Innholdsfortegnelse for May 25 - June 7, 2020 i New York Magazine

1 In the latest issue, New York explored how the current crisis will reshape higher education (“What Is College Without the Campus?,” May 11–24). As part of this special report, James D. Walsh spoke with NYU Stern School of Business professor Scott Galloway about his predictions for a future marriage of elite universities and big tech. Bonnie Keeler, an assistant professor at the University of Minnesota, tweeted, “This is the best thing I’ve read about the future of college, in times of COVID and beyond.” @ardalis added, “Long before the pandemic, it was clear to me that the current costs of higher education were going to reach a tipping point where they simply exceeded their value. So is this another area where tech will swoop in and disrupt?” @DagomarDegroot challenged…

TO CLARIFY: ERIC ADAMS has indeed left Borough Hall in the past six weeks. The Brooklyn borough president goes for walks across the street in Columbus Park, and “every day, I spend a lot of time in our hospitals and our schools—oftentimes people don’t realize those on the front lines are in constant need of supplies, and those supplies don’t get there unless someone is dropping them off.” But at night he doesn’t go back to his place in Bedford-Stuyvesant, where he lives on his own. Instead, he’s set up a mattress in front of his desk and brought in fitness gear, some spices, and his NutriBullet blender. Apart from making a couple of laundry runs, he hasn’t been home since the staff began working remotely in March. He’s not…

Born: August 1927 IN EARLY FEBRUARY, Marga Griesbach took a fall as she was packing for a cruise. In her home in Silverdale, Washington, across the sound from Seattle and the Kirkland nursing home in which COVID-19 was then silently spreading, the 92-year-old twisted too quickly while reaching for some T-shirts. As she fell, she felt her ribs crack and, for a split second, could not breathe. ¶ Though the pain was tremendous, Marga was determined not to let anything keep her from the cruise that was to take her, along with her longtime German companion, Dieter, and next-door neighbor Selma, around southern Australia, New Zealand, and Hawaii through early May. ¶ So she just kept filling her suitcase. ¶ On the 15-hour flight from Vancouver to Auckland, Marga passed…

ONE EVENING TOWARD the end of February, my phone rings and the name “Vincent Livelli” pops up on my screen. In the last year or two, a stab of fear has shot through me whenever I see Vincent’s name that it might be a neighbor calling to say he’s died. “Okay, Bliss, it’s Vince,” he says impatiently, like he’s got a busy afternoon ahead of him. “I have some information for you. You need to order face masks for you and the children because of the co-rona-virus.” He pronounces the disease slowly in his earthy Brooklyn drawl in case I haven’t heard of it. “Vincent! Hi!” I shout into the phone. He’s 99 and almost entirely deaf. “That’s all. I’ll hang up now. I love you. Bye-bye.” My husband comes…

Sister Rita: b. 1931 Sister Barbara: b. 1933 Sister Joan: b. 1931 Sister Theresa: b. 1932 Sister Margaret: b. 1936 ➝ THE SISTERS OF MOUNT SAINT VINCENT CONVENT, in the Bronx, are not inclined toward self-pity. They are much more comfortable looking outward. Many of them entered the convent as young women in the 1950s, saying no to marriage and children at a time when those things were assumed to be a woman’s calling. Instead, they took vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience and dedicated their lives to caring for their communities. SISTER JOAN BURBAGE: My days are actually exactly the same as before the pandemic. I’m an old lady! I’ve been retired for a number of years. SISTER BARBARA SROZENSKI: We have around 50 sisters here. Normally, we share…

NEGOTIATE WITH LOVED ONES Chris Voss Teaches the Art of Negotiation, $15 a month (billed annually) at masterclass.com Former FBI hostage negotiator Chris Voss teaches a MasterClass that two people we spoke to were persuaded to take by a YouTube ad. Entrepreneur Umesh Kumar told us that he assumed the class would be all about business but that it’s really about “how to enhance everyday communication.” TAKE 2018’s Most-Talked-About COLLEGE CLASS The Science of Well-being, Yale on Coursera, free at coursera.org Two years ago, a New York Magazine cover story investigated Yale’s Psychology and the Good Life with Professor Laurie Santos. Santos has since adapted the class for Coursera, which is where marketer Erin Thibeau stumbled upon it. The curriculum draws on positive psychology and behavioral science to “debunk myths…

