Washington City Paper (April 17, 2020)

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FREE VOLUME 40, NO. 15 WASHINGTONCITYPAPER.COM APRIL 17–23, 2020

Life Goes On During unprecedented times, expecting parents and pregnancy experts still prepare to welcome new life and care for clients.

PAGE 6

By Kayla Randall

NEWS: DC JAIL INMATE DIES OF COVID-19 3 HOUSING: RESIDENTS WANT RENT CANCELED 4 ARTS: HOW TO VIRTUALLY LAUNCH A NEW BOOK 10

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COVER STORY: LIFE GOES ON

6

A global pandemic won’t stop new parents from welcoming babies or doctors, doulas, and midwives from providing essential care.

DISTRICT LINE 3 Loose Lips: A delayed trial could have cost Deon Crowell, a DC Jail inmate who died of COVID-19, his life.

4 The Lease They Can Do: Residents organize to ask landlords for rent cancelations.

ARTS 10 Cancelation Cries: Local writers reflect on the sadness of launching a book during a pandemic.

11 Speed Reads: Sarappo on Weird: The Power of Being an Outsider in an Insider World 14 Short Subjects: Gittell on Sorry We Missed You 15 Arts Club: Randall and Warren on “The Entire History of You” 17 Liz at Large: “Forward”

SPORTS 16 Sports Medicine: Experience as a competitive athlete prepares medical professionals for the challenges of fighting COVID-19.

FOOD 18 Priority Eating: More demand for grocery deliveries makes life harder for local residents with disabilities.

CITY LIST 20 City Lights: Enjoy some cat videos or color pictures inspired by a favorite local bar.

DIVERSIONS 14 Crossword 22 Savage Love 23 Classifieds

DARROW MONTGOMERY 900 BLOCK OF RANDOLPH STREET NW (REAR), APRIL 6

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INTERIM EDITOR: CAROLINE JONES ARTS EDITOR: KAYLA RANDALL FOOD EDITOR: LAURA HAYES SPORTS EDITOR: KELYN SOONG LOOSE LIPS REPORTER: MITCH RYALS CITY DESK REPORTER: AMANDA MICHELLE GOMEZ CITY LIGHTS EDITOR: EMMA SARAPPO STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER: DARROW MONTGOMERY MULTIMEDIA AND COPY EDITOR: WILL WARREN CREATIVE DIRECTOR: JULIA TERBROCK ONLINE ENGAGEMENT MANAGER: ELIZABETH TUTEN DESIGN ASSISTANT: MADDIE GOLDSTEIN EDITORIAL INTERN: KENNEDY WHITBY CONTRIBUTING WRITERS: MORGAN BASKIN, MICHON BOSTON, KRISTON CAPPS, CHAD CLARK, MATT COHEN, RACHEL M. COHEN, RILEY CROGHAN, JEFFRY CUDLIN, EDDIE DEAN, CUNEYT DIL, TIM EBNER, CASEY EMBERT, JONATHAN L. FISCHER, NOAH GITTELL, SRIRAM GOPAL, HAMIL R. HARRIS, LOUIS JACOBSON, JOSHUA KAPLAN, CHRIS KELLY, AMAN KIDWAI, STEVE KIVIAT, CHRIS KLIMEK, PRIYA KONINGS, NEVIN MARTELL, KEITH MATHIAS, BRIAN MCENTEE, CANDACE Y.A. MONTAGUE, BRIAN MURPHY, BILL MYERS, NENET, TRICIA OLSZEWSKI, EVE OTTENBERG, MIKE PAARLBERG, PAT PADUA, JUSTIN PETERS, REBECCA J. RITZEL, ABID SHAH, TOM SHERWOOD, CHRISTINA STURDIVANT SANI, MATT TERL, IAN THAL, SIDNEY THOMAS, HAYWOOD TURNIPSEED JR., JOE WARMINSKY, ALONA WARTOFSKY, JUSTIN WEBER, MICHAEL J. WEST, DIANA MICHELE YAP, ALAN ZILBERMAN

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2 april 17, 2020 washingtoncitypaper.com

DISTRICTLINE LOOSE LIPS

Dead Wrong

A man accused of murder is the first COVID-19-related death connected to the DC Jail.

DelayeD justice may have cost Deon Crowell his life.

The 51-year-old was transported from the DC Jail to a hospital on April 7 after he tested positive for COVID-19. Less than a week later, he died of complications from the disease.

He is the first person who was incarcerated in the DC Jail to die from the coronavirus since it reached the facility last month.

Crowell was awaiting trial for murder. It was originally scheduled to begin in October 2019, according to court records, but his attorney, Elizabeth Weller, says the trial was delayed due to federal prosecutors’ failure to immediately notify the defense about missing body camera evidence.

“He was awaiting trial—he was innocent and never proven guilty,” Weller writes in an email. “There was no reason for him to die.”

Metropolitan Police Department detectives linked Crowell to Joni Rockingham’s death with DNA evidence and arrested him in June 2018. He was held without bond in the DC Jail since then. In August 2019, two months before the trial was set to start, federal prosecutors notified Crowell’s attorneys that the police had inadvertently deleted nearly 240 pieces of body camera footage related to the investigation.

While Crowell’s attorneys, Weller and Rachel McCoy, spent several days in court between November 2019 and January 2020 trying to get to the bottom of the missing evidence, the trial was postponed to September 2020, and the deadly coronavirus was starting to spread throughout the world.

On March 7, the first D.C. resident tested positive for COVID-19. And on March 26, a 20-year-old man became the first person inside the DC Jail to test positive. As of Monday, April 13, 53 DC Jail inmates and 18 Department of Corrections employees have tested positive, according to data the District provided.

News of Crowell’s death came after lawyers, inmates, and corrections officers have for weeks sounded the alarm about conditions inside the jail. The D.C. Council passed emergency legislation in mid-March that expanded good time credits, hoping to facilitate release for low level offenders. The D.C. Public De-

In the middle of her daily briefing on Monfender Service filed a sweeping motion seeking the release of all inmates serving sentenc- day, April 13, Bowser first learned of Crowell’s es for misdemeanor offenses. The PDS also death.

“Mr. Deon Crowell, 51, passed this mornjoined the ACLU in a class action lawsuit; in response, a judge appointed outside experts ing,” she said. “He was an inmate at DC Jail. to evaluate and monitor the jail’s response to He was hospitalized April 7. His next of kin has been notified by the DOC chaplain, and the COVID-19 pandemic. we send them The union repreour deep condosenting D.C. correclences.” tions officers supCrowell likely ports the suit and has would not have raised its own conbeen eligible for cerns about a lack of release due to personal protective the seriousness equipment and unof his charge. safe working condiStill, Weller filed tions. Meanwhile, a motion for his during her daily press release on March briefings, Mayor Mu20. She argued riel Bowser has that he had limitbeen hostile to quesed criminal histotions from reporters ry with only one about conditions in prior conviction, the jail and whethand that since er certain inmates her client had dishould be released. abetes and other A few days after health issues republic defenders’ related to that diquest for release for agnosis, he was all inmates serving at higher risk if sentences on misdehe were to bemeanor crimes, durDeon Crowell and his wife, Joanne, in an come infected. ing a call with counundated photo. The U.S. Attorcilmembers, Bowser ney’s Office opsaid “nobody wants posed the reus to clear out the quest on April 9, jail for people who two days after are serving sentencCrowell was hoses that they earned, pitalized, though let’s keep that in the document is mind,” according to not available on a tweet from a Washthe D.C. Superiington Post reporter. or Court’s webLast week, the Council passed additional emergency legis- site, and a USAO spokesperson declined to lation that expands credits for good behav- comment for this article. A judge never ruled ior and eligibility for compassionate release. on the motion.

Crowell’s death underscores the devastatOn Friday, Bowser sent out a press release announcing she was granting 75 days of good ing reality of incarceration during a pandemtime credit to 36 inmates. That ruling allowed ic. Close quarters and often unsanitary livabout half of that group to immediately walk ing conditions make it difficult for inmates, guards, and employees to keep far enough out of jail.

Courtesy photo

By Mitch Ryals

“He was awaiting trial— he was innocent and never proven guilty.

There was no reason for him to die.”

apart. Even in a heavily Democratic place in D.C., there isn’t enough political will to enact the policies that would temporarily empty the jail. At some point, concern for the public’s safety might outweigh concern for the individual’s right to safety.

As for the missing body camera footage that delayed Crowell’s trial, prosecutors write in court documents that some footage was not initially filed along with the murder investigation and was automatically deleted after 90 days. Most of the deleted footage came from officers’ and recruits’ investigation into Rockingham’s disappearance—she was initially reported as a missing person.

But detectives reference some of the deleted footage in their written reports, Weller notes in court records. One report describes conversations with a man, identified only as “Male 3,” who spoke to officers on the scene when Rockingham’s body was found in December 2017. The man told the police that Rockingham “set up” two other men and got them killed and said “what goes around comes around,” according to court records.

Prosecutors dismissed Male 3’s words as “nothing more than inadmissible street rumor.”

They argue in court documents that “there is no error, let alone prejudice, from the defense learning in August of 2019 about the deleted [body worn camera] files as opposed to learning about it in January of 2019.” The government was only aware of a handful of deleted files in January, and learned about the rest in August.

Given the circumstances now, Crowell’s attorneys would disagree. The delay, not the missing information, is the problem, and may have cost Crowell his life.

“The United States Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia was aware of the deleted videos in January 2019, which would have given us plenty of time to be ready for trial last year, but they did not disclose the issue until August 2019,” Weller writes in an email.

“If they had disclosed the fact of these grossly negligent deletions in a timely manner, as they are legally obligated to do, Mr. Crowell would not have been in jail awaiting his trial.

The entire system failed him. We only hope this serves as a wake up call so it does not happen to anyone else.”

CP

washingtoncitypaper.com april 17, 2020 3

DISTRICTLINE CITY DESK

The Lease They Can Do

Darrow Montgomery

As they wait for support from the D.C. Council, tenants ask landlords to cancel rent payments.

Residents of Tivoli Gardens Apartments

By Amanda Michelle Gomez “CANCEL OUR RENT!” reads a flyer posted on the door of every unit in the Tivoli Gardens Apartments in Columbia Heights.

Some of the tenants living in the 225-unit complex have lost their jobs during the coronavirus pandemic and cannot pay rent, so a handful of them are gathering signatures in the hopes that collective action will move their landlord to forgive rent until one month after the COVID-19 emergency ends.

Simone Jacobson is one such organizer who hasn’t had any income since March 20. Jacobson is the co-owner of the Burmese restaurant Thamee. After Mayor Muriel Bowser ordered restaurants, along with other nonessential businesses, to close on March 16, Jacobson decided to temporarily shut down Thamee. Unemployment benefits could provide her workers more than

4 april 17, 2020 washingtoncitypaper.com

she could, she thought. Still, the maximum amount D.C. will issue, $444 per week, is not enough to sustain anyone. Jacobson knows this: She has received two payments, totaling $756, and still cannot afford her $1,327 in rent.

“Even if I gave the entire amount of my unemployment payment to the building,” says Jacobson, “I would not be able to afford any other [expense]—internet, phone, food—literally anything else.”

Jacobson is one of countless renters in D.C. who’ve lost their jobs and now struggle to afford housing. Since March 13, more than 64,500 District residents have filed for unemployment. This figure excludes those who are ineligible for unemployment due to, say, immigration status. While the D.C. Council has banned evictions during the state of emergency, tenants still have to pay rent in order to remain in good standing with

their landlords.

Fearing the day when the eviction moratorium lifts, tenants of Tivoli Gardens and elsewhere are organizing around rent cancelation. The DC Tenants Union, a coalition of housing advocacy groups and renters, knows of at least 24 properties in the region where tenants are asking their respective landlords for rent reductions or cancelations because of the pandemic. But because success has been modest so far, the DC Tenants Union and other groups are demanding the Council take immediate action on a number of items, including citywide rent and mortgage payment cancelation until a month after the state of emergency ends.

“It’s important to show that collective power,” says Stephanie Bastek of the DC Tenants Union. “Just doing it building by building, it’ll never work. It’s taking us so much energy to do these two dozen

buildings and there are hundreds of thousands more tenants in the city that we are not reaching.”

