermittent headaches—I was pretty sure it must be the virus though I was told the only way I could get confirmation of this was by presenting myself at the emergency room, death’s door, sick to the point of dying, ready to be hospitalized,” the British-born punk/new wave icon writes in an April 19 post on his blog, Ericland. He and his wife, fellow singer-songwriter Amy Rigby, both over 60, managed to get an appointment to be tested via drive-through clinic on the Albany University campus. “As we left, we were both moved to tears at the great job all these people are doing,” says the rocker, who was diagnosed as positive shortly after the visit and is recuperating at the couple’s Catskill home. (Rigby has tested negative.) “I don’t want to clap and bang saucepan lids for healthcare workers, I want to see them properly rewarded for the work they do. It should be clear enough right now that tripling the defense budget at the expense of decent healthcare for everyone was not the smartest course of action.” Thedysfunctionalworldof.blogspot.com
Stella Abrera, dancer and artistic director of Kaatsbaan Cultural Park for Dance “We’re all becoming Zoom experts now,” says Stella Abrera, the artistic director of Tivoli’s Kaatsbaan Cultural Park for Dance retreat, which on April 6 took the step of suspending its spring live programming. “It’s challenging, trying to prepare the future and not knowing what that means.” Conceived in 1990, Kaatsbaan is a tranquil, 153-acre complex devoted to dance studies featuring three studios, a 160-seat black box theater with a massive performance floor, and dining and lodging facilities. Before signing on with Kaatsbaan in January, Abrera served for 24 years as the principal dancer of the American Ballet Theater. Although Kaatsbaan has postponed visits by esteemed national and international choreographers and dance companies and moved its spring classes to the fall, at this point there have been no staff layoffs. “Online, we’re continuing our training with the students who were already enrolled in our annual intensive classes; we’re keeping up with our social media; and we’re looking toward a ‘digital dance’ residency program for some of the companies that were scheduled to visit,” says Abrera, who’s leading classes like the all-ages “Sundays with Stella” from the kitchen of the local cabin she shares with her husband, dancer and actor Sascha Radetsky. “It’s really moving, helping kids learn to do pirouettes in their bedrooms and seeing how, despite all this, they’re still so excited to be dancing.” The center’s website features a link to the Kaatsbaan COVID-19 Relief Fund. Kaatsbaan.org
Fionn Reilly
Davis McCallum, artistic director of Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival “In the theater world, uncertainty is like kryptonite,” says the Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival’s artistic director, Davis McCallum. “It makes it very hard to plan anything. Especially at our theater, which is a rotating-repertory theater, meaning that several productions alternate performances every few days during our fall and spring season. Everything—the schedules of the actors, the sets, the budget—hinges on something else that it’s connected to.” Held outdoors under a massive open-air tent on the grounds of the historic Boscobel estate in Garrison since 1988 (and for a year before at designer Russel Wright’s nearby home, Manitoga), the theater company has responded to the crisis by, like Kaatsbaan and other organizations, taking advantage of technology. “We’ve always relied a lot on the generosity of our members for support, and the membership events we do have been a big part of that,” says McCallum, whose company had at the time of this writing just joined the ranks of groups that have had to cancel their 2020 seasons. “Besides staying connected to our members and audiences through email and social media, we’re also planning to host a regular Tuesday afternoon luncheon and a Thursday evening cocktail party for members at the $100 donation level using Zoom.” Despite the cancellation of its on-site performances, however, the Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival’s season may, in an outside way, still include performances. “We have a production of ‘Much Ado About Nothing’ that’s scheduled for local schools, and we’re hoping to be able to do that sometime in the fall,” McCallum says. “We’re all going to need the arts to help us recover and get through things when we reach the new normal, whatever that will be.”
