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A Journal of the Plague Year 2020–chapter 110

Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il at the Mansu Hill monument near Pyongyang.

Wednesday, July 8

Who will be memorialized in Trump’s “National Garden of American Heroes”? And even more importantly, just how big and prominent will Trump’s statue of himself be?

Last Friday, Trump issued an executive order concerning his planned memorial park, noting that there will be statues of several presidents and others including Davy Crockett, Amelia Earhart, Billy Graham, Harriet Tubman and Orville and Wilbur Wright. Oh, and Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia.

Except for Scalia and maybe Tubman, it’s the kind of list that could have been put together for a junior-high term paper on the basis of 1950s television shows, especially those of Walt Disney.

I assume the statue of Orange Man will be executed by a Russian sculptor, surely the same guy who will be doing one of Putin. Or what about a North Korean artist? They understand what’s wanted.

But the problem with statues is they can be smashed or removed—and they invite graffiti and pigeon poop. In Russia, as the Berlin Wall fell, a statue of secret police boss Feliks Dzerzhinsky was dashed to the ground alongside a pink granite statue of Stalin, his face smashed by hammer blows. There are probably warehouses filled with such East Bloc relics, from the Albanian leader Enver Hoxha to the Romanian Nicolae Ceaușescu. (Many of Russia’s are now back in Moscow’s not-altogether-reverent 24-hectare Muzeon Park of Arts, the world’s largest open-air sculpture park.)

I would expect Trump’s park to include likenesses of Jared and Ivanka. And, hey, what about this: product placement! Ivanka could be carrying her $1,540 Max Mara handbag. Jared could have on Ermenegildo Zegna shoes and a Hermes tie. All proceeds could go to charity—such as the Trump Foundation!

And wasn’t this all brought about by the removal of statues of Confederate generals such as Robert E. Lee and Nathan Bedford Forrest? Those marble guys are looking for new homes—and what could be better than MAGA park?

Dinner: hamburgers, grilled eggplant, onion, and bell peppers, and corn on the cob.

Entertainment: more episodes of the Britbox thriller The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher.

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A Journal of the Plague Year 2020–chapter 109

Bring me my Chariot of fire!

Monday, July 6

I just returned from taking the car to the Subaru dealer. It’s due for an oil change and NY State Inspection, and I received a letter from Subaru headquarters of a parts recall: It seems the fuel pump must be replaced. 

Two sentences worthy of General Jack D. Ripper inform me that  “your vehicle may be equipped with a low-pressure fuel pump assembled with an impeller that may become deformed. Over time, the impeller may become deformed enough to interfere with the body of the fuel pump, potentially causing the low-pressure fuel pump to become inoperative.”

In other words, terminate the old fuel pump…”terminate with extreme prejudice.”

So I left my car there for fixin’ and drove back in a loaner Subaru Forester. The replacement continues the manufacturer’s hyperactive tendency toward feature creep—this one has a push button ignition that takes some getting used to. The radio has a mind of its own. To turn it off, it’s not enough to press the on-off button. You have to open the driver’s side door.

The dealership, meanwhile, surprised me by seeming quite pandemic-ready. Everyone had face masks. I was instructed to wait outside until there were fewer customers waiting inside. There was plenty of social distancing complete with boxes marked on the floor indicating just where customers should stand. They ensured me that the loaner had been disinfected and that my car will be disinfected before they return it. I needn’t pick up my car until tomorrow—it was a one-and-a-half hour drive over to Riverhead—at which time I can return the loaner. 

But I can’t keep the loaner beyond 48 hours and must return it with the same amount of gasoline it had when I took possession. Hey, will the budget brand Coastal gas be OK? You bet.

On the way back home, I stopped at the Water Mill farm stand we have regularly visited over the years. They had plenty of everything—I got four ears of corn plus some sugar-snap peas. The weeks have coasted past so quickly that I hardly expected to see summer produce there. Again, both customers and workers had face masks. And there was lots of Plexiglas dividing cashiers from customers. The Plexiglas makers must be raking in the dough.

Tonight’s dinner: leftover chicken paprikash, pasta, and a lettuce, cucumber, and radish salad.

Entertainment: We’ve had severe troubles connecting to the Internet over the past few days, probably due to the large number of people out here, jamming up the Wi-Fi space. We finally watched the last few minutes of season three of Broadchurch on Sunday night. We’ll have to see how it goes tonight—there may be nothing doing.

