Washington City Paper (April 24, 2020)

POLITICS WHO WILL WIN THE WARD 8 COUNCIL SEAT? 3 NEWS HOMICIDES CONTINUE DURING COVID-19 CRISIS 4 SPORTS DO RUNNERS NEED TO WEAR MASKS? 10 THE DISTRICT'S FREE WEEKLY SINCE 1981 VOLUME 40, NO. 16 WASHINGTONCITYPAPER.COM APRIL 24 – 30, 2020

The Young and the Restless

As they live through a global crisis, are the kids all right?

PAGE 6 By Kayla Randall

TABLE OF CONTENTS COVER STORY

6 The Young and the Restless: How are children and teens coping during a global pandemic?

NEWS

3 Loose Lips: The Ward 8 Democratic primary grows contentious.

4 Trigger Warnings: Despite a stay-at-home order, homicide numbers in D.C. haven’t dropped.

SPORTS

10 Mask Your Feelings: Doctors and runners weigh in on exerciseappropriate face coverings.

FOOD

12 Taking Stock: Restaurateurs predict how the COVID-19 crisis could permanently change the way they work.

ARTS

11 Music: West on Dan Roberts’ November Suite 13 Books: Ottenberg on Anne Tyler’s Redhead by the Side of the Road 14 Lost Art: The Phillips Collection prepares to celebrate its 100th birthday while coping with COVID-19.

15 Arts Club: Randall and Warren on Moonlight 15 Film: Gittell on Extraction 20 Liz At Large: “Rest”

CITY LIGHTS

16 City Lights: Buy a puzzle from a bar or watch a classic D.C. concert scene.

Darrow Montgomery | 1600 Block of Monroe Street NW, April 19

DIVERSIONS

18 Savage Love 19 Classifieds 20 Crossword

Cover Photo: Darrow Montgomery; Joel and Jaala Brown on Zoom

Editorial

Advertising and Operations

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Darrow Montgomery/File

NEWS LOOSE LIPS

Ward 8 Councilmember Trayon White

Behind the 8 Brawl Can Ward 8 Councilmember Trayon White live stream his way to a second term?

By Mitch Ryals @MitchRyals If you need to find Trayon White, just look at his Instagram (unless you’re LL, who has been blocked from viewing the Ward 8 councilmember’s account for months).

The freshman lawmaker, nearing the end of his first term, entertains an audience of 37,000 followers with near-constant uploads of images and videos from the Council dais, live streams from crime scenes and food give-aways, and posts about goings on in the ward. In one video shared last year, he quizzes a few kids about a lesson he just gave them about gentrification.

Even when White’s itchy thumbs have landed him in trouble—like the time he posted a picture of himself kicking back in Mexico during a budget vote, or the time he repeated a conspiracy theory that suggests a wealthy Jewish family controls the weather—he has managed to escape relatively unscathed.

Most recently, White took to Facebook Live and, over several days, recorded himself and his team standing outside Hope Village, the soon-to-be-shuttered halfway house in Ward 8. Dressed in a white hazmat suit, White at first responded to complaints to his office that the

men housed inside lacked food and supplies.

From the street, White shouted to the men, who responded through their open windows.

He later responded to reports of two deaths inside the facility on two different days, and streamed live as employees loaded the bodies into a black van and drove them away. On camera, he called out the facility’s operator, Jeffrey Varone, and its spokesperson, Ward 8 political operator Phinis Jones, and gave out the email address and phone number for Jon Gustin, an administrator in the Bureau of Prisons’ reentry branch.

The two men who died inside were housed in the same building where other residents were said to be quarantined due to the coronavirus, White said in one of his videos, and one of the men was “suffering from some type of respiratory infection,” according to a firefighter he spoke with.

“They just pulled a body out, a gentleman who was in the basement who was allegedly the same person who said he had the flu last week, who was quarantined, who said he was being tested for coronavirus, man,” White said with a sigh, adding that he didn’t know the official cause of death.

With the June 2 primary approaching, White’s political opponents seize on the Hope Village episodes as only the most recent

example of why the current occupant of the Ward 8 seat is better suited as an activist than a councilmember.

Mike Austin, one of White’s primary challengers, calls White’s constant social media presence a “dog and pony show” and accuses the incumbent of spreading false information about the deaths inside the halfway house. The BOP has said neither death is related to COVID19. A BOP spokesperson says via email that the deaths are under investigation and declined to comment further.

“Banging pots, making a fuss, and getting thousands of views and spreading false information on Facebook Live, and just (putting out) propaganda,” Austin says. “As a councilmember your job is to get the facts and instill calm.”

(Austin later clarified that he was speaking figuratively about the commotion outside the halfway house and didn’t see White banging pots.)

Yaida Ford, a civil rights lawyer and another of White’s challengers, says his call to shut down the facility without a plan to house its residents is indicative of his “wrongheaded” policies.

Although some men will move to home confinement, it’s unclear where the rest will be housed as they near the end of their sentences.

Following White’s posts from outside Hope

Village, the company that runs the facility announced it would not seek renewal of its contract with BOP, which expires April 30.

Varone, Hope Village’s chief executive, did not respond to a phone call seeking comment, but he told the Washington Post that a recent lawsuit alleging a lack of medical care and testing for the facility’s residents cost the company “unnecessary time and attorney’s fees” and that some men could head back to prison. The facility also employed more than 50 Ward 8 residents, the Post reported.

Stuart Anderson, White’s third challenger, who served more than a decade in prison and lived in Hope Village in 2008, says “I do the work. Social media? Posting? I don’t need that.”

White did not agree to an interview and did not respond to written questions by press time.

Others believe White’s Instagramming and Facebooking show a level of authenticity that’s rare among elected officials. At-Large Councilmember Elissa Silverman, who is supporting White and donated to his campaign, calls his Instagram feed “must-watch TV” and says his service-heavy approach to the job is necessary for one of the most economically depressed areas of the District.

“He has a different job than almost any other member,” Silverman says. “The need for services is so great in Ward 8, and the level of violence is higher than any other ward. So he’s directly responding to crime scenes, and oftentimes he knows either the victim or sometimes the suspect.”

During his first four years on the D.C. Council, White’s unconventional approach to the job has made him more than a few enemies.

Ten people originally filed to dethrone Trayon “Ward Eight” White, as his name appears on the ballot, and there is growing frustration over what critics say is White’s hostility and unwillingness to work with those who disagree with him. The question is, will it matter?

“I consider him Ward 8’s Donald Trump,” says Darrell Gaston, an advisory neighborhood commissioner who is supporting Austin.

“No matter what he does, his supporters feel he can do no wrong.”

The campaign is heating up, Austin tells LL at the beginning of a phone interview. Last week, a hooded man busted the window of Austin’s Mustang while it was parked in front of his house. Austin believes it was a campaignrelated scare tactic.

On the same day, White posted on Instagram that a neighbor called to say someone was taking his campaign signs down. “Then I see all these Mike Austin signs up,” White wrote. “So who do I see, Ole Lenwood walking around with signs in his hand. The hate is going to bring more love.”

White asked his supporters to post pics tagged with #ImWithTray, and the comments came flooding in.

Austin brands himself as a more experienced, mild mannered alternative to White. The chair of Advisory Neighborhood Commission 8C is unimpressed with the legislation the incumbent introduced in his first term and says White’s abrasiveness toward people who challenge his ideas has ostracized certain people in the ward.

washingtoncitypaper.com april 24, 2020 3

NEWS NEWS CITY DESK In March, Austin secured an endorsement from a recently organized group of Ward 8 voters pulled together by former Ward 8 advisory neighborhood commissioner Sandra Seegers.

The group of about 40 residents from across the ward scored each candidate based on their answers during in-person interviews. White refused to participate.

Among the group of voters is Rev. Anthony Motley, a former confidant of the late Mayorfor-Life and Ward 8 Councilmember Marion Barry, who also supported White since he was elected to the school board in 2011. Now, Motley finds himself in a bit of a pickle.

Publicly, Motley is sticking with the group’s choice in Austin, but he declines to say whether that support will transfer to the voting booth.

When he asked White to sit for an interview, the councilmember said “he didn’t see it as beneficial to him,” Motley says.

“I didn’t understand why it wasn’t,” Motley says. “Because here are 30-plus people who have different views, different political affiliations, different interests, but who all want the same thing: good representation in the ward, and who wanted to make their voice be heard.

And what was wrong with that?”

Ford brands herself as a quiet champion for Ward 8 residents who works as an attorney representing victims of police brutality.

Before opening her Capitol Hill private practice, Ford worked on public benefits cases for the Legal Aid Society of D.C. and briefly as legislative counsel for the Council’s human services committee, then led by the late Ward 1 Councilmember Jim Graham.

Ford and Austin point to White’s renegotiation of the massive Reunion Square project in Anacostia as a mark against his development policies.

White renegotiated Mayor Muriel Bowser’s original proposal for $60 million in tax increment bond financing down to about $25 million, and replaced market rate rental units with affordable housing for seniors. He initially wanted to eliminate a planned hotel, which remains in the development.

White has said he’s working to prevent displacement of longtime residents. Ford says the original $60 million TIF would have “brought much needed development to a ward that’s failing.”

“Will I pay higher property taxes so I can have enough equity in my property, so I can build wealth for my family?” Ford says. “Yes, I will, because I understand black people have been deprived of opportunities to generate wealth.”

Austin suggests that one way to welcome development in the ward is with tax credits for homeowners and renters.

Meanwhile, Anderson talks broadly about his top priorities for Ward 8, including a new hospital, bringing more grocery stores to the area, and reducing violence. He spoke to LL on the phone last week as he was delivering meals to children and seniors, an effort he says he began on his own after public schools closed due to the coronavirus.

Anderson has worked with families of incarcerated people after serving more than a decade in prison himself. He ran in the 2015 Ward 8

special election after Barry’s death and dropped out to support White’s losing bid before returning to manage White’s campaign in 2016.

Trigger Warnings

Each of White’s challengers have their own obstacles to overcome.

For Austin, it’s his perceived connection to White’s predecessor, LaRuby May and Bowser’s Green Team. (Ward 8 handed Bowser her lowest vote percentage in the 2018 primary.)

Austin worked as May’s legislative counsel in her Council office and as secretary and a vice president of United Medical Center’s board, which May chairs. May donated to his campaign, and Bowser has not said whether she is supporting any candidates in the Ward 8 race.

Austin pushes back against his connection to the Green Team and says he has not spoken with the mayor or her team.

“If I’m Green Team, lemme get the Green Team money,” he says.

But while talking about education inequality in the ward, Austin has to correct himself.

“Making sure we have a fair shot,” Austin says, quickly realizing he just uttered Bowser’s favorite hashtag. “Not a fair shot. Scratch that.

Sounds like the mayor. But a real chance at a decent education, and that only comes with the money being in the budget.”

Ford, who moved to D.C. from Washington state to attend Howard University School of Law, is facing two hurdles. Her lack of name recognition is only overshadowed by her lack of funds. According to her March campaign finance report, Ford raised a little more than $3,100 but spent almost $5,000.

“I’m not a newcomer,” she says. “I lived here for 15 years. A lot of people don't know me and the reason for that is historically I don't do photo-ops at food giveaways. I’ve served women and girls in Ward 8 for the last 15 years and never did media blitz or sought that recognition.”

For Anderson, an activist and organizer with deep ties in the ward, the coronavirus is his campaign’s greatest enemy. Anderson admits that his strongest campaigning tactic was inperson door knocking, and he’s still working on setting up an online apparatus.

Olivia Henderson, a longtime ANC, is proof of Anderson’s loyal following and the dissatisfaction with White. For all of White’s work in the community, she says, Anderson has been providing the same service for much longer. “[White] will not work with me as an ANC commissioner,” she says. “And that’s why some things in the community isn’t working. He has his pick of what communities and what people he works with.”

Although White won the Ward 8 Democrats endorsement last time around, the group is not endorsing anyone this cycle, and the chair, Troy Prestwood, declines to say which candidate he’s supporting.