SANDRO BOTTICELLI’S SMALL, nearly unknown 15th-century masterpiece gives us a human being stripped of all hope. The painting is a metaphysical crucible filled with the woes of the external world, invisible emotions, shame, wailing last things, cataclysmic loss, silence, final journeys, the closing down of life, demonic intensity, and the retraction of self. Often called, perfectly, La Derelitta (or “The Desperate One”), it is the saddest painting I have ever seen, though I’ve never seen it in the flesh. I first saw it in my 20s. I had talked my way into a job showing slides for art-history classes at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. The afternoon I projected it, it smote me. There’s no visual way into or out of this picture—no space. It’s all wall,…

THEY SAY I HELPED TERRORISTS set fire to the train. Not only do they have Face-book chat records with a man I now know is a recruiter, there were witnesses at the railway station who saw me walking to the train station with a package in my arms. Must have been kerosene, they say. Must have been rags, or wood for torches. Other witnesses saw me running away from the train, with no package in my arms. Though they saw no men with me, they allege that I guided men, terrorists, enemies of the country, down the unnamed lanes of my slum, to the station where the cursed train would be waiting. When I protest my innocence, they point to the seditious statements I posted on Facebook, calling my own…

“THE LAST DAY I WORKED was on March 14, the Saturday before Governor Cuomo closed New York down. I rent a workspace in Brooklyn, and no one in my building was on the same page about hygiene protocols. I was also nervous about taking the train to get there. I knew there was no way I could say for sure that none of my clients would get infected at an appointment. So I was just like, “I can’t do this,” and I canceled all the next day’s appointments. Shutting down my business was terrifying financially. And the irony is I was just getting to a good place money-wise. About a year ago, I got a divorce, and that process was finally ending. I’d also doubled my business revenue, which allowed…

MY GRANDFATHER HAD LOST one of his eyes when he was working on carpentry, but he always told me, “At least I have one eye.” Optimism! I learned that there is always something you still have that you can work with. And that has helped me a lot. Every time there is a problem, there is also an alternative. One should never lose hope. In my extended family, I see four generations. What I have learned from them is that you will never know what is going to happen, but there is always something that is going to be exciting. COVID is a great example of uncertainty, and yet the world is going to continue and go on. Beyond your expectations, beyond your fears, there is always the sunrise. I’ve…

ONE OF MY PRIMAL memories is the day of Pearl Harbor. I was 4 years old, and my father had taken me to the Buffalo Zoo, and the polar bears were acting insane. A crowd had formed around them, and they were jumping up and down and blowing water on each other and galloping around. I remember my father, who just loved animals, saying, “They must know something tremendous in the world has happened somewhere.” And that night on the radio, we heard about Pearl Harbor and then he went away to war. Since this COVID-19 has hit, I’ve wondered about everything. About life, death, and America. I think it’s the most overwhelmingly shocking event, both metaphysically and politically, that I could have imagined. Because it’s so mysterious. One doesn’t…

THERE’S SOME ADVICE I WISH I HADN’T FOLLOWED. Merce Cunningham said, “Wear weights on your ankles; it will strengthen your back,” and so I forced myself to dance and do class that way. And that was damaging my back progressively. I am going to sue Merce Cunningham. But you know, he grew up when I grew up. No one knew what to do. I had very good teachers, but the state of somatic knowledge was inchoate at that point. No one knew how to train the muscles, how to compensate for different proportions and anomalies as they do now. I had scoliosis that developed over the years from the mid’80s until 1997, when it started to impinge on the nerves in my left leg. So I hobbled around not knowing…

IT’S LIKE A BAD DREAM come true. I started off as a virologist, have read a lot about the influenza epidemic of 1918–19, and I’ve always felt a wonderment that it doesn’t happen more frequently. There are so many viruses out there in the world. Between my junior and senior years of high school, I did a visit at a mouse-research laboratory in Bar Harbor, Maine. It was on a whim, a suggestion of my mother’s. What I discovered over that summer was that the forefronts of research were available to me. I could work on a problem that no one else knew the answer to. It was a simple problem, not earthshaking in any way, but it was mine. There was a moment when I knew something that no…