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A Journal of the Plague Year 2020–chapter 108

Spooky times.

Friday, July 3

Independent journalist I.F. Stone called them “the Haunted Fifties.” True enough, the decade at the middle of the 20th century was haunted by the bruising previous eras of The Great Depression and World War II.  The 1950s, of course, were a time when Americans longed for calm, for prosperity, and to get back to something like “normalcy.” By public acclamation, then, the ‘50s were desired to be a transitional time.

Stone saw little to be calm about. To him, the specter of nuclear annihilation loomed over everything. “How free are men who can be blown off the map at any moment without their permission?” he asked.

Ours is surely another transitional time. Call it, then, the Haunted 2020s.

If the presidential polls are to be believed, a considerable majority of Americans want to get back to calmer times—free of Trumpian name-calling and vacuity, released from the threat of death by pandemic or by police brutality. A CNN poll shows Biden leading trump by 55% to 41%.

If Trump called out to “Make America Great Again,” surely Biden’s appeal is merely to “Make America Calm Again.”

New York Times writer Thomas Friedman recently suggested that Biden’s bumper sticker should be: “Respect science, respect nature, respect each other.”

Do unto others as you would have them do unto you—with a bit of Teddy Roosevelt-like nature worship and Jonas Salk-like respecting of science. If that’s not true conservatism, I don’t know what it is.

Unfortunately, neither science nor nature is likely to allow us to go backwards. We face a future of more coronaviruses, rising ethnic strife, and an unwillingness by police to loosen their grip on local budgets and/or brute power.

The haunting of the 2020s may lead to a haunting of the remainder of the 21st century.

I believe that Trump would lose an election—so therefore he’s unlikely to allow one to happen. He may at last recognize the existence of the pandemic…when it can benefit him. The Department of Homeland security is likely to say that, under the current infectious conditions, no election can take place. Besides, mail-in ballots or electronic voting only lead to election fraud. We had better put off any kind of balloting.

Meanwhile, Bill Barr might announce that his department has found the Democrats in general and Joe Biden in particular are engaged in a monstrous, dark conspiracy to rig the voting. Biden will be indicted. A show trial will proceed, followed by large-scale incarceration.

Who would stop it? The beleaguered and generally pissed-off police? Why would they? Trump is on their side.

Dinner: eggplant with tomato sauce and parmesan, potato salad, and a lettuce and avocado salad.

Entertainment: Episodes from season three of Broadchurch.

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A Journal of the Plague Year 2020–chapter 107

Wednesday, July 1

More frightening stats that have come to my attention: 

The number of new cases in the United States has shot up by 80 percent in the past two weeks, according to a New York Times database.

More than 48,000 coronavirus cases were announced across the United States on Tuesday, the most of any day of the pandemic. Officials in eight states—Alaska, Arizona, California, Georgia, Idaho, Oklahoma, South Carolina and Texas—also announced single-day highs.

New York added visiting citizens from eight states—California, Georgia, Idaho, Iowa, Louisiana, Mississippi, Nevada and Tennessee—to a must-quarantine list that already included Alabama, Arkansas, Arizona, Florida, North Carolina, South Carolina, Texas and Utah.

New Jersey and Connecticut are advising travelers from the 16 states to quarantine.

Dr. Anthony Fauci says the U.S. is now having 40,000 new cases appear each day, and that that number could go up to 100,000 per day.

He also believes that many anti-vaccine Americans could refuse to get inoculated if and when a vaccine is made available. Seven out of ten citizens, however, say that they will get inoculated if the vaccine is free and available to everyone.

If, as the maps seem to indicate, the bulk of the new cases are appearing in so-called red states, where anti-science sentiment is the most intense, there’s a temptation to think that such people deserve what they are getting. But, it’s important that everyone recognize that we’re all in this together—that like it or not, this thing has to be stamped out everywhere or it will just keep reoccurring everywhere. 

Our next Peapod delivery is scheduled for between 5:33 and 7:33. Why this exactitude? Perhaps Peapod is a subsidiary of the Pentagon. Maybe, I think, the delivery guys will show up wearing military fatigues and carrying automatic weapons. 

Instead, it’s just the usual mystifying hit-and-miss delivery. We still can’t get various items, such as charcoal, and even stuff they had before, such as fresh spinach, is now said to be out-of-stock. Go figure.