For those who cannot afford rent right now, lawmakers are advising tenants to immediately contact their landlords and discuss options. City Paper received screenshots of notices from large real estate companies such as the Donaldson Group, Horning Brothers, and UIP Property Management that ask tenants to reach out if they are concerned about rent. These notices, all similar in language, list financial aid arrangements but don’t mention the eviction moratorium.

“We understand there may be a delay in your ability to access these benefits. If that’s the case, please talk to us,” each notice reads. “If rental payments stop flowing, community stability and safety will be disrupted, just when peace of mind is most needed.”

The Apartment and Office Building Association of Metropolitan Washington confirmed that the National Multifamily Housing Council created the template to help housing providers communicate with residents. Another template titled “COVID-19: Our Commitment to Residents” does mention the eviction moratorium.

Tenant organizers like Rob Wohl are telling the dozens of people that call the DC Tenants Union hotline to first talk with neighbors. “Develop some unity of purpose and then talk to the landlord so you are bargaining from a position of strength,” says Wohl. “The reality here is a lot of people are going to owe money … But that doesn’t mean people have no leverage. Landlords can’t take people to court right now and they are going to have to sue tons of people to collect all this back rent once courts are open again.

That is not free for them.”

When she realized she couldn’t afford her April rent, Jacobson first contacted her landlord and property manager. She’s lived at Tivoli Gardens for 10 years and thought management might show some compassion.

But after speaking with the manager for an hour, Jacobson decided she had to organize with others to get rent relief. If the Donaldson Group forgave her rent, the manager told Jacobson, the company would have to extend this relief to others. This made sense to Jacobson. She knew neighbors that work

in the service industry were laid off too. In fact, some of her own employees live in the complex, so she started working with a few other tenants and the DC Tenants Union to cancel rent for everyone. The Donaldson Group manages the property, but the Morris & Gwendolyn Cafritz Foundation owns it, and the foundation can afford to cancel rent, organizers argue. Within the first 24 hours, 10 percent of the property signed the rent cancelation petition.

City Paper reached out to the Donaldson Group for comment but did not hear back by press time.

Three miles southeast of Tivoli Gardens, at The Summit at St. Martin’s Apartments in Eckington, tenants are also organizing.

Lowell Hickman is collecting signatures for rent cancelation at his 178-unit building and believes there’s enough support behind the petition. Hickman, who is co-vice president of his building’s tenant association, says he’s been fielding questions from individuals who can’t pay rent because the landlord, Victory Housing, has not sent any notices explaining what to do.

“Tenants are now coming to me more and more and asking ‘What do we do? Are they going to do a rent freeze? What happens when this is over? Are we going to pay back rent?’” he says.

Hickman, like many of the people asking him questions, has been laid off; his position at the nonprofit Community Family Life Services was eliminated during the pandemic and he doesn’t have enough savings to pay the $1,358 in rent.

Hickman typically pays rent into an escrow account at D.C. Superior Court because he’s in the middle of a lawsuit with his landlord involving maintenance issues that have only gotten worse during the emergency. Hickman says the property manager isn’t regularly cleaning common areas even though one tenant was self-quarantining due to a potential COVID-19 diagnosis, but Victory Housing says office personnel have been sanitizing everything, from handrails to elevator buttons, daily.

In a statement to City Paper, Victory Housing says no late notices or payment demands are being sent out. Instead, property managers are “encouraging” tenants to contact the rental office if they are having issues with rent. As of April 14, three residents had reached out and all were placed on payment deferral plans. “Such plans are available for all residents who are experiencing economic impact,” says Dan Lukomsky, the asset management director with Victory Housing.

Organizing isn’t without challenges, especially during a pandemic. One of the three individuals on the tenant association board at St. Martin’s is a hospital nurse who works around the clock, so Hickman is taking on a lot of the organizing. The association cannot even hold an in-person meeting because such gatherings go against social distancing advice.

Appreciation for tenant organizing is building at Tivoli Gardens. Roger Williams,

who’s lived in his unit for more than 20 years, was trying to form a tenant association before the pandemic. “The only reason we got movement now in my estimation is because there has been a paradigm shift,” says Williams, “The paradigm shift is the state of emergency.”

Sometimes tenants are asking for rent relief without organizing. After realizing he cannot pay April rent, Fredy Acabal reached out to his landlord independent of any tenant association or petition. Acabal isn’t working after the hotel where he used to shine shoes shut down. Acabal lives with his brother, who was laid off too. They have lived in a 12-unit apartment building in Columbia Heights for the last 11 years and have never been late or missed a payment. During their meeting, the landlord told Acabal that he and his brother do not have to pay rent until the pandemic is over and they have work again, but it is not clear if the landlord is canceling rent altogether or Acabal and his brother have to pay back rent. Their rent is $1,385 a month. Acabal is not eligible for any government assistance because of his immigration status.

“Even if I gave the entire amount of my unemployment payment to the building, I would not be able to afford any other [expense]— internet, phone, food—literally anything else.”

“If we are going to pay it again in the future, that’s almost going to be $4,000 dollars,” he says. “I can’t pay.”

Ward 3 Councilmember Mary Cheh knows many residents are interested in a citywide rent cancelation. She’s raised the idea with her colleagues but believes there is not enough interest among the Council and Mayor to pass such legislation. She is also unsure if rent cancelation is the right solution.

“If we have an across the board ‘OK, nobody has to pay their rent,’ I think it’s too— it’s not sufficiently responsive to people who need help and puts all the weight on the landlords who themselves are not monolithic,” Cheh tells City Paper.

Cheh floated an idea of her own during a call between the Council and mayoral staff on April 8. While not fully fleshed out yet, the idea is to create a payment plan program for eligible tenants so they can make up rent they missed during the emergency. Cheh was inspired by a provision in the Council’s second round of emergency legislation that lets select mortgage holders create a program where an eligible borrower can apply

for a 90-day deferment.

“It’s a way to make it so it’s not like this avalanche of indebtedness,” she says.

Cheh is having her legislative director write up the proposal so she can circulate something before the next legislative meeting. Ward 8 Councilmember Trayon White was the only other member to raise concerns over rent in the April 8 call. “It’s going to be even worse when it’s over,” White warned.

A spokesperson for At-Large Councilmember Anita Bonds tells City Paper that the lawmaker, who chairs the Committee on Housing and Neighborhood Revitalization, is also interested in establishing “guidelines” to implement a rent repayment program in the third emergency bill. Like Cheh, Bonds believes residents should work with their landlords to pay owed rent in smaller amounts over a period of time rather than in a lump sum.

Since Bowser declared a public health emergency on March 11, the Council has passed two COVID-19 bills that provide some relief to both tenants and landlords.

Highlights include a ban on evictions and foreclosures, a freeze on rent increases, and a prohibition on utility and internet disconnections. By the Council’s own admission, the relief offered thus far is not nearly enough.

The first bill temporarily stopped evictions but not filings. Since March 16, landlords filed nearly 900 eviction cases, according to Beth Mellen Harrison of the Legal Aid Society of the District of Columbia.

Though the number is lower than the weekly average of 600 per week, Harrison says, tenants are still receiving eviction notices from D.C. Superior Court, if not the landlord who’s serving the complaint.

“Even if they’re dismissed, even if they’re able to work out a repayment agreement, it is considered a strike against them when they look for new housing,” says Harrison of the filings. “The point of stopping filings right now is to have a pause so that tenants can get unemployment insurance in place and get the federal stimulus checks and whatever other financial relief the Council is able to provide—hopefully, more emergency rental assistance—so that they can just resolve any issues of nonpayment.”

The Council still has many housing issues to address in its next round of pandemic legislation in order to provide immediate relief and long-term recovery, but to the members’ credit, they’ve passed some of the most sweeping tenant protections in the nation.

So far, no state has passed rent cancelation legislation, though city leaders are calling for this elsewhere and a bill that would make it happen is sitting in the New York legislature. Tenants hope solutions are included in the Council’s next relief package.

“If the city—and this isn’t just in this city but nationwide—doesn’t come up with a solution,” Williams says, “there is going to be a whole lot of people who are going to be between a rock and a hard place when these courts open back up.”

CP

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Life Goes On As anxieties surrounding birth in the time of COVID-19 mount, six local individuals consider how the pandemic has changed pregnancy, childbirth, and new parenthood.

By Kayla Randall

6 april 17, 2020 washingtoncitypaper.com

KaTie shepherd has just a while longer to go. She’s in her seventh month of pregnancy and her first child is due sometime between the end of May and beginning of June.

She had planned to take birthing and newborn classes beginning in her third trimester, but they were all canceled.

“I run a little anxious in general, and the way I cope with it is by planning and really thinking things out,” she says. “Everything has been tossed in the air now.”

Shepherd works as a sex therapist and lives in Alexandria. She says she’s holding a lot of anxiety for other people as well as herself during this time. Staying glued to the news and obsessively reading every alarming story about pregnancy and childbirth, along with the sometimes vicious comments on those stories, can cause even more unease. “Every day there’s a new thing to be worried about and I can’t live like that,” she says.

She initially planned to deliver at Inova Alexandria Hospital, the hospital closest to her home and doctor’s office. As circumstances changed in late March, Shepherd began weighing whether to continue with a hospital birth or plan for a home birth.

“I have no idea what it feels like to give birth, so having the safety net of medication and different interventions was actually calming and grounding for me,” she says. “The hospital I’m going to be using is already only allowing one support person. At least my husband will be able to be there, but my doula is not allowed to come with me now.”

She might be able to bring in her doula via iPad, but the experience will be different.

Guidelines are changing so swiftly that she can imagine a scenario in which even her husband won’t be able to come with her.

Support is a huge part of the birthing experience, she says, adding that the distress that can follow birth is much more likely to happen without support. “When you look at the history of childbirth in the United States, we’re not good on this stuff anyway, and the idea of ... having a very primal experience like that completely alone sounds very potentially traumatizing.”

Shepherd also wonders what post-birth life will look like. She has family in the area, but a lot of them are older and some have chronic medical issues. Is it safe to let her mother come over and help with the baby? She has to protect both her child and her parents.

Courtesy Katie Shepherd

The novel coronavirus pandemic has shut down the D.C. area and much of the rest of the world, and changed nearly every aspect of life. But labor and delivery cannot be shut down. Pregnant people and new parents still need everything they’ve always needed.

Hospital labor and delivery units must operate, and babies still need milk and diapers. Living during a pandemic presents specific challenges, some foreseen and some unforeseen, to pregnancy, childbirth, and new parenthood.

City Paper spoke to six people with their own perspectives on birth—a pregnant woman, a doula, two OB-GYNs, and two certified professional midwives—to learn how the pandemic has impacted maternal health locally.

Katie Shepherd’s 20-week ultrasound After speaking with City Paper late last month, Shepherd ultimately decided to proceed with a hospital birth and work with her doula remotely. There was “not really enough time to get my self-guided pain management together and get that secure midwife relationship that you would normally spend the entire pregnancy cultivating,” she says. doula and doula trainer Samantha Griffin is the owner of DC Metro Maternity, through which she specializes in birth support for local women of color, the vast majority of whom are black or brown.

She leads a six-person team and says the last week of February and first week of March were hectic for the group. “I went to several births, some of which I was not expecting to go to. We had so many people in labor at the same time,” she says.

In that time, the novel coronavirus had made its presence known stateside. “It came at the end of what felt like a baby storm,” she says.

In mid-March, local hospitals started to limit visitors and support people in labor and delivery units. “Then there were all these questions like ‘does the doula count as a visitor?’

We have contracts with people, and although we’re not medical personnel, we have professional relationships,” Griffin says. “A lot of the time the doctors and the midwives and the labor and delivery nurses are very used to working with us.”

Griffin encountered a new policy while watching a CDC webinar: If a birthing person tests positive for COVID-19 during labor, the

new parent could be separated from their child.

“That policy really stopped me in my tracks and made me think how seriously the health professionals must be taking this in order to talk about separating parent and child because that’s not really common practice,” she says.

“I run a little anxious in general, and the way I cope with it is by planning and really thinking things out. Everything has been tossed in the air now.”

DC Metro Maternity ultimately decided to make their services virtual. The sudden transition has been stressful for clients and hard for Griffin and her team. Some clients are single mothers by choice, and postpartum doula support fills a care gap for them. If it’s 3 a.m. and a single parent needs someone else to hold the baby, there’s no substitute for that so far.

Griffin is also a small business owner, and the doulas working with her are independent contractors. She’s figuring out virtual support,

and helped a client deliver in late March, but the physical support is missing. Her work doesn’t translate as well over Zoom as some other jobs do.

