Keith's note: NASAWatch turns 24 on 1 Apr 2020. It started as "NASA RIFWatch" on 1 Apr 1996 and was first hosted on a Mac Classic II on an ISDN line in my little condo in Reston, Virginia (see 20 Years Ago Today: The Seeds of NASAWatch). Here a few things from those early days that are still online:
Just to show you how things have changed, this photo should shock a few of you ... (well worth a click) - and no, it is not an April Fool's joke. Today, some up and coming bloggers and digeratti love to throw snark at me just like I threw it at Dan Goldin back in the day. Life is funny like that.
Those of you who have followed my 'other' exploits will know that I have had a certain interest in doing online updates from distant and extreme locations (Devon Island, Everest Base Camp, etc.). This website (still online), "The McMurdo Dry Valleys Long-Term Research Project - Life in Extreme Environments; An Antarctic Field Journal", done with my friend Dale Andersen, was one of the very earliest - possibly the first - website actually updated from Antarctica.
People have been asking me to look back on things and pick the events that are most memorable. After all I have spent nearly 1/3 of my life running this damn thing. I have been given many chances to do things because of my peculiar notoriety. This shaky video, done live with my friend Miles O'Brien in 2009 - about our mutual friend Scott Parazynski - while this picture was being taken - is the one singular moment where it all came together. I wrote about it here: "My Star Trek Episode at Everest".
Thanks to all of you for stopping by for the past 24 years. Let's all hope we're here for the 25th anniversary.
Is this asteroid Arrokoth or a potato? Perhaps, after all the data was beamed back to Earth from NASA's robotic New Horizons spacecraft, the featured high resolution image of asteroid Arrokoth was constructed. Perhaps, alternatively, the featured image is of a potato. Let's consider some facts. Arrokoth is the most distant asteroid ever visited and a surviving remnant of the early years of our Solar System. A potato is a root vegetable that you can eat. Happy April Fool's Day from the folks at APOD! Although asteroid Arrokoth may look like a potato, in fact very much like the featured potato, Arrokoth (formerly known as Ultima Thule) is about 200,000 times wider and much harder to eat. via NASA https://ift.tt/2UQHooB
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Episode Notes
On the Gist, let the experts speak.
In the interview, Mike speaks with three self-identified extroverts about what it’s like to live in isolation. Amanda Mull of the Atlantic, author Stephen Witt, and host of the Unorthodox podcast Mark Oppenheimer, join Mike to talk about how stifling it can be to remain indoors, how they’re coping, and what they plan to do once it’s all over.
Russell Wilson covered in slime during Nickelodeon Kids’ Choice Sports Awards 2017 at Pauley Pavilion on July 13, 2017, in Los Angeles.
Frederick M. Brown/Getty Images
In the midst of a devastating pandemic, few things are less important than previews of what the television schedule will look like 10 months from now. But the NFL has been living in its own protective bubble throughout the coronavirus outbreak, and on Tuesday, the league announced an expanded playoff format for the 2020 season, a result of the new collective bargaining agreement between owners and players. Fourteen teams will now compete in the playoffs (up from 12), and two additional Wild Card games are scheduled for Jan. 10. Naturally, all this depends on whether gatherings of 10 or more people will be legal come January.
NBC is airing one of the additional Wild Card games, and the network will simulcast it on both its streaming service and Telemundo. CBS has the other game, and a separately produced version of it will be broadcast on kids cable network Nickelodeon.
“The youth demographic is very important,” NFL executive vice president Brian Rolapp told reporters on Tuesday. “There are plenty of young fans, and we want to continue to bring the game to the young fans.”
This plan raises more than a few questions. Does the NFL fear it is headed down the same path as baseball, which has struggled to attract young viewers? Can football, an astoundingly violent and complicated sport, be repackaged for children? Should it?
There are no specifics yet about how, exactly, the NFL and Nickelodeon plan to tailor a playoff game 4 kidz, including whether the word “for” will be replaced with its numerical counterpart and if they will use the letter z in place of s. As someone who grew up with Nickelodeon, I feel like I can provide some helpful suggestions.
—When a player gets taken to the blue tent for concussion protocol, cut to Linda Ellerbee so everyone knows it’s serious.
—Mike Pereira has decades of officiating experience, but when it comes to explaining needlessly complex rules to an immature audience, no one does it better than Moe. Get her in front of the Aggro Crag and have her do her thing.
Guts.
Screengrab via YouTube.
—Replace the medical cart with The Mystery Machine. Do kids still watch Scooby Doo? They should.
—You know the somber music they play when going to commercial after someone suffers a catastrophic injury? Play the Salute Your Shorts theme song instead.
—T.J. and J.J. Watt vs. the Bosa Brothers in a Family Double Dare–style race down the Sundae Slide. Losers jump into a giant bowl of spaghetti with Bill and Stephen Belichick.
—Lose a coach’s challenge and get slimed. Win, and the coach goes to Space Camp.
—Ms. Frizzle shrinks down her class and travels into a retired lineman’s brain to show the effects of CTE. (The NFL will wait nearly a decade to recognize Frizzle’s study.)
—You can probably tell by my references that I don’t know much about current-day Nickelodeon. (Not to mention the fact that The Magic School Bus and Scooby-Doo weren’t even on Nickelodeon.) I’m happy to update these ideas for a hipper, modern audience. Surely there are a bunch of new Nickelodeon shows about the internet or whatever—maybe get the star of one of those to do play-by-play? It’s either that or have Jim Nantz do TikTok dances for 3 straight hours.
—Let Andy Reid try all the obstacle courses from Legends of the Hidden Temple.
I urge the league and the network to seriously consider that last suggestion in particular. January is a long way away; we need something to look forward to.
California Governor Gavin Newsom speaks in front of the hospital ship USNS Mercy after it arrived into the Port of Los Angeles on March 27, 2020.
Carolyn Cole/Getty Images
On Tuesday, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo used his daily coronavirus press briefing to chastise his younger brother, CNN anchor Chris Cuomo—who has now been diagnosed with a case of COVID-19—for having allowed their 88-year-old mother to visit his house. “My brother’s smart, he was acting out of love, luckily we caught it early enough,” Cuomo said. “But it’s my family, it’s your family, it’s all of our families. And this virus is that insidious and we have to keep that in mind.”
The episode—vivid, personal, and making a specific point about the dangers of COVID-19—captured what has made Cuomo and his press conferences the most visible counterpoint to President Trump’s daily briefings. While the federal response led by President Donald Trump largely sought to keep the public in the dark about the extent of the crisis, Cuomo’s briefings are hailed as the most reliable source of public information in the country.
But in recent days, it’s become clearer and clearer that Cuomo’s initial response to the crisis lagged behind that of some of his fellow Democratic governors—most notably Washington’s Jay Inslee and California’s Gavin Newsom. Newsom and Inslee both reacted more swiftly and forcefully to the crisis in ways that are saving lives on the West Coast, yet it’s Cuomo who is being hailed as a possible future president and strong national leader.
Both Los Angeles and San Francisco had their first cases—and deaths—weeks before New York, but New York has quickly become the global center of the pandemic while the situation in California has remained comparatively calm for now. From the point of each state’s 10th death and 100th case (testing has been more sporadic in California, so it’s not fair to compare overall positive tests necessarily) New York’s case load and number of deaths have accelerated more steadily and rapidly. While the vastly greater density of New York City versus California’s major metropolitan areas partially explains this course, it is likely that California’s more aggressive and swifter social distancing actions helped as well.