Dinner: hot dogs, sauerkraut, and American Picnic Potato Salad, courtesy of the Silver Palate Cookbook.

Entertainment: Britbox’ very odd The Seven Dials Mystery.

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A Journal of the Plague Year 2020–chapter 106

Around Jack’s Coffee, precautions remain ongoing.

Tuesday, June 30

States that had eased off of the lockdown are reimposing restrictions. In the U.S., the pandemic appears to be reasserting itself, and this has us pondering what the months ahead hold. 

On June 29, Suffolk County reported its first 24-hour period without a COVID-19 death since June 12.

Meanwhile, there were 46 new reported cases in Manhattan on June 27, and a total of 26,707 cases in that borough during the pandemic. A pilot program has only now gotten underway, selling face masks and hand sanitizer from vending machines in subway stations. So the end is not in sight.

We figure that we’ll probably hang on in East Hampton until the fall at least. Perhaps in September, we’ll go back to the city, at least to pick up more clothing, perhaps the computer printer, and kitchen equipment and spices. Then after a few days, we could well turn around and come back here.

There’s been talk for a while of a second wave of COVID-19. No one knows anything, but that second wave might come in the fall or winter.

Deep winter months out here—and I mean January through March—can be a tad bleak. Would we really want to be here, especially if it’s a harsh winter? But there’s really no place else for us to go…

As an adult, I’ve never before lived through a crisis at all like this. It’s so open-ended, so unclear when there might be any resolution. Our national expert, Dr. Anthony Fauci, still maintains that there will be a vaccine by the end of the year. But even if that’s true, just how will it be administered? Who will get first dibs? For the time being, everything is up for grabs.

I might have died in the mid-1950s polio epidemic that claimed my sister, but I didn’t. I was only a child, and had little sense of the passage of time. But in my recollection, the vaccines that appeared within a few years meant an end to the crisis…of which I was mostly unaware anyway.

In the 1960s and ‘70s, the Vietnam War seemed to go on and on, year after year. Always more escalation, no real resolution in sight. More and more deaths. But neither I nor anyone I knew very well was directly involved. Other political crises—Watergate for instance—came to a head after some months and then ended without violence. 

The days after 9-11 could have included more terrorist events—but they didn’t. Instead, the Bush Administration used the attacks to generate wars in other parts of the world. And those went on and on—the Afghanistan conflict is still continuing. But again, I’ve never been directly affected.

So as I am writing this, I realize that I have lived through other open-ended, slow-to-be-resolved crises—I simply wasn’t very affected personally. Yes, the periods were worrisome, frustrating, even maddening. But I never imagined that I would die as a result. 

This time is pretty different in that regard: I went out this morning to buy more coffee, and I was anxious the whole time I spent in Jack’s Coffee store. Was I standing too close to others? Were they too close to me? I hate the masks—you can’t make yourself understood, nor can you breathe very well. But get used to them. We’ll probably have to wear masks for a long time to come.

Dinner: leftover spaghetti with meatballs and a lettuce salad.

Entertainment: Final episodes of Alias Grace.

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A Journal of the Plague Year 2020–chapter 105

Already obsolete? The newish Hudson Yards project in Manhattan.

Monday, June 29

Having wondered about how our Manhattan building is coping, I began looking for visions of how cities should adapt to a pandemic-heavy future. It turns out there’s some cogitation going on—although much is still at the head-scratching stage.

As you might expect, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology is quite involved. The MIT Senseable City Lab and its Alm Lab are busy placing sensors in various world cities—and collecting data from global sewers. “A vast reservoir of information on human health and behavior lives in our sewage,” proclaims one project website. It foresees “a future in which sewage is mined for real-time information. Insights on eating habits, genetic tendencies, drug consumption, contagious diseases and overall health lie in the sewage system.”

So beyond a world peppered with CCTV monitors, there is a future world in which sensors poke through our filth in order to respond to coming crises. One pilot study involved a 24-hour sampling of stuff from a Cambridge, Mass. manhole. There researchers found and sorted more than 4,000 different bacteria.

There’s also a lot of attention being paid to “sustainable cities”—those with plenty of green space, more bike lanes, and less congested transit systems. But we’ve already heard a lot about that in New York City. In my opinion, it’s very much a work in progress, and at the moment it just means more traffic congestion and more accident-prone streets. Trucks double park in bike lanes. Pedestrians run for their lives across bus lanes and one-way thoroughfares. Dog-walkers and bird-watchers arm-wrestle for space in the park. 