“The winning candidate will be someone who illuminated a vision of inclusivity where they will work hard to find areas of opportunity and cooperation throughout all four corners of our ward,” he says. “In many ways we are the heartbeat of Washington D.C. And if we’re having a heart attack, then this city’s going to die.”

The coronavirus disease and gun violence are killing D.C. residents. Advocates fear one might exacerbate the other.

4 april 24, 2020 washingtoncitypaper.com

By Amanda Michelle Gomez @amanduhgomez D.C. has not gone a week without a homicide since Mayor Muriel Bowser declared a public health emergency over the coronavirus pandemic on March 11.

There have been 17 murders in D.C. since the city saw its first confirmed case of COVID-19 on March 7, and 46 murders since the start of 2020, according to data from the Metropolitan Police Department. Despite a pandemic and orders from the mayor to stay inside, D.C. is on track to match its homicide rate from last year, when the city saw the highest murder count in a decade, at 166. And like last year, the overwhelming majority of homicides involved a gun.

There are now two co-occurring public health crises killing residents: COVID-19 and gun violence. The fear among some is that one could exacerbate the other. With t he pa ndem ic forcing businesses to close and creating joblessness, advocates worry that mounting anxiety can aggravate violent crime. While MPD has yet to see a change in behavior that can be credited to the pandemic and its rippling effects, those that work closely with offenders and victims believe it’s inevitable. Domestic homicides, for example, could ver y well increase.

MPD Chief Peter Newsham says most murders continue to involve individuals who are known to one another and where violence is used to settle disputes. A minor difference in recent shootings is that some of the victims were either selling or purchasing drugs.

“Our violent offenders, particularly the ones who are inclined to use firearms, are not particularly moved by the COVID-19 pandemic,” Newsham tells City Paper. “They will pick up an illegal firearm and use it whenever it suits their purposes and I think for them it’s business as normal.”

Clayton Aristotle Rosenberg, chief of staff of the nonprofit Alliance of Concerned Men, which works to save lives in high-crime areas, is worried that violence will increase as

people lose their jobs and resort to desperate acts. While working as a violence interrupter in neighborhoods within Ward 7 and Ward 8, as part of the Office of the Attorney General’s Cure the Streets program, Rosenberg has seen more people at risk of being involved in violence. He hasn’t seen an increase in crime, but rather in the temptation to commit them.

He sees more people out now that work or school is not occupying their time.

“These are individuals who weren’t on our radar at first and now they are because of all of the new stresses they are dealing with.

They are trying to eat and they are in survival mode,” Rosenberg says.

That’s not to say that every person who loses a job due to the pandemic will turn to crime. But as Rosenberg points out, hope counts for a lot, and a lack of economic opportunity often leads people to commit violence.

R es ea rch s u g gest s there is a correlation between both violent and property crime and t he u nemployment rate, along with other social and community conditions.

Cu re t he St reets identifies individuals for its program based on a number of variables, like if someone was recently shot or released from custody as a result of a gun crime. Rosenberg already works with many individuals who don’t have a job, and says that the pandemic has only complicated the organization’s efforts to connect people with employment opportunities, since so many businesses are laying off workers and implementing hiring freezes.

“Because staff is not out there as much as they were before this crisis hit, it’s almost like the community—the participants they work with—they are a little bit more lax and think they can get away with a little bit more, to be honest,” adds Lashonia Thompson-El, who co-leads Cure The Streets. In some cases, Thompson-El says, violence interrupters have heard more from their participants than before over the phone and have even mediated conflict between individuals over Zoom.

The police chief, however, views things differently from the violence interrupters.

“Our violent offenders, particularly the ones who are inclined to use firearms, are not particularly moved by the COVID-19 pandemic.

They will pick up an illegal firearm and use it whenever it suits their purposes and I think for them it’s business as normal.”

“I don’t think you are going to have otherwise law-abiding non-violent people all of a sudden involved in gun violence,” says Newsham. “The violent offenders and the people who are inclined to use firearms are different than everybody else. The difference is they just don’t have any regard for human life. Anybody who would fire a firearm off in our city, as populated as it is and as small as it is, has no regard for human life.”

But there are indications that other kinds of violent crime, like domestic violence, are likely to increase, if they haven’t already.

With residents being asked to stay at home, there is the potential for more severe violence, as tension builds between domestic partners and violence escalates faster.

MPD has so far declined to publicly release the number of domestic violence incidents it has logged since the city’s stay-at-home order began on March 30, but Newsham says MPD has not seen a spike in calls or arrests for this type of crime. (A department spokesperson suggested that reporters file a public records request to receive that data, which City Paper has done.) Service providers across the country, meanwhile, say they’re overwhelmed with calls for help. And while D.C. has seen a decrease in domestic violence homicides in recent years, with a low of eight in 2018, advocates are worried that the pandemic could reverse this trend.

“DC SAFE’s numbers don’t look astronomically different right now. They will though,” says Elisabeth Olds, co-founder and strategic oversight manager at DC SAFE. “As this goes on, we will likely see higher levels of violence in already abusive relationships.

Although it’s necessary, you can’t lock this many people in with their abusers and not expect that.”

DC SAFE, a 24/7 crisis intervention organization for domestic violence survivors, has not yet seen a noticeable increase in the total number of people who say they are being abused, or who are looking for emergency shelter. But the organization has seen a higher volume of calls as its advocates transition services to focus on the hotline. Before the pandemic, advocates were stationed at D.C. Superior Court and United Medical Center.

(DC SAFE is still providing shelter and survivors can still file for temporary protection orders under the public health emergency.)

MPD is monitoring changes in crime.

So far, crime that you might expect would increase, like theft or burglary, has not.

Property crime in the last 30 days is down 39 percent compared to the previous 30 days, Bowser said during an April 20 press conference.

Like everyone else, gun violence prevention advocates planned for a very different kind of year. They were hoping to strengthen public safety initiatives and improve community-police relationships with enhanced oversight, since the Neighborhood Engagement Achieves Results Act was finally implemented. Instead, advocates say communitypolice relationships might actually worsen, since MPD of ficers are responsible for

Darrow Montgomery/File

NEWS

Clayton Aristotle Rosenberg enforcing the stay-at-home order. Those who work with minors are especially concerned about police interactions with schools closed.

“We were gaining momentum on a czar and vision zero for gun violence and I don’t want to lose that traction,” says Rachel Usdan, a volunteer leader with the D.C. chapter of Moms Demand Action.

Groups like Moms Demand Action, a group that advocates for gun control measures, are now refocusing their advocacy efforts. Instead of helping students pay tribute to classmates they lost due to gun violence, Moms Demand Action is supporting community-based organizations that connect students to food while school is out.

The Comprehensive Homicide Elimination Strategy Task Force, tasked with submitting a report to the D.C. Council that identifies the most effective strategies for eliminating homicides, had to cancel its most recent meeting in April.

Every group working to curb violence is likely concerned about money seeing as D.C. has to operate on a tighter budget. During an April 6 press conference, Bowser said the D.C. government has to cut $607 million in spending from the current fiscal year budget, along with next year’s. Newsham is prepared for the financial hit, telling City Paper, “if we have to make cuts here at MPD, we will do so.”

Advocates were act ua lly look ing to increase money for gun violence prevention efforts prior to the pandemic. Now, they are worried about maintaining current levels of funding for the Cure the Streets program, which is funded through the attorney general’s office, and for the Office of Neighborhood Safety and Engagement and the Office of Victim Services and Justice Grants under the Executive Office of the Mayor. The latter grants provide funds to organizations like DC SAFE as well as hospital-based violence intervention services.

“At the very least, we are hoping that it can be sustained,” Usdan tells City Paper.

Funding interruptions could deal major setbacks to newer programs like Cure the

Streets and the ONSE’s Pathways Program, which launched in 2018. Gun violence intervention programs like these have proven to reduce shootings and homicides elsewhere, but only when sustained. The Cure the Streets program receives much of its funding from existing OAG sources and remains a priority for Attorney General Karl Racine. To the extent that supplemental funding is required, a spokesperson says the OAG plans to work with the Mayor and the Council to keep funding at current levels, but could also seek philanthropic grants to fill any gaps.

For those who have been paying close attention to D.C.’s homicide rate, the city’s lack of coordinated response to the violence before March is a source of frustration—especially since the city is proving that it can respond to a public health crisis in a way that involves every government agency as well as the private sector. Every department is being asked to address the coronavirus because it intersects with everything. People like David Bowers, the founder of NO MURDERS DC, would argue the same is true of homicides. Unequal access to opportunity derives from inadequate education, health care, and housing, his thinking goes, so leaders in each need to respond to the prevalence of homicides.

“Folks have been getting killed and dying in this city from homicides for years and we have not had the kind of commensurate response that we should have,” says Bowers with NO MURDERS DC, a movement to end murder in the District that started in 2000.

“There is a hierarchy of value that people consciously or unconsciously put on life. If we are going to talk about racial equity and be about racial equity then let’s be about that.”

Like homicides, COVID-19 has revealed the racial inequity still pervasive in D.C. While the whole city has been impacted by the virus, deaths are disproportionately high among black residents. A concern now is these very communities are being hit hard twice. As of Wednesday, Ward 8 has seen the most homicides, at 12, and COVID-19 related deaths, at 29, this year.

Keep your local source for COVID-19 updates up and running.

Become a member.

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washingtoncitypaper.com april 24, 2020 5

The Young and the Restless Children, teens, and their parents from all across the D.C. area comment on the state of their strange new worlds and how they're spending time at home.

By Kayla Randall Photographs by Darrow Montgomery

Rose Shafer on Zoom

For many Washingtonians, Friday, March 13, was the last day—the last day of physically going to work or school and the last day anything felt remotely close to normal before the outbreak of the novel coronavirus that has ravaged the United States and the world changed the way we do almost everything. For many young people used to daily routines, stability is gone. It’s been replaced by jumbled schedules, missed milestones, poor sleep and eating patterns, glitchy technology, and a lack of typical social interaction with teachers and friends. City Paper spoke to children and teens, and their parents, from all across the D.C. area to see how they’ve been handling the COVID-19 crisis at home in their new realities since that day.

March 13 was Rose Shafer’s last day of physically going to Yorktown High School, where she

is a senior. Since then, she, like most other children and teens, has been doing school work online and staying home.

Shafer, who interned at City Paper in the summer of 2018, has found that her final high school semester has come to an abrupt, unceremonious, and chaotic end. In May, she’ll turn 18 and head to college at William & Mary in the fall.

“I’m torn between wanting to make the world a better place and wanting to do a job that won’t kill me, so I don’t know what to major in,” she says.

“I’m probably going to double major.” She could see herself working in a garden or greenhouse, or perhaps at a nature center where she can spray mist on little frogs.

At this point, she just hopes that there will be a fall and that college will still be a thing then.

“I’m not usually an anxious person but the

6 april 24, 2020 washingtoncitypaper.com

anxiety is kind of inescapable,” she says. “I’m in a constant back and forth between trying to stay informed and having to turn off the news because it makes me feel actually sick. I’m just doing what I can by donating to my local food bank and stuff; otherwise, I’ve been trying to avoid the internet and read all the unread books that haunt my shelf.”

There will be no prom or graduation ceremony for her senior class, nor will there be senior experience, a program that would have her do real-world work for school credit. She says she’s just fine with missing the large formal social events, but she is sad about losing out on senior experience.

However, she “can’t find room to complain or feel seriously upset about it” while people are dying, she says. Her school has informed her that she’s basically already graduated. Her online school

work can be done at her leisure she says, because “due dates are social constructs at this point.”

Teachers aren’t giving tests, but rather assignments that receive a complete or incomplete.

She’s also working at her local cemetery for a few hours on most weekdays, where she pulls weeds, mows the lawns, and tends to the rose garden. She says she barely has to interact with people (and stays at least six feet away when she does) and regularly cleans equipment. The property contains more than 75 species of trees, she says, and they’re “all iconic and blossoming right now.”

For fun, she reads, works on puzzles with her family, and takes walks around the neighborhood “photographing the exotic flora and fauna of North Arlington.” She also has weekly oboe lessons via Zoom. Sometimes the stream crashes or glitches while she’s playing.