In an elementary demonstration of additional seriousness with which Newsom has taken social distancing, his own daily briefings are done by teleconference rather than the in-person press conferences Cuomo has continued. Even with the disadvantage of the remote format, though, Newsom’s actions and style are less suited for successful political theater.
During these much drier Newsom tele-press conferences, the California governor has played up a brand as a technocrat, focusing on partnerships with Silicon Valley businesses in coming up with ways for the state to prepare for its own looming coronavirus onslaught. On Monday, for instance, he boasted that community surveillance based upon user-shared data from Silicon Valley firms has helped guide the state’s decisions. “Working with Esri, working with Bluedot, working with Facebook, Apple, and others we have our modeling that is done on a daily basis based upon these patterns as well as patterns around the rest of the country and the rest of the world,” he said. Data assessment is the way out of the crisis, but it is not particularly dramatic.
By contrast, Cuomo’s comfort playing on his famous last name, his family political dynasty, and his apparent touch for personal narrative often make the press conferences deeply entertaining.
But Cuomo begins these press conferences with facts: slides showing the daily number of cases, hospitalizations, intensive care unit intakes, and deaths across the state of New York and broken down by locality. He then describes the on-the-ground situation with specific numbers of what protective personal equipment and life-saving ventilators exist on the ground in New York, what the state still needs, when the projected need will be highest, and what the state is doing and will need to do in order to prevent a worst-case scenario where New Yorkers see health care rationed for people who might die without aide.
After flatly refusing on Tuesday to offer a “protocol” for rationing health care, Cuomo reassured New Yorkers that he was trying to do all that was necessary to meet an anticipated need of 20,000 to 40,000 ventilators in the coming seven days to three weeks despite an intense scarcity that has been exacerbated by the federal government’s lack of action.
“We’re creative and we’re working and figuring it out and I still am hopeful that at the end of the day we will have what we need,” he said after listing several back-up plans for ventilator usage.
Cuomo’s performance is succeeding with the people of his state—on Monday it was reported that his approval rating is up to 87 percent. Trump’s nationwide approval rating, which has spiked to 47 percent according to the Real Clear Politics rolling average, is paltry by comparison.
Cuomo’s popularity has garnered attention from Trump, who has said he would be a stronger candidate that the current presumptive Democratic nominee, Joe Biden, but that Cuomo would still lose to him. Cuomo, though, has largely refused to take the president’s bait.
Instead, Cuomo has focused on the positive. As he regularly does, Cuomo again on Tuesday thanked the federal government for its response, which has been deeply inadequate but has also included sending more than 4,000 ventilators from the national stockpile, helping the state transform New York City’s Javits Center into a field hospital, and sending the USNS Comfort hospital ship to Manhattan. Cuomo has even been making nice with Trump’s much-loathed son-in-law.
“The federal government is a partner in this obviously. I spoke to the president again yesterday about this situation. I spoke to the vice president, I spoke to Jared Kushner,” Cuomo said on Tuesday. “The White House has been very helpful.”
Cuomo portrays his cordiality as a requirement of national unity in the midst of a political crisis, rather than acting as a sycophant to an egomaniacal president.
“Democrats want to criticize Republicans and Republicans want to criticize Democrats. Not now, not now,” he said. “The virus doesn’t attack and kill red Americans or blue Americans, it attacks and kills all Americans. And keep that in mind because there is a unifying wisdom in that.”
While it would normally be fair to understand these sorts of as smarmy clichés as efforts to distract from a refusal to speak truth to power, there appears to be a tactical purpose here. As Slate’s Ben Mathis-Lilley has noted, we are unfortunately in a situation where lives could depend on the ability of state leaders to stroke a tyrannical leader’s massive ego. Cuomo seems to get that.
At the same time, he has confronted the federal response when absolutely necessary, saving his fire for when Trump makes circumstances most dire. For instance, Cuomo has chastised the federal government on a daily basis for its ad hoc approach to dealing with the ventilator shortage. And over the weekend, after Trump floated a quarantine of his state, Cuomo blasted that idea as “a declaration of war.” The president ultimately backed down.
That tactical flexibility is more necessary, however, because New York is playing catch-up. Newsom and his state’s mayors clearly acted earlier than Cuomo and New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio on social distancing measures. San Francisco was one of the first places to shut down all bars, restaurants, gyms, and issuing a stay at home order on March 16, the same day that de Blasio was defending his personal decision to go to the gym and one day after Cuomo on 60 Minutes played down the possibility of severe restrictions in New York comparable to Europe, saying “I think actually the more successful you are early on, the less dramatic efforts you have to take later on.”
Los Angeles’ Mayor Eric Garcetti issued his own citywide shutdown order on March 19, with Newsom following with the nation’s first statewide order that same day. Two days before that, on March 17, Cuomo had resisted calls for a similar shelter-in-place order.
“I don’t think shelter in place really works for one locality,” he told CNN. “As a matter of fact, I’m going so far that I don’t even think you can do a state-wide policy.”
Cuomo ultimately issued his own such order one day after California, on March 20.
Newsom and California’s early actions has allowed the state to focus on next-level mitigation actions. The state was the earliest to order an eviction freeze and has done incomparable work in finding housing for the state’s sizable and vulnerable homeless population, including public-private partnerships with hotel chains.
Still, Newsom’s jargon-filled speech can sound like incomprehensible techno-babble compared to Cuomo’s family yarn-spinning and straightforward number sharing.
“As it relates to the bending of the curve—we’re in the middle of this and I think it would be too easy for us to assert a belief at this moment about what has or has not worked, except to say this: We know what does work and that’s physical distancing,” Newsom said in one typical word salad on Monday, responding to a question about his state’s apparent success in mitigating the outbreak. “And we believe very strongly the stay at home order has helped advance our efforts in reducing the stress on the system that we believe would have already materialized in more acute ways had we not advanced those protocols when we did.”
That’s not quite something you can put on a bumper sticker!
One final thing that has helped Cuomo to become the national presence that Newsom has not may be the lower expectations of the New York governor among many progressives, who have battled with the moderate Democrat for years.
As HBO’s John Oliver summarized that sentiment, “I never really liked Andrew Cuomo before this, but I will admit he’s doing admirably well and I can’t wait to get to the other side of this when I can go back to being irritated by him again.”
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Donald Trump is the USA #1 hero America needs! Don’t Google any of my previous articles about him.
Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images
Things took a turn for the better—or, much more accurately, for the slightly less very bad—late Sunday regarding the White House’s response to the coronavirus pandemic. As of Friday, Donald Trump was still bragging that he’d told Mike Pence not to respond to Democratic governors’ emergency requests if they weren’t sufficiently obsequious, and on Saturday, he suddenly floated the idea of putting the New York area under some sort of federally imposed quarantine, which he presumably envisioned as being like martial law, from a movie. On Sunday afternoon, he sent three tweets celebrating the TV ratings that his crisis press conferences have been getting. Hanging over all of it was his previous threat to declare that Americans should reopen businesses and public spaces by Easter, which falls this year on April 12.