Say what you will about Singapore’s “therapeutic gardens,” serene greenery won’t do that much to ward off the next COVID crisis. Shouldn’t social distancing and some disinfecting mechanism be built-in to future development?

Unsurprisingly, most of the world appears to be going in the wrong direction. “In 10 years, an estimated 20% of the world’s population will live in urban environments with a limited access to appropriate water, health, and sanitation infrastructures,” says one Harvard public-health lecturer quoted by the BBC.

Urban farming? Refashioning neighborhoods so that everything one needs, from groceries to health care to exercise, is no more than 20 minutes away? Unless we abandon our current cities and build altogether new ones, that all seems a tad unreal. 

But perhaps not to the Onassis Foundation, which is sponsoring a new Pandemic Architecture competition, soliciting proposals for city design that take account of pandemic dangers. At this point, the effort is more about raising questions than offering potential solutions. But it is a new undertaking—maybe something will come of it.

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A Journal of the Plague Year 2020–chapter 104

No elevator pitches, please.

Sunday, June 28

Life back in our Manhattan apartment building must seem right out of dystopian science fiction. Two New York Times articles today highlight the issues.

One article says that for two crucial months this past winter, scientists regularly underestimated the impact of symptomless carriers. “Models using data from Hong Kong, Singapore, and China suggest that 30 to 60 percent of spreading occurs when people have no symptoms,” says the Times.

A primary illustration involves a woman from China who traveled to Germany in January, where she attended two days of long meetings. She only began feeling sick on her flight back home, but even then attributed her headaches and chills to jet lag. Back in Munich, eight people were shortly hospitalized with the coronavirus. Ultimately, 16 infected Germans were identified and, thanks to rapid response, all survived. “Aggressive testing and flawless contact-tracing contained the spread,” says the article.

But how do you avoid infected people if they show no symptoms? The only way is to avoid all people, isn’t it?

Another Times piece examines just how elevator traffic should be managed now that many Manhattan businesses are reopening. If an appropriate social distance between individuals is six feet, how many elevators can make that possible? Not many, of course.

New York state standards require most commercial buildings to have elevators measuring at least 4 feet 3 inches by roughly 5 feet 8 inches. That leaves people standing about four feet apart.

But no talking!

Consultants advise a limit of four people per elevator. But lots of buildings and companies will simply place the onus on individuals. “We recommend using your best judgment,” says one real estate operations executive. Sure—you be the judge. Meanwhile, your boss is waiting for you in a meeting upstairs.

In our residential building, it is already common for there to be lines of people waiting in the lobby for an elevator to arrive. Some of these people have dogs with them; others have bags of groceries or stuff; several will be yakking away on their mobile phones. Then the elevator arrives and everyone jockeys to get onboard.

It’s an episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm played for real. Imagine numerous aggressive and whining Larry Davids as your neighbors. Arriving at their floors, they push past you to get in or out of the elevator. And we have to make our way up to the 18th floor.

Our building has only two passenger elevators and no freight elevator. So it’s also common for one elevator to be “in service,” with movers bringing furniture in or out of the building or maybe building staff taking big bags of garbage out to the curbside. 

Just waiting around in the lobby, where it’s hard to imagine proper social distancing, will be hazardous. And New Yorkers aren’t the most patient or deferential of people. Oh, you go next—after you, after you. 

Sure.

There are stairs—two flights will get you from one floor up or down to the next. I negotiated the stairs a lot during Hurricane Sandy back in 2012. Going down ain’t great. As your legs and ankles get tired, it’s easy to stumble. Going up is truly punishing—four floors, and you’re huffing as if you’ve been in a mini-marathon.

You could just stay in your apartment, but what about food and other necessities? Will the doorman allow delivery people to bring stuff upstairs? 

There are people we could telephone to find out just how these things are being handled right now. But it feels awkward to get in touch. Oh, so you want to know exactly what, Mr. East Hampton refugee?

Dinner: chicken salad with apples, walnuts and mayo, plus a sugar snap pea stir fry with scallions and Asian seasonings.

Entertainment: A streaming video from the Film Forum, Jean-Pierre Melville’s When You Read This Letter.