Amy Helm, singer In a departure from the livestreaming culture that the pandemic has inspired among many performers, Woodstock musical figurehead Amy Helm is taking her art to her audiences in person—at a safe distance. Last month, she launched Amy Helm’s Curbside Pickup Band, a project that allows house-bound local fans to book the singer and multi-instrumentalist and her accompanists for short live sets on their lawns or driveways. “I was out in front of my house one day and a lady I knew was driving by and she called out to say hi,” recalls Helm. “She had all these flowers that she’d bought from a struggling local farm and she was delivering people’s homes for free, just to cheer them up. The compassion of that just really struck me, and it made me wonder if maybe there was something similar that I could do. With my dad [the late Levon Helm], I used to play for Musicians on Call, an organization that sets up room-to-room performances for people in hospitals and nursing homes.” Helm enlisted guitarist Connor Kennedy to help rope in other players and hung out her virtual shingle. Within days, she found herself booked out for weeks. The volunteer effort isn’t designed to take the place of the regular income from the tours and local gigs Helm has suddenly found herself without, though. “There’s a link to leave tips on the website, which we do really appreciate,” says Helm, whose much-loved home venue, Levon Helm Studios, is, naturally, shuttered for the time being. “But besides just wanting to do something that makes people feel good, I really just wanted to have a reason to play. Musicians don’t feel right if we’re not playing, and it always feels better to be doing it for people.”
Brendan Burke, artistic director of Shadowland Stages “I’m still weak but I’m doing much better,” says Brendan Burke, the artistic director of Shadowland Stages in Ellenville, who is recovering from COVID-19 in his home in New Paltz. “I started feeling sick around March 14 or 15. After being hospitalized at [Poughkeepsie’s] Vassar Brothers Medical Center for four or five days, I went home. But, four days later, I was feeling worse and I ended up back in the ICU, in a sealed room, for five days. Then I was in rehab at Ellenville Hospital for 10 days. I feel like I stepped out of a time capsule. I lost 30 pounds.” Shadowland presents classic, contemporary, and new plays in a restored 1920s Art Deco theater and has been a leading economic magnet of the southern Ulster County town since opening in 1985. Just last year, the site hosted the East Coast premiere of Jeff Daniels’s original drama “Flint.” Unfortunately, the outbreak has forced Shadowland to cancel its 2020 spring/summer season. “It was a painful decision, but moving forward with it would have been too much of a health risk, as well as a financial risk,” says the director, who adds that Shadowland has transitioned its beloved Shadowland Cinema classic film series from screenings to streamings and is continuing its popular acting classes for kids using Zoom. “I can’t begin to describe my thankfulness for the heroism of the medical staff who helped me and are helping so many others now,” Burke says, with palpable emotion. “When this is all over, even a ticker tape parade won’t be enough to thank them for what they’ve done.” Shadowlandstages.org
Amyhelm.com/curbside
Hvshakespeare.org
5/20 CHRONOGRAM THE GUIDE 65
OUR DOORS ARE TEMPORARILY
CLOSED FOR OPERATION
BUT WE ARE OPEN FOR
I N S P I R AT I O N
IMAGINATION
C R E AT I O N
MOTIVATION
COLLABORATION
C O N T E M P L AT I O N visit us online at garrisonartcenter.org
Please check our web site for schedule changes and online events. Stay healthy and make ART! We miss you all! - Jennifer Hicks founder/director
Jan Jan Sawka: Sawka: The Place of Memory The Place of Memory (the (the Memory Memory of of Place) Place)
~ Special Notice Regarding Spring 2020 Arts Events at e Hotchkiss School ~
We are grateful to those in our communities working on the front lines to keep us safe and extend well wishes to all during these challenging times.
Your work deserves attention. Which means you need a great bio for your press kit or website. One that’s tight. Clean. Professionally written. Something memorable. Something a booking agent, a record-label person, a promoter, or a gallery owner won’t just use to wipe up the coffee spill on their desk before throwing away.
When you’re ready, I’m here. Jan Sawka, The Memory (or The Mirror), 1987, courtesy the Estate of Jan Sawka Jan Sawka, The Memory (or The Mirror), 1987, courtesy the Estate of Jan Sawka
Our doors are closed. February – 12, But 8 still open online! February 8we’re – July July 12, 2020 2020 SAMUEL DORSK Y MUSEUM OF ART SAMUEL DORSK MUSEUM OF PALTZ ART STATE UNIVERSITY OF YNEW YORK AT NEW
STATE UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK AT NEW PALTZ
www.newpaltz.edu/museum www.newpaltz.edu/museum
PETER AARON
Arts editor, Chronogram. Published author. Award-winning music columnist, 2005-2006, Daily Freeman. Contributor, Village Voice, Boston Herald, All Music Guide, All About Jazz.com, Jazz Improv and Roll magazines. Musician. Consultations also available. Reasonable rates.
See samples at www.peteraaron.org. E-mail info@peteraaron.org for rates. I also offer general copy editing and proofreading services.