On Sunday night, though, Trump said he was recommending that U.S. residents continue “social distancing” until the end of April—a welcome reversal, especially given the influence it may have on on the #MAGA-movement Southern governors who have been refusing to issue stay-at-home orders. (Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves have already partiallyrelented.) As of this moment, Trump also seems to have stopped actively pursuing feuds with New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo and Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, and has dropped the potentially panic-inducing, constitutionally questionable idea of closing state borders; instead, the CDC has simply recommended that residents of New York–area states avoid nonessential travel. While his Monday press conference was filled with bizarre falsehoods about, for example, the population of Seoul, he stuck to the same overall plan he’d introduced the day before, saying that “challenging times are ahead for the next 30 days.”
A Monday CNN report attributed Trump’s decision to extend the social-distancing guidelines to a number of related factors. One was media coverage of New York City’s Elmhurst Hospital, which is located in the borough of Queens, where Trump was born, and which has been deluged with coronavirus patients to the extent that a mobile morgue is set up outside. Another was a model shown to him by health officials Anthony Fauci and Deborah Birx which projected hundreds of thousands of potential deaths. A third was the reminder apparently given to him by advisers that “attacking governors who had criticized the federal government, which he had done on multiple occasions, could have a political cost.” (Michigan is a key 2020 swing state, and Whitmer—like Cuomo—has seen her approval rating rise even more than Trump’s has in recent weeks.) The passage of a stimulus package which stabilized the stock market also probably helped, given the prominence that market drops had taken in Trump’s prior rambling about reopening “the economy.”
In sum—as Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham, who was said to be part of the group that helped change Trump’s mind, foreshadowed in tweets last week—the president was convinced that a “back to work” message wouldn’t save the Dow Jones but would create a slow-moving health disaster defined by catastrophic televised images for which he, and not Democrats, would be blamed. (Monday afternoon, the Los Angeles Times reported that Trump’s campaign aides are particularly concerned that the pandemic is about to escalate in red states and that he will suffer more severe consequences there if he is “seen as too lax.”) So instead, he’s pivoted to a framework in which he will be considered a hero for keeping U.S. coronavirus deaths under 2.2 million by not actively overruling epidemiologists.
The critical factor in any Trump decision is how a given subject makes him feel. Initially, when the possibility of a coronavirus pandemic was largely being raised by Democrats and members of the media, it made him feel defensive, so he denied that it existed. Slowly, the people around him have been able to turn the ship, and now talking about coronavirus makes him feel like an important president doing serious things on TV. This is what currently passes as a reason for optimism.
It is not ideal that the president can’t be counted on to prevent coronavirus deaths. But Sunday’s press conference shows that, through flattery and fear, he can be prevented from preventing the actual preventers from doing prevention. And every American has a part to play in keeping this going. If you are responding to an opinion poll, say you trust and support the president’s advice about social distancing. If you are a Nielsen household, claim that you watched his press conference even if you didn’t. If you are advising Trump on public health issue, make facially ludicrous claims about his ability to “analyze and integrate data” in order to stay in his good graces. If you are a news blogger, use flattering photos of the president looking resolute and leader-y to illustrate your posts.
We’re all in the fight against the coronavirus, and our president’s sociopathic inability to contemplate the existence of minds and egos besides his own, together.
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Keith's note: I got this note from a Lockheed Martin employee last night:
"Keith: I have been an avid reader of NASAWatch since the 1990's (RIFwatch times) and I saw the post on Lockheed Martin's response to the COVID-19 pandemic. There was a large Lockheed Martin team working last week and this past weekend with local hospitals in Denver to help make items to replace PPE (Personal Protective Equipment) that are critically needed. Some are as simple as repurposing the standard surgical masks into 3D printed cartridge filters that can attach to respirator masks, making 3D printed respirator masks, and even rapid prototyping PAPRs (Powered, Air-Purifying Respirator) that the hospital cannot get.
I have worked here for three decades and this is still the coolest thing I have seen Lockheed Martin do. I am even more surprised and proud that the company is doing this without PR. Corporate is really behind this and it is all overhead or volunteer hours (one of my designers has been in over 30 hours this weekend to support).
From what I have seen locally they really are working hard to do just about all they can do on short turn around. This is not just local though. All portions of the company from Space, to Aero, to Information Systems have been engaged to do this same support - with the specific focus driven by local needs of hospitals - not corporate. I am actually proud of what corporate is doing. Great efforts are being done with no press and that is wonderful and worth lauding."
I am told from another source that Lockheed Martin has collected maks and safety glasses from their shops in their Denver facilities, Michoud Assembly Facility, and Kennedy Space Center.
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Episode Notes
In 1904, cartoonist Gus Mager created a newspaper comic strip about a group of simian-faced folks called the Monks (as in, you know, monkey). Knocko, Peddlo, Henpecko, and the rest became so popular that the -o suffix soon spread to words up and down the English language. Legend has it that Mager’s characters even inspired the Marx Brothers’ nicknames. Ain’t that neato!
Podcast production by Mike Vuolo.
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Two years ago, I talked to Gertrude Johnson Howard—who is now 84 years old and lives in Phoenix—for Slate’s “Interview With an Old Person” series. (It’s exactly what it sounds like.)Our conversationstuck with me because of Johnson Howard’s candor, vivid memories, and spirited optimism. In this moment of widespread uncertainty and fear, as older people are being told with particular urgency to stay indoors and isolated, I checked back in to see how she was processing everything. This conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.
Christina Cauterucci: Gertrude! How are you doing these days?
Gertrude Johnson Howard: I’m doing great. I’m not stressed out at all. We just done got so crazy and got so … I don’t know what done happen to us. We got away from God. When I read my Bible, every time the people of God get too far away from him, he suffers things to happen. And then they repent and come back to him. I know I’m just probably one of those fanaticals, they might call me. But I was reading in my Bible, and I looked up the word plague. And I just went through different Scriptures that I found, and I believe that’s what [the coronavirus] is.
Have you ever been through anything like this, this kind of public health crisis, before?
Well, when I was born, they had a pandemic or whatever they call it, and it was called malaria. [Editor’s note: Malaria was once endemic throughout parts of the American South and began to decline in the 1930s.] It was transported by mosquitoes. I was born on a plantation in Alabama, and we had no windows with screens or anything like that. It was long before electricity. We didn’t know anything about electricity. The doctor had told my mother that I probably would die when I got malaria. I must have been between 2 and 3 years old.
They did what they call home remedies for me. Do you know what the fat off of beef is? It’s called tallow. If you make a beef roast then set it in the refrigerator, the next morning, you can see some white fat rolls in there. And they put quinine in that. And they greased me with it, and they wrapped me up in flannel cloth, and they heated a brick on each side and laid it close to me. And that caused me to sweat. They put some kind of leaf in there too. And my mother said I would just sweat, and they sweated that malaria out of me. I had pneumonia, too, at the same time. But now they have penicillin to help with pneumonia and stuff like that. You just think about all those epidemics I’ve been through since malaria! They had polio, they had so many things. So I’m not stressed out about this disease that done hit us.
How are you dealing with it? What’s changed for you?
We can’t go to our senior center. It’s closed. And I guess all the saloons around here are closed. This town is kind of shut down, but I stayed in here yesterday all day and kind of cleaned my house. I know my house was glad I couldn’t be out running around! So I mopped all the floors, and I spent a lot of time talking on the phone too, because people call me. They want to know how I’m doing because they know I’m in that age group that this thing is supposed to hit.
“You just think about all those epidemics I’ve been through since malaria! They had polio, they had so manythings.”— Gertrude Johnson Howard
That’s great to hear. Who’s calling you?