Currently, she’s reading a book about medieval Swedish history in which the black plague is a topic of discussion. That “really puts it in perspective,” she says. She recently finished War and Peace, which she calls “an experience.”

As an introvert, she likes spending time alone, but now, she says, she’s forgotten how to interact with other humans. “When they do contact me, I’m like wait how do you have a conversation again?”

One of the worst aspects of the pandemic, she says, is “the way it’s revealed all the inequalities of the system. I wish there was more I could do. But at some point I have to tear myself away from upsetting media about things that are entirely beyond my control because it just makes me so upset that it’s hard to go about life and do work.”

Kelis Corley of Capitol Heights, laments that her final high school semester will end without any of the celebration that usually comes with it. The 17-year-old St. John’s College High School senior plans to attend Stony Brook University in New York on a basketball scholarship in the fall.

Her high school basketball season concluded before the coronavirus-related closures, but nearly everything else has changed.

“We already did most of our work on an online system, but now we get so much more work,” she says. “It’s a little bit harder because you’re not having a whole lesson there.”

Time management for school work has been tough—it’s hard to stay focused at home when she can turn on her television at any time. At school, there are no at-home distractions, and the teacher is always right there to lend help when it’s needed.

If she needs help now, Corley says, she has to email her teacher and wait for a response. At one point, the sound wasn’t working during one of her online sessions. Her teacher was teaching, but couldn’t be heard by students. They’ve since figured out the technological woes, she says, but the handson aspects of learning are still absent.

The decrease in her ability to socialize in person has been a particularly challenging adjustment. “You don’t get to see anybody,” she says.

“Your senior year, you’re going to want to have fun. We can’t have prom or graduation anymore, so it’s really sad for our class. We’re missing a lot of experiences that everybody looks forward to when they’re growing up.”

She and her classmates and teachers are used to seeing each other every day. She’s realized how instrumental they are in her life now that they’re physically gone from it.

Her days are slow. She wakes up just before having to go to virtual class from about 9:30 a.m. until about 2:30 p.m. She also tries to get workouts in to stay fit. Her college basketball team’s summer workouts, where she’d get to know her new teammates, have been canceled.

She cooks more now, too. Her mom gets the groceries. Corley has asthma, and her mother doesn’t think she should be potentially putting herself at risk by going out.

With physical classes and activities canceled, her senior group is filled with anger and sadness for what feels like their lost and incomplete year.

“We’ve worked our whole lives to get to this point to graduate,” she says. “Everybody’s just really mad at the world. Everybody’s posting memories of school because who would have thought that we couldn’t finish school.”

But there is one thing Corley can be happy and proud about: There are only a few weeks left of high school.

Joel and Jaala Brown on Zoom “Everything else is gone, but I’m still excited that I finally finished,” she says.

While older high schoolers are able to find perspective and think about the future, younger children still have plenty of schooling left and are less independent, relying more heavily on their parents.

DC Public Schools special education teacher and ANC7B02 commissioner Tiffany L. Brown has had to build new routines after her family’s regular schedule was thrown off. She and her husband live with their two children, sixth grader Jaala, 11, and seventh grader Joel, 12, and their dog, a “spoiled” Shih Tzu-poodle mix, in Hillcrest.

Brown says Joel and Jaala, who attend Capitol Hill Montessori, can bother each other but generally get along, and these days, when they aren’t doing school work online, they’re enjoying competing for the dog’s attention. Jaala is outgoing and an independent learner, and Joel is more reserved and needs more motivation to work, Brown says.

She imagines her son sitting quietly in class if he doesn’t understand something, and waiting until class is over to ask for help individually.

At home, they wake up at different times. Joel is also a big proponent of meal time.

“My son’s stomach goes off at 8, 12, and 4,” she says. “‘Mom, what’s for lunch?’ and I’m like ‘You just ate breakfast an hour ago!’”

For a few weeks, Brown says her children have been “over it.” But she’s trying to make sure they’re getting their work done, despite the slowed down and strained internet at home. There has to be accountability, she says. Otherwise the school year might as well end. Guiding her children academically can still be difficult. “Someone is usually presenting this information to them,” she says. “Even though I’m a teacher, I’m not a middle school teacher.”

When they’re not working, Joel likes to play on his Xbox. Jaala spends her time on TikTok. “If I let her, my daughter would stay on her phone for 24 hours,” Brown says. She’s trying to figure out how

to transfer her daughter’s energy for TikTok into energy for school work.

Joel can worry, and now has no interest in leaving his home, Brown says. “I watch more news than I should so that means my kids watch more news. So, when they said ‘stay in, it’s really bad,’ my son didn't even want to go outside.” He’s good talking with and texting his friends on the phone.

Do they miss their school friends?

“Yes,” says Jaala.

“A little,” says Joel.

What do they think about the pandemic?

“I don’t feel comfortable with it because it’s like a virus that could come out of nowhere at any time,” Joel says.

“I don’t like it,” Jaala says. “I do online school now and I don’t like it. I like interacting with my teachers at school and getting to see my friends.”

Jo-Jo Valenzuela and his wife have their three boys—Lorenzo, 12, Sebastian, 6, and Dominic, 3—at home now. Understandably, their Falls Church home can get rowdy.

Lorenzo is in sixth grade and Sebastian is in kindergarten, and both attend Shrevewood Elementary. They’re doing distance learning and receiving weekly school work packets. Recently, their school tried to do a virtual conference call, but there are bugs that needed to be fixed for the technology they’re using to work properly, Valenzuela says.

Valenzuela is looking forward to having Dominic in preschool next year. “He’s a smart kid,” he says. “He’s been reading and writing since he was 2. He’s the genius of the family.”

Valenzuela says he takes care of the children’s daily activities as his wife works from home as an accountant, and he physically goes to work a couple days a week. Valenzuela is a beverage consultant for his company Jo-Jo the Barkeep LLC, and the management partner, co-owner, and chef at The Game Sports Pub in Adams Morgan.

“I’ve just got to make sure they do it,” he says.

“A 30-minute activity turns into three hours for the 6-year-old, Sebastian.”

He’s tried to find activities to do with the boys, like guitar playing. “I used to be a guitar player, so I threw in some guitar lessons here and there.

We were active for like three days, and that was it,” he jokes.

With their daily schedule jumbled due to the lack of physical school, the three boys wake up and go to bed at different times. Lorenzo is early to fall asleep and also an early riser. “Sebastian is definitely like a noon guy,” Valenzuela says.

How does Sebastian feel about what’s happening in the world and the fact that he has to stay home now? “Sad,” he says. “I want to play.”

Sebastian enjoys recess at school, and misses playing on the playground. Lorenzo says he misses recess too, because it’s his last year of it before moving on to seventh grade. To pass his time, he’s “been playing video games a lot, and at night we watch movies,” he says.

They often set up a time after dinner before going to bed to sit together and watch. They’ve gone through nearly the entire Marvel Cinematic Universe canon of films. Valenzuela says he worked constantly before the pandemic grabbed hold of his life. Now, he’s with his family much more. “I learned how to skateboard because my son learned how to skateboard,” Valenzuela says.

They’re spending time eating together, and playing catch and board games. Valenzuela says he regularly loses board games to his sons.

“They’re really good,” he says, laughing. “I’m really trying my best to win.”

And sometimes, when the weather is nice and the neighborhood isn’t bustling, they go outside to play on the backyard trampoline.

Ice Cream Jubilee owner Victoria Lai and her husband, literary agent Howard Yoon, are both running their businesses from home and splitting their time between conference calls and phone meetings and their children.

Together, they have Zoey, who’s 3-and-a-half,

washingtoncitypaper.com april 24, 2020 7

and Zander, who’s 6 months old. Lai’s stepson Ian, 15, is with them every other week, alternating between their Mount Pleasant home and his mother’s place nearby.

Lai says Zander is “a healthy, fast-growing, big chunker of a boy.” He wakes up in the wee hours of the morning for feedings, and Zoey wakes up between 6 and 7 a.m., calling for Yoon.

“I love being crafty, and Zoey is a little bit too,” she says. “So we try to do activities, from pouring colored water from one container to another to finger painting. Many, many days, we are putting on Moana or a lot of iPad time, especially if Howard and I have calls or important documents or meetings to get out.”

Zoey is luckily still taking naps; she might start napping as early as 12:30 p.m. or as late as 3 p.m.

The pair have adjusted all of their calls to be taken in the “nap zone.”

“Every day feels like such a marathon,” she says. She can’t reliably work on anything. She’s had to use feeding time to her advantage.

“When Zander was getting up twice a night, there’s something biological that gets you,” she says. “My eyes would fly open the moment I heard him stirring. I would go and give him a bottle and then I would be like, ‘I have a million things to do: I have to apply for my PPP loan, I have to apply for the D.C. microgrants.’ I’m going to do it between 2 and 4 a.m. because I can’t do it after 9 a.m.”

After about five weeks of not having the full attention of her teachers or playtime with her peers, Zoey can be more clingy now, Lai says.

It’s been tough to have a serious call while she’s awake and nearby. Lai can do all of her checkin calls with Zander snuggled in her lap, but she recalls one incident that he interrupted. “I was leading a conference call with my team, and I looked down and he was so quiet for a long time, and I saw he had this big poopy diaper blowout and I was like ‘I gotta go guys!’

It was just one of those mom moments that I think I’m not alone in, juggling the disaster that can be functioning as a 100 percent parent and 100 percent business owner and working person at the same time.”

Lai says she hasn’t had a chance to be bored or depressed because she’s been kept busy.

Everything she does, from sitting down to play LEGOs with Zoey for 45 minutes to staying up in the middle of the night to apply for loans, she’s doing for her children and her employees. As wild as the current situation is, there are nice moments.

Lai enjoys making her kids laugh, spending time with her husband, and taking 5 p.m. pre-dinner walks that might not otherwise be happening if they were running around meeting clients and reporters.

“So what that I may never see Tiger King? That is not even something that occurs to me,” she says.

“I self-medicate with chocolate, like a lot of chocolate. And we get by.”

Julia Saladino and her husband juggle time working and parenting their nearly 19-monthold daughter, Adelina, at home. Saladino is a nonprofit attorney who runs a legal email hotline, and her husband is a therapist. They’ve both been working from home since mid-March, and have decided that as long as they are home, they’ll be there with their daughter regardless of her daycare’s status.

“Outside of our parental leave, I don’t think it’s ever been like this extended amount of time that we’re all hanging out at the house,” she says.

Lorenzo, Sebastian, and Dominic Valenzuela on FaceTime

Julia Saladino and Adelina Pearson on Zoom The first couple weeks were stressful. Saladino is thankful that her workplace is flexible and understanding. But the pressure of trying to balance everything at once was overwhelming.

Since then, she’s figured out more of a working routine. Her husband has the baby in the morning and she has her in the afternoon.

It’s tricky, though, in their small Brookland condo, to navigate Adelina’s needs while working.

“She’s at the age where she’s obsessed with mom,” Saladino says. “It makes it so that I honestly can’t be in the condo because she’ll lose her mind if I’m not on the floor playing with her. She hunts me and she’ll just be screaming.”

Saladino’s solution: She works on a chair right outside the condo front door. Her daughter is fine when Saldino is not accessible, and

8 april 24, 2020 washingtoncitypaper.com

enjoys hanging out with her father, she says.

“It’s absurd, but I just have to do that to make it so everyone’s calm.”

As she works in the mornings, her husband and daughter go for a run and have breakfast.

Around noon, Saladino returns to do lunch and nap time, and spends the afternoon with Adelina. Her husband needs complete privacy while he works. Saladino says she has to run interference to make sure her daughter doesn’t bang on the door as he works in another room.

“It’s definitely challenging and not ideal, but we are doing our best to make it work for as long as we need to,” she adds. “In her defense, I’m not usually on my computer if I’m home with her.

She’s not used to me being home and not having my attention.”

Adelina’s routine has been completely altered,

and it’s happened at an interesting time in her development, says Saladino. Months 14 through 18 were challenging, she says, because Adelina had a lot of emotions but still lacked good communication skills. She was often screaming and throwing herself to the ground, unable to articulate what she wanted.