Basics LOCATION 627 East 6th Street OPENED November 29, 2019 BRANDS SOLD Merritt Meacham, Poche, Gauntlett Cheng CHEAPEST ITEM Holographic heart sticker, by Maggie Lee, $2 PRICIEST PIECE Venice W. “Cotton Pad Crop Jacket With Removable Pillows,” $1,475 NOTABLE CLIENTS Dasha Nekrasova, Bobbi Salvör Menuez, Rowan Blanchard ETHOS “Quasi-punk” IN EARLY FEBRUARY, CAFÉ FORGOT, a roving store that sells appealingly weird clothing, threw a party in its newest location, a sliver of a shop in the East Village. A crowd of multi-multi-hyphenates (artists’-assistants-slash-podcast-hosts) packed the space, drinking wine in Dixie cups and trying on clothes, dressing-room curtains splayed open. Butt after curious butt slid in and out of a pair of jeans with back pockets that had been replaced with clear vinyl windows (complete with miniature tassel curtains); the artist…

NEW YORK CITY TRANSIT interim president Sarah Feinberg, 42, turns her camera for a moment to show me how deserted the 30th floor of 2 Broadway is. “It’s myself, the guy who sits at the front and lets people through the locked door,” she narrates as she pans MTA headquarters. “A woman who basically runs the office is here some days. And then our NYPD liaison is here most days. And that’s it.” The NYCTA, whose very density has been blamed for New York City’s being the epicenter of the coronavirus, is being run from a ghost town. She swivels back to her nondescript workspace: beige shades, a monitor behind her head, cherry-veneer cabinetry. Feinberg started in the office on March 2—five days before Governor Andrew Cuomo declared a state…

EACH DAY’S HEADLINES jolt us with the same unnerving reality: There has never, in the history of the Republic, been a stranger time to be old. We live in a kind of gerontocracy that feels both accidental and deeply entrenched. Our best hope for unseating the about-to-turn-74-year-old in the White House, whose reign is propped up by a terrifyingly powerful cable network that serves as the plaything of an ultrarich 89-year-old, is a former vice-president who, at 77, won the Democratic nomination over a 78-year-old senator whom young people preferred during the primaries. If elected, he will, one hopes, work effectively with the 80-year-old Speaker of the House or may, one worries, be thwarted by the truculent 78-year-old Senate majority leader. Until then, several crucial rights, including access to health…

I HAVE BEEN more or less quarantined for a couple of years. I have a pulmonary fibrosis, I have a walker, and I don’t really go out much. I just go out when my friend takes me to the doctor or the bank. So having to stay in the house is not an entirely new situation for me. Actually, I’m quite happy as far as that is concerned. With the virus, well, I’ve got a lot of feelings about that. What is working for me? I’ll tell you. I accept the theory of reincarnation. I’ve been a person that’s been interested in the so-called afterlife for most of my life. When this virus came, it was still somewhat of a shock. A plague. We all know there have been plagues…

➸ OVER THE LAST DECADE, the world of online classes has grown steadily: Platforms like Coursera and MasterClass launched with courses on everything from coding to political campaigning 101, amassing tens of millions of users. But after the pandemic forced most of the world into lockdown, the category ballooned. In a matter of days, instructors locked the doors to their studios, kitchens, and offices and moved their businesses online—to Instagram, Zoom, and beyond. (Meanwhile, it was reported in early May that MasterClass was valued at about $800 million—double its 2018 valuation.) The result is that the internet is flooded with classes. But which meditation lessons and saxophone classes are actually worth your attention? On the following pages, 23 options recommended by dozens of enthusiastic class-takers.…

Is this your first time picking up here? No, I come every Wednesday to grab chicken. When you’re a regular, the employees address you by name. It makes you feel really special hearing someone say, “Raven, your rotisserie chicken is ready,” which says a lot about how little human interaction we’re having right now. Do you live alone? I have two roommates, Brian and Izzie. They’re my good friends. And they’re a couple. We’re all making a science-fair volcano together. Have you gone on any of the dating apps? Yeah, I logged on. Half the guys are like, “Hey, done any good puzzles lately?” Then the other half are like, “Hey, you ready to break quarantine? I have a car.” Actually, those types of messages should probably be flagged by…

1. Da 5 Bloods Netflix, June 12. In what promises to be one of Spike Lee’s most ambitious films, four black vets return to Vietnam and uncover the skeletons of the past. 2. The Vast of Night Amazon, May 29. Andrew Patterson’s microbudget sci-fi debut, set in a small 1950s New Mexico community experiencing what could be an extraterrestrial encounter, might be the best discovery of this bent and broken movie year. 3. The Old Guard Netflix, July 10. Gina Prince-Bythewood (Love & Basketball) films Greg Rucka’s cult comic book about a group of immortal warriors led by Charlize Theron. 4. Relic IFC Midnight, July 10. One of the standouts at Sundance, this horror debut from Australian director Natalie Erika James is a deftly creepy drama…