Some is family, but most are friends. And every day I look over my list, and if there are people I haven’t been in touch with for a while, maybe I’ll call at least two or three of them a day and see how they’re doing and see if there’s anything that I can do.
I have a lot of friends because I have this letter writing ministry. It started when I was a young person in church. They gave me this job to send sick cards to people that was sick, and then as time went on, they gave me a job to visit people in their homes—they were called shut-ins, and they weren’t able to come to church at that time. I would go and talk to them and “bring the outside world to them,” I called it. Now they won’t let me into the nursing homes because of this virus. But I’m still writing to people.
How have you been feeling, in general, these past few days?
I had a dream last night that kind of bothered me. I was at the funeral of one of my cousins, and she passed away in—I think it was 2002. I went from Arizona back to Ohio for that funeral. And it just kind of bothered me this morning when I got up, that I had had that dream. But there ain’t nothing you can do about dreams. You just dream. So I got up and I said, “Well, I was in here all day yesterday, but I’m not staying around this house all day today.”
People don’t like when things like this happen, things they can’t do anything about. My mother would say they acting like a chicken with its head cut off. I’ve killed a lot of chickens in my lifetime. We used to kill a chicken and pull the head off, and you know, that chicken would hop around quite a bit and didn’t realize he didn’t have a head, he don’t realize he’s dead. Sometimes people look so lost like that, especially now, when the doctors say, “We don’t have a cure.” Nobody knows where [the coronavirus] comes from. They say it comes from China, but it had to come from some place before it got to China.
It came from bats.
Came from bats, huh? Have you ever been close to a bat?
Not really, no. Have you?
Yes, I have. I was raised up with bats. Being born on a plantation, I was very conscious of all kinds of birds and snakes and small lizards and rabbits and possums and things. And bats are a thing we were always taught to fear. It was like they was—I don’t want to say they were cursed, but it was almost like that. When they get close to you, they got a face that is scary. They really do.
“At the store, I got teary-eyed because people looked so desperate. They were coming out of there with big rolls of toiletpaper.”— Gertrude Johnson Howard
When [news of the virus] first came out, I took my friend to the grocery store. And that was quite an experience. I never seen people—they was rushing like they was running from something and didn’t know what they was running from. And that really bothered me. Have you ever seen a dust storm?
I don’t think so.
Well, we used to have dust storms in Alabama. When you’re in a dust storm like that, that sand gets in your nose, your eyes, your ears. And the look on those people that was at the store kind of reminded me of people running from those dust storms that I had seen when I was a child. They looked bewildered. I would just love to put my arms around everybody and hug them and assure them that it’s going to be all right. That this will be over after a while. I kind of wanted to cry. I got teary-eyed because they looked so desperate, Christina. They were just coming out of there with all these big rolls of toilet paper.
Was your friend able to get what she needed?
Yeah, she was just going to get a few things, but she came out with 70-some-odd-dollars’ worth of stuff. She was kind of panicky, too. I think it was kind of good for me to be with her that day, because she lives alone like I do, but she don’t enjoy living alone like I do. I read, I write, and I talk on the phone. Then I’ll eat. I’ll go take me a nap. I know how to live alone. I didn’t always know how to do it, and I thought I would be most lonesome. But I know how to do it—and I got coloring books in there.
What’s the best thing you did before everything got shut down?
This year I was invited to go up to the city where my daughter teaches school and talk to the young kids about Black History Week. I really enjoyed the children, how they paid attention to what I said. Mostly I just told them the story of my life, where I was raised, and how good it is that they got nice schools to go to. My daughter’s kids, all them wrote me a note. I got it all rolled up here.
That’s so great.
Isn’t that great? My daughter said, “When you have a bad day, Momma, just open it up and read what the kids wrote.” I read everything that them 32 kids wrote for me. And not only that, sometimes I lay hands on it and pray for that roll. I ask the Lord to bless these kids and shield them. And about this virus—I’ve asked the Lord to give the doctors and whoever’s in charge an understanding of what to do.
On a happier note: I know it’s your 85th birthday in July. That’s a big one. What are your plans, if people are back out and about by then?
My kids are planning something. They told me all I have to do is get ready and come to wherever. I looked in my closet, and I’m wondering if I’ll buy myself a new suit.
What’s your advice for people in this moment?
We can love each other. They haven’t passed no laws saying you can’t love. So that’s the one thing I try to do. I try to care for people, because I’ve been hurt so bad in my lifetime, and love is what brought me through.
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March 31, 2020
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President Trump shakes hands with Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro earlier this month at Mar-a-Lago.
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Social media companies Facebook and Twitter have ramped up oversight of misinformation about the coronavirus on their platforms, taking more direct measures to identify and take down misleading propaganda, and over the weekend invoked its broadening oversight to force the removal of posts by Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro. Both companies have previously been loath to remove content posted world leaders even if their posts were demonstrably false. Twitter, however, has revised its terms of service to expressly disallow content that “goes directly against guidance from authoritative sources of global and local public health information.”
Over the weekend, two tweets by the Brazilian president were removed that overhyped the effectiveness of the treatment hydroxychloroquine. Facebook followed suit on Monday by removing the video from Facebook and Facebook-owned Instagram. “We remove content on Facebook and Instagram that violates our Community Standards, which do not allow misinformation that could lead to physical harm,” a Facebook spokesperson told BuzzFeed News. Bolsonaro, a right wing populist, has preached and pushed conspiracy theories since taking office some 18 months ago and has, like Trump has at times, cast doubt over the legitimacy and seriousness of the pandemic.
The deletion of Bolsonaro’s posts comes on the heels of Twitter removing a post last week by Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro hyping a homemade “natural brew” treatment for the coronavirus. Maduro complained he was being censored by the company. The far right in American politics has been particularly active in sowing doubt about the dangers of the coronavirus, prompting Twitter to delete a tweet from Rudy Giuliani that pushed a similar line to that of Bolsonaro overstating hydroxychloroquine’s effectiveness. Fox News’ Laura Ingraham had a similar tweet, praising hydroxychloroquine, removed. The right wing site the Federalist has also had one of its more cockamamie coronavirus tweets deleted.
When it comes to the far right echo chamber it’s hard to discern where exactly the seed of an idea is first planted—with the president or elsewhere. But President Donald Trump has used his platform to push a number of untested cures.
Twitter has not yet used its oversight powers to rein in potential misinformation spewing from the president of the United States, but it might only be a matter of time.
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JAXA MHU-5 (JAXA Mouse Habitat Unit-5): The crew performed routine mouse habitat maintenance activities for the continuing Mouse Mission-5 investigation. JAXA Mouse Habitat Unit-5 (MHU-5) examines the effects of partial G on mice using the JAXA-developed mouse habitat cage units (HCU) that can be installed in the newly developed Centrifuge-equipped Biological Experiment Facility-L (CBEF-L) on …
March 31, 2020 at 12:00AM
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March 31, 2020
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This week, Americans braced for more restrictive lockdown measures across the U.S. as the death toll ticked higher, towards 3,000, and public health officials warned the number of American deaths due to the coronavirus could reach as high as 200,000. On Monday, in New York, the epicenter of the American outbreak, the Empire State Building began a light display resembling a flashing siren light as a salute to first responders on the front lines of the fight against the virus. “Starting tonight through the COVID-19 battle, our signature white lights will be replaced by the heartbeat of America with a white and red siren in the mast for heroic emergency workers on the front line of the fight,” the building’s official Twitter account announced.
