Innholdsfortegnelse for September 7, 2020 i The New Yorker

My obsession with the garden and the events that take place in it began before I was familiar with that entity called consciousness. My mother taught me to read when I was very young, and she did this without telling me that there was something called the alphabet. I became familiar with words as if they were all wholly themselves, each one a world by itself, intact and self-contained, and able to be joined to other words if they wished to or if someone like me wanted them to. The book she taught me to read from was a biography of Louis Pasteur, the person she told me was responsible for her boiling the milk I drank daily, making sure that it would not infect me with something called tuberculosis.…

Betty Riddle grew up in Sarasota, Florida, in a segregated neighborhood that people back in the nineteen-sixties called Black Bottom. She was raised by her mother, Idella, in a wooden house on Central Avenue. When she was twelve, Idella was murdered—“killed by a woman over a man,” Riddle recalled—and so she moved in with her aunt. Riddle learned early how to fight. When she was fifteen years old and seven months pregnant, she stabbed a taunting rival in the eye with a hooked knife. In 1975, Riddle was convicted of assault with a deadly weapon, and given three years’ probation. After she had her baby, a daughter named Leola, she turned to drugs, especially crack cocaine. “I saw crack in everything,” she said. “Whatever I could sell, I sold.” She…

“One thing I will always be grateful to your mother for—she taught you to swim.” “Why.” Not asked as a question but groaned as a protest. Louisa does not want her father to talk about her mother. She is sick of her mother. Her mother can do nothing right. This is the theme of their new life, in Louisa’s opinion: that Louisa and her father are two fish who should leave her beached mother behind. They are making their way down the breakwater, each careful step on the heaved granite blocks one step farther from the shore. Her mother is not even on the shore, seated smiling on the sand. Her mother is shut inside the small, almost-waterfront house they are renting, most likely in bed. All summer Louisa has…

Vesper Flights, by Helen Macdonald (Grove). The sixth mass extinction—the ongoing disappearance of countless species at a blindingly rapid rate, as a result of human activity—is the subject of this masterly collection of essays. Macdonald, extending her decade-long attempt to redefine nature writing in order to capture a present that is as troubling as it is resistant to narration, trains her sights on how imperilled species, from peregrine falcons that circle skyscrapers in Manhattan to glowworms in Britain threatened by the “sodium glow of the surrounding town,” make do. Her book retains the essential wonder of classic nature writing, while, ultimately, she finds that being attuned to nature now means “opening yourself to constant grief.” Lot Six, by David Adjmi (Harper). In this witty and intimate memoir, a celebrated playwright…

The word “innocent” comes up early in the new podcast “Nice White Parents,” about separate and unequal education at a public school in Brooklyn. It’s hosted and reported by Chana Joffe-Walt, a producer for “This American Life.” In New York City, as with many places in the U.S., school segregation has long been de facto, and differences in school resources correspond closely with race; the city, in lieu of an integration plan, has focussed on “school reform,” along with an elaborate, choice-based system that involves testing, wait lists, and parental strategizing. In the series, Joffe-Walt, who is white, homes in on the insidious, sometimes unwitting role of white parents in perpetuating an unjust system that benefits their kids. The innocence we hear about, you may not be surprised to learn,…

ENGINEERING ELECTIONS I read with interest Jill Lepore’s fascinating narrative about how the Simulmatics Corporation’s early social-science research insinuated its way into John F. Kennedy’s Presidential campaign (“All the King’s Data,” August 3rd & 10th). She laments Simulmatics’s role as a political “secret weapon,” one that presaged the more sophisticated contemporary modelling that, in her words, “alienates individuals, and undermines democracy.” I see the linkage from past to present somewhat differently. The connection between Simulmatics and today’s political machinations is not in the impact that data-analytic models have on voters. Not only is there no empirical evidence that the deployment of Simulmatics’s strategies caused voters to favor Kennedy, but there are no hard data demonstrating that current attempts to mine and manipulate digital information actually achieve their desired political effect.…