66 THE GUIDE CHRONOGRAM 5/20
exhibits
GREEN KILL GALLERY
LABSPACE
Sunflower Guardian, Gary Mayer
Stress Eating, Allyson Melberg-Taylor
This month, Green Kill Gallery in Kingston is featuring large paintings by David Fox and paintings and sculpture by Gary Mayer in its front windows to accord with social distancing protocols. Drive on up and see an show, virus-safe! The show runs May 2-30. Greenkill.substack.com
Mellberg-Taylor’s figurative paintings are part of the group exhibition “Space Case” at LABspace in Hillsdale. The exhibition is open for individual, no-contact visits. Email julielabspace@gmail.com to make arrangements. Labspaceart.blogspot.com
WASSAIC PROJECT
ART OMI
DORSKY MUSEUM
Virtual Studio Visit with Kristen Schiele on May 13 at 6pm on Instagram Live: @wassaicproject
Omi Pond House, Rob Fischer
Circle 52, Harvey Weiss
The grounds of Art Omi’s 120-acre sculpture park in Ghent remain open. Filled with massive works from internationally acclaimed artists, the fields and woods at Art Omi offer plenty to contemplate and appreciate. (Dogs are also welcome, which is a treat.) Omi is home to the ReActor seesaw apartment, which created an international buzz when it was completed in 2016. Artomi.org
The Dorsky Museum at SUNY New Paltz is partnering with regional artists for its upcoming “Stay Home, Make Art” exhibit. Artists are encouraged to submit work created during the pandemic to Anna Conlan at conlana@newpaltz.edu. Artwork will be featured on the museum’s Instagram and Facebook pages, as well as the msueum’s website. Newpaltz.edu/museum/
Wassaic Project residency alumna Kristen Schiele will be taking viewers on a virtual tour of her Brooklyn studio this month. Schiele creates bold, immersive and semi-abstract paintings, collages and installations. She is inspired by stage sets, cinema, allegory and storytelling that is theatrical and playful. Most comfortable at large-scale, she uses a range of materials which are anchored by architecture or pattern. Wassaicproject.org
WOODSTOCK ARTISTS ASSOCIATION & MUSEUM Healing Energy, Carl Van Brunt Joy Taylor juried this show of posters at WAAM, featuring work by Natalie Wargin, Angela Gaffney-Smith, Susan Spencer Crowe, Carl Van Brunt—all posted on the building’s exterior. Woodstockart.org
5/20 CHRONOGRAM THE GUIDE 67
Horoscopes By Lorelai Kude
OUR MOST NEEDED RESOURCE: PATIENCE AND DISCERNMENT Americans will require the patience of Taurus the Bull to endure not just long weeks of quarantine and social isolation, but the escalating information and dis-information wars between cautious pragmatists and panicky risk-takers during May. The Sun and Mercury in Taurus rely on solid facts, while the transit of Venus through informationjunkie Gemini, and her square to dreamy, imaginative, and easily deluded Neptune in Pisces May 3 makes sparkly promises, dangling glimmering pearls of hope just overhead. Those lustrous promises will either come to pass or be exposed as faux by month’s end. May 7’s Full Moon in Scorpio, the sign associated with the realms of death and the thin line between this life and the next, exposes the vast panoply of loss we’ve collectively suffered. Sun in Taurus trine Jupiter in Capricorn May 17 facilitates shared grief, collective resolve, and the healing energy of a common experience, building bonds not easily broken when the crisis abates. May’s greatest danger is restless energy and the temptation to succumb to impatience, especially in lovely weather. The planetary transits of May 20–29 will require tremendous self-control on the part of the population; if we’ve flattened the curve by then, resuming public life too soon will spike the curve, sending us all back into quarantine. The challenge is distinguishing real information from wishful thinking, and the planetary mashup between Mercury and Venus in Gemini square Neptune in Pisces on the Gemini New Moon May 22 is less than helpful, bringing data without discernment, information without interpretation, or worse yet, skewed interpretation by those with an agenda to promote. Mars/Uranus sextile May 25 may bring surprising positive news. May sanity prevail and may our collective sacrifice pay off not be in vain. May we use May’s celestial energies to Do the Right Thing.