“We’re not covered by any of the stimulus.

Those of us who are self-employed or do contract work, we’re not included,” she says. “My heart hurts for making this difficult decision.

Some people opted not to move forward and that’s a loss of not only my life’s work but definitely my livelihood for a few months.”

She wants people to reach out to and communicate with her and join virtual support groups. Griffin is now teaching childbirth education virtually, preparing birthing people and their partners and talking them through what’s happening at hospitals.

She’s paying close attention to this birthing cohort, whom she believes may need more postpartum care.

“I’m especially concerned about it because most of the clients we work with are families of color, and although they do choose to birth in hospitals, there often is a bit of uneasiness about the hospital in the first place,” she says.

“Now, we’re sending them in without a layer of perceived safety. And it’s perceived safety that matters when we think about birth trauma.” dr. connie Bohon, an obstetric hospitalist at Sibley Memorial Hospital and a gynecologist in private practice on K Street NW, has always maintained that pregnancy should be “a happy time.” For her, “there is nothing better in the world than delivering a baby,” she says.

“It is outrageously wonderful.” But right now,

washingtoncitypaper.com april 17, 2020 7

Darrow Montgomery

the fear can be insurmountable for new parents. The nature of care has changed and continues to do so by the hour.

“It’s the fear of the unknown,” she says.

“Being the provider, I want to tell them science. It’s hard not to be reassuring. We’re all in the same boat, trying to do the best we can.

But it’s hard. In fact, for a vaginal delivery, we have to wear a mask because of the possibility of exposure. We have to be concerned about the possibility of infection. It’s not the kind of thing that we like. It takes away the support aspect, the fun part.”

With the virus straining hospitals, Bohon says she’s tried to be as informative as she can with patients, “trying to hide that veneer of anxiety that everybody has.”

Bohon and her colleagues have tried to limit the number of providers in the office each day.

They’re a seasoned crew and are in a different position than other hospital doctors. “Right now, they’re pulling people who may not have been part of the emergency team. In labor and delivery, we’re not doing that,” she says. “We know the needs that everybody has. That allows us to function more as a cohesive team.”

When a patient visits the office, the staff tries to do as much as they can—sonograms and blood draws, for example—during one appointment. They’ve also recognized that some visits don’t have to be done in person.

At Sibley, Bohon says, they have a negative pressure room and three operating rooms for labor and delivery; one is reserved for people under investigation for COVID-19 and COVID-19 positive patients. For now, she says she and her crew have enough protective equipment and the hospital has enough labor and delivery beds.

“But every day is a new day,” she says. “I have an N95 mask, so I hold on to it. I wear it when I’m in the hospital. If we’re concerned that we’re going to be around a patient for a long time, we wear a surgical mask on top of it. The concern is if you use it and you go from one patient to the next, you can transmit it.”

The biggest impact has been limiting the number of visitors a birthing person can have in labor and delivery: No more than one person is allowed and, for a patient having a c-section, no visitors are allowed in the operating room. “A lot of these decisions are really, really hard,” she says. “We did a c-section a week ago and the woman was by herself.”

Bohon is also fielding the many questions and concerns patients bring up.

“What do we do with a mom who comes in and she has a fever?” she asks. “We have to treat her as a PUI (a person under investigation without the diagnosis).”

And what about transmitting the virus to newborns? Some newborns have been infected, Bohon says, but as of early April, she doesn’t believe the virus can be transmitted during pregnancy or birth or that the disease passes in breast milk. The thought is—and Bohon notes that at this stage, everyone is just talking without hard scientific data, which is rapidly evolving—“that mom can pass it on to baby like anybody else, through droplets.”

Breastfeeding can provide immune protection

8 april 17, 2020 washingtoncitypaper.com

Sibley Memorial Hospital for babies and she says she’s doing everything she can to encourage it.

Bohon is also asked how safe it is to be in the hospital. Home birth requests have surged since the public health crisis firmly took hold in the U.S. in March. She assures everyone asking that labor and delivery is a separate unit and still a safe place to be, and discourages last minute home births. “The vast majority of deliveries are perfectly safe, but if you are in the small percentage with a complication, we don’t know the stress on EMS, and time is not on your side—you need to get to a hospital immediately,” she says. “We’re being as safe as we can in labor and delivery. Our national organization has implored the surgeon general to say labor and delivery is not the ICU or emergency room.”

With so much palpable fright and anxiety, Bohon wants people to not act out of fear and irrationality, and to deliver their babies in the hospital if that’s what they had planned. For example, “you don’t want them to starve at home because they’re afraid of going to the grocery store,” she says.

What if you hardly have a grocery store to go to in the first place? Another huge concern in the District is how the pandemic will exacerbate the inequalities in Wards 7 and 8, like isolation, lack of social support, lack of postpartum care, limited transportation, and limited access to grocery stores, Bohon says. It’s important to make sure that those residents are getting the news.

To ease her own anxiety, Bohon has taken to running and restricting the time she spends

consuming news. She wants to be updated and informed, but not overwhelmed. “I think it’s really important to get out in the sunshine.”

Mary’s Center outpatient OB-GYN and American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) District IV junior fellow legislative chair Dr. Meghana Rao knows what it’s like to work with the underserved communities of D.C. She treats many patients who are uninsured, are covered by Medicaid, or are people of color. News for health care professionals is coming fast. “What I tell you today, in two days, it’ll probably be different,” she says.

The issues providers are encountering during the COVID-19 outbreak keep increasing.

“The biggest one is that we tend to see pregnant women very frequently in pregnancy, and so now we’re having to transition as much of our care as possible to telehealth,” she says.

“You can imagine that with an underserved population there’s even more challenges. Just getting the supplies that they need in order to do their care at home, something as simple as having a scale or thermometer, those are things that we’re working on. And they’re not reimbursed by insurance companies so that makes it even more difficult.”

Rao’s team is trying to keep everyone as safe as possible by having patients do some prenatal and postpartum care at home but still come into the office if necessary. She’s doing two weeks of telehealth, followed by one week of in-person visits. Mary’s Center has combined its three D.C. clinic locations

into its one location on Georgia Avenue NW for the time being.

Rao emphasizes the anxiety that she’s seeing in patients. “I can’t even begin to tell you how many patients I’ve referred to therapy just for anxiety around coronavirus,” she says.

“When you’re already in a high-risk population, when you already have so many social stressors and financial stressors, to add one more thing on top of that is really rough.”

Numerous patients are dealing with food insecurity and many are diabetic. Lines at food banks get longer by the day, and pharmacies are selling out of basic necessities, from diapers to formula to medication.

As a care provider, Rao must balance supporting the patient during a difficult time and adhering to social and physical distancing to curb the spread of the virus. Plenty of people would like to have a doula or multiple family members with them when they deliver, but it’s just not possible right now, Rao says. While she feels safe in her workplace, she says many of her colleagues at other health facilities do not.

She’s heard of people who change their clothes in the garage and shower before they will interact with their families.

She praises the clinic’s support staff, who she says has been incredible, but meeting patients’ needs remains difficult. She feels for them. “I think about how hard it is for us dealing with childcare—I have two young children—and then trying to put myself in the shoes of one of my patients who will be in the same situation but not have the same family support or financial resources or transportation ... I can’t even imag-

ine what they’re going through.”

The Mary’s Center staff now has to assess every decision even more carefully: Is this test necessary? Is there a better way to do this?

How do we make sure the patient gets the best possible care while also keeping them safe?

Inquiries about home births may be growing, but Rao says her high-risk patients wouldn’t necessarily be the safest population for that.

They’re more likely to need access to a c-section and monitoring of parent and baby.

Rao talks to patients about their transportation every day. For some, the telehealth visits are more convenient, particularly if they had to commute for an hour to the clinic. But if a patient is coming by bus, providers have to think cautiously about what kind of exposure they might encounter on their way to the clinic. She also thinks about patients who don’t have internet access and can’t follow the quickly developing news about hospitals.

“Day to day, you’re not really sure what the new guidelines are,” Rao says.

“There’s a lot of stuff that can be elective and be postponed, but pregnancy can’t,” she adds. “We’re tracking our pregnant patients who also have COVID-19 very closely.”

In early March, before the virus outbreak shut most everything down, ACOG was lobbying on the Hill for support to reduce maternal mortality and advocating for expanding access to postpartum Medicaid coverage and increasing research on women’s health, Rao says.

“I do worry about how this pandemic may have impacted all of that,” she says. “It’s even more urgent. In some states, they’re using this as an opportunity to shut down access for abortion care.”

And yet, amid all the muck, there are lovely things happening too, she says: So many people, like George Washington University medical students, are volunteering to help with childcare for essential personnel. Community partners are donating items via Amazon that Mary’s Center patients need.

AzA NedhAri provides care as a certified professional midwife, working with people seeking home births. She’s also the executive director of Mamatoto Village, a nonprofit organization on 47th Street NE that provides accessible perinatal and postpartum support and primarily serves black women who live in Wards 7 and 8.

Some of her clients have been laid off in the wake of the pandemic and are concerned about social benefits and access to food.

“Food security is a huge issue right now because—especially for our clients, which are the majority of our clients, who live east of the river— there’s three grocery stores for both of the wards and they’re not easily walkable,” she says. “With public transportation significantly reduced, people are having a difficult time getting to those places to be able to get groceries. And then when they get there to get the groceries, there’s nothing that’s left hardly, especially for our clients using WIC and food stamps because people are also purchasing the WIC items.”

There are many challenges in many dimen-

sions, she says. Several potential clients have inquired about home births, but some of them can’t afford to pay several thousand dollars for those services.

“Even though the certified professional midwives bill did pass, and the mayor did sign that bill, it’s not active yet—even though I petitioned for the mayor, along with 100 other people who signed the petition, to try to get them to activate the CPM bill now so people who are eligible could have access to out-ofhospital births. But that’s just not currently available.”

The law would give the midwives licensure to practice right now and moms who use Medicaid would be able to get reimbursement, Nedhari says.

The petition, dated March 31, 2020, reads: “We are writing to request emergency action to increase accessibility for District families seeking care from a Certified Professional Midwife (CPM) during the COVID-19 crisis.

The Certified Professional Midwife Act of 2019, which was passed unanimously by the

time or weren’t able to reschedule them at all.

Some people have called because providers recommended inducing labor and they worried there would be an overutilization of intervention to move people in and out quickly through the birthing process.

There has been a rise in people seeking outof-hospital births, Nedhari says, to the point that “the home birth midwives in the DMV area, we’re all on one group together and we have this spreadsheet of who’s available, who has space. Most people are booked up until August at this point. I’m waiting for the next wave to happen, especially with the increasing COVID-19 cases for pregnant women—there’s a surge I think we’re about to see. We are almost at capacity, so the conversation we’ve been having is do we need to set up an ancillary birth center space where we can meet the demand that’s there.”

The midwives are also dealing with a crushing lack of personal protective equipment.

Nedhari says CPMs don’t have access to PPE, and when they try to get their own, they’re

“It’s important for us to feel all the range of emotions that come from this thing because it allows us to be more fully human in this moment.”

Council on March 3rd, 2020, is currently under your review. Pending your signature and approval by Congress, the law is to come into effect on October 1, 2020.” It goes on to say that COVID-19 has already claimed thousands of lives in the U.S., “while continuing to threaten the health of pregnant people and their babies.

The District must immediately grant licensure to Certified Professional Midwives to practice within their full scope without waiting for appropriations.”

Last week, she planned to again reach out to the mayor and the mayor’s office to address the status of the bill and find a consensus around trying to activate it.

As of April 9, Nedhari says they’ve only had one client test positive. The thread of worries goes far beyond the illness itself. Clients who already had pre-existing mental health issues feel their troubles are being exacerbated by this crisis. They’re also not getting the in-person care that they’re used to. Mamatoto Village shut its office on March 16 and suspended in-person visits.

“We have several clients who have nobody,” she says. “While we’re continuing to do telehealth visits at the regular interval, that in-person support is not there and it’s sorely needed. They’re feeling the impact, we’re feeling the impact because our staff wants to show up and be there, but the situation doesn’t necessarily make that possible right now.”

In her own midwifery work, she’s heard from people who’ve reported having prenatal appointments canceled and were unable to get them rescheduled in a reasonable amount of

blocked from even the small suppliers they’d normally order from as it’s all been purchased.