The display is set to occur each evening at 9 pm, according to the Empire State Realty Trust, which owns the building. “The Empire State Building is an international symbol of dreams and struggles overcome,” the head of the Empire State Realty Trust said in a statement. “Tonight, and every night in this struggle, she is a beacon to remind us we are all in this together, and we will come out of this together.”
The siren light, however, also sent another perhaps equally appropriate message to many people: a city under siege.
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When I was in middle school, a friend and I got caught up in our moms’ television nostalgia and binge-watched That Girl, a 1960s sitcom about the adventures of Ann Marie (Marlo Thomas), an aspiring actress in New York City. Though it was lost on teen-soap-obsessed me at the time, the series broke ground by depicting a single woman with bigger dreams for her career than her love life, and with Ann’s dry-witted, suit-wearing boyfriend, Donald (Ted Bessell) acting more as a foil than a destination. Years later, I remember only Ann, striding down Broadway, gazing at skyscrapers, a brassy theme song welcoming her to the city where she believed she could anything, a well-worn trope today but a milestone then. To understand the evolution of the single sitcom woman—the careerism of Mary Richards, the sexual independence of Carrie Bradshaw, the wackiness of Jess Day—That Girl is the place to start.
A far cry from the just-completed The Donna Reed Show or the fledging The Doris Day Show—which began after Day’s husband signed her contract without her knowledge or consent—That Girl offered audiences a different kind of everywoman. Marlo Thomas, Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique in hand, pitched a series that would neither begin nor end with marriage. Instead, from 1966 to 1971, its protagonist pursued an acting career, fended off her father’s matchmaking schemes, and waltzed off to her happily-ever-after … of a women’s liberation meeting. At its core, That Girl is about a twentysomething woman navigating New York City. (How appropriate that Thomas would later drop in on Friends as Rachel Green’s mom.) Though parts of the show, like its lack of diversity or its tendency to pair sexual harassment with a laugh track, feel dated now, her crazy adventures and struggles to make ends meet were revolutionary for the time and well worth revisiting.
A 1998 New York Times article described the show as making feminism “approachable and almost, well, cute.” To understand this dynamic, you ought to start with “When in Rome,” the 10th episode of Season 2. A famed Italian director, Vittorio Barrini, spots Ann modeling in a car at an auto show, apparently naked because of the position of the car door. The role of “Angelica” would be perfect for that girl, he says, and the shot zooms in on Ann’s surprised face, the usual “spotted” cold open staple of the series that complicates the idea of the male gaze more often than this scene suggests. Ann’s looks get her the audition, but her acting secures her the gig in her first feature film—but only if she’s willing to play the part nude.
As comical as the characters’ horror (including Ann’s) at performing nude is, the fact that Ann even considers accepting the role sets up a relatively groundbreaking episode, considering the show operated at a time when 25 minutes could entirely revolve around why Donald’s pants are in Ann’s closet. (It’s not because the couple is having sex.) Ann spends most of “When in Rome” telling Donald and her neighbor Ruth the party line, that she couldn’t possibly do it, only to pause and ask, “Could I?,” seeking a permission that neither gives her. This is Ann’s decision alone.
Ultimately, the episode isn’t about modesty so much as a challenge to Ann’s identity: Is she still an actress if she turns down the part? Barrini says no. You’d like to be an actress, he corrects her at one point. Early in the episode, power dynamics like these are made even starker: As Ann reads Angelica’s lines for Barrini in his hotel room, magazine-writer Donald and his coworker, Jerry (Bernie Kopell), wait by the phone. “To them, a pretty, young girl is a pretty, young girl. You know what I mean?” Jerry says, before Ann bursts into the office, hyperventilating. She is too excited to speak; the men, misinterpreting, pepper her with questions about if Barrini hurt her. The scene is both funny and deeply discomforting, highlighting the ever-present threat of predatory men while playing it for laughs.
But this is the signature battle move of That Girl—the series doesn’t directly call out sexism so much as show Ann wielding the power in the end. Even as Barrini emphasizes what an opportunity he could give her, Ann’s respect for her less glamorous work in minor productions, including as a mop on a children’s program, shines through. And her choice in the end rejects the notion, still present, that a woman must do things she is uncomfortable with to further her career. You’ll have to watch to find out whether Ann gets the part, but know that her inevitable showdown with Barrini is classic That Girl, giving Ann the last word.
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Episode Notes
Sarah feels like she’s drowning in the clutter of her tiny Brooklyn apartment where she lives with a messy husband and two-year-old daughter. Now that her family is self-quarantining together, the chaos seems destined to only get worse. In this episode of How To!, we bring in Bruce Feiler, author of The Secrets of Happy Families, to give Sarah a home makeover. But Bruce has more than a Marie Kondo-style cleanup in mind. Instead, he suggests that Sarah first declutter her mind and then call a family meeting to reorganize responsibilities.
What are your toughest challenges during the pandemic? And what have you found is working for you? Leave us a voicemail at 646-495-4001. We’re collecting your problems and solutions for our recurring Quarantine Q&A.
Podcast production by Derek John and Rachael Allen.
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Danny is online weekly to chat live with readers. Here’s an edited transcript of this week’s chat.
Q. Shaken: I’m a 66-year-old woman in good health. I got back from an international trip in January and self-quarantined, and I am now following the guidelines put out by the CDC. My boyfriend of several years, who lives three hours away, came up to visit yesterday. Within minutes of his arrival, he began criticizing, ridiculing, and needling me for wearing a face mask and going “over-the-top neurotic” about the pandemic. And then to my horror, at one point he leaned in and deliberately coughed in my face! I was stunned. I still am. We had a huge fight and I asked him to leave. He emailed when he got home saying I was right and what he did was wrong and dangerous and I deserved better. I am shaken by this incident and I can’t wrap my head around his actions. Please give me your thoughts. What kind of man would do such a thing?
A: A man you should dump immediately. I’m glad he realized what he did was wrong and dangerous (and disrespectful, and unkind, and unnecessary, and a whole host of other things), and that you deserve better than someone who would treat you that way. He’s absolutely right. While I’m glad he was able to come to his senses and apologize, I don’t think that detracts from how bewildering and frightening his visit was in the first place, nor does it automatically reestablish the trust he broke when he mocked you for taking your health—and the health of others—seriously.
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Q. Open-mouthed masticator: Almost every day, without fail, my co-worker has a container of raw carrots and celery with his lunch, and while I applaud him for trying to get his five a day, the way he eats them is sending me over the edge. I get that raw veggies aren’t the quietest foods to eat, but while most people can finish a carrot stick in two or three bites, he eats his like he’s feeding it into a wood chipper, with no fewer than 10 tiny bites per piece! If that wasn’t enough, he then proceeds to chew with his mouth partially open, so I can hear everything smacking and rolling around. I realize I’m being a bit (a lot) dramatic here, and I’ve definitely been bothered by co-worker’s chewing before, but I’m not sure how to address this politely, especially since my co-worker is older than me and we work together a lot. (I call him my work dad.) Both of us wear headphones during “the act,” but I can clearly hear it through my music or podcasts, and he seems blissfully unaware that he is slowly driving me mad. Should I just suck it up and deal?