ARIES (March 20–April 19) You’re good in an emergency, and you’ve been plenty busy pioneering assertive responses to our current common crisis. Risk-taking is your specialty but nobody wants you to be a daredevil right now. Your natural heroic instincts are best suited to inventing creative solutions to your feeling of stuck-ness. Planetary ruler Mars enters Pisces May 13, prompting your Wise Warrior self to seek a deeper understanding of those with whom you are experiencing conflict. Understanding and owning your fears become fuel for cathartic integration of your hidden feelings of vulnerability when Mars in Pisces sextile Uranus in Taurus May 25.
TAURUS (April 19–May 20) Channel restless energy into vigorous homeimprovement projects: if you’re stuck there, you might as well build as solid a fortress of solitude as can be managed. Busy Mercury in Taurus through May 11 gifts you with no shortage of solid ideas, all of which are welcome distractions from gnawing financial fears which you must fight against to keep your sanity during these stressful times. Full Moon in Scorpio May 7 illuminates the boundary between need and desire; you’ll discover the gap between what you want and what you need must be bridged by your ability to accept imperfect realities. A practicing, professional astrologer for over 30 years, Lorelai Kude can be reached for questions and personal consultations via email (lorelaikude@yahoo.com) and her Kabbalah-flavored website is Astrolojew.com. 68 HOROSCOPES CHRONOGRAM 5/20
Horoscopes
GEMINI (May 20–June 21) Venus lingers longer in Gemini this year than any other sign: April 3–August 7, including her retrograde May 13– June 24. The transit of the love planet during this difficult time brings comfort, creativity, and a completely new, unexpected revenue stream tied to your communication skills. The Nodal Axis shifts into Gemini/Sagittarius May 5, where it will transit for the next 19 months. This is your time: even if it starts out sequestered and solitary, you’re destined to shine. The Sun enters Gemini May 20 and the New Moon in Gemini May 22 double down on that promise.
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CANCER (June 21–July 22) The lunar nodal axis leaves your sign on May 5, after a year and a half run of transformation which sometimes felt like trauma. Though the Capricorn opposition is still intense, the underlying stressors are passing, and you’ll start to gather strength, especially around the Full Moon in Scorpio May 7. Lessons learned now are integrated into your consciousness, allowing you to share your hardearned and experiential wisdom with others. By being real you inspire others to be courageous with their own feelings. Find new ways to tell an old story on the New Moon in Gemini May 22.
LEO (July 22–August 23) Even “alone together,� all the world’s a stage and Leo is the performer. Whether you’re putting on a show for one or Zooming a call-in show called “Ask the Leo� (since obviously you know everything), May is weirdly productive for you despite social isolation. Your sense of drama goes over the top, or on the down low at the Full Scorpio Moon May 7. You’re bossier than ever after May 20 and when the day comes again when you meet friends and loved ones in person, they’ll be sorry they didn’t listen to you when they had the chance.
VIRGO (August 23–September 23) You’re in a planetary three-way kiss May 3 when Venus in Gemini squares Neptune in Pisces while the Moon is in Virgo. You touch (from afar) more people than you can imagine with your message of practical help and public hope. Mercury in Gemini May 12–28 gives you a bully pulpit; use it wisely to cast the widest possible net, reeling in those to whom you may offer service and solace. Chaotic disruption and reconnoitering of resources May 20–29 remind you that you too need tending, your booboos need kissing and your heart needs holding. Take care of you.
LIBRA (September 23–October 23) With ruling planet Venus in Gemini and Sun in Venusruled Taurus through May 19, social isolation must be particularly hard for you. You feel like all that charm and charisma is going to waste “only� on your dog or family. Waste not want not: This is your chance to turn all that grace and pleasantness on the world by making good use of available technologies. Connecting yourself to others is your scientific specialty and your superpower: use your superior connectivity skills to save your own sanity. Contribute to the health and well-being of others by being there for them!
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Horoscopes
SCORPIO (October 23–November 21) Our global pandemic has doubtlessly triggered your deep investigative curiosity as well as any phobic obsessions around contagion, disease and illness. Peak emotional insights come at the Scorpio Full Moon May 7; deepest compassion and ability to sacrifice your own desires for the greater good from May 13 onward. Reach new understandings of old issues May 25. Avoid conflict with insight and clarity. Confronting fear and doing battle against it is what you were made to do: wrestling with the unknown produces a storehouse of riches which will come in handy when all this passes, as it surely will.