“A little before 18 months, there was a huge explosion with her language,” she says. “It’s been very interesting to be witnessing it so fully because we wouldn't be spending this much time with her if she was in daycare. She’s able to tell us a lot of the things that she needs now. I keep remembering that this is probably so confusing for her, because her brain’s rapidly developing and she’s gaining all these communication skills.”

Saladino misses her Trader Joe’s time. Her weekly self-care ritual involved going to the store by herself for a couple hours, just walking around and listening to her podcasts. It’s not realistic to do that anymore. “Whatever you do for your alone time, you probably aren’t doing it now, so that’s really hard,” she says.

Living in a world overtaken by a viral pandemic is wearying. But once the worst of it has passed and regular routines return, Saladino says, she can look back on this and be grateful that she got to spend so much time with her daughter. “I’m seeing all this language acquisition; she knows how to ask me for a hug. I feel really fortunate that we’re all together and we’re safe and we’re healthy.”

They’re able to eat dinner as a family now that no one needs to leave for and come back from work. They also FaceTime family members with Adelina in tow. “We usually call my nephew who lives in Louisiana,” she says. “He’s like 21 and she loves him. She asks for him every day.”

Adelina has been in a music class for several months. They can’t meet in person now, but they’re producing online content. Every evening, Adelina listens to a lullaby.

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washingtoncitypaper.com april 24, 2020 9

SPORTS RUNNING

Mask Your Feelings Exercising outside has everyone on edge.

Shaming one another doesn’t help.

Running gives Margaret Sprock a temporary escape from her restricted routine. Like many other local residents during the novel coronavirus pandemic, exercising outside is one of the few reasons Sprock leaves her home, and she’s using this opportunity to explore the neighborhood and new running routes near where she lives in Silver Spring.

“I think I would go crazy if I couldn't get out and exercise,” Sprock says.

She also tries to follow health guidelines and safety precautions as diligently as possible while running. Sprock, 29, runs alone and feels strongly that others should do the same.

When she sees someone walking, she assumes the responsibility of going around them and will wait for walkers to pass when crossing a bridge or intersection. She always washes her hands when she gets home.

So when a woman driving a car pulled up next to her at a traffic light during a recent afternoon run, Sprock smiled and thought she was asking for directions. Instead, the woman berated her.

“I stopped and looked at her, and she said, ‘You’re running without a mask. You’re breathing all over people. Who do you think you are?’”

Sprock recalls. “She asked me, ‘What’s your name?’ I was like, OK, I’m getting out of here.”

Sprock isn’t the only one being shamed, policed, or publicly chastised—whether online or in person—for not following what may or may not be a rule. Neighborhood forums have disintegrated into virtual shouting matches about the merits of running during a global pandemic.

Runners, in turn, have gotten angry at walkers who take up the width of trails and sidewalks and at cyclists and skateboarders who whiz by without warning.

Everyone, it seems, is on edge. Social distancing recommendations can be ambiguous and people are understandably scared, considering the coronavirus pandemic has led to more than 169,000 deaths worldwide and more than 44,000 deaths in the United States as of April 22. Even the simple joy of outdoor physical activity can quickly escalate into a contentious situation.

“I think people have so much stress in their lives right now, whether it’s the loss of a job or just fear,” Sprock says. “It kind of makes people

Illustration by Hunter Myers

By Kelyn Soong @KelynSoong

around them an easy target or outlet for taking those feelings out on them.”

That’s not to say runners are faultless.

Sometimes they get too close to others while passing. They ignore social and physical distancing recommendations from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention by running in groups. Local residents on social media report runners blasting by them with little room to spare.

With gyms closed and more people turning to running for exercise, it may be hard for everyone to share trails or sidewalks, especially in a dense city like D.C. Newer runners may not understand the common etiquette of giving walkers a warning when behind them.

Two weeks ago, a Bloomingdale resident posted on the neighborhood message board website Nextdoor imploring runners to not get so close. “If you are running, I don’t want to break your stride. Really,” the person wrote.

“But, please, please for the time being, please dont [sic] blow past people sweating, huffing and puffing within 2 feet. I get it, you need to get your exercise in, but please consider the health of others while doing it. That is all.”

“Agreed. It’s a bit selfish on the runners part,” a Truxton Circle resident replied.

The post led to a spirited discussion about what runners should or should not do.

Another D.C. resident wrote: “I personally hope the city starts fining anyone walking, running, breathing outside without a mask on. Oh and a super large fine if you spit on the sidewalk.

Everyone—just wear a mask.”

10 april 24, 2020 washingtoncitypaper.com

The viral “study” by Belgian and Dutch researchers about runners needing to stay more than the recommended six feet apart from others also made an appearance. As Vice points out, epidemiologists have not found the study to be very useful.

Some comments online have been decidedly less civil.

“Saw a girl crossing the street to avoid two runners without masks then get boxed in by yet another runner without a mask in the bike lane and she just screamed ‘FUCK ALL OF YOU’ and I want her to be president,” tweeted Los Angeles-based comedian Dan Sheehan.

General guidelines have added to the confusion of what is permissible. The CDC recommends “wearing cloth face coverings in public settings where other social distancing measures are difficult to maintain (e.g., grocery stores and pharmacies), especially in areas of significant community-based transmission.”

In Montgomery County, where Sprock lives, face masks are required in “grocery stores, pharmacies, and large chain retail establishments.”

So should runners wear masks or a face covering? The answer depends on the situation.

Dr. William Schaffner, the medical director for the National Foundation for Infectious Diseases, a non-profit organization based in Bethesda, does not believe runners should be required to wear masks.

“The risk of transmission is through prolonged face-to-face contact with someone else, within six feet in an enclosed room. That’s where the real risk of transmission occurs,” he

says. “If you are whisking past someone as a jogger, your chances of picking up coronavirus from that jogger—should they be asymptomatic—the possibility of transmission is very, very low ... My suggestion is to interpret general guidelines to a specific situation. In terms of exercising, one of the things I recommend is to be somewhere you can exercise that is less densely populated. Go during off-peak hours where there are fewer people on the street.”

Schaffner also works as a professor of preventive medicine and infectious diseases at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, where he says he sees “a lot of people walking, joggers, and the occasional bicyclists.” But it’s not nearly at the level of a crowded city like D.C., where trails and sidewalks can get busy, particularly during hours when residents are off work. In those scenarios, Schaffner recommends wearing a cloth face covering (not surgical masks or N95 respirators) while exercising—for health reasons and as a symbolic gesture.

“If that’s the kind of situation, I would be more inclined to say that we all have to get with the program, that you have to wear a mask if there’s the density of people out there,” he says. “I think both for symbolic reasons and that you’re passing so many people, maybe it would be wise to wear some sort of face covering or mask—runners as well. If a lot of people are on the trail and you’re passing them not every five minutes, but every 30 seconds, then I think you should be wearing masks. Even passing momentarily, you’re encountering an awful lot of people.”

“Runners should neither be villainized nor

SPORTS ARTS ALBUM REVIEW should they try to take advantage,” Schaffner adds.

Dr. Glenn Wortmann, the chief of infectious diseases at MedStar Washington Hospital Center, agrees. “How much of the virus that actually comes out when you cough or breathe or how much is inhaled, there’s so many variables, it's impossible to predict,” he says. “The six feet that has been advised just in normal social distancing, you want to do at least that while exercising, but the risk of transmitting just running by someone that is walking, that instance is extraordinarily low, if not zero.”

Like Schaffner, he understands that people are still nervous and recommends finding alternate times and pathways to exercise when there aren’t many out. He believes it’s OK to exercise without a mask—Wortmann rides his bike without one—but that not doing so means you should be vigilant about maintaining the appropriate distance away from others.

“I would be courteous with regards to being around other people,” Wortmann says. “What that means is you should not be running in a pack. When you’re biking, you should not be drafting off the person in front of you. Leave adequate space.”

“I think a lot of people are trying to treat people with respect and give people the benefit of the doubt, and then there’s some people who aren't following the rules at all or are overzealous and seem to act like they're the only ones allowed to use the sidewalk, that it’s everyone else’s responsibility to stay far away from people. We live in a city. It takes cooperation from everyone.”

Instead of shame, Tangney, the author, with Ronda L. Dearing, of the book Shame and Guilt, recommends instructing people in a constructive way by giving them an option. In general, she explains, the fundamental difference is when people feel shame, they feel bad about themselves, but when they feel guilt, they feel bad about a particular behavior.

It’s hard to induce guilt without inducing shame, Tangney adds.

“I hesitate to say [use] guilt in this case.

I think it’s just getting people aware of, and expressing real concern,” she says. “Telling them, ‘I’m concerned about your health and other people’s health’—giving them a way to change their behavior, not a demand.”

“There’s no easy answer,” she continues.

“But I'm sympathetic of people's need to exercise and get out, a nd con nec t w it h nature and the world and also connect with the idea that we’re all in this together.

We’re in the same world for the first time in a while. Everyone around the globe is dealing with this. It's quite an astounding thought.”

“I think people have so much stress in their lives right now, whether it’s the loss of a job or just fear. It kind of makes people around them an easy target or outlet for taking those feelings out on them.”

Wh at ’s m o r e clear is that shaming others isn’t always a n ef fec t ive to ol.

Shouting at someone on the sidewalk or scolding them on Twitter won’t get people to change their behaviors, especially if they don’t believe they did anything wrong.

“In general, when people feel shamed by others, they’re not inclined to take the other person’s perspective, so much as they’re likely to get defensive or angry or start pointing fingers back,” says George Mason University psychology professor June Price Tangney. “It doesn’t seem to cause people to change their behavior much. If anything, people are more likely to dig in their heels. One of the general questions is: This public shaming of people for not social distancing, is it a good idea? It kind of feels good, but it doesn't accomplish what people think it’s going to accomplish.”

On a recent run, D.C. resident Kerry Allen was heading up 16th Street NW when she saw a man ahead staring at her on the sidewalk. As she got closer, the man yelled, “Give people their space!”

It took Allen a few moments to realize what he had said. She estimates she was about eight feet away from him.

“It doesn’t sound very dramatic at all, but it really ruined my run,” says Allen, who competed in the U.S. Olympic Marathon Trials in February.

Allen, 31, replayed the interaction in her head for the rest of the workout. The incident itself won’t change her running routine, but she’s still experimenting with different routes and going at different times of the day to see which option would be safest for her and those around.

“It’s a trying time for everyone,” Allen says.

When Sprock returned home after being scolded at the intersection, she went online and checked Montgomery County’s coronavirus website. She felt guilty and wanted to know if she did indeed break a rule by not wearing a mask.

When she saw the local government’s recommendations did not specify runners, she felt relieved. But the woman’s comments still rang in her head.

“I know in a lot of countries, some of the lockdowns include not running outside,” Sprock says.

“I’m sticking to the guidelines because I don't want them to take running away from us. When someone yelled at me, it was a kick in the gut because I have tried really hard to follow guidelines. To be attacked for something that's not even an accurate guideline really bothered me a lot.”

The following morning, she went on another run in the neighborhood and again chose not to wear a mask. With temperatures in the 60s, it was an ideal day to be outside. She saw other runners, walkers, and families enjoying the weather. No one made a comment to her.

Sprock thought about the past month and how in these difficult and challenging times, most people she’s come across have been friendly. Walkers have thanked her for going around them with a smile or a wave.

“Everyone,” she says, “is doing their best.”

Home Suite Home November Suite Dan Roberts Self-released Nobody who’s heard Dan Roberts’ work— in the Bohemian Caverns Jazz Orchestra, with the U.S. Army Blues, or on his own jazz albums—can doubt the pianist’s supreme gifts as a composer and arranger. Hence, his new album, November Suite, is exciting before one hears a note. It features five new Roberts originals, four of them movements in the titular suite, and two fresh arrangements.

Of course, that kind of ensemble can be a recipe for bombastic disaster. Yet Roberts handles it with kid gloves. His understatement is hard to overstate, but consider that the Invoke String Quartet’s album-opening eight-bar vamp on “Praia” is its high-water mark. After that it’s used for color and drama: While it’s prominent in the third movement of the suite (which uses a different string quartet), it remains in accompaniment to Roberts’ piano playing. The strings shimmer on “November Suite: I” during Roberts and flugelhornist Griffith Kazmierczak’s solos, and it’s their best moment.