Now, it’s difficult for her to get it because she has to order an exorbitant amount of supplies.

“They’re basically price-basing for hospital or government entities and if you have a small practice where you’re doing three to four births a month, you can’t afford to pay $6,000 or $7,000 for PPE,” she says. “There’s like 50 or 60 midwives in the DMV area, and even if all of us pitched in, it’s still way more than we would ever need to use. In normal situations, we wear gloves at a birth, but we don’t come to birth with all of this equipment on our physical person. We’ve always used gloves but I’ve never worn a mask or a face shield or any of the stuff that we’re having to do now—that is not normal. And it feels so abnormal being in people’s homes geared up.”

Despite the trials, Nedhari says she’s an optimist who always tries to find the silver lining.

These days, resilience and joy have frequently come to mind. She’s found it by hugging her children and letting “the sun beat on her face.”

“Black people are resilient people,” she says.

“This moment is a continuum of things we’ve had to overcome collectively. This situation, as many situations, impacts black and brown people the most. And it’s hard acknowledging the difficulty in seeing the statistics and how they’re playing out in our families and our communities. I’ve definitely known several people who’ve lost family members or whose family members are at risk for loss from COVID-19.”

It’s critical, she says, that we don’t marginalize or ignore one feeling over another.

“It’s important for us to feel all the range of emotions that come from this thing because it allows us to be more fully human in this moment.” sAm sewell ruNs Sage Midwifery, where she provides inclusive care to local families as a certified professional midwife based in Northern Virginia. With ever-changing guidelines, she has found that groups of midwives, both certified professional midwives and certified nurse midwives, have united to collaborate and share information.

Sewell says she and other midwives are acting as if they’re asymptomatic carriers of the virus to be more careful with their clients.

Currently, for clients that she will see in person, she calls and asks them to take their temperature the morning of their appointment.

Sewell takes her own temperature several times each day. Then, assuming the clients have answered no to all virus screening questions and they’re afebrile, Sewell goes to their house, sits in her car in their driveway and calls or FaceTimes them. She does 80 percent of the visit that way.

“Midwives are very touchy feely,” she says.

“We build a trusting relationship and that’s how we have really good outcomes. So it’s a very big change.”

Now that people are flocking to her to inquire about home births, she’s having to build these trusting relationships in just a few weeks. In late March, she got a call from a pregnant person who was due days later. Her typical capacity as a solo provider is four due dates per month. Recently, she’s had 10 interviews with prospective clients in two days. If a midwife gets sick, someone has to back them up. Since out-of-hospital providers are left out of the supply chain and are thus unable to fully protect themselves, she says the midwives have had to be crafty and creative with PPE. They’re using masks that people have sewn for them, and one of her friends, a student nurse midwife, got PPE from dentists, many of whom are out of work right now, and dropped it off at Sewell’s house. “[It’s] your phone ringing off the hook, your email blowing up, all of these Zoom calls with other midwives and other providers, and then trying to come up with emergency practice guidelines to deal with the pandemic, notifying your clients of the way things are going to be and also telling them if you’re presumed positive or test positive for COVID-19, you are risked out of home birth and you have to go to the hospital. If anybody in your family is, you have to go to the hospital,” she says.

A big part of the midwife’s job is to counsel, Sewell says, and pregnant people have heavy hearts. “Their childbirth education classes have been canceled, their mommy groups have been canceled. Everybody’s scared.” At this moment, midwives are checking on clients and each other.

To push through fear, compassion is key for Sewell. She likes to remind people to not feel ashamed if they’re feeling extra tired and taking extra naps. “That is a natural response to trauma. We’re all being traumatized right now.”

CP

washingtoncitypaper.com april 17, 2020 9

Nikki Bass

CPARTS

Cancelation Cries

With bookstores closed, local writers must figure out new ways to promote their work.

By Hannah Grieco Spring iS the perfect time of year for a book launch—usually. For D.C. writers long-awaiting their 2020 book publications, it’s been a season of heartbreak. All public events, from launch parties to monthly readings, have been canceled due to the stateside outbreak of the novel coronavirus. Writers had plans to share their new work at Politics and Prose, Capitol Hill Books, Busboys and Poets, and many more indie booksellers, and now they’re at home like the rest of us, wondering what lies ahead.

Authors and poets work for years on their novels and collections, and the events they attend to publicize their books are necessary for sales and name recognition. It’s how they ensure their words get read, their agents stay excited, and their publishers continue promoting their art. But what happens when all events get canceled, when buzz can’t be generated for anyone, no matter how prolific,

and when all that hard work gets muted in the face of a pandemic?

Amber Sparks, one of D.C.’s best-known writers of short stories and essays, launched her new collection And I Do Not Forgive You on February 11 at Politics and Prose with high hopes and incredible reviews. For NPR, writer Ilana Masad described her stories as “full of vivid language, compelling imagery, sharp wit, and an abiding tenderness.” Author John Domini said of the book in The Washington Post, “I was so won over I pressed the book on strangers on public transportation.” And they’re right. Sparks’ stories sing, a mixture of humor and a deep ache for something better. She writes about women and their relationships, their choices, their complicated lives. She captures moments like no other writer.

After her February 11 launch, most of her winter-spring tour was canceled, and with that went the chance to sell copies of her book. She has found that many bookstores are moving to an online event format, how-

10 april 17, 2020 washingtoncitypaper.com

ever, and it does offer some light to an otherwise dark launch scenario.

“A lot of events and even some of my festivals are getting set to do online versions, so I really have hope that they’ll keep the book alive,” she says.

She also struggles with some guilt about her disappointment, and even her joy in her achievement.

“I’m really proud of this book,” says Sparks.

“It’s my best work, and I’m worried people will forget about it before it’s time for best-ofs and awards. But then I feel like an ass even thinking that, when people I know are so sick and so many people are dying.”

Courtney LeBlanc and Alysia Li Ying Sawchyn feel her pain. LeBlanc is an Arlington poet whose first full collection Beautiful & Full of Monsters, came out March 10. It’s a stunning debut, addressing identity and personal violence with brutal honesty. Sawchyn is an Arlington essayist whose new collection A Fish Growing Lungs: Essays will be published on

A new D.C. mural serves as a symbol of strength in crisis. washingtoncitypaper.com/arts June 9. Sawchyn’s work is nuanced and bold, a deeply personal story about her own mental health misdiagnosis and its profound repercussions. It’s a memoir in essay form, moving and compelling. Both collections have garnered rave reviews, with LeBlanc and Sawchyn planning events all over the country to support sales. And like Sparks, LeBlanc and Sawchyn now have to look to the virtual world to get the word out about their books.

“I’ve been a bit blue overall,” says LeBlanc.

“I’m excited about my book but not able to celebrate it or share it the way I envisioned I would. The day of my canceled book launch party I took my dog for a long hike and allowed myself to feel sad, I allowed myself to cry.”

Sawchyn is staying optimistic, and had planned her launch party for the fall, to coincide with universities starting back up. But it’s still been disappointing.

“I was hoping to travel,” she says. “It wasn’t a full-on book tour, but I was scheduled to do a few readings and attend some programs that have since been canceled for the summer. And it seems like the fall is very up in the air right now.”

Both LeBlanc and Sawchyn are already immersing themselves in online events. Local bookstores, like Politics and Prose, Busboys and Poets, Old Town Books, and One More Page Books, are virtually hosting many author events, including those originally scheduled to be in-store, and some are offering online workshops and classes, and promoting new publications through their websites and delivery sales options. Now, more than ever, it’s critical to support these small businesses and the writers who’ve given us their hearts on the page.

Many area reading series and festivals are offering online readings and discussions, and literary journals and organizations like The Writer’s Center are also hosting similar opportunities for writers to share their words. For extroverts like LeBlanc, however, it’s been a challenge to feel connected to her readers.

“I’m trying to do things online—readings and posting about my book—but it feels very selfserving,” she says. “I just wanted to be able to celebrate my first full-length collection. I wanted to read the poems and sign books for people, I wanted to share this collection with them.”

One positive that many newly published authors have discovered is the power of community. Writers with new books out in 2020 are coming together in an entirely new way, supporting each other and offering virtual cheerleading when spirits flag.

“All these writers with new books out have formed this informal support network for each other that’s been wonderful and heartening to see,” says Sparks. “And the virtual events have honestly been life-affirming, just to hear readers again and see their faces.”

CP

I’M A WEIRDO Weird: The Power of Being an Outsider in an Insider World

By Olga Khazan Hachette Go, 312 pages

Weird: The PoWer of Being an ouTsider in an insider World, Olga Khazan’s debut nonfiction book, reads like it was written for a younger version of the author. That’s not just a guess: Part of the book’s angle and narrative is based on how Khazan, a reporter at The Atlantic, grew up as a Russian Jewish immigrant in Midland, Texas. Her childhood was one marked by ostracism and a persistent sense of not belonging, which pushed her, in adulthood, to try and see her strangeness as a strength. Thus, we have Weird, where Khazan sets out to reclaim the label as a source of creativity, adaptivity, and uniqueness.

Although Weird is structured as a typical pop-psychology book, full of insights from researchers and scientists, like the articles Khazan regularly publishes at The Atlantic, the book’s biggest strengths lie outside the realm of science. Studies prop up the main thesis— that “weirdness” of many kinds makes for better out-of-the-box thinking and resilience—but the heart of the book is in the lovingly crafted narratives of the widely varied “weirdos” Khazan profiles. Her prose is animating, specific, rich, and sometimes laugh-out-loud funny when she tells the stories of her subjects, who range from a doctor with dwarfism to a fish-out-of-water liberal at a deep red Texas university. Khazan writes with affection for her subjects, though she’s not afraid to challenge them—when one man sets out to make friends because his marriage will crumble with no outside support, Khazan writes, “When he first explained that, I thought it sounded a little calculating. How would his friends feel, knowing they were the only things standing between him, his wife, and a divorce lawyer?” before coming around. A conservative couple who moves to McKinney, Texas, where she went to high school, asks her if she’d consider moving back; she says “I almost didn’t have the heart to tell them no. Almost.”

But the book’s premise is stretched at times.

Feeling awkward around classmates as a young

Russian immigrant isn’t the same as some of the struggles her subjects have faced, and she sees the gulfs in their lived experiences—“I don’t mean for this grouping, however, to imply that I consider the low-level unease of, say, a white immigrant to be equivalent to the obstacles faced by people of color or those living with rare medical conditions. Being laughed at by preteens and being discriminated against for centuries are simply not comparable experiences,” she writes in the introduction. Still, there are some notable stumbles. When we meet Jess Herbst, who was the first openly transgender mayor in Texas, within two paragraphs Khazan uses her former name and mentions features like “the large hands of the man she presented publicly as just a few years ago.” One can argue this is a choice intended to highlight just how “weird” Herbst is to a cisgender outsider (or, in the nature of the book’s title, an insider), but the choice is thrown into relief by how the narrative characterizes another trans woman introduced later on, Vivienne Ming, whose hands and deadname are left out—maybe because, in the words of the narrative, “her surgical procedures worked so well that no one would ever suspect she wasn’t assigned female at birth.” In effect, Khazan’s prose can other her subjects in the same ways their communities do, and even if that’s a source of strength, as she argues, it stings. Plus, despite the explicit acknowledgement that not all forms of “weirdness” are equal, it can be difficult to square the outsiderness of a conservative professor in a predominantely liberal field with that of a Muslim immigrant from Africa who grows up in a small Southern town.

But Khazan’s book sings when she gives herself room to write about people’s quirks, vulnerabilities, and habits. That’s why the book’s fourth and final section, “To Stay Different or To Find Your Own Kind?,” focused entirely on wrapping up these people’s stories, is almost disappointingly short. In it, Khazan writes about herself and her interviewees one after the other, with the momentum not broken up by explanations of social psychology, and the effect is transporting. For readers who love a well written, thoroughly researched social science book, Weird hits the spot. And for those who grew up like Khazan or see themselves in her story, it may be a balm for the soul.

—Emma Sarappo

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washingtoncitypaper.com april 17, 2020 11

PUZZLE

FILMSHORT SUBJECTS

THE WALLS ARE CAVING IN

By Brendan Emmett Quigley

THE WALLS ARE CAVING IN ANSWER

Across 1 Wu-Tang Clan rapper ___ Killa 6 The Nittany Lions' sch.