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A Journal of the Plague Year 2020–chapter 103

Swedish writers Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo.

Saturday, June 27

“ ‘Justifiable homicide,’ ” said Allwright. “How do you say that in Swedish?”
“It’s untranslatable,” said Martin Beck.
“There is no such concept,” Kollberg said.
“You’re wrong about that,” Allwright said, and laughed. “They’ve got it in the States, believe you me. Just let a policeman shoot somebody, and it’s always ‘justifiable homicide.’ Legitimate murder, or whatever we’d call it in Swedish. It happens every day.”
—Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo, Polismordaren  (1974)

So some Europeans have been on to us, with our peculiar institutions, for 40-odd years. But who are the Swedes, with their increasingly popular and very bloody “Scandi noir” fiction, to preach?

In cinematic depictions, police activity in Sweden, Denmark, or Norway is often marked by squads of black uniformed, Kevlar-padded, automatic-weaponed cops closing in on suspected evildoers. In such fiction, the contrast between the heavily armed Scandi cops and often unarmed Brits like Inspector Lewis or Chief Inspector Vera Stanhope is very striking. Has Sweden become more violent, and more heavily policed, since the 1970s?

In an article on Sweden from two years back, Politico reported that “Shootings in the country have become so common that they don’t make top headlines anymore, unless they are spectacular or lead to fatalities.” Norwegians disparage their trigger-happy neighbor, commonly using the phrase “Swedish conditions” to describe crime and social unrest. Crime is closely linked to Sweden’s failure to integrate the immigrants it has allowed, more per capita than any other EU country. Immigrants now make up a quarter of the Swedish population.

Denmark, in contrast, has been noticeably unwelcoming to immigrants. It is one of six Schengen-area countries that tightened its borders, contrary to EU protocol, and has deported lots of asylum-seekers and would-be immigrants. In 2018, its government even went so far as to begin moving undesired immigrants to a remote uninhabited island once used for contagious animals.

That country’s admirable social contract seems to rest upon the fact of a less diverse population. What American wouldn’t envy the Danes’ benefits as summarized in The New York Times: “free health care, free education from kindergarten through college, subsidized high-quality preschool, a very strong social safety net and very low levels of poverty, homelessness, crime and inequality”? But must such goodies come at the cost of ethnic diversity?

Denmark has also been much more effective in fighting the pandemic than Sweden. A combination of lots of testing and government subsidies to keep employees on payrolls has meant a COVID-19 death rate that’s less than one-third of Sweden’s. The pandemic continues in Sweden, which never closed its schools or restaurants and has had five times as many deaths as its Scandi neighbors combined. Recently, Denmark, Norway, and Finland all closed their borders to Swedes, as did the Netherlands and Cyprus. Greece requires visiting Swedes to produce a health certificate.

So what’s my point in all this? Sweden, unlike its neighbors, seems to be evolving in the direction of the U.S.: more crime accompanied by fewer restrictions on the population and on the economy—all at the cost of placing people at greater risk.

The authors of the Martin Beck detective novels, Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo, were already unhappy with the direction of Sweden in the 1960s and ‘70s. They spoke of their Social Democratic government’s “anti-humanitarian cynicism” partially disguised by its proclaimed goal of A More Compassionate Society. Today, they would likely be even more disenchanted.

Dinner: leftover black beans and rice, a lettuce salad with cucumber, radish, and avocado.

Entertainment: One episode of Netflix’ German series Dark–which we deemed too weird and supernaturally oriented. Then an episode of the Margaret Atwood adaptation Alias Grace, which is terrific. We paid for but were unable to load a streaming video from the Film Forum, Jean-Pierre Melville’s When You Read This Letter. Poor streaming reception has led us to cancel our subscription to Acorn. Both Mhz and Britbox have almost no new shows, so they may be next.

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A Journal of the Plague Year 2020–chapter 102

Born in the U.S.A.

Thursday, June 25

In Mexico during the 1980s, I encountered other travelers from a variety of places—England, New Orleans, you name it. Among them were two women who seemed a bit withdrawn, prickly, even unfriendly. They spoke English, but with an accent that I couldn’t easily place. After a while it came out: They were South African.

They could have had any number of reasons for staying a bit apart. But I believed that they were embarrassed by their country’s policy of racial oppression, apartheid. Maybe they were secret supporters of the liberation struggle. Maybe Nelson Mandela was a family friend. Who knows? But I think they felt that non-South Africans would regard them as something like neo-Nazis. They probably felt themselves to be pariahs—people who others would shun once their nationality became known.