Sparing use of strings, however, doesn’t dilute the album’s ambition. It deploys its instrumentation with similar organization to a big band. Kazmierczak and singer Lena Seikaly, performing wordless vocals, form the gorgeous front line, with Roberts just behind.

Then come the strings. In the back are bassist Tom Baldwin and drummer CV Dashiell, who, despite having sturdy, complex rhythm lines, remain in the background and in fact make their remarkable work seem more subliminal than it is.

The ambition is obviously deepest in the entire “November Suite” itself. “I” unfolds multiple sections in its 11 minutes, while “II” has three stirring melodies, fast-slowfast. Both feature killer flugelhorn and piano solos, with Kazmierczak and Roberts trading expressive eight-bar improvs on “II.” Seikaly is featured on the second movement, a glorious event that gives her otherwise soft delivery a chance to flourish. And “III,” with its romantic setting for strings and piano, holds the suite’s full supply of melodrama— although its keystone is an up-tempo rhythm so strong that it’s a surprise when neither Dashiell nor Baldwin enter on it.

“IV” is the most accomplished. It develops out of a set of clockwork polyrhythms that, taken together, never quite state Brazilian grooves outright, but the implication is powerful enough. Kazmierczak’s quote of Jobim’s “Waters of March” (in the midst of a counterpoint improvisation with Seikaly) is spot on. There’s also, in a curious but memorable moment, a brief waltz break with Roberts playing Burt Bacharach-style piano chords.

Roberts’ arrangement of Duke Ellington’s “Something” is pretty but minor, though its use of cellist Geoff Manyin as a soloist is a nice touch. His take on Sara Serpa’s “Praia,” barely altered from Serpa’s 2008 recording, is even more minor. But the suite and “Lullaby,” the moving coda of a piece, do enough heavy lifting to make November Suite a sublime experience.

—Michael J. West

washingtoncitypaper.com april 24, 2020 11

FOOD YOUNG & HUNGRY

Taking Stock Restaurateurs consider what immediate and lasting changes the COVID-19 crisis will have on their industry.

When the dust settles and the country begins to reopen after the COVID-19 crisis, it will happen in phases. Mayor Muriel Bowser won’t ring a literal or figurative dinner bell announcing the city’s restaurants and bars are fully back in business once the city’s stay-athome order lifts.

Because many of D.C.’s small, independent businesses have not been able to secure significant financial aid, a number of them will close, succumbing to the economic realities of months of depressed sales. Those who do make it will carry on operating under stressful conditions as they slowly relaunch.

Restaurants have reinvented themselves throughout the crisis to keep up with evolving public health restrictions and keep staff and patrons safe. In the immediate term, when diners return to restaurants, they may encounter fewer seats, staff members wearing masks and gloves, and contact-free ways to settle the bill.

“People will come out of this feeling a level of stress,” says Neighborhood Restaurant Group founder Michael Babin. “Not just financial, but stress and anxiety when they’re in groups.

That could be really bad for restaurants.”

“Restaurants are places to relax and unwind, where you’re supposed to leave the cares of the day behind,” Babin continues. “Walking into a beer garden where lots and lots of people are together—how long will the anxiety last?

It’s antithetical to everything we’re trying to accomplish with our guests.”

Babin says the restaurant industry was in a “fragile place” before the outbreak of COVID19 and in need of “a gradual correction of supply and demand.” At least 90 D.C. restaurants and bars closed in 2019. Some operators blamed landlords for increasing rent once their fiveor 10-year leases came up for renewal. Others wondered if D.C. was dense enough to support its restaurant boom. “If things had been more in balance before, we’d be looking at a different situation. This is crushing,” Babin says.

Though any return to dine-in business is still a ways away, local restaurateurs like Babin are also thinking about what long lasting impacts the global pandemic may have on the hospitality industry. Everything from supply chains to

Illustration by Hunter Myers

By Laura Hayes @LauraHayesDC

labor and service models could change. They shared six predictions.

The city could give restaurants more enforcement responsibilities.

Pizzeria Paradiso founder Ruth Gresser opened her first restaurant in 1991. Since then she’s gone on to open four more pizza shops across the region. Despite weathering economic recessions and the post-9/11 spending freeze, Gresser hasn’t encountered anything as damaging as the COVID-19 crisis.

She worries about how closely the restaurant business is tied to entertainment. Restaurants will reopen sooner than venues like concert halls, sports arenas, and theaters, which will likely lag farther behind because they host larger crowds.

She also wonders what role restaurants will play in enforcing public health measures once they can welcome people back into their dining rooms. Having a liquor license already requires restaurants and bars to “become an arm of the law” when selling alcohol, according to Gresser. Designated employees are required to attend alcohol awareness training every two years. These individuals are then tasked with making sure their establishments don’t overserve patrons or serve anyone underage. The ABC Board can issue fines or suspend licenses if businesses fail to comply with the District’s liquor rules.

Gresser thinks staff might have to participate

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in additional training in the aftermath of the crisis.

“Will there be some standard now for food service employees that requires some kind of test to walk through the door?” she asks. More importantly, could liquor licenses be on the line if Gresser and her employees don’t keep up with new duties?

The bond between restaurants and charitable causes could weaken.

Restaurants and bars donate thousands of dollars in food and drink to charitable events; open up their venues for fundraisers; and find ways to raise money for causes they hold dear every year.

“Millions upon millions of dollars have been generated because of restaurants,” Gresser says. “I don’t know that restaurants are going to be able to afford to be the vehicle charitable organizations go to for supporting their fundraising.”

Even in trying times, Pizzeria Paradiso is doing what it can. Earlier this month, Gresser launched the 10,000 Pizzas Initiative. She’ll donate 1,000 vegetarian pies a week for 10 weeks to feed vulnerable families and frontline workers. Each pizza will come with a coloring sheet from Art Works Now, a nonprofit organization Pizzeria Paradiso has backed for years.

While she’s made it work, Gresser recognizes that not every restaurateur will be able to afford to give in the future. “Who is going to

step up?” Gresser wonders. “These charitable organizations are crucial to the well-being of our society.”

This could be the time to reconsider labor models.

One of D.C.’s most restless restaurateurs, Erik Bruner-Yang, is spending the crisis interacting with customers and staff. He opened Toki Underground almost 10 years ago and subsequently opened Maketto, Brothers and Sisters, Spoken English, and ABC Pony.

“What I’ve enjoyed from this moment is the reconnection, the personal connections, I used to have when I was just one restaurant,” he says.

“My role [lately] has been looking at numbers on a page. That doesn’t matter right now.”

He also started the Power of 10 Initiative, based on the math that if a restaurant receives $10,000 in donations, it can create 10 fulltime jobs for restaurant workers to cook 1,000 free meals for neighbors who need them. After kicking off in D.C., Power of 10 launched in Los Angeles and will soon expand to Chicago, Charlotte, North Carolina, and New York.

Restaurants, according to Bruner-Yang, will have the opportunity to start fresh once the public health crisis ends. “There’s a good opportunity to revisit a no-tip model,” he says. When restaurants are up and running under normal conditions, he explains, it’s hard to make drastic changes. “Here’s a good

FOOD ARTS BOOK REVIEW opportunity to revisit a more equitable pay system because we can start all over.”

He acknowledges that eliminating tipping would work for some and not others. The heated discourse surrounding the 2018 ballot measure that sought to eliminate the tip credit demonstrated that a contingent of workers and owners strongly opposed getting rid of tipping.

“In the long run, it’s more fair,” Bruner-Yang says. “We can provide better benefits. We can pay people more. I think now people will be like, ‘Yeah, that makes sense,’ from customers to employees.”

Off-premise dining may stick around.

Shouk co-founder Ran Nussbacher is convinced Washingtonians will be ordering in with greater frequency well into the future, especially in the fast-casual sector.

Throughout the COVID-19 crisis, the vegetarian Israeli fast-casual restaurant has continued its usual take-out and delivery operations out of its K Street NW store. They’ve also added “hood drops” that allow people who live in areas outside of delivery ranges to get Shouk delivered at coordinated times.

“I see this crisis as accelerating shifts and trends that were underway already,” Nussbacher says. “Off-premise dining is nothing new. We’ve known for the past few years it’s only been accelerating. I think now it’s going to get a boost.”

“We also have generations of customers that are being forced to learn how to order online for the first time,” Nussbacher says. “We see that with our food drops. Elderly customers are getting comfortable with it.”

Shouk uses Caviar, Uber Eats, and other third-party delivery apps. Those services have come under fire during this public health emergency for not doing enough to lower their commissions for struggling restaurants who are more dependent on them than ever. In response, some restaurants have tried doing delivery themselves. Nussbacher doesn’t think that’s sustainable.

“It’s not realistic to have a delivery driver on demand who sits around waiting for the next delivery to come in,” he says. “That’s not a model that scales and it’s not something any restaurant can afford. The reason these services exist is there is no alternative.”

The supply chain could become more local.

During the COVID-19 crisis, some restaurants have turned away from large purveyors who’ve been inconsistent in terms of delivery schedules and product availability. Chefs are getting their produce, grains, and proteins from local farmers instead, and the supply chain looks a little different.

“It’s going to create more of a local economy naturally and more local interdependence,” Babin says. “I’m in favor of it. I hate the reason it’s happening and I don’t know how long it’ll last, but it’s a good reminder to a lot of people who don’t normally think about it. Local is a more resilient system and regional economies with

lots of interdependence can be a good thing.”

Viruses can spread easily in large factories and industrial operations where employees work in cramped quarters. Perdue Farms closed a Delaware poultry processing plant at the end of March after two employees tested positive for COVID-19. Four Tyson Foods employees working in Georgia died in April from the virus. At least 634 employees at the Smithfield Foods processing plant in South Dakota tested positive; the company has also been fighting outbreaks in other states.

“If the Smithfield Plant is an indication of what we can expect from large producers, then the value of small, local producers is going to be great even if the price is higher,” Gresser says. Consumers will have to play their parts because restaurants will have to pass along some of the increased costs. “What’s the maximum that people will pay for a pizza? In the last few years it’s gotten tighter. If we’re going into an economic downturn, there could be further tightening.”

Food is in the spotlight, but independent restaurants may not have the opportunity to advocate for their needs.

Many media outlets are regularly covering how restaurants are coping with the COVID19 crisis. Because of this, Gresser thinks customers are bonding with their neighborhood eateries and watering holes like never before.

“They’re recognizing how important these outside-the-home homes have been to them and how important the individuals are who work in them,” she says. “That’s why you’re seeing the generosity toward all of the restaurant relief funds.”

Babin agrees. “People are focused on restaurants in a way they haven’t been because they’re aware of the pain that’s being felt,” he says. “There can be some good things that come out in terms of a seat at the table.”

But Babin and Gresser aren’t sure these new bonds will last forever or lead to better representation when it comes time to advocate for their needs with local and federal legislators.

“The restaurant industry isn’t a monolithic thing,” Babin says. “Comparing a giant chain to an independent restaurant is like the difference between Nike and a guy who makes shoes one pair at a time. They’re both in the shoe business, but the similarities end there. I worry the voices that are listened to are the giant voices who have a different perspective and agenda than independents.”

Just look at the White House’s Economic Council for Restaurants. It includes the CEOs of Chick-fil-A, Subway, Outback Steakhouse, Papa John’s, and McDonald’s, as well as Thomas Keller, Wolfgang Puck, Jean-Georges Vongerichten, and Daniel Boulud, well known and acclaimed, though not particularly diverse, fine-dining chefs. The people on the council have little to nothing in common with mom-and-pop shops that make urban dining so enjoyable.

“I worry about a huge consolidation and the idiosyncratic parts of the business getting squeezed down,” Babin says.