9 Conductors locations 10 "I just took a ___ turns out I'm 100% that bitch" 11 "Huh, hombre?"

12 180s 15 Pop's sis 16 Did phenomenal on 17 Letter in the WSJ?: Abbr.

18 Building material used in many kids rooms?

19 Water-filtration company 20 Real S.O.B. 22 On-line coupon 24 Like the WHO: Abbr.

27 Four-sided shape with two 90Âş angles 29 TikTok user, likely 30 Ridiculous 31 Standing position?

36 With 39-Down, The Masked Singer judge 37 Religious journey 40 Carry around 41 Barista's serving 42 Tends to a strain, say 43 They might make you feel the walls are caving in 45 Even if, briefly 46 One who sees things the way they are 47 One who writes music in the style of Bach, e.g.

48 Keep to oneself 49 Dish sometimes served "au poivre"

7 Hurt, as after a sick burn 8 Of ___ (helpful for) 9 Biblical measurement that is roughly 18 inches 10 Mad Men man 13 Where The Mountain Meets the Moon author Grace 14 The clap, e.g.

15 NBA Hall-ofFamer Mourning 20 ___ store by 21 Long military attack

23 Depressed urban area, for short 25 Gambled 26 Safety item under your airplane seat 28 Ruler by birth 32 Oil treatment inits.

33 High peak 34 Ultrasound's target 35 Have a longlasting hate for 37 Small obstacle 38 Allergic reaction 39 See 36-Across 41 World On Fire actress Brown 44 Fully appease

LAST WEEK: SAY YES

Down 1 No stud he, no loser either 2 Performed 3 "Fer ___" ("You betcha") 4 Sal ___ (Abe Vigoda's The Godfather role) 5 Kazakhstan's former capital 6 Raise, as interest

14 april 17, 2020 washingtoncitypaper.com

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0 $ 6 7 2 5 & + ( ' 1 $ 7 ( 6 5 ( 9 ( 5 6 WORKING ON IT $ & ( ' , Sorry We Missed You 3 Loach 8 5 6 2 Directed by Ken For more than ( 50 % years, $ filmmaker 7 ( Ken Loach has been making films about the plight 5 in, his*native +England.

7 7It of working people is a sign then, of both his unwavering com7 and(our(failure 1 to enmitment to the cause act meaningful change for workers, that his 3 by2 6 films seem to get more relevant the day.

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has set his sights on the gig economy. Ricky (Kris Hitchen), struggling to get out from under crushing debt and support his family, takes a new job as a driver for a parcel delivery company with an enticing business structure. In the opening scene, his new boss lays out the upside, selling him hard on the freedom and flexibility of being an â&#x20AC;&#x153;owner-driver franchisee,â&#x20AC;? and skipping the lack of health insurance, long hours, and fines for lateness. Ricky gets in deeper right away when he decides to buy his own van, rather than rent one from the company at a higher monthly cost. The new debt locks him into a job and company he knows almost nothing about. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s a testament to how deftly Loach conveys the tight spot he is in that we can understand his choice, while also immediately recognizing exactly how it will go wrong.

The rocky path the film follows may be predictable from its opening moments, but its precise humanism and fresh details make Sor-

$ 3 6 8 6 7 5 $ 3 , 7 6 7 4 8 ( ry We Missed You a riveting watch. Ricky has 1 7 $initial/success 6 as a driver, $ but 8 without the support of a full-time employer, small complica1tions,mutate 7 into potential / (disasters. * 2He has his wifeâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s $sold1 ' car 6to buy 2 the van, which forces her to take the bus to her job as a home health care worker, leaving the children , 1 7 /home alone to fend for themselves for longer each day.

5Their$teenage 3 son ( (Rhys = Stone) 2 ,runs' afoul of his teachers and eventually the police, repeat2away 2from)their<jobs to edly pulling his* parents him out of trouble. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s a cruel and vicious 7bail 8 5more(hours they . miss, ( the 1more cycle.

The they must make up, and their children end up $ way.

9 $ 2emotionally 7 ( neglected- either but it5 never(feels6 unpro5 Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s(a tough 6 watch, 6 8 ductive, especially as part-time and contract employees hard by 5 (off-screen $ / are ,being6hit 7 mandated closures. We see the unemploy3ment8number 1 rise 7 and, read6about7relief funds for workers, but cinema has a unique ability 6a human 7 ( $the. to put face to statistics. Sorry We Missed You brilliantly dramatizes the way so many working families are one mistake away from total tragedy, and how the anxiety associated with the tenuousness of their existence can often facilitate their doom.

It may not sound like the movie you need right nowâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;many viewers are looking for comfort, not a lesson in lifeâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s hard realitiesâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; but Sorry We Missed You is not the endurance test it appears to be. Loach and his committed cast of actors find occasional moments of humor amidst their pain, and the film, despite the sorrow it portrays, is strangely satisfying. Like other great works of social realism, it conveys the tragedy of the poor with such empathy that it invites you, if only for a short time, to willingly share their burden. â&#x20AC;&#x201D;Noah Gittell Sorry We Missed You is available to view at Kino Marquee to April 23. kinonow.com/sorry-wemissed-you-afi-silver-theatre.

Illustration by Julia Terbrock

ARTS CLUB

“THE ENTIRE HISTORY OF YOU” For this week’s edition of City Paper Arts Club, arts editor Kayla Randall and multimedia editor Will Warren watched “The Entire History of You”—the third episode of Black Mirror’s first season. It’s a truly horrifying look at what life could be like if we had the ability to watch and replay every single moment, so of course we ate it up. Next, we’ll be watching Moonlight, and we’ll definitely cry at its beauty.

These arts club chat excerpts have been edited and condensed for clarity. For the full chat, subscribe to Washington City Podcast.

Kayla Randall: This episode is about a nearfuture in which everyone has a memory implant right behind their ear called grains. What these grains do is allow people to “re-do”— which means to be able to see their entire lives, their past. Whatever happened in the morning, you could rewind it and see exactly what happened, sort of eliminating the faulty nature of the human memory.

Will Warren: And this one character is driven mad by what he perceives as an affair that his wife is having with another person. [He] becomes increasingly unhinged in his pursuit of the truth.

KR: This is one of my favorite episodes; it’s just so resonant in terms of the themes it portrays.

Our main character is Liam, and honestly, he’s kind of a relatable guy.

WW: Yeah, he does some pretty barbarous things, but in the beginning, and obviously

they know what they’re doing, they set him up as this guy you want to root for. His bosses beat down on him, he’s uncertain about his job future, he’s trying to stand up to corporate evil.

You can see yourself in him, which, it turns out, is unfortunate because he does some bad stuff.

KR: Having a memory implant at first might be appealing, but then to be able to just replay your life over and over again like it’s a movie proves to be really toxic.

[Eventually one] whole night escalates into him rewatching all of his interactions, and rewatching the interactions that his wife has had with this guy. At a certain point, you’re kind of like, alright, Liam, let it go. But again, at the same time, as a human being, I could see myself easily doing the same thing—becoming obsessed. Personally, I always lament how garbage the human memory is. In fact, there’s a line in the episode: “Half of the organic memories you have are junk.”

WW: Is there a part of you that would be interested in getting a grain?

KR: A little tiny bit? I don’t know.

WW: We see the state and security apparatus using it. [The airport] scrolls through his timeline and is like “oh I guess you didn’t pack any bombs or talk to any shady people, so you’re good.”

KR: That’s really scary, that kind of police state where people are allowed to see your whole life.

WW: It’s interesting that the only person for whom the grain works is the state.

KR: Exactly, and if the state is the only institution benefiting from something, let’s re-evaluate it.

CP

washingtoncitypaper.com april 17, 2020 15

Kelyn Soong

SPORTS

The XFL and DC Defenders come to an abrupt end. washingtoncitypaper.com/sports

COLLEGE ATHLETICS

Sports Medicine

Photos courtesy of subjects

Being collegiate athletes helped prepare them for their latest fight: the COVID-19 pandemic.

Left to right: Antonio Washington, Kamilla Beisenova, and Kelley Marchiano

By Kelyn Soong Dr. Antonio WAshington is used to feeling unrelenting stress. In the mid to late 1980s, he competed for the Howard University varsity men’s wrestling team while studying on a pre-med track. Washington practiced daily in the winter season, usually from 6 a.m. to 7:30 a.m., wrestled against Division I talent on the weekends, and stayed up late to finish his studies with his eyes toward a medical degree.

Success as a student athlete required intense focus and discipline.

“With a sport like wrestling in which there is constant engagement with your opponent, the entire match is meaningful and challenging,” Washington says. “Because the match is not over until the time has run out. Every mo-

ment is a moment that if you took your foot off the gas pedal, it can cause your match to end.

It’s not over until it’s over.”

Decades later, the 55-year-old doctor is drawing on those lessons for another pressurefilled situation. Washington is the medical director at two freestanding emergency rooms for the South Texas Hospital System, located in the Rio Grande Valley along the border between Mexico and the United States. As a physician, Washington serves on the front lines of the novel coronavirus pandemic, evaluating individuals who may test positive for COVID-19.

His past as a competitive athlete has helped prepare him for this. But while collegiate wrestling may be more physically taxing, there is one crucial difference.

16 april 17, 2020 washingtoncitypaper.com

“In wrestling, you can quit your match,” Washington says, “but not as an ER doctor.”

AccorDing to the World Health Organization, more than 1.9 million people have tested positive for COVID-19 cases worldwide, and more than 123,000 people have died as of April 15. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report that the United States has 579,005 total cases and 22,252 total deaths— the most of any country Across the globe, doctors, nurses, physician assistants, and other health care workers are spending grueling hours at hospitals and urgent care clinics. Their jobs require them to walk into the epicenters of the pandemic, in places stretched thin and where the constant flow of potential COVID-19 patients makes

everyone’s role vital.

Among those are former elite athletes, who have traded the rigid schedule of competitive sports, which are now at a standstill due to the pandemic, for the urgent and critical duties of treating coronavirus patients. They’re using skills they learned as athletes to help save lives: Early hours, persistent pressure, and time management are nothing new for them.

Three times a week, Kamilla Beisenova wakes up at 6 a.m. to get to her 12-hour shifts at the George Washington University Hospital as an emergency room technician. She started the job last April with the intention of going to medical school either this fall or next year.

At the hospital, her duties include starting the intravenous lines for patients, drawing blood work, performing electrocardiogram

(EKG) tests, and general tasks like collecting urine, taking patients to X-rays and CT scans, and providing patients with food and blankets.

In the last few weeks, Beisenova, a former GW women’s tennis player, has added another important responsibility: testing potential COVID-19 patients with a nasopharyngeal swab.

“It’s definitely stressful, especially because I felt like in the beginning, it didn’t feel real yet, it didn’t hit you,” she says. “Now having to adjust to the flow of having so many new procedures for our safety and patient safety, we’ve had to learn and adjust to doing everything different. I think that’s been really hard and stressful.”

It’s only been two years since Beisenova, 23, graduated from GW as a member of the women’s tennis team. She first competed in tournaments around age 7, when she lived in Kazakhstan, and trained at the 4 Star Tennis Academy in Potomac after she moved to the United States with her family in 2010. Beisenova currently lives in Bethesda with her mother, younger brother, and 84-year-old grandmother, which makes her job dealing with potential COVID-19 patients even more anxiety inducing.

“I would be so afraid to bring this home,” she says.

But Beisenova can handle the pressure. Being a former Division 1 student athlete tested her resolve, and Beisenova draws some parallels from those years to her schedule now. Junior and collegiate tennis matches can sometimes last up four hours under the crackling summer heat. In college, victories can come down to your individual match. At the hospital, she’s standing for the majority of the day, and doctors rely on Beisenova to accurately conduct patient tests.

“I don’t think I would have learned or adjusted or been comfortable with a lot of these things if I hadn’t played competitive sport in my life,” she says. “A lot of things sports teaches you, not just how to adjust to pressure or stress, but just staying organized, disciplined, managing your time, dedicating to your goal, all those things have had an impact, that have transfered from me playing tennis to life in general.”

Similar to Beisenova, Kelley Marchiano credits her past as a collegiate athlete for her life today. Marchiano, 32, is a physician assistant at Priority Care Clinics in White Marsh, Maryland.

She sees about 20 patients a day who arrive at her clinic for COVID-19 tests. Some patients show up with upper respiratory problems, and others are asymptomatic other than the loss of smell and taste, Marchiano says. She prefers to do the nasal swabbing herself and is constantly on her feet for her three 12-hour shifts a week.