This could be the fate facing Americans if we ever travel again. 

The European Union is preparing to ban American travelers when it reopens its borders on July 1, lumping the U.S. in with Russia and Brazil in terms of countries that have failed to stop the spread of the coronavirus. First, the U.S. banned EU tourists in mid-March, angering political leaders. Now, Europe has largely contained COVID-19, while new cases in the U.S. are increasing in number. Sweet revenge will prevail, as John Prine once sang.

The EU is considering two draft lists of permissible travelers, and U.S. tourists are included on neither, according to The New York Times.

Moreover, Trump’s disgraceful behavior, and that of his yobbish fans, is sufficient reason for non-Americans to regard us warily. Oh, they may well think: You are the type of people who automatically regard Mexicans as rapists and Central Americans as diseased. Maybe you too hate Angela Merkel and Justin Trudeau while admiring Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong-un.

We were in Scotland a few years ago, and we rushed to make it clear to our B&B hosts and others that we were non-fans of the Orange man. I think they accepted what we said, and quickly changed the subject to an explanation of Scottish ways and a discussion of places we might like to visit. Oh, are you golfers? We had to make it clear that we weren’t—another reason to find us objectionable.

So, compatriots, steel yourselves for Ugly American status.  Maybe you could wear a Black Lives Matter T-shirt or attach a Bernie Sanders bumper sticker onto your rental car. Or maybe COVID-19 will prevent you from ever again traveling abroad.

Tonight’s dinner: Black beans and rice, lettuce and avocado salad.

Entertainment: Concluding episodes of season two of Broadchurch.

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A Journal of the Plague Year 2020–chapter 101

“Chinatown dance rock” group “The Slants.”

Wednesday, June 24

Emily has been taking online Continuing Legal Education courses. (All lawyers must accumulate 24 CLE credits per year, and she now has 14.) Most of these are dull, little videoed lectures delivered by lawyers who should, in many cases, avoid all microphones. I ask her if she chooses the lectures based on their potential for humor. No, she says, you generally cannot tell what the tone will be.

A case in point is the course she just took. “Government Regulation of Hate Speech” turns out to be a discussion of cases involving outrageous branding and trademark law. Could a San Francisco girl-biker group trademark its name, “Dykes On Bikes”? What about an Asian rock band, “The Slants”? Are these names invidious and thus undeserving of intellectual-property protection? What protection does trademark afford such groups, anyway?

This course was a bit like a George Carlin routine. There is something inherently funny about discussing an outrageous subject from a bureaucratic or legalistic perspective. That was the nature of Carlin’s classic monologue “Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television.” The monologue gave him an excuse for saying the words—shit, piss, fuck, cunt, cocksucker, motherfucker, and tits—again and again, on television.

Carlin was arrested in 1972 for delivering the monologue. In 1978, the U.S. Supreme Court considered whether a radio broadcast of Carlin’s monologue merited an F.C.C. complaint that could have resulted in penalties against the station. 

According to The Atlantic, “The majority decision stated that the FCC was justified in deciding what’s ‘indecent,’ saying the Carlin act was ‘indecent but not obscene.’ The Court ruled that because Carlin’s routine was broadcast on the radio, during the day, it did not have as much First Amendment protection.”

Years later, you still couldn’t say the forbidden words on broadcast TV. But the rise of anything-goes cable TV along with the Internet has made the ruling pretty much moot.

Hate speech is another matter. Defamatory words are not allowed in trademarks, but violations of the First Amendment aren’t allowed either. In the case known as Matal v. Tam, the Supreme Court, in an opinion written by Justice Samuel Alito, ruled the Trademark Act’s clause regarding disparaging language was a violation of the First Amendment. Thus the group could register the racist slur “The Slants” as its name. (FYI, the group has a well-regarded album “Slanted Eyes, Slanted Hearts.”)

I’m looking forward to seeing a YouTube video of these musical folks. Dykes On Bikes is inherently funny too. I said to Emily that of course they are based in San Francisco—had they been from Des Moines, they’d have felt compelled to move to the Bay Area.

Dinner: leftover balsamic chicken with mushrooms, couscous, and a lettuce and avocado salad.

Entertainment: Episodes from season two of Broadchurch.