Simple Man Redhead by the Side of the Road

By Anne Tyler Knopf, 192 pages Anne Tyler, one of the best novelists currently working in the United States, has published 23 novels. Among her books set in Baltimore are the Pulitzer Prize-winning Breathing Lessons and her newly published novel, Redhead by the Side of the Road. This new novel’s pitch-perfect portrait of a mildly obsessive compulsive person makes clear that Tyler is now, as she has long been, at the height of her powers.

Tyler writes about ordinary people facing common dilemmas—a relationship ending, a job not working out, the day-to-day reality that their lives are going nowhere, and the joy of small things. She casually weaves sharp insights into these portraits. For instance, Micah Mortimer in this new novel off-handedly observes about his past girlfriends: “They start giving me these sideways kinds of glances.

They start acting kind of distracted. It’s like all at once they remember somewhere else they’d prefer to be.”

Micah is a fussbudget and something of a failure, as the pleasantly omniscient narrator does not hesitate to inform us, with details to back up this assessment. “When Micah was behind the wheel he liked to pretend he was being evaluated by an all-seeing surveillance system. Traffic God, he called it. Traffic God was operated by a fleet of men in shirtsleeves and green visors who frequently commented to one another on the perfection of Micah’s driving.” Micah runs a one-man computer repair company, appropriately called Tech Hermit,

and the novel follows him from job to job, to customers as modest and eccentric as he is.

Redhead by the Side of the Road also chronicles his relationship with Cass, a fourth grade teacher, and its many crossed signals.

This novel contrasts Micah with his family: his four impetuous sisters, life-long waitresses, their husbands and children. Micah is the oddity here, a perfectionist in an environment of permanent chaos. “Conversations in this family didn’t so much flow as spring up in bursts here and there like geysers and she wasn’t used to this pursuit of a single subject.” Micah apologizes for being finicky, by saying anyone would be “if you’d been reared in a household where the cat slept in the roasting pan.” Micah likes order and predictability. He has regular routines, from his morning run to his daily housework to his spotty business.

That seems like all he has.

His relationship with Cass, however, means more to him than he knows, and the arc of this discovery is well plotted. At first he appears to take her for granted, treating their affair with an almost distant casualness. But over time he reflects on his previous relationships, and he concludes he blew them all, leading him into a rather negative self image through casual thoughts on identity theft: “Anyhow, he very nearly adds, there are lots of worse things than losing your identity. Right now he almost feels that losing his own identity would be a plus.”

This is a novel about how people sabotage themselves, little by little, every day. It’s also a story about contracting horizons, about getting old rather than growing up. As such, this novel has a wistful quality, like Breathing Lessons, where people adjust to their losses and diminished circumstances and admit that they’re lonely. The narrator of this new novel tells us that Micah is a narrow, limited, and closed-off man. But Micah surprises us; maybe he even surprises his creator, describing himself near the end as “a roomful of broken hearts.”

—Eve Ottenberg

washingtoncitypaper.com april 24, 2020 13

ARTS

Lost Art The Phillips Collection faces tough decisions and uphill battles in the run-up to its centennial.

By Kriston Capps Contributing Writer The Phillips Collection ought to be having a moment. On any given day, the museum’s selection of works by the likes of Georgia O'Keeffe and Arthur Dove make it an essential destination in the District. Late in February, the museum opened an especially challenging exhibit, one that traces the complex exchanges between European artists who looked to Africa for visual inspiration and the African American artists who engaged with these appropriated ideas from Europe. The Washington Post critic Philip Kennicott called the show “absorbing.”

Two weeks into the run of Riffs and Relations: African American Artists and the European Modernist Tradition, however, the coronavirus pandemic forced the Phillips Collection to temporarily shutter. Kennicott’s review ran just two days before the museum suspended operations on March 14. Another exhibit, featuring trenchant abstractions by Moira Dryer, ended in April behind closed doors. So will Riffs and Relations.

This fall, the Phillips Collection was planning to open a major exhibition on Picasso with the Art Gallery of Ontario—a prelude to a year of festivities at the museum. That show has been put on hold indefinitely. In fact, the Dupont Circle museum has canceled or postponed all exhibits, performances, and programs for the rest of the calendar year. Now, the Phillips Collection is weighing even harder decisions.

“We had to start with pay cuts,” says Dorothy Kosinski, the director and CEO of the Phillips Collection. “I led out the door with that, for me and my leadership team. Then we started with furloughs of part-time people.”

Next year is a mile-marker for the Phillips Collection: The museum celebrates its 100th anniversary in 2021. No other modern art museum in America can boast a centennial.

Yet in the run-up to its long-anticipated birthday party, the Phillips Collection is cutting salary and hours for staff and furloughing other workers.

Making these decisions has been emotionally challenging, Kosinski says. She declined to answer how many staff members at the Phillips Collection have been furloughed, noting that the board is making decisions on an ongoing basis. “I’m working closely with trustee leadership so that we make smart decisions that will ensure the long-term health of our organization,” she says.

"Watusi (Hard Edge)" by Alma Thomas, 1963, from Riffs and Relations at The Phillips Collection

Many of Washington’s most beloved museums are guaranteed by the federal government.

Art museums on the National Mall, including the Hirshhorn National Museum of Modern Art and the National Gallery of Art, have not yet made any staff reductions.

All of them are suffering a loss of revenue from theaters, shops, and cafeterias—but their workers are safe, so far.

Smaller and local museums in D.C . that don’t have that federal backstop have had to make difficult calls. The National Museum of Women in the Arts, for example, has laid off workers in security, operations, facility rentals, and the museum gift shop. Most of the museum’s staff are able to work remotely, though, and the museum hasn’t canceled any exhibitions to date. Right now, the National Museum of Women in the Arts is pouring its energy into its virtual presentation, NMWA @Home.

Glenstone, the contemporary art museum in Potomac, is still sorting out its online offerings. While the private museum and its grounds are closed for the foreseeable future, Glenstone is still paying all its staff their regular salaries. The Kreeger Museum, a modern

14 april 24, 2020 washingtoncitypaper.com

collection in D.C.’s Foxhall neighborhood, didn’t respond to questions about its status.

Downtown, the National Building Museum planned to reopen on March 13 following a three-month closure for renovations. That didn’t happen. Now, plans for the museu m’s big su mmer spectacular are up in the air. Shakespeare’s Pl ay h ou se, a collaboration with the Folger Shakespeare Librar y and t he University of South Carolina, is still tentatively scheduled to run from July 4 to Sept. 7. Prospects for seeing A Midsummer Night’s Dream inside the museum’s extravagant great hall this summer are diminishing.

Earlier this month, the Building Museum launched its Resilience Campaign, an effort to raise $100,000 by the end of May to support its operations. “We have definitely taken a financial hit,” says Chase Rynd, the museum’s executive director.

When the shutdown order in D.C. finally lifts, museums will have to scramble to sort out new calendars. Exhibitions take years of planning, especially big shows that feature works borrowed from other institutions. “Even

“It’s been so mindimploding to pivot on a dime from how we’re going to celebrate to the next week when we’re closed and the world is falling apart.”

just doing shipments—the kind of freight and movement and people and objects involved is going to be complicated for a good long time,” Kosinski says.

Logistics could hamper some of the Phillips Collection’s plans for its centennial. The museum is the last stop for Jacob Lawrence: The American Struggle, a traveling exhibition organized by the Peabody Essex Museum. (It’s there now, behind closed doors, through April 26.) The show assembles 23 rarely reunited panels that Jacob Lawrence painted on the Revolutionary War; at the Phillips, they will join paintings from Lawrence’s masterpiece, The Migration Series, starting in June. A retrospective on Washington Color School artist Alma Thomas, another important exhibition, is scheduled to land at the Phillips in the fall.

“We still hope and intend to do these projects,” Kosinski says.

Otherwise, the museum’s plans for next year are still in the works. One project will focus on the museum’s growing contemporary art collection. While the museum has acquired new artworks for decades, in more recent years it has sought to prioritize artworks by women and artists of color. With a discretionary fund established in 2015 specifically for this purpose, the museum has purchased works by Zilia Sánchez, McArthur Binion, Alejandro Pintado, Simone Leigh, and others. The Phillips Collection has looked to local and D.C.–born artists, too, with acquisitions of works by Nara Park, Renée Stout, John Edmonds, and Sam Gilliam.

Right now, Kosinski says that she’s meeting constantly (virtually) with her board and senior staff to go over the museum’s short-term, medium-term, and long-term budget. Charting the course is painful work, she says, because she doesn’t have answers yet for furloughed workers. She never anticipated the possibility that the museum would spend much of its 99th year closed.

“The way things are, it’s so fluid. Five days ago I would have said something different,” Kosinski says. She adds, “I have every hope and determination that we’re going to have a wonderful celebration of the 100th anniversary of America’s first museum of modern art.”

Her focus is on making sure that staff can come back once the lockdown is over. To that end, the museum has launched a fund to support its workers and programs going forward.

The museum is calling it the Sun After the Rain Fund, named after a painting by Marjorie Phillips, who founded the museum with her husband Duncan Phillips.

“It’s been so mind-imploding to pivot on a dime from how we’re going to celebrate to the next week when we’re closed and the world is falling apart,” she says.

This is not the first time that the Phillips Collection has faced an uncertain stretch even during Kosinski’s tenure. She came to the museum in 2008, when the Great Recession made fundraising and other nonprofit operations almost impossible. She says she is prepared to weather another storm. “I walked through the door in a crisis.”

ARTS FILM REVIEW

Illustration by Julia Terbrock

ARTS ARTS CLUB

Moonlight For this week’s edition of City Paper Arts Club, arts editor Kayla Randall and multimedia editor Will Warren watched Moonlight, the lush, gorgeous story about identity, love, longing, and so many more emotions, centered on three acts in the life of a young black boy in Miami. Did we cry? Yes. Next, we’ll be discussing Ta-Nehisi Coates’ debut novel, The Water Dancer.

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

Kayla Randall: So Moonlight is this look at a single person, Chiron. He is a young black boy growing up in Miami, and the movie breaks his story into three parts. The first part when he is an adolescent, the second part when he is a teenager, and the third part when he is a grown man. It traverses through moments in his life.

It’s all pulled together in this really beautiful narrative about identity and manhood and sexuality and life.

Will Warren: It’s a beautiful coming of age story.

KR: There’s so many coming of age stories, but this one is so unique. I feel like I’ve never seen a coming of age story quite like this, how Chiron’s life is painted with such specific detail. From the opening shots, you’re just in it: This is the place, and these are the people, and I know them, and here they are.

Right away, everyone is really endearing.

People are so human in this story; there’s no villains. Everyone is relatable in some way,

everyone is understandable in some way— even the people who do things that are harmful to both Chiron and themselves. Overall, it’s this really, really human story. The cinematography is incredible, the direction is incredible. There’s a scene where Chiron is in the ocean and he’s being taught to swim by Juan, his neighborhood drug dealer but also his father figure. It’s the most beautiful scene I’ve ever had the pleasure to witness.

WW: It’s this one moment of beauty and love between this little kid and this guy who’s sort of taking him under his wing and happiness amid a lot of dark stuff that’s going on in Chiron’s life.

His mom is struggling with drugs that Juan, the father figure, is selling her, so that’s a little complicated. He is being bullied a lot by other kids in the neighborhood because they think he might be gay.

KR: Chiron doesn’t speak very much. What do you think about having a protagonist not really speak that much or be kind of nebulous? I personally was really moved by it and really fascinated by it.

WW: I was never ever wondering what was going on in Chiron’s mind, or wanting to understand him more, and I think that is definitely because the folks playing Chiron did such a good job, but [also] the way that the movie and Barry Jenkins linger on certain details or moments. It almost makes you feel like you’re inside Chiron’s mind. You know what he’s feeling because you’re literally there within it. I think every aspect of the movie feeds into that effect. It totally worked.

KR: Pretty much everything works here.

WW: Yeah, it’s kind of like a perfect movie.

Action Seen Extraction Directed by Sam Hargrave The only reason to even consider watching Extraction is for the 20-minute action sequence that comes at the end of the first act.