It helps that she spent four years on the University of Maryland track and field team, focusing on the 800 meters, arguably the toughest distance to race on the track.

“I think especially working 12-hour shifts, that can be exhausting for most people,” Marchiano says. “Having been an 800 runner, I have that stamina built up. I can handle that pretty well. I think it’s that I don’t get overwhelmed by things.”

She adds that she has personally swabbed at least 10 patients who have tested positive for COVID-19. After her shift ends at 8 p.m.,

Marchiano takes off her personal protective equipment, changes out of her scrubs in the office, and sterilizes her shoes. At her home near Towson, Maryland, her husband and 2-and-ahalf year old daughter wait until she returns to have dinner.

It’s physically and mentally draining work, but as she reflects back on her time as a Division I student athlete, Marchiano feels she’s been able to have a clear perspective—“I’m grateful that I still have a job,” she says—and take things in stride. Even during a global pandemic.

“I do feel an intense amount of pressure to see these patients, diagnose them correctly in order to help prevent further spread of the virus and keep people safe and healthy,” she says. “But I think I am better equipped to handle that pressure because of all the situations and races I conquered as a student athlete at Maryland. This is just another obstacle to overcome.”

So far, WaShington has admitted two known COVID-19 patients to the hospital, but says he is “bracing for worse.” Medical experts predict that cases will increase before the situation improves, and that a second wave of the virus could return in the fall after a lull in the summer. It will likely be many months until live sports return.

It’s forcing those on the front lines like Washington, who went to medical school at Johns Hopkins University, to adjust to the sobering truth that by simply showing up to work, he could be risking his own life and the lives of those close to him.

He carries a change of clothes to the office and before he leaves each night after his 12-hour shifts, he takes off his scrubs and shoes in the parking lot, places them in a bag, and sets that aside for three to four days. When Washington returns to his home in McAllen, Texas, he hops in the shower before doing anything else.

“Emergency medicine in general is a pretty stressful job,” he says. “We’re used to a certain level of stress being in there. At any point at any time, any level of emergency can walk through the door. But the COVID-19 experience has added to that level of stress and readiness that’s necessary to work as a physician in the emergency room. That’s largely because for most physicians, this is the first time practicing in which just doing your job places your life and health at risk.”

Sports can’t prepare you for everything.

Wrestling competitions, tennis matches, and track meets aren’t life or death affairs. But during his wrestling career, the thought of giving up during a competition never crossed Washington’s mind. He felt obligated to himself, his coaches, teammates, and school to compete.

The matches where he faced bigger or stronger opponents brought the best out of him. Washington believes you learn how committed you are in these moments. Wrestling taught him that, and until the pandemic is over, he’s not going anywhere.

“You have to dig deep,” Washington says.

“You continuously have to answer the questions: Are you going to persist? Can you dig deeper? It reminds and encourages you not to quit.” CP

LIZ AT LARGE

“Forward” by Liz Montague Liz Montague is a cartoonist and cat mom. You can find her work in The New Yorker and City Paper.

washingtoncitypaper.com april 17, 2020 17

DCFEED

Restaurant staff report feeling grateful for any take-out and delivery orders that come in, but also stress that there are ways to be a better customer during the pandemic. Place orders early, pick up whenever possible, cut back on special requests unless you have an allergy, and answer your phone. washingtoncitypaper.com/food

YOUNG & HUNGRY

Priority Eating

People with disabilities have a hard time accessing food as demand for grocery delivery services increases.

Andy Arias

Darrow Montgomery/File

Andy AriAs uses a manual wheelchair to move through life. His hands regularly touch wheels that also touch the ground. “The idea of me staying safe even with gloves and a mask would be super challenging,” he says. “I can’t leave my house and take the risk. It’s like walking around with rubber soles on your hands. How do you not expose yourself?”

He hasn’t left his Maryland apartment since March 15 and has been getting food from grocery delivery services, plus a weekly fast food treat from either Taco Bell or McDonald’s via Postmates.

Arias, who lives alone, depended on Amazon Fresh delivery even before the COVID-19 public health crisis made it unsafe to leave home. “It’s physically challenging for me to carry more than a bag or two,” he says, adding that it would cost about $17 an hour to hire an aide to do his shopping for him.

But he says ever since March 13, it’s been much more difficult to secure a delivery slot. The city declared a state of emergency on March 11, launching a mad dash for groceries as Washingtonians prepared to stay home.

He’s not alone. Other D.C. area residents with disabilities report having to wait up to two weeks to get groceries delivered through services like Amazon Fresh, Instacart, and Peapod. They’ve stayed up late or set alarms for odd hours to try to increase their chances of securing a coveted delivery time.

Many D.C. residents, in order to avoid contracting or spreading the virus, have suddenly started getting their groceries delivered, something residents with disabilities have relied on since the services launched. An order Mayor Muriel Bowser issued on April 8 imposed new rules for grocery stores, making shopping simultaneously safer and more daunting. Stores must limit how many shoppers can enter at a time; require customers to wear face coverings; and make their aisles one-way. The order also tells grocers to “encourage the use of online shopping and curbside or home delivery.”

“What we’ve seen is long delivery times,” says Arlington resident Mark Reumann. “And when you get a delivery, you’re not guaranteed to get

Darrow Montgomery/File

By Laura Hayes

Kristin Duquette everything you order. I probably got one-third of my order last time.”

Reumann is blind and under the current circumstances he spends much of his time “on the hunt for groceries.” He checks the sites every couple of hours and wishes services like Peapod

18 april 17, 2020 washingtoncitypaper.com

and Instacart would automatically notify users when new slots become available.

Before COVID-19, Reumann would sometimes do his own shopping, but that isn’t feasible now. “If you’re blind you can’t socially distance,” he says. It’s hard to tell if others are within

six feet and he can’t see the lines customers are supposed to wait behind to check out. “You need help from store employees. You’re risking yourself, you’re risking them,” he adds. On top of that, there’s the challenge of getting to the store; driving isn’t an option and Reumann considers public transportation risky.

Alec Frazier also doesn’t drive. The Takoma Park resident has Sensory Processing Disorder, which makes getting behind the wheel challenging. “At one point I counted. I had 15 disabilities,” he says. “I’m not even going to try driving.”

If it were up to him, Frazier would solely rely on grocery delivery services. He’s an avid Instacart user, but says that the service has become less reliable lately, with wait times of up to four days. Much of what he selects online hasn’t been available in the store, and he also struggles to communicate with Instacart drivers who don’t follow his written instructions describing how to enter his living complex.

But Frazier’s biggest issue with Instacart is that he can’t pay using his SNAP benefits. Before COVID-19, it mattered less because he only received $77 a month through the federal program. He recently found out that his benefits temporarily increased to $194 a month through June. In order to redeem them he has to visit the physical store. Using public transportation is difficult if there’s no bench at the bus stop, and once Frazier loads his grocery bags, he typically hails a Lyft. Both methods of transit can leave him exposed to the coronavirus.

Frazier has thought seriously about how grocery delivery services can improve during a pandemic. “I have this idea that you can list yourself as disabled on a food-buying app so they prioritize your shopping,” he says. “They know that you genuinely can’t leave the house or you can’t drive.”

Arias also wonders if delivery services could prioritize those with the greatest need by adding a box for customers with disabilities or immunodeficiencies to check. “That would be the best thing, if they would be willing to do that temporarily,” he says. “If you’re going to provide online services, especially in a pandemic, you should be thinking about the most vulnerable people first.”

One in four U.S. adults—61 million people— has a disability, according to a 2018 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report. As of 2017, there were at least 75,783 people with disabilities living in D.C. When asked about the possibility of giving priority to customers who have disabilities or who are immunocompromised, Instacart and Amazon supplied non-committal answers. Peapod and FreshDirect did not immediately respond.

“We continue to be focused on providing an essential service to as many customers as possible, including those who are most vulnerable,” an Amazon spokesperson tells City Paper. “We

are working hard to identify ways to deliver groceries to more customers, like adding more delivery windows throughout the day.” Pressed again about whether people with disabilities could receive special consideration, the spokesperson responded, “We are focused on increasing availability for all customers.”

Instacart tells City Paper that the company is “constantly evaluating our service and are in close contact with our more than 350 retail partners across North America to ensure we’re providing accessible and affordable grocery delivery for all those who need it.”

Silver Spring resident Cara Liebowitz, a wheelchair user, thinks guaranteed grocery delivery slots are a good idea in theory, but wonders how implementation would work. “It would have to be based on self-reporting,” she says.

Liebowitz, who’s 27, left the D.C. area and is staying with her parents in New York until COVID-19 runs its course. “I know if I had stayed in D.C., I would have experienced a lot of difficulty,” she says. “I rely heavily on grocery delivery normally and in this crisis I’m hearing no grocery delivery services have spots available for weeks on end. As someone who is high risk, I wouldn’t want to risk going to a grocery store right now, and grocery shopping in person is difficult for me at the best of times.”

The Whole Foods near Liebowitz’s house is only letting a certain number of customers in at a time. Those waiting to get in have to line up outside, spaced six feet apart. Liebowitz can’t imagine enduring that feat. “That’s part of the reason I use a wheelchair,” she says. “My walking and standing stamina is limited. What if this was before I had my chair? That would be very difficult for me.”

Some stores, including Safeway and Giant locations in the D.C. area, have designated specific times for senior citizens to shop, a population at higher risk for developing complications and succumbing to the virus. Liebowitz wishes they would make their language more inclusive and welcome others who need more space to shop.

“I have two conditions on the CDC high-risk list,” she says. “I’ve heard a lot of people are reluctant to go to stores during these hours, especially if they’re invisibly disabled. They don’t want to have to prove they’re immunocompromised.”

Giant has scheduled “dedicated shopping hours for senior citizens 60-and-older and individuals with compromised immune systems” from 6 a.m. to 7 a.m. daily. A representative says if someone with a disability shows up during that time, they won’t be turned away.

Safeway’ has set aside slots on Tuesday and Thursday mornings from 7 a.m. to 9 a.m so “senior citizens, pregnant women, and compromised immune systems can avoid crowds.”

Neither store specifically calls out disabilities.

“Seniors are very much not the only people at risk in this pandemic,” Liebowitz says. “I’m tired of reminding people that you can be young and disabled or young and immunocompromised.”

D.C. launched one form of help on April 15.

D.C. residents who are home-bound and cannot shop for groceries or pick up medications can obtain help by calling a hotline at 1-888-349-

8323. “It’s a lifeline, really, to make sure people have what they need,” Bowser said at an April 9 briefing.

This is especially critical because services like Instacart cost extra and paying for groceries is already a challenge for many residents. Because of the public health crisis, they may not have access to the personal care attendants they depend on for cooking and grocery shopping.

The service is free. “This is based on need,” Department of Human Services Director Laura Zeilinger says. “We would not be charging for those groceries. We’ll be leveraging disaster relief funding.”

City Paper requested an interview with the Office of Disability Rights to find out what other resources are available for residents with disabilities. After several days, Director Mathew McCollough responded that ODR could only issue a statement approved by the Executive Office of the Mayor, which City Paper has yet to receive.

Arias hopes people who aren’t disabled or immunocompromised will consume mindfully.

“If you’re able to go to the store and you’re safe, don’t use the apps if you don’t have to,” he says.

“And if you are going to use Instacart or Amazon, try to do it once a week. I even do that. If I do it more than once a week, I’m taking a slot away from somebody else.”

D.C. resident and wheelchair user Kelly Mack encourages Washingtonians to check on their friends or neighbors who are older or who have disabilities. “If you’re running to the store, make their lives easier and pick up a few things,” she says. “Anything any of us can do to help each other will make it easier for us to get through this safely.”

Mack is fortunate: Her husband can do the grocery runs for their household. “Without him it would be a trillion times more difficult,” she says. Typically when Mack goes to the supermarket she stops by the service desk to ask for an employee to help her shop. “I don’t know if that’s still available,” she says.

Like Liebowitz, D.C. resident Kristin Duquette left the city to stay with her parents as the virus moves through the country. She uses a scooter to get around and says she recognizes how privileged she is to be able to lean on her parents as a support system.

“If I was still in D.C. right now, I don’t know how I would be going from day to day without chronic panic attacks,” Duquette says.