A: Don’t compare him to a wood chipper or tell him that he’s single-handedly driving you to the breaking point. Wait until you’re feeling relatively composed, and when he’s not already eating, and tell him politely: “You may not have noticed this, but when you snack on raw vegetables, the sound is pretty noticeable, even when I have headphones on. Could you please chew more quietly?” It’s a perfectly reasonable request, one he should be able to accommodate. If he tries his best but doesn’t immediately have an intuitive sense for how loud he’s chewing, you can certainly—but again, politely!—let him know in the future: “Sorry, Ralph, but you’re doing it again. Mind keeping it down?”(I say all this knowing you may very well not be working in the same room as Ralph for quite some time.)
This is part of the reason I think it’s important to avoid language like “work wife” or “work dad,” by the way. I realize part of this is about finding more-human and less-corporate way to refer to your co-workers, but there’s something about assigning a “fatherly” role to someone you have a professional relationship with that makes it more difficult to have professional conversations. He’s not your father, and no one needs to act as someone else’s father in the workplace. I don’t say that because I think you’ve done something terribly wrong, or trapped yourself. It’s just that I think there are better ways to develop friendly terms for your colleagues that don’t involve trying to make the workplace feel more like the family home.
Q. Is it ethical? My boyfriend and I both live in large group homes. We want to continue spending time together during this pandemic, but we’re not sure if it’s ethical to be going back-and-forth between our two houses, especially since we recently learned that one of his roommates has asthma. Should we maintain a virtual relationship indefinitely, or should I ask my roommates if he can temporarily move in (even though it would be a strain on them)?
A: I asked a friend who’s a registered nurse to weigh in (and I’d also recommend you contact your city’s non-emergency health line in case it has any specific instructions for someone in your situation): “The answer is no, especially to the going back-and-forth between each other’s houses. If the letter writer wants to ask the roommates if the boyfriend can temporarily move in, that’s definitely a better option. The issue is that if he lives with a bunch of other people, there’s no way to know how strictly they’ve all been observing social distancing, and therefore no way to know whether the boyfriend is incubating anything. So, from a physical and public health perspective, the letter writer and the boyfriend should maintain a virtual relationship until public health officials say it’s OK to relax the regulations. But relationships are really crucial to people’s mental health, and this is a scary time. I really want to find a workaround for them. I just don’t really see a good one.”
Q. Brotherly love: My brother, “Ari,” is 32 years old and has a history of making poor choices. A couple of years ago, he came home from a fairly long stint in prison. I kept in touch with him during that time through phone calls, I’m happy he’s back, and I want to be supportive. But, while he claims he has matured, and he has stayed out of trouble since being out, he’s not making a huge effort to improve his life. He has been working here and there, but he recently got injured pretty badly in an accident (which was actually not his fault). He’s about to get a pretty substantial sum of money as a settlement and is already talking about how he’s going to spend it: His main goal is buy an all-terrain vehicle and buy a plot of land that he can ride it on. I’m past the point of lecturing him when he talks to me about his ideas (a fault of mine that I recognized and worked on), but I also cannot bring myself to be happy for him because it’s just ludicrous. He then gets upset when I don’t share his enthusiasm and accuses me of not being supportive. But seriously, how am I supposed to endorse his irrational actions? How do I talk to him without bringing him down, but in a way that lets him know he needs to get his act together?
A: I wonder if it might be useful to reconsider what’s being asked of you, and whether it’s possible to find a middle ground between “endorsing” your brother’s actions and trying to dictate how he spends his settlement. Can you find it within yourself to experience vicarious happiness for your brother, not because you believe buying an ATV is going to ensure his future financial security but merely because he’s excited about it? Can you find a way to muster up at least satisfaction that this plan is not illegal and does not hurt anyone? “I’m not going to try to change your mind about how you spend your money. You already know what I think, and you’re 32 years old. I hope everything works out, and I’m glad that you’re feeling good about it.” What would it look like for you to make peace with the possibility that your brother may never “get his act together,” at least not in the way you might consider “together”? That’s not to say you should just peacefully say “Right on” whenever he does anything; you’re not being asked to mindlessly sign off on anything your brother does for the rest of his life. But within the context of safety and legality, he has the right to make choices you wouldn’t make, and you don’t sound like you’re in any danger of pretending to approve of something you don’t. Why not accept that you’ve done your level best to persuade him to do something else? If things don’t work out, he’ll be the one who has to figure out a response, not you. I think a distant fondness for his own autonomy is an achievable emotional response for you. Good luck!
Q. Different mother to different kids: My parents married very young. They divorced and I ended up with my gran who was “old school” (abusive). The abuse came to light and I ended up with a family friend. Mom visited.
My mom remarried when I was 14. I was 17 when she had my sister. It is alienating to see her play good mom to my sisters when I didn’t have that. I keep my visits short because otherwise I end up with an upset stomach. Please do not tell me to seek therapy; I can’t afford it in my area. I have looked. My mother has been pressuring me to take out my sisters and “help out” more. I just want to see her. We’ve had terrible fights. I just want to be a daughter. Am I awful?
A: You’re not awful, and there are plenty of ways to take care of yourself and tend to your own grief that don’t involve scheduling therapy sessions you can’t afford. I don’t know if you’ve ever gone into detail with your mother about how her abandonment affected you as a child, or if she’s ever expressed any sorrow or sympathy or remorse for the abuse you suffered because she wasn’t present to raise you. If you two haven’t discussed it much, and the fights have centered rather around her requests to have you babysit more often, it might provide useful emotional context, even if the idea of bringing that up with her might feel daunting. But I think it would be powerful, and important for your mother as she considers her relationship with you, to have an honest conversation about what attempting to reckon with and partially heal the past might look like. She may not always be able to see you without her other children, depending on their age, and I don’t think it’s practical to assume you’ll be able to have a relationship with her that doesn’t involve them in any way, but you can certainly ask for the occasional visit or phone call that’s just about the two of you.
If, on the other hand, you have discussed this with her before, and she’s still leaning on you to babysit her other children, then I think it’s better to save your time and energy; if your mom’s sole emotional response is “The past is the past, and you need to help me raise the kids I have now,” then I don’t wonder at your having a stomachache after your visits. I would have one too. If you need to start thinking of your mother as a person with very limited emotional resources, where else can you turn for sympathy, emotional support, nurturing, and affection? In what ways can you try to provide that for yourself? You may find some of the writing on self-parenting or the concept of “becoming your own loving mother” useful—at times it may jar or seem a bit hokey, but I’d encourage you to read with an open mind and adopt whatever might be helpful.
Q. Estranged friends in an emergency: I used to have many friends in NYC, long-distance and mostly online. After a vicious falling out with one of them, I ended contact with all the others since we were mutual friends, whether or not they knew about our fight. I had no logical reason to drop away from everyone uninvolved and with no reason. I simply panicked and overreacted. With the current health emergency in NYC, I’m very concerned and scared about their well-being. Should I reach out to the mutual friends for emotional or other support? At best, it can help to know someone is still thinking about you and there might be ways for me to help from afar. At worst, I could be breaking a silence and intruding at a time of incredible stress. One thing: I do not intend on communicating at all with that one particular friend because they clearly drew their boundaries. I just don’t know how to or whether to approach the rest when I dropped the ball so hard and for so long.