It’s an electrifying chase scene, in which Chris Hemsworth drives, punches, and shoots his way through the streets of Mumbai, leaving a trail of corpses in his wake. The camera plays both journalist and collaborator, following behind him as he sprints to escape, then spinning around a corner to identify a surprise attack. It’s also shot as if filmed in a single take, even though the seams will be apparent to even casual viewers. All in all, it’s an impressive technical achievement but one that begs for praise too brazenly. It’s the flashy, self-conscious choice of a director trying to distract you from how empty the film actually is.

Hemsworth plays Tyler Rake, an ex-soldier who now works in the private sector, specializing in extracting hostages. He is hired by an Indian drug lord, whose teenage son has been kidnapped by a rival. Never mind why. It couldn’t matter less. The initial rescue is easy enough—all Rake has to do is kill a room full of nameless thugs in gruesome fashion—but getting out of the city is the tougher task, especially when the kidnapper has closed its borders, and the kid’s father has directed his own goons to steal the kid back from Rake, just so he doesn’t have to pay him.

Most of these characters are defined by a single trait: their ability and willingness to kill. Nearly every scene in Extraction shows someone getting shot point-blank in the head.

It makes a run for the record in that category, which was once held by Martin Scorsese’s The Departed and is currently owned by the latest John Wick film. With so many of its action beats enacted in exactly the same fashion, Extraction feels more like a first-person shooter video game than a film.

If it aimed to be a simple thrill ride it would have been better off, but it loses any claim to credibility when it foolishly tries to take seriously the relationship between Rake and the teenage hostage. To do this, they utilized the flimsy and overused “Dead Kid” device to justify Rake’s behavior. It’s the second film this year, following the addiction drama The Way Back, to insert the trauma of losing a child into a story where good character development would have done the trick, and it’s even less effective here. While many great works of drama have centered on the loss of a child, in Extraction it’s a painfully shallow attempt to make Rake seem more human, to justify his violent behavior, and to create a bond between him and the boy that feels entirely unearned.

In fact, it’s not clear what Extraction is trying to earn, except more subscribers and bigger bonuses for its streaming service executives.

It’s sad that this shallow puddle of a film is the best that Hemsworth, who has cultivated a promising star persona in his last few Marvel movies, could do. It’s not the blockbuster he deserves, but instead a mildly diverting action sequence with a shapeless and cynical film around it, which places it squarely in the increasingly large pile of Netflix original action films, like last month’s Spenser Confidential, that are barely good enough to watch for free on your couch when you have literally nothing —Noah Gittell else to do.

Extraction is available to stream on Netflix on April 24.

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CITY LIGHTS City Lights

#HirshhornInsideOut’s Maker Morning series If your walls are covered with movie posters or dusty diploma frames, there’s no need to worry.

The Hirshhorn believes that art can be found anywhere, and has been encouraging patrons to try their hand at recreating famous pieces through the #HirshhornInsideOut campaign.

Earlier this month, as part of the campaign’s Maker Morning series, the museum encouraged its social media followers to recreate the work of Dutch artist Piet Mondrian. Mondrian, who is known for his contributions to 20th century abstraction, believed that “the first aim in painting should be universal expression.” In much of his most famous work, he limited his color palette to the basics—white, black, yellow, blue, red, and gray. Although you might not recognize the name, you’ve certainly seen one of his primary-colored pieces. According to the Hirshhorn, creating your imitation painting is as simple as cutting paper into squares and lines, then arranging them in one of his grid-like patterns. If you don’t have ready access to colored paper (or other traditional art supplies), get crafty. Use the plain sides of scrap paper and sharpies or pens to create his sharp black dividing lines. You can even use eyeshadow or other makeup to pigment the squares. Not only will working on your very own Mondrian help pass the time, but you’ll have a fun new piece of wall décor to admire while you’re at home.

Learn more about the #HirshhornInsideOut campaign at hirshhorn.si.edu and get the instructions for the Maker Monday challenge on Facebook. Free.

—Sarah Smith

City Lights

Women in the Life Magazine D.C.’s public libraries remain closed, but if you’re hungry for new reading material, don’t sleep on Dig DC, an online archive that offers a digital sampling of DC Public Library’s Special Collections.

There, you can read high-quality scans of Women in the Life magazine, a publication with roots in the District’s black lesbian social scene—though “there is more to being a black gay woman than just partying,” editor S. A. Reid reminded readers in the first edition, which was published as a newsletter in 1993. While the parties and social events didn’t stop, Women in the Life aimed to serve the community’s intellectual life, covering everything from politics to art, sports to sexuality. Though the writing was often witty, Women in the Life didn’t shy away from more serious subjects. For example, the April 1995 issue included articles ranging from part three of a fourpart investigation into a cluster of HIV cases to a roundup of “hot (or at least lukewarm) flicks.”

The approach worked, attracting readers and allowing the magazine to expand over time. By the end of its decade-long run in 2003, Women in the Life had evolved into a full-blown glossy magazine available for free at bookstores across the District. Dig DC currently offers 28 digital issues of Women in the Life that ran between 1993 and 1996. Archives from the magazine can be found at digdc.dclibrary.org. Free.

—Michelle Delgado

City Lights

All Souls Bar jigsaw puzzle In the days before the COVID-19 pandemic, one of the delightful markers of spring was the first opportunity the weather afforded to drink a damned cocktail on a patio without shivering. That’s the picture that emerges in the 500-piece jigsaw puzzle from All Souls Bar, the Shaw neighborhood drinkery that, like all the other bars in the city, is now closed to customers looking to imbibe in-house. The rueful scene shows relaxed patrons in a pre-pandemic era socially mixing—not distancing even a little!—while cupping beverages in the bar’s cozy outdoor area. A separate puzzle depicts a close-up of one of the whiskey-and-rosé cocktails for which I would have easily traded a case of N95 masks just a few weeks ago. As far as bar merch goes, puzzles have to be among the most coronavirus-specific options out there. The proceeds go to bar staff, but the benefits flow to the reluctant puzzle-solvers who would rather be drinking a perfect Manhattan patio-side. Move quickly— the puzzle sold out fast on its first run and had to be restocked. The puzzle is available for purchase at shop.allsoulsbar.com. $48.

—Kriston Capps 16 april 24, 2020 washingtoncitypaper.com

City Lights

City Lights

If you’re a D.C. resident looking to relieve your anxiety by envisioning the worst-case scenario, look no further than Tom Clancy’s The Division 2. Contrary to what you may assume from the title, The Division 2 is a third-person shooter role-playing game. In a post-pandemic Washington D.C., law and order have collapsed and the District has been divided by competing militias. You play as a customizable member of “The Division,” a group of American sleeper agents that are activated to keep order. Yes, the American military fantasy knows no bounds, but it can be entertaining. The game is an open world, meaning you can wander through various D.C. landmarks while playing through the main story or tagging along with friends. For those wondering what this has to do with Mr. Clancy, the noted spy novelist founded Red Storm Entertainment, named for Clancy’s Red Storm Rising, way back in 1996; that company released a series of video games with his name on it and gaming giant Ubisoft purchased it in 2000. Since Red Storm’s founding, there have been over 45 video games marketed under the “Tom Clancy’s” name. The author’s 2013 death did nothing to stop the stream of Tom Clancy material, with The Division 2 being one of the latest—and most prescient—updates. The Division 2 is available for XBOX One, PS4, Stadia, PC, and UPLAY+ at store.ubi.com. $6.99–$79.99.

—Tristan Jung

This week’s streaming movie openings include a newly restored version of a 40-year old Hungarian drama that is as relevant as ever. Set in pre-World War II Germany, Mephisto revolves around the magnetic Klaus Maria Brandauer, who plays stage actor Hendrik Höfgen, a rising star defined by his portrayal of Mephistopheles in a stage production of Doctor Faustus. But Höfgen is at a creative crossroads: The Nazi party is gaining control of Germany, and while he and his black girlfriend (Karin Boyd) are disgusted by the political climate, the actor ends up making a Faustian bargain himself, ingratiating himself with Nazi leaders for the sake of his career. But as he sells out his own convictions in the name of success, what becomes of his soul? Director István Szabó navigates a swooning historical landscape that threatens to consume his central figure, who turns in one of the great screen performances of all time.

Brandauer, who went on to play a Bond villain in Never Say Never Again, here embodies the tortured artist through a wildly vivid range that careens from hammy, operatic full-body gestures to the most subtle changes of expression at eyeballlevel. Mephisto won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film in 1981, and is now available through Kino Marquee’s virtual cinema, with proceeds to help JxJ, the multidisciplinary arts project that encompasses the Washington Jewish Film Festival and the Washington Jewish Music Festival. The film can be screened at kinonow.com. $12.

—Pat Padua

City Lights

City Lights

Tom Clancy’s The Division 2

“DMV Covid-19 Social Distance Art Sale” Facebook group Galleries in D.C. may be closed, but as with so much else these days, arts commerce is quickly shifting online. Just 10 days after its April 4 launch, a public Facebook group called “DMV Covid19 Social Distance Art Sale” had passed 1,500 members. It’s a mix of artists, gallerists, and other D.C.-area arts aficionados, including such prominent figures as Lenny Campello, Cynthia Connolly, Mary Early, Muriel Hasbun, Philippa P.B. Hughes, Andrea Pollan, and Tim Tate. The group, founded by Arlington-based photographer Jason Horowitz and managed by Leslie Holt, codirector of Red Dirt Studio in Hyattsville, offers artists a place to network and sell their wares. “I started the group out of a sense of personal isolation,” Horowitz says. “Many artists in the area and all around the country are essentially out of work.

Some artists are locked out of their group studios but still expected to pay rent. Many artists are freelancers with little or no health insurance.” Some artists are using the site directly to sell their work, while others are posting links to their websites or to other outlets such as Etsy. Horowitz’s hope for the group is to create “a community of supporters and artists that mutually reinforce each other.”

Join the group and check out the affordable offerings on Facebook. Prices vary.

—Louis Jacobson

Mephisto

City Lights

Warming Waters As bars, restaurants, and museums remain closed, Mother Nature is one of the few things we still have to enjoy—at least until we’re barred inside due to overcrowding. But even a short walk to pick up groceries and enjoy the sun or marvel at your neighbor’s tulips is a welcome reprieve from staring at screens all day.

Coincidentally, it’s also seasonally appropriate to show your appreciation for the planet and celebrate environmental protection. On the 50th anniversary of Earth Day, Storytelling with Saris, “a multi-layered collaborative art and advocacy” group, had planned to celebrate the holiday by debuting its public art installation Warming Waters above the C&O Canal.

Blue and white saris would be draped above the water, featuring handwritten climate pledges from residents of D.C. and Katakhali Village, Bangladesh. But like we have had to adapt to an atmosphere full of greenhouse gases, the artists behind Warming Waters, Monica Jahan Bose and Robin Bell, adapted their opening day to an online format, a Facebook Live event now available on their page. The preview of the installation featured insights from the workshops and messages from local government offices, environmental protection groups, and the artists. And, if you missed the livestream, you can still catch the rescheduled launch of Warming Waters in July 2020. The livestream is available on Storytelling with Saris’ Facebook page. Free.

—Katie Malone

City Lights

“Lonely Vibes”

In the Loop’s concert scene Released in 2009, In the Loop is a British satire known for its razor-sharp dialogue. If The West Wing suggested beautiful speeches can heal political divides, In the Loop demonstrates an opposing theory: Spin is the start of destruction, rippling from interpersonal clashes into worldwide events.

Half an hour into the movie, there’s a brief scene that I can’t stop thinking about. Two characters meet at an unnamed venue, where they pretend to listen to death metal and mostly survey the crowd. It’s a stylish backdrop, unimportant to the plot—but it’s enough to make me feel homesick for all the shows I wish I could have seen this spring.

I miss cramped, sweaty house venues and being jostled by strangers. I miss obsessively checking my earplugs and eating midnight toast when I finally straggle back home at night. Still, the scene has a line that makes it all come crashing down: “You see this mosh pit?” one of the characters asks. “Well, they’re mostly House staffers, Senators’ interns.” Surely there are plenty of music fans roaming the halls of Congress—but they’re far from the only people in D.C. Fuckitybye! You can rent In the Loop on Google Play, iTunes, or Amazon. $2.99.