That said, Duquette sees COVID-19 as an opportunity for Americans to gain a greater sense of empathy that can lead to lasting change. “People with disabilities are used to adapting to systems that are not built for us,” she says. “A lot of people with disabilities have been asking for these accommodations, whether it’s wanting to telework more often or getting more things delivered. Now these things are necessities. Hopefully there will be a shift and we can show all of society how to be adaptable.”

“It shows our humanness regardless of our social status or ability or knowledge or nationality,” she says of the pandemic. “Hopefully that commonality can help us come together and find more solutions that can have impact after this pandemic.”

CP

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CITYLIST CITY LIGHTS

CITY LIGHTS

THE DEFINITION OF INSANITY

THE BEST OF CATVIDEOFEST

District-born producer Gabriel London’s latest film project brings the intersection of mental health and the criminal justice system into sharp focus. The Definition of Insanity follows Judge Steve Leifman, who launches the Miami-Dade Criminal Mental Health Project with a team of criminal justice and mental health professionals after seeing firsthand how people with mental illness are treated in Miami-Dade County jails. The project is billed as an experiment with an ambitious goal: to build a humane criminal justice approach to mental illness that reaches from the courts into the community. The film is available on WETA, at PBS.org, or on the PBS video app for six months after the premiere. Free.

—Elizabeth Tuten

CITY LIGHTS

The day we collectively discovered Netflix’s Tiger King was the first time in the past month that we managed to not think about coronavirus. For some, it took murder plots, double crosses, and the horrors of the North American exotic animal trade to even briefly ease our fretting. Others, however, could have done without the redneck-crime-thriller aspect and were more taken in by the B-roll of big cats. If watching the tragedy of Joe Exotic made you wish there was a way to just kick back and enjoy some feline antics without having to wonder whether Carole Baskin fed her husband’s bones to tigers, the American Film Institute has just the thing for you! In collaboration with Oscilloscope Laboratories (known film distributors and animal lovers in their own right who employ a dog nicknamed “Landshark” as their head of security), AFI brings you Best of CatVideoFest: Creature Comforts Edition. Normally, you can only see CatVideoFest compilations in theaters, where original cute cat videos are screened to raise money for animal welfare. This week, you can rent a 40-minute reel of raw cuteness for as little as 99 cents. Don’t be afraid to kick in a few dollars if you can spare them! 75 percent of your generous contribution goes to Silver Spring institution AFI Silver, which screens independent and classic films yearround. The compilation is available at catvideofest2020.vhx.tv. $0.99.

—Will Lennon

HEAVY METAL PARKING LOT

On May 31, 1986, the aimless young burnouts of the DMV region hopped in their muscle cars and converged en masse on suburban Maryland to watch the heavy metal bands Judas Priest and Dokken play at the now-demolished Capital Centre. Local filmmakers Jeff Krulik and John Heyn were there, too, to document not the concert itself, but the pre-show rituals in the arena’s parking lot. With equipment they had borrowed from a public access TV station, pretending that they were there on behalf of MTV, Krulik and Heyn interviewed an assortment of shirtless, big-haired, drugged-out suburban concertgoers, eager to opine on everything from why Judas Priest ruled to why punk rock sucked. By the end of the night, Heyn and Krulik had the makings of what would become Heavy Metal Parking Lot, a 16-minute short that today stands as perhaps the greatest cult concert film of all time. Though there’s never a bad time to revisit this indelible portrait of late-’80s local teenage heavy metal dirtbaggery, the film seems especially evocative now, at a moment when tailgating, going to concerts, hanging out in parking lots, and sticking a microphone directly in your mouth as you answer an interviewer’s question all seem like distant, receding memories. Pull your cutoffs out of storage, pop the top on a can of domestic macrobrew, and watch it again and again. The film is available on Vimeo and at heavymetalparkinglot.com. Free.

—Justin Peters

20 april 17, 2020 washingtoncitypaper.com

CITY LIGHTS

IVY & CONEY’S COLORING BOOK PAGES

With the evenings stretching out and the streets in full bloom, pilsner should be freely flowing from every rooftop and patio in the District. Coronavirus sucks! April is the coolest month, and this stinkin’ pandemic is robbing us of some of spring’s best offerings. Pouring a draft at home’s just not the same, especially if there’s no baseball playing there either. The best substitute for authentic spring leisure might be fantastical escape. The Ivy & Coney coloring book is a portal to a time when a seat on the rooftop with a view of a screen didn’t feel like an unimaginable luxury. Order a coney, a Chicago dog, or anything else off their take-out menu, and get free digital coloring-book pages to go. Grab some crayons and Malört and feel transported. Coloring book pages come with orders from Ivy & Coney. Prices vary.

—Kriston Capps

CITY LIGHTS

CITY LIGHTS

SHEA BUTTER BABY

OH, HELLO: THE P’DCAST

Week four of quarantine: Your food supply is running low, you have no more toilet paper, and you’re in dire need of physical interactions with your friends, leaving you stir-crazy. Consider staying occupied during this time by jamming to R&B artist Ari Lennox’s album Shea Butter Baby. Lennox, who was born and raised in Washington, D.C, listened to artists ranging from John Legend to Red Hot Chili Peppers growing up, which influenced her distinctive voice, she explained in an interview with NPR. Last May, Lennox released her debut album, Shea Butter Baby. Although it’s almost a year old, Shea Butter Baby still fails to disappoint, including hits like “Up Late,” “BMO,” and “New Apartment,” alongside features from J. Cole and JID. Not only will this album make you want to dance, cry, and “leave your curls in the shower,” it might leave you wanting more. Lucky for you, Lennox released an EP of remixes to Shea Butter Baby on March 27, featuring rising artist Doja Cat, leaving us with three more tunes to keep us occupied during quarantine. Of course, you can always relax and unwind with the original album’s “I Been,” where Lennox narrates a day: “I’ve been smokin’ purple haze, ooo, to forget about you, but you lie, and you lie, and you lie, and you lie, you lie.” We all have something to forget about right now, right? Shea Butter Baby is available to stream on Apple Music, Spotify, and Google Play Music. Free.

—Kennedy Whitby

“Where were you the day that Princess Diana died?” So begins the central mystery in a new comedy podcast by Georgetown University grads John Mulaney and Nick Kroll. Since 2008, the friends have performed as geriatric New Yorkers George St. Geegland and Gil Faizon in live comedy acts, various television stints, and even a Broadway play (or, as they’d pronounce it, Brd’way). The Geegland-Faizon saga continues with Oh, Hello: The P’dcast, an eight-episode parody of the true crime podcast genre where the fictional duo investigate the death of Princess Diana. John Oliver, Pete Davidson, and Lin-Manuel Miranda are among the “experts” Geegland and Faizon call upon for testimonies about Diana’s life. As if the show’s premise wasn’t absurd enough already, Serial host Sarah Koenig and This American Life host Ira Glass recur as mentors— and maybe even meddlers—as the rookie detectives’ contentious personal history and shaky love lives threaten to overshadow any breaks in the case. And Mulaney and Kroll have decided not to pursue sponsors for the series, instead asking listeners to donate to the United Way COVID-19 Community Fund. Oh, Hello: The P’dcast is available wherever podcasts are streamed. United Way donations are accepted at unitedway.org/ohhello.

—Mercedes Hesselroth

CITY LIGHTS CITY LIGHTS

A K-POP CRASH COURSE

Curious about K-pop? Mia Steinle has you covered. A D.C.-based investigative journalist by day, Steinle has channeled her obsession with the genre into Bae Bae—now D.C.’s biggest K-pop dance party—since 2015. With in-person events on pause, Steinle launched a limited run newsletter designed to guide readers through a decade of K-pop’s most influential hits and historic moments. “I named it after Mamamoo’s 2015 song, “Um Oh Ah Yeh” because it’s hard to find actual words to express how I’m feeling these days,” Steinle explains in the first issue. While Steinle has curated plenty of uplifting bubblegum pop hits, the project also showcases K-pop’s fuller emotional and stylistic range, from sultry electronic melodies to bold ballads. The newsletter archive is available for free at tinyletter.com/miasteinle, and Steinle offers two ways to listen along. If you search Spotify using her name, you’ll find a 55song feast of a playlist titled “Intro to K-Pop.” But the slower (and more rewarding) method is to watch the music videos linked in each newsletter. By the end, you’ll have absorbed a decade of catchy hooks, zany skits, nostalgic fashion trends, and endless inspiration for dance moves. You can subscribe to Um Oh Ah Yeh at tinyletter.com/miasteinle. Free.

—Michelle Delgado

UNDER THE BLOSSOMING CHERRY TREES

Along the Tidal Basin, peak cherry blossom season means springtime renewal and major crowds.

But according to the 1975 film Under the Blossoming Cherry Trees, set in Edo period Japan, the pink flowers were once a harbinger of doom that is perfectly suited to sheltering in place. Prolific actor Tomisaburō Wakayama of the Lone Wolf and Cub series stars as a mountain man who wanders through the forest ambushing travelers, but he tries to avoid a cluster of cherry trees that, during peak bloom, drive men to madness. When he captures a mysterious, beautiful woman (Shima Iwashita), he finds out she’s no victim: She immediately begins to manipulate her captor, questioning his manhood and demanding that he kill the wives he keeps back home, a prelude to a wave of beheadings that is by turns comic and gruesomely erotic. Director Masahiro Shinoda is perhaps best known for his 1971 version of Shūsaku Endō’s novel Silence, which Martin Scorsese adapted in 2016. While that film was a meditation on faith under persecution, this wild horror ride, based on a novel by Ango Sakaguchi, chronicles the moral degradation of a simple man taken in by a pretty face. The National Museum of Asian Art originally scheduled the film as part of a Cherry Blossom Film Festival, and it would have been something to have moviegoers stumble out of a screening into the Mall’s festive scenery, which would have been seen in a newly unsettling light. But you can watch the movie on the Criterion Channel, and Curator of Film Tom Vick will host a Zoom discussion about this film and others in the Movies in the Spirit of the Cherry Blossoms series on April 19 at 2 p.m. The film is available to stream on the Criterion Channel. Free.

—Pat Padua

CITY LIGHTS

WOMEN ON STAMPS

The United States Postal Service, currently imperiled by coronavirus, is so significant to daily American life that its artifacts and ephemera have their own Smithsonian museum.

Apart from delivering letters and parcels six days a week in snow, rain, and heat, one of its important functions is commemorating significant people, events, and dates, as it’s done since the 1860s. In 1893, Queen Isabella I, credited with financing Christopher Columbus’ 1492 voyage, became the first woman immortalized on a U.S. postage stamp. Since then, the USPS has recognized pioneering women in politics, health care, activism, and the arts.

But it’s unlikely you’ll find one of these special stamps in the mail—these commemorative issues are typically made in small batches, and many are very rare. Thankfully, despite its closure, the National Postal Museum has a four-part virtual exhibit titled Women on Stamps. The first honors early government leaders and pioneering women, like Sojourner Truth, Abigail Adams, and Sacagawea. The other portions of the exhibit feature women in health, science, philanthropy, and the performing and visual arts. If you find yourself wishing for a pen pal to write to with all of your newfound time, the virtual exhibit is sure to be the perfect source of inspiration. All four parts of Women on Stamps are available at postalmuseum.si.edu/virtual-exhibitions. Free.

—Sarah Smith

CITY LIGHTS

THE WILD GOOSE LAKE

Maybe there’s an upside to what one hopes is the temporary shutdown of movie theaters: Arthouse fodder like this stylish Chinese neo-noir might have a better shot at an audience if moviegoers don’t have to go outside to see it. But the downside is more than economic, as the atmospheric cinematography, which lenses gorgeous images out of everything from a rainy window to a bloodsoaked umbrella, would look so much better on one of the AFI Silver’s big screens. The Wild Goose Lake tells the complicated story of Zhou Zenong (Hu Ge), a gangster who, as the movie opens, is injured and on the run after killing a policeman. One rainy night, he meets the mysterious Liu Aiai (Gwei Lun-mei), a former prostitute who may hold the key to Zhou finding his long-lost wife. Director Diao Yinan’s 2014 thriller Black Coal, Thin Ice won top honors at that year’s Berlinale, and if this film isn’t as consistently compelling, it still deserves a proper theatrical viewing. In the meantime, you can stream this through the AFI’s Virtual Screening Room, but try to watch it on the biggest home screen you can muster—you’ll want as much screen resolution as possible for this visual feast. The film is available to stream at filmmovementplus.com. $12.