SAGITTARIUS (November 22–December 22)
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Planetary ruler Jupiter stations Retrograde May 14, and his “backward” motion through mid-September is designed to rewind you to a crucial point in time: midFebruary 2020, when doors, options, the horizon and the future seemed wide open. Restless Sagittarius hates being home-bound, and this period of enforced confinement has taken its toll, body and soul. Reset the dial by staying in your own lane and taking care of body and soul - but start with the body. Discover responsible ideas and generate practical and surprising solutions May 9–11. Reuniting with family takes priority after May 17; patience pays off.
CAPRICORN (December 22–January 20) Saturn stations Retrograde beginning May 11, but that doesn’t really slow you down, as you’re operating on momentum you’ve been building since January. You’re probably far more productive and engaged during this stressful time than many of your peers but what they don’t see is the tremendous toll your steely self-control takes on your nervous system. Excellent self-care is what you need, especially May 10–14. Review your relationship to power and control May 15–17 and decide where you can gracefully take a step back for the sake of your own well-being. Nurture your post-crisis replenish and renewal fantasies.
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Mars in Aquarius through May 12 inspires you to fight for your ideals. Living a disembodied life via technology while in isolation gets to feel normal quickly: don’t forget you are flesh and blood. Last Quarter Moon in Aquarius May 14 reconnects you to your emotions, and that feeling you’re avoiding is grief. You’ve never been a fan of the status quo, but you’ve always been a champion of the marginalized and suffering; now that there’s less status quo and more suffering it’s hard to know which battle to fight first. Trust your gut when it comes to prioritizing.
PISCES (February 20-March 19) Venus in Gemini squares Neptune in Pisces May 3, kicking off the dance between flight of fancy and sleight of hand. You’re able to swim the rapids between illusion and delusion better than most but beware of charlatans dressed as cheerleaders and wolves in sheep’s clothing who (correctly) sense you’re an easy target. Mercury in Gemini square Neptune in Pisces May 22, possibly sowing he said/she said confrontations and communication confusion. First Quarter Moon in Virgo May 29 is an opportunity for a new intimacy, perhaps via remote control. Long distance love sparks short fuses: patience is a virtue! 70 HOROSCOPES CHRONOGRAM 5/20
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SUPPORT LOCAL BUSINESS Thank you to our advertisers for your support during this difficult time. Readers, did you know that if every one of you allocated just 5% of your federal stimulus checks to spend at local businesses in the Hudson Valley, it could put $6,000,000 back into the local economy? Yes, 6 MILLION DOLLARS. Need a haircut? Craving your favorite lunch dish from your local cafe but they’re closed? Want to pre-pay for your anniversary dinner later this year? Buy a gift certificate from your go-to local spot to use when they re-open! Because with your help, they will re-open. Support your local businesses now so you can see them later. Stay strong Hudson Valley. 11 Jane Street . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66
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4
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WDST 100.1 Radio Woodstock . . . . . . . . . 62
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Ridgeline Realty . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23 River Pool at Beacon . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30 The Rodney Shop . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23 Rosendale Theatre . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57 Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art . . . . . . . . . 66 Sassafras Land Care . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 Stamell String Instruments . . . . . . . . . . . 68 SUNY New Paltz . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
9
Table Talk Diner . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
Woodstock Byrdcliffe Guild . . . . . . . . . . . 62 YMCA of Kingston and Ulster County . . . . . 70
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5/20 CHRONOGRAM AD INDEX 71
parting shot
After the Storm April 14, 2020 Photo by Carolyn Marks Blackwood
72 PARTING SHOT CHRONOGRAM 5/20
Carolyn Marks Blackwood’s landscape photographs showcase abstractions of nature: beautiful sunsets, cropped to show the one section of the sky that looks like the clouds are ablaze; angry storm clouds spitting out bolts of lightning into the blackness; ice sheets from the Hudson run aground, broken and jagged like shards of glass. Her new series, The World Is Still Beautiful, has been three years in the making. What first started as a voyage on an icebreaker to capture striking images of the Arctic to promote environmental conservation eventually morphed into images of the landscapes seen from atop the 125foot cliff overlooking the Hudson that Blackwood’s house sits on. After she started posting her images on Facebook, Blackwood started receiving dozens of letters from those who had an emotional response to her work, thanking her for improving their day. “It started to feel like something simple that I could do that could change the trajectory of someone’s moment,” she says, by reminding other people that, despite the hardships we’re facing, especially now, the world is still beautiful. Follow Blackwood on Instagram: @theworldisstillbeautiful. —Abby Foster
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