A: I don’t mean to dismiss long-distance, mostly online friendships, but I think the best use of your time and energy right now is to look for opportunities to support your local community and the friends you have in your life right now. That’s not to say you’re not allowed to get in touch with them! But maybe reach out to your actual in-real-time friends right now, find a local mutual aid organization and seek out (healthy, appropriate) volunteer opportunities, and then check back in with that impulse in another week or two. Do you still feel the same urge to reconnect? If so, are you prepared to handle rejection gracefully? Are there other means you could use to address the fact that sometimes your response to conflict is to panic and cut people out of your life, means that don’t necessarily involve people you’ve dropped in the past?
If you do all that and carefully consider those questions, and you still feel moved to get back in touch, you certainly can. But I’d keep the contact brief and to the point: Tell them you’re thinking of them, that you hope they’re well, that you’d like to help in any way if you can, and that if they’d prefer not to hear from you again, you’ll leave it at that.
Q. Gifting: We give our 40-year-old son, his wife, and her son $100 each year for their birthdays. They do not reciprocate with birthday gifts, or Mother’s or Father’s Day gifts, for my husband or myself. They both make good money. My husband at 71 is about to retire. Do I continue to offer gifts on retirement income? Do I say something? Did I not instill in my son a sense of giving (he is an only child)?
A: You have lots of options here, I think. There’s no one universally agreed-upon way to smoothly transition from childhood gift-giving to a more laid-back approach to adult birthdays. The most important thing I’d stress is to keep the conversations about what you can afford to give, now that your husband is retiring, separate from the conversation about not getting gifts in return. They’re both important conversations to have, but having them at the same time makes it seem like you’re attempting to leverage something out of them. (That’s not to say you don’t want your kid and his family to give you gifts—it sounds like you do, and very reasonably so!)
If I were in your position, I’d talk with your husband first to make sure that he’s on the same page. Then I’d let the others know (in a polite but matter-of-fact update) that you won’t be sending checks anymore. You’re free to mention your husband’s retirement or not to. Frankly, I think it’s perfectly ordinary to not send a 40-year-old $100 for every birthday without having to mention your budget in order to justify it.
Q. Born-again school: My nephew (14) sent me a letter soliciting donations for his school. According to the letter, these donations are for things like team sports and new lockers, etc. After checking out the school website, I found out the school doesn’t hire anyone not “born again” or who doesn’t believe in creationism, and it prohibits any sort of same-sex relationships and support thereof. Since I can’t in good conscience donate to the school, and any effort made to possibly discuss why with my nephew could result in another prohibition from interacting with my nephews and niece one on one, would it be petty to make donations to other organizations and send those receipts and reasoning to the school? The donations are supposed to be made directly to the school anyway—I’m just debating whether to inform the school and/or my nephew why I won’t be contributing.
A: Just don’t send a donation! You don’t have to pretend to share your relatives’ conservative religious outlook, but sending notifications of antagonistic donations to the school doesn’t strike me as productive. Your nephew is 14, he’s not personally responsible for his school’s anti-evolution and anti-gay practices, and you’re worried that pressing the issue may result in his parents barring you from seeing him or his siblings again—so just ignore the letter. Ideally (especially given the present economic situation), your nephew and his parents will understand if you don’t have spare cash to fund nonessentials like new lockers for his high school and won’t press the issue. If they do press, you can either say just that it’s not in your budget or that you don’t share the school’s values. If you don’t want to wait to be prompted, and you want to say briefly, “I can’t in good conscience donate to a school that opposes my values,” you definitely can. But there’s a difference between giving an honest answer and forwarding receipts for counterdonations.
Certainly if you can afford it and you feel so moved, make as many donations as you like to whatever organizations you do support! But it’s not going to hurt the school’s feelings, or change its anti-gay stance, or improve your relationship with your nephew, if you forward the school your donation receipts. Think of it this way: You’d like the opportunity to have a productive conversation with your nephew at some point about creationism, homophobia, and secularism. Starting it by saying, “I’ve sent a bunch of charitable receipts to your principal” isn’t going to help you with that conversation. I hope that when you do have it with him, he’s open-minded and willing to listen.
Q. Re: Gifting: Please, I beg of everyone, do not assume things about all only children! Certainly not all siblings are great at sharing and remembering giving gifts. Can we please get past the idea that all only children are a certain way and that it’s sad not to have sibling? People are individuals and there are strengths and weaknesses to anything. I am an only child; I give gifts; kindness and thoughtfulness were watchwords in my household and were instilled in me. Have you talked to your son about the fact that you feel neglected?
A: Oh, that’s interesting. I hadn’t quite known what to make of the “only child” parenthetical at the end of the letter, and I see your point that the implication seems to have been that this was a result of him not having siblings. I’m of your party here. I don’t think this is a problem unique to only children and I do think it would have been more than fine for the letter writer and her husband to have had a conversation with their son a long time ago about wanting to receive something, even just a card or a call, on Mother’s Day and Father’s Day and birthdays.
Danny M. Lavery: Thanks, everyone! See you next week.
Q. My husband finally revealed his fetish: What should I do if I just can’t get into it? I don’t want him hiding things from me again, but I also don’t enjoy the idea of having sex while he’s wearing women’s lingerie. Is there any way to get through this? Read more and see what Stoya had to say.
My partner has always been a soft no toward kids, I’ve been a soft maybe.
I would have kids with him, but I still don’t know if I want to. There’s pressure to have children from our family, and we’ve talked about having them. We would be good parents: we’re stable, fully employed, debt-free, and we own our house and cars outright. He’s very empathetic and kind, and I’m practical.
Which brings me to the main reason we haven’t tried. We’re both sarcastic, and neither of us suffers fools well. Toddlers are basically puppies who can open drawers and have loud meltdowns. I have a goddaughter, and I hated being out in public with her as a toddler because she would just scream. I don’t know how to get the patience to deal with meltdowns and messy hands. We’re both fine with teenagers and the small babies we have in our lives, but the under-5 phase, starting when they can talk—how do we navigate that? I don’t want to do it wrong, if we do it at all.
—To Have or Have Not
Dear to Have or Have Not,
This is a big choice, and enumerating pros and cons may not get you veryfar.
Trying to plan for life’s bigger and less-predictable moments is not easy, and in this case, I think it’s impossible! There’s absolutely no way to know how you will feel about some hypothetical child you haven’t yet had. The passage of time—even the nine-plus months it takes to have a baby biologically—can change you. The act of becoming a parent will certainly change you.
I get your point: Toddlers (particularly other people’s toddlers) can be shouty, and loud, and irritating. But nature is clever, assuring that most of us care so profoundly for our kids that we are able to overlook the less-fun stages of their development in ways that we can’t when the children aren’t our own. And how you navigate the less-fun years is something impossible to plan from here! You can read all the books and then find yourself parenting a child who is not neurotypical. You can steel yourself for a wild toddler to find he’s calm but then acts out at 7, or 17. There’s absolutely no way to know.
It’s great that you don’t want to do it wrong; should you decide to have kids, that desire will guide you to (mostly) doing it OK. But just as every toddler has her annoying days, every parent messes up a little. When asking yourselves whether you’re ready to be parents, think less about practical things like the fact that you are financially stable (not as relevant as you think, maybe). This is a big choice, and enumerating pros and cons may not get you very far. You’re weighing taking on a lifelong experiment, one choice that will lead to many more. Maybe listen more closely to your inner voice than to any others (including mine). Good luck!
• If you missed Monday’s Care and Feeding column,read it here.
I’d love to say that I’m capable of dealing with my anxiety, but I’m realizing that I’m not. In the age of social distancing, is it OK for me to ask my family to keep their distance while we are at home?