—Michelle Delgado

27-year-old Southeast D.C. rapper Shy Glizzy is back with a new single and video, “Lonely Vibes,” though it’s not about COVID-19—it’s about the ongoing issue of gun violence. Glizzy, whose own father was shot and killed before Glizzy turned 1, was incarcerated for robbery in his teens, and has been rapping about the life on record since 2011. His video for his 2018 single “Do You Understand?” has earned over 5 million views. “Lonely Vibes,” like prior Glizzy tracks such as “Funeral,” mixes sorrow with trap rap bravado. But rather than using gospel, as “Funeral” did, “Vibes” conveys the message with help from a minimalistic, mournful programmed rhythm. The song starts somber, with Glizzy enunciating in a dreary monotone over the lush instrumental bottom: “Feel like the realest of ‘em all, I’m on my lonely vibes.”

The paranoia and stress of this life is conveyed in the video via the use of a gun scope focused on Glizzy, who just exhales smoke and stares sadly at burning candles. The video is available on YouTube. Free.

—Steve Kiviat

washingtoncitypaper.com april 24, 2020 17

DIVERSIONS SAVAGE LOVE

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

e Visit thper City Paor more te f ve. i s b e w age Lo Sav washingtoncitypaper.com/ columns

I was raised in a religious home and didn’t lose my virginity until the embarrassing age of 26. I was told by the church to save it for marriage and I was a virgin until I met the woman who would become my wife at a party. I said to hell with it, we had a one-night stand, and we’ve been together now for eight years. I’m tall and slim and my wife is short and heavy.

Like an idiot I believed it’s what’s on the inside that matters. My wife is the sweetest, most thoughtful person I’ve ever met, I love spending time with her, but I have absolutely no sexual attraction to her. As a result, I’ve all but stopped initiating sex and on the rare occasion when we do make love I make her come twice while I’m struggling just to get off.

I know it’s shallow and I know beauty is only skin deep but what am I supposed to do when seeing my wife naked sends me into an anxiety attack? When I’m helping out with laundry, I get bummed because there’s nothing in her wardrobe I find attractive on her.

Even when I look at old pictures of us together I get extremely depressed because I know this is the best she’s ever going to look. It doesn’t help that she finds me handsome and regularly tells me so.

It’s gotten to the point where I find any woman who isn’t my wife desirable. (Including, but not limited to, her family and friends.) I should also mention that she has no interest in having an open relationship or threesome because she prefers having me “all to herself.”

I don’t want to ask her to change because she’s perfectly happy with herself but I’m becoming increasingly resentful. What do I do? How do I tell her? And is there any way I can come out of this a good husband?

—In The Shallows I was so relieved to get all the way to end of your letter without learning you had kids.

Because that means I can advise you—with a clear conscience—to file for divorce and move the fuck out just as soon as it’s possible to do so. Not for your own sake, ITS, but for your wife’s sake. She deserves better.

You say you’re growing increasingly resentful. I hope your resentment is directed at all of the people who victimized you. Your wife isn’t one of them. It’s your parents you should resent, ITS, as well as all the sex-phobic bullshit artists out there masquerading as “faith leaders.”

You should be angry with yourself too.

While I know from personal experience how a religious upbringing can put the zap on a kid’s head, you were a grown-ass man when you met your wife at that party. You couldn’t have slept with her that night—you couldn’t have lost your virginity in a onenight stand—if you hadn’t already rejected nearly everything you’d been taught about sex. If you were capable of having premarital sex, you were capable of refraining from marrying the first person you slept with.

Your wife is going to want to know why you’re leaving her—of course she is—but you’re not going to tell her the real reason.

You’re going to make something up. You want kids and she doesn’t (or vice-versa), you married too young (which is true), you

18 april 24, 2020 washingtoncitypaper.com

have unresolved childhood issues (and don’t we all). While you won’t be able to spare your wife the pain of a breakup, ITS, you can spare her the pain of learning the person she’s been sleeping with for eight years is repulsed by her body. You can’t be a good husband to her, ITS, but you can be a decent ex-husband. And to do that—to be her decent and loving and supportive ex—you can’t set her self-esteem on fire on your way out the door.

And your wife’s body isn’t repulsive. She’s not someone you’re attracted to, ITS, and you’re not obligated to find short and round women sexually appealing. But while “tall

“Time is a motherfucking meat grinder and it makes hamburger out of us all. If you prioritize your idea of hot over all other qualities, you run the very real risk of spending decades with a person who has aged out of hot and was never nice.” and slim” are more closely associated with conventional concepts of attractiveness, ITS, not everyone’s into tall and slim. There are people who are into short and round and people out there who are attracted to all body types and people who are utterly indifferent to bodies. Your wife deserves the chance to find someone who’s sincerely attracted to her. Even being alone would be better than spending decades with someone who recoils from her touch.

For the record: What’s on the inside does count. It matters. If you met a woman who was more conventionally attractive—if you were with someone who was your idea of hot—and over time she revealed herself to be an asshole (if she was rude to waiters, if

she was emotionally abusive, if she was a Trump supporter, etc.), your attraction to her would wither away. What you want—not what you’ll get, ITS, but the best you can hope for—is some combo of hot on the outside (subjective and personal) and good on the inside. And the longer you’re with someone, ITS, the more important good on the inside becomes. Time is a motherfucking meat grinder and it makes hamburger out of us all. If you prioritize your idea of hot over all other qualities, you run the very real risk of spending decades with a person who has aged out of hot and was never nice.

—Dan Savage

Long time reader asking for advice. I’m a med student, I came to the U.S. when I was 18 in order to go to college, and I’m still in the U.S. I’m 25 now and I’ve been dating my boyfriend for about three years now. We’re somewhat monogamous and have been living together for two years. I’m out as a gay man where we live but my parents and family back in Brazil have zero idea. As you may know, Brazil has a weird relationship with sexuality. We’re seen and for the most part are very open but our culture is also very homophobic. My BF has been pressuring me to come out but I’ve been apprehensive considering how important family is to me.

—Fears A Massive Implosion Likely, Yet…

Gay men don’t come out to our families because they’re unimportant to us. We come out to our families because they are important to us.

Family is important to you and you’re worried you might lose yours if you come out to them. But you’re definitely gonna lose them if you don’t. Because to keep your life a secret from them—to hide your boyfriend from them—you’re going to have to cut them out of your life. It’ll be little things at first, FAM, but over time the amount of things you have to keep from them grows. Lies pile up on top of lies and the distance between you and your family grows. Before you know it, they don’t know you at all anymore and you don’t know them. Because you can’t risk letting them know you. So to avoid their possible rejection, you will have rejected them. You will have lost your family. I know, I know: It’s scary. I came out to my very Catholic family when I was a teenager. I was scared to death.

But if they couldn’t accept me for who I am— if I couldn’t rely on their love and support— what was the point of having them in my life at all?

—DS P.S. No one likes being someone’s dirty little secret. It hurts your boyfriend to see the person who claims to love him prioritize his family’s presumed bigotry (it’s possible they’ll react more positively than you think) over his feelings and dignity. By not coming out, FAM, you will lose the family you were born into and the one you’ve created with your boyfriend too.

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

CLASSIFIEDS Legal Notices SUPERIOR COURT OF THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA PROBATE DIVISION 2020 ADM 000191 Name of Decedent, Alaaeldin Abdelmegid Saleh. Name and Address of Attorney Abigail Scott, Esq Regan Associates, Chtd, 1003 K Street, NW, Third Floor, Washington, DC 20001.

Notice of Appointment, Notice to Creditors and Notice to Unknown Heirs, Mervat Mahgoub, whose address is 1906 Jackson Street, NE, Washington, 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 of Wills with a copy to the undersigned, on or before 10/9/2020, or be forever barred. Persons believed to be heirs or legatees of the decedent who do not receive a copy of this notice by mail within 25 days of its publication shall so inform the Register of Wills, including name, address and relationship.

Date of first publication: 4/9/2020 Name of Newspaper and/or periodical: Washington City Paper/ Daily Washington Law Reporter. Name of Personal Representative: Mervat Mahgoub TRUE TEST copy Nicole Stevens Acting Register of Wills Pub Dates: April 9, 16, 23.

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The cost of this contract will be approximately $30,600. The decision to sole source was made because NorthBay is uniquely qualified to provide a week-long sleep-away program that matches Two Rivers’ emphasis on experiential learning and social-emotional education. Please contact Two Rivers with any questions at procurement@ tworiverspcs.org.

KIPP DC PUBLIC CHARTER SCHOOLS REQUEST FOR PROPOSALS AM/PM Bus Shuttle Services KIPP DC is soliciting proposals from qualified vendors for AM/PM Bus Shuttle Services. The RFP can be found on KIPP DC’s website at www.kippdc. org/procurement. Proposals should be uploaded to the website no later than 5:00 PM ET on May 8, 2020. Questions should be addressed to barry.williams@kippdc.org.

Self-Contained Special Education Classroom Services Within a KIPP DC School KIPP DC is soliciting proposals from qualified vendors for Self-Contained Special Education Classroom Services Within a KIPP DC School. The RFP can be found on KIPP DC’s website at www.kippdc. org/procurement. Proposals should be uploaded to the website no later than 5:00 PM ET on May 5, 2020. Questions should be addressed to nancy. meakem@kippdc.org.

SUPERIOR COURT OF THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA PROBATE DIVISION 2020 ADM 000277 Name of Decedent, Deborah D. Hollingsworth-Edmonds.

Notice of Appointment, Notice to Creditors and Notice to Unknown Heirs, Paul D. Edmonds Jr., Vincent C. Hollingsworth, whose addresses are 1018 Southern Avenue SE, Washington, DC 20032, was appointed Personal Representative of the estate of Deborah D. Hollingsworth-Edmonds who died on 8/9/18, with a Will and will serve with-

out 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 October 23, 2020. Claims against the decedent shall be presented to the undersigned with a copy to the Register of Wills or to the Register of Wills with a copy to the undersigned, on or before October 23, 2020, or be forever barred. Persons believed to be heirs or legatees of the decedent who do not receive a copy of this notice by mail within 25 days of its publication shall so inform the Register of Wills, including name, address and relationship.

Date of first publication: 4/9/2020 Name of Newspaper and/or periodical: Washington City Paper/ Daily Washington Law Reporter. Name of Personal Representative: Paul D. Edmonds Jr., Vincent C. Hollingsworth TRUE TEST copy Nicole Stevens Acting Register of Wills Pub Dates: April 23, 30, May 7.

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ARTS LIZ AT LARGE

DIVERSIONS CROSSWORD

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By Brendan Emmett Quigley

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21. Turkey is found here 23. Pea soup 24. Went silent, as toward the cops 28. When tripled, comic sound of gun fire in sci-fi 31. Spill cleanup org.

32. Helps out in a bad way 33. Seafood served in a hot dog bun 36. Battleships board 37. Missile shelter 38. Apple drink that's “hard�

40. GoToMeeting rival 43. One who has one, two, okay five drinks too many

By Liz Montague @Lizatlarge

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57. ___-over (coffee brewing method) 58. Biological hairs 62. First light time?

64. Almost done 67. HVAC installer's measurement 68. Brown et al.

69. Turkish cheese?

70. String instrument of Ren Fairs 71. Audience participation part of an event 72. Speaker’s position Down 1. Hotspot service 2. Black, in poems 3. Uber 4. One no longer on the force 5. Playing tonsil hockey outside, initially 6. O’Hare's airport code

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28. They often get hit with viruses, for short 29. Drug maker ___ Lilly 30. One uncomfortable at the dance 34. Pouts 35. Church HQ’d in Utah 36. Midas’ downfall 39. Announcements at 6-Down 41. Washington’s bill 42. Rainier, e.g.: Abbr.

44. Quid pro quo 46. Georgia symbol 47. Footwear with a strap 48. Kevin of Shark Tank 52. Hyundai electric model 53. New, in Nicaragua 54. Prepare for a marathon 55. Yellow sign 59. Princess with “cinnamon buns�

60. Sign on the cross 61. Drinks with a citrus flavor 63. Scotch rejection 65. Mad color 66. Org. at 6-Down

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