—Pat Padua

washingtoncitypaper.com april 17, 2020 21

SAVAGELOVE

me o s d Nee dvice? love a Curious about kinks?

e h t t i s i V er p a P y Cit or more te f ve. i s b e w age Lo Sav washingtoncitypaper.com/ columns

I am a super queer presenting female who recently accepted that I have desires for men.

My partner of two years is bisexual and understands the desires, but has personally dealt with those desires via masturbation while my desires include acting. Her perspective is that the grass is greener where you water it and that my desire to act is immature, selfish, and has an unrealistic end game. What gives when you don’t feel fulfilled sexually in a monogamous relationship?

—Open Or Over?

I’m a cis het woman who loves men and loves dicks. I love dicks so much that I fantasize about having one. Nothing brings me to orgasm more quickly or reliably than closing my eyes and imagining my own dick, or imagining myself as my partner, and what they’re feeling through their dick. I love being a woman, and I’m afraid to bring this up with any partner(s) of mine. Is this super weird? Am I secretly trans somehow? Am I overthinking this?

—Perfect Minus Penis

Something definitely gives when a person doesn’t feel fulfilled in a monogamous relationship—sometimes it’s an ultimatum that’s given, sometimes it’s a one-time-only hall pass that’s given, sometimes it’s an agreement to open the relationship that’s given. But the relationship sometimes gives, e.g. the relationship collapses under the weight of competing and mutually exclusive needs and desires. If you want to open things up (if allowed) and she wants to keep things closed (no allowance), OOO, it’s ultimately your willpower—your commitment to honoring the commitment you’ve made— that’s likely to give.

—Dan Savage

It’s not that weird. Some people are trans and you could be one of them (but fantasizing about having a dick ≠ being a male), and you’re overthinking what you should be enjoying. Buy a strap-on, tell your partners about your fantasies, and enjoy having the dick you can have.

—DS

I have a close friend who’s cheating on her girlfriend. It has been going on for over a year. At first I actually supported the exploration because my friend has a really unsupportive girlfriend who has done really crappy things to her over the course of their relationship. I kept pushing for her to make a decision and use this affair as a way for her to free herself, but she is just coasting along with her girlfriend and her lover. She’s under a lot of stress and she’s turned into a major liar and it’s creeping me out. I’m considering either telling her girlfriend myself (though I promised my friend I wouldn’t) or maybe I just need to end this friendship. My friend’s double life upsets me. It’s just been going on too long. —Is My Friend An Asshole?

If your friend—the one leading the double life—is asking you to run interference for her, if she’s asking you to lie to her girlfriend, or if she’s asked you to compromise your integrity in some way, she’s an asshole and you’re a sap. Tell your friend you’re done covering for her and that you won’t be able to see her again until the deceit or the pandemic is over, whichever comes first. If the issue is that your friend expects you to ooze sympathy while she goes on and on about the mess she’s made of her life, IMFAA, simply refuse to discuss the mess that is her love life with her. Remind her that she already knows what you think she needs to do—she needs to break the fuck up with her shitty girlfriend—and then change the subject.

—DS

22 april 17, 2020 washingtoncitypaper.com

I wonder if you might be able to put a label on this sex act: It has to do with overstimulation, in this case of a penis (mine). After receiving a wonderful hand job, the giver kept stroking me purposefully. My penis was in a heightened, super-sensitive state. It was almost like be-

“Buy a strap-on, tell your partners about your fantasies, and enjoy having the dick you can have.” ing tickled, if you’re ticklish. I was being forcefully held down (consensually), and just as I thought I couldn’t take it anymore, I had a second amazing orgasm. I didn’t ejaculate again, it was more of a body orgasm. It came in waves and everything was warm. It was mind-blowing, spiritual, galactic, unique, and very similar to how I’ve heard women describe their orgasms. Ever hear of anything like this? Is this some sort of Japanese underground kink thing?

—Witty Hilarious Overzealous Amateur The act you’re describing already has a name, WHOA, and an entry on Urban Dictionary: apple polishing. Most men find the sensation of having the head of their cock worked so overwhelming that their bodies involuntarily recoil, which makes it difficult to polish someone’s apple if the “victim” isn’t restrained in some way. But it’s not painful—it’s like being tickled; indeed, the victim usually reacts with desperate laughter and gasping pleas for it to stop. (Don’t ask me how I know.) That all-over feeling of euphoria you experienced when your apple got polished was most likely a wave of endorphins—like a runner

who pushes herself past her physical limits and experiences a full-body “runner’s high,” you were pushed past your physical limits, WHOA, and experienced the same sort of high. —DS I’m a 35-year-old straight guy. I recently started seeing an amazing 34-year-old girl. We love being around each other, but during sex, neither of us can come. It’s infuriating, to say the least.

She has no trouble when she masturbates and I know I have no trouble when I masturbate, so why can’t we come together?

—Can’t Understand Matter If you can come when you masturbate and she can come when she masturbates, CUM, masturbate together and you’ll be coming together. Mutual masturbation isn’t a sad consolation prize—mutual masturbation is sex and it can be great sex. And the more often you come together through mutual masturbation, CUM, the likelier it gets that you’ll be able to come together while enjoying other things.

—DS I have a weird and terrible problem. I’ve been seeing someone new, and have just discovered that I get diarrhea every time I swallow his come. Like debilitating pee poops an hour after, every time. I know the solution to the problem would be to stop swallowing, but I was wondering if you had ever heard of this before or knew why this was.

—My Sad Asshole I have heard of this before, MSA, and superstar Savage Love guest expert Dr. Debby Herbenick unpacked the cause for another reader a few years back: “Prostaglandins are substances made by the body and that the body is sensitive to. Semen contains prostaglandins—and prostaglandins can have a laxative effect on people. Related: If you’ve ever felt a little loosey-goosey right before getting your period, that’s also thanks to prostaglandins (which spike just before your period, because the prostaglandins get the uterine muscles to contract, which then helps to shed the lining of the uterus, resulting in a menstrual period). So why don’t more semen swallowers find themselves running to the bathroom post-blowjob?

I don’t know why most people aren’t extra-sensitive to prostaglandins, but fortunately most of us aren’t, or there would probably be a lot less swallowing in the world.”

So, MSA, you’ll have to stop swallowing your boyfriend’s come or only swallow when you have immediate access to a toilet in a restroom with a powerful fan.

—DS Email your Savage Love questions to mail@savagelove.net.

Contents: Adult . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

SUPERIOR COURT Auto/Wheels/Boat OF THE DISTRICT OF . .

Buy, Sell, Trade . . . . . .

COLUMBIA PROBATE DIVISION Marketplace . . .2020 . . . . .

ADM 000191 Name Community . . . . . . . . . of Decedent, Alaaeldin Employment . . . . . .

Abdelmegid Saleh. . .Name and Health/Mind Address of Attorney . . . . . . . .

Abigail Scott, Esq Regan Body & Spirit . . . . . . . .

Associates, Chtd, 1003 K Housing/Rentals Street, NW, Third Floor, . . . .

Legal Notices . . . . . . .

Washington, DC 20001.

Notice of Appointment, Music/Music Row . . . .

Notice to Creditors and Pets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Notice to Unknown Heirs, Real Estate . .whose . . . . . . .

Mervat Mahgoub, address is 1906 Jackson Shared Housing . . . . .

Street, NE, WashingServices . . . . . . . . . . . . ton, DC 20018, was appointed Personal Representative of the estate of Alaaeldin Abdelmegid Saleh who died on December 28, 2019, without a Will and will serve without Court Supervision.

All unknown heirs and heirs whose whereabouts are unknown shall enter their appearance in this proceeding. Objections to such appointment shall be filed with the Register of Wills, D.C., 515 5th Street, N.W., Building A, 3rd Floor, Washington, D.C. 20001, on or before 10/9/2020. Claims against the decedent shall be presented to the undersigned with a copy to the Register of

Wills or to the Register Pursuant to the School of Wills with a copy to Adult Phone Reform Act, D.C> Legals Entertainment the undersigned, on or 38-1802 (SRA) and the . . . . . . . 42 DC SCHOLARS PCS - REQUEST before 10/9/2020, or be DC Public FOR Charter PROPOSALS School – ModuLivelinks - Chat Lines. Flirt, chat .forever . . . . . . barred.

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(844) .believed . . . . . . . .to . be heirs or CMIPCS hereby submits solicits proposals for a modular 359-5773 of the decedent this notice oftointent to contractor provide professional .legatees . . . . . . 42 and construction Legals who do not receive a award management a sole source conservices to construct a modular . . . . . . . 42 copy of this notice byIS HEREBY GIVEN tract tobuilding CMItoMaintenance. house four classrooms and one faculty offi ce suite. .mail . . . . within . . 42 25 NOTICE days of For more information, The THAT: Request for Proposals (RFP) TRAVISA OUTSOURCING,contact INC. shall so heather.hes .its . . .publication . . . . . . specifi cations can be obtained on (DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA DEand after Monday, November 27, of OF CONSUMER slink@creativemindspcs.

PARTMENT .inform . . . . . . the 42 Register 2017 from Emily Stone via comREGULATORY AFFAIRS Wills, includingAND name, org by munityschools@dcscholars.org.

12:00 pm April FILE NUMBER 271941) HAS .address . . . . . . 42 All questions should be sent in and relationship.

28, 2020.

DISSOLVED EFFECTIVE NOVEMwriting by e-mail. No phone calls .Date . . . . .of . 42 BER 27, 2017 AND HAS FILED first publicaregarding this RFP will be acARTICLES OF DISSOLUTION OF Name FOR-PROFIT of cepted. Bids must be received by .tion: . . . . .4/9/2020 . 42 DOMESTIC COR5:00 PM on Thursday, December Newspaper and/or periSubcontracting opPORATION WITH THE DISTRICT 14, 2017 at DC Scholars Public . . . . . . . 42 OF COLUMBIA odical: Washington City CORPORATIONS portunity certified Charter for School, ATTN: Sharonda DIVISION .Paper/Daily . . . . . . 42 Washington Mann, 5601 E. with Capitol St. SE, MBEs & WBEs Washington, DC 20019. Any bids A CLAIM of AGAINST TRAVISA Name Fort Myer Construction .Law . . . .Reporter. . . 42 not addressing all areas as outOUTSOURCING, INC. MUST lined in the RFP specifi cations will Representative: INCLUDE THE NAME OFfor THEDC Water Solicita .Personal . . . . . . 42 not be considered.

DISSOLVED CORPORATION, Mervat Mahgoub tion #200020 EmerINCLUDE THE NAME OF THE TRUE TEST copy Nicole gency Sewer Main IR&R Apartments for Rent CLAIMANT, INCLUDE A SUMMAOF THE FACTS SUPPORTING Stevens ActingRYRegister Contract for FY21-FY23.

THE CLAIM, AND BE MAILED TO of Wills Pub Dates: April Emergency repair and 1600 INTERNATIONAL DRIVE, 9, 16, 23. reconstruction of various SUITE 600, MCLEAN, VA 22102 sewers. Items include ALL CLAIMS WILL BE BARRED UNLESS A PROCEEDINGDIP TO and CIP point repair, THE CLAIM IS trench COMTWO RIVERSENFORCE PUBLIC excavation and MENCED WITH IN 3 YEARS OF CHARTER SCHOOL backfill, and pavement PUBLICATION OF THIS NOTICE IN ACCORDANCE WITH SECTION REQUEST FOR PROand surface restora29-312.07 OF THE DISTRICT OF POSALS tion, etc.

Due: MustQuotes see! Spacious semi-furCOLUMBIA ORGANIZATIONS nished 1 BR/1 BA basement ACT. Technology Equipment 5/25/20.

Must submit apt, Deanwood, $1200. Sep. enTwo Rivers PCSTwois Rivers PCS is soliciting Subcontractor Approval trance, W/W carpet, W/D, kitchto provide mansoliciting price proposals quotes to projectRequest en, form fireplacew/ near quote.

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1802 (SRA) and the DC Public Charter School procurement policy, CMIPCS hereby submits this notice of intent to award a sole source contract to A2S. For more information, contact heather.hesslink@ creativemindspcs.org by 12:00 pm April 28, 2020

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FRIENDSHIP PUBLIC CHARTER SCHOOL NOTICE OF REQUEST FOR PROPOSAL Friendship Public Charter School is seeking bids from prospective candidates to provide:  Educational Curriculum, classroominstructional intervention programs, subscriptions and educational supplies.

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