In today’s hyperconnected world, it sometimes feels as though our devices are controlling us instead of the other way around. Setting limits has become a real challenge. So how can you manage your screen time and find a healthy balance? It’s simple. Try Rocco. He’s an unhinged exbouncer who smacks your devices out of your hand. First off, Rocco is crazy big. He’s got bowling-ball biceps and competes in contests where lumberjacks throw logs. No matter how much you want to check Twitter, we guarantee that you won’t be able to get your tablet back from Rocco. With his help, you’ll come to realize that sneaking one last You-Tube video isn’t worth getting slapped off the toilet. You may be asking, Doesn’t Rocco have to go home sometimes? No. Not…

Jay and Linda moved to Plateau Roadand brought with them a pair of horses:old Kahlua and his longtime mare.When her heart failed suddenly, Kahlua—a paint the color of the Mexican liqueurand swaybacked like a hammock—went on a hunger strike. Fearingthat he might die from loneliness,Jay and Linda heard about a donkeyhoused unhappily an hour north,whose spouse likewise had died.Donkeys are stoic, disguising their pain,and we know grief is pain. They hauledhim home, installed him in the barn,to see if the widowers could get along,the Odd Couple of Central Vermont.Nickolai, a Slavic name, means “victorious;conqueror of the people,” and, if that’s so,he’s won us over, my husband and me,Jody and David, Cathy and Eric, and otherlong-marrieds of Peck Hill Road.Driving to town for groceries and gas,I shift my Subaru into neutralto…

As Basho has said —it is a narrow road to the Deep North — as Mandela has saidthe haphazard segregation later became a well-orchestrated segregation— as Basho has said the journey began with an attained awarenessthat at any moment you can become a weather-exposed skeleton— think of us in this mannerthese are notes for your nourishment — hold themas bowls of kindnessfrom journeys of braverythe will to seek & find the sudden turning rivers & the dawn-eyedfreedom…

SEPTEMBER 2 – 8, 2020 One of the silver linings of the pause in New York City has been seeing harried pedestrians become masked flâneurs, discovering the pleasures of walking for its own sake. The High Line was created for exactly that purpose—an elevated stroll in the fresh air, enhanced by outdoor art and sustainable landscaping. Of course, some people would rather just kick off their shoes and lean back. A portion of the park is now open daily, from noon to 8 p.m., with timed tickets available on the High Line app and Web site. PODCASTS American Rehab The first serialized offering from the veteran investigative podcast “Reveal,” hosted by Al Letson and reported by Shoshana Walter, Laura Starecheski, and Ike Sriskandarajah, is a knockout—a riveting eight-episode exposé of…

When a certain breed of New Yorker dies, specialists are summoned: attorneys, accountants, appraisers, auctioneers, and, sometimes, Alan Bloom. Among those who settle estates, Bloom is known as a broom-sweep. He is the final step in emptying a home, coming in after other dealers have had their pick. Along with antiques and collectibles, Bloom takes tired appliances, old clothes, used medical equipment, and any food left in the refrigerator. In the world of high-end clearance sales, he is the seeded sandwich roll to Sotheby’s mille-feuille. One afternoon, not long before the city shut down, Daisy Edelson welcomed Bloom to the Emery Roth building on West End Avenue where she and her two sisters grew up. Her parents bought their “classic nine” floor-through apartment in 1965. Her father, Gilbert, lived there…

In 1953, Marilyn Monroe asked her longtime makeup artist Allan Snyder to sneak into the hospital where she was briefly admitted after filming “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes,” so that he could powder her nose. According to Snyder, Monroe also asked that he do the same after her death, and gave him an engraved money clip to remind him to get to her while she was “still warm.” In 1962, Snyder touched up Monroe’s visage for her funeral, and served as one of her pallbearers. Not long ago, Mario Dedivanovic, who has spent twelve years painting the face of the reality-TV mogul Kim Kardashian West, and who considers Snyder a spiritual mentor, texted me an article from a women’s magazine revealing Snyder’s “eight beauty secrets.” He noted that Snyder had used…

I wonder how they were dressed when they were put in the ground. Trayvon and Breonna and George. Each was born or mostly reared in the American South, an area defined as much by its powerful aesthetic as by its racial segregation, a place where people of color wear their culture on their backs, like a second skin, and a statement: This is a synthesis of all that is American, of all that we are and that you are, too. This is how we do. Given the importance of self-presentation in that part of the world, the correctness of John Lewis’s suit as he was beaten in Alabama, or the fall of his coat as he and other freedom fighters were gassed in Tennessee, or the sharp brim of Martin…