We have a large family: myself, my hubby, six amazing children, and a beautiful grandbaby who lives with us. For the past 11 months, since her husband died, my mother has been living with us. My husband and I and our youngest children live in the main part of our home. My mother has an apartment in our basement, and our oldest son and grandchild share the other half of the basement. Their area has two bedrooms but no kitchen, so my oldest son comes up to eat, and I get to spend lots of time with the baby while he’s at work.
My mother refuses to stay in her apartment. She’s constantly in our space, so much so that I feel like I can’t even have a conversation with my children without her interfering. I miss the quiet days with my grandchild while everyone else was at work or school. I now realize that I used that time to regroup and feel at peace.
My kids (from 21 down to 10) are independent and give me space—it’s like they know that I need a 20-minute timeout whenever we’re in a shared space for an extended time. My mom either doesn’t care or gets offended when I ask her to go downstairs for awhile. She guilts me about her grief to get me to agree to her staying upstairs until we all go to bed. I feel bad that I can’t meet her needs along with my own, but I need some space!
—More Distance, Please
Dear MDP,
The age of social distancing or not, it is perfectly valid for any one of us to need time and space of our own—never mind those of us with six children, a grandchild, a spouse, and a parent all under one roof, however big that roof is. Of course you need some space! I’m sorry.
I think the inevitable frustration of a big change in your living arrangement—Mom coming to stay!—is exacerbated by the special conditions of having to hunker down at home during this pandemic. But it’s been almost a year of her living with you; even if you had initial conversations about the logistics of life together, now you’ve had some time and can reevaluate those.
I think you will find it difficult to manage Mom’s schedule. For whatever reason (perhaps she’s just loneliness) retreating to her part of the home is not appealing to her; she wants to be upstairs in the thick of things. That might undermine your ability to have conversations without her participating, and it might eat into your quiet time cradling the baby. But you can save important mom-kid conversations for bedtime or stolen moments when Mom is downstairs; you can have one-on-one time with the baby when you’re out for a walk (6 feet from anyone else, please!). What you can’t do, not really, is send your mother to her room like a naughty child. It makes her feel bad, she breaks out the guilt trip, and then you feel bad!
The good news is that you can manage your own schedule! Can you deputize Mom to handle Tuesday night dinners and then say you won’t be a part of those—you’ll be up in your room reading a magazine, having a bath, or being alone? Can you set up a grandma-led homework session so that you can slip away for 30 minutes in the evenings to sit in the yard, or reorganize your dresser, or watch television? Your desire for personal space is tricky to manage when we’re all staying home, but if nothing else, can’t you lock yourself in the bathroom and take a long steamy bath while listening to a podcast? My hope is that if you focus on identifying what you need and state that out loud (“I’m going upstairs for 30 minutes! Grandma’s in charge!” or “I’m going out to the yard to read! If you need something, ask Dad!”) your family will honor that. Good luck!
Dear Care and Feeding,
My husband and my 2½-year-old son have good moments, but most of the time they do not get along and it creates unbearable tension in my house. I’m the primary caregiver: We both work 9–5 but my husband also works on a side business that keeps him away most evenings and weekends. My son has preferred me over his dad for quite a while, which hurts my husband’s feelings. I think the basis of their tension comes from my husband’s impatience for what I think is typical toddler behavior: tantrums, picky eating, talking back, etc.
My husband insists that our son is a brat who treats his dad poorly because he’s a mean child. I’m tired of living with this dynamic. I can’t seem to make my husband understand that he and our son are not equals, and trying to argue and reason through toddler behavior won’t work. I am so worried that their relationship will never be healthy. What can I do to try to improve the dynamic?
—Will Love See Us Through?
Dear WLSUT,
I’m so sorry to hear this. It’s quite natural for your son to be more bonded to you given the work schedules you describe, but your husband’s misunderstanding about a child that age is no doubt exacerbating things.
I cannot blame you for being tired of trying to negotiate this. Your husband’s inability to understand something as fundamental about parenthood as the fact that he and his child are not equals is troubling. I know he’s working two jobs, but does your husband ever have the time to join you and your son for a trip to the playground so he can see, firsthand, how toddlers behave?
If visits to the playground are off the table at the moment, perhaps there are other members of your extended family or social circle raising kids—some trusted voice who could affirm that toddlers are unpredictable and picky and full of big emotions, and that part of the task of a parent is to guide them through those emotions.
Failing that, I wonder if your pediatrician or some other trusted figure could point out to your husband that, no, tantrums aren’t a sign of disrespect but a still-developing psyche.
If your husband’s work schedule has been affected by what’s happening right now, perhaps that is a blessing. If Dad and Kid had more time to spend together, your son’s obvious preference might soften a little; not only might the two develop a stronger relationship, but your husband might better understand what a 2-year old is capable of emotionally. Please try to encourage a little bonding between the two of them—regular bedtime stories, some other special rite. It will help.
It might also help to remember that kids change quickly! This is one of the many phases your little guy will pass through, and while you are in a tough spot, I’m confident that you can turn things around. I hope you will call in some backup to show your husband the error of his thinking; I hope it will help him better understand his son. Good luck.
Dear Care and Feeding,
My 12-year-old daughter has been dealing with a bully, Jeff, since the start of the school year. Jeff’s bullying has been mostly verbal (calling her stupid and ugly) but occasionally physical (pushing her down and kicking her, throwing things at her and encouraging his friends to do the same) and it has happened almost daily.
On one occasion she has called me in hysterics begging me to pick her up because he’d jostled her in the hallway and said, “See you in class,” and she was afraid of what he would do.
The school administration has been slow and reluctant to respond, but they finally agreed to transfer my daughter to a different classroom where she won’t have to see or interact with Jeff. They asked me if I thought punishment was required, and I told them I just wanted my daughter to be safe. Rather than being relieved with this result, my daughter was angry. She thinks it’s unfair that she’s being moved and Jeff isn’t, and she wants to see Jeff punished. (He has occasionally been sent out of class, but no banishment lasted more than an hour.) I don’t believe that punishment would do anything to help the situation, and I was surprised to hear my normally gentle daughter sound so vengeful. What should I do?
—Safety First
Dear Safety First,
What a rotten situation. I don’t blame your daughter one bit. Why should some other kid’s transgressions mean she has to be uprooted? Why shouldn’t Jeff be truly punished for his behavior? Even if she is “normally gentle,” it’s not necessarily bad to see her stand up for herself, and it’s a human impulse (perhaps a youthful one), anyway, to want justice.
But in this instance, I suspect you feel, as I do, that what matters most is her safety. The situation you describe is so awful, and she’s free of it. Going back to the school to demand retribution—especially since the administration was slow to take this seriously when the issue was more pressing—seems likely to end in frustration. And as the adult, you understand what your daughter might not, that revenge may not be the salve she imagines.
I think you should tell her how proud you are of her for speaking up and confiding in you—remind her that you’ll always be available to back her up when she’s in a tight spot. Of course, she’s right to stand up for herself, to demand repercussions, to point out bad behavior. At the same time, I think you should tell her that sometimes real justice is elusive, and matters less than her safety. It’s a grim lesson, but sometimes lessons are are.
—Rumaan
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We have a very smart, creative 13-year-old daughter. I recently read the texts between her and her first boyfriend—something she knows I do—and was surprised. She tells him that her life is screwed up and that she feels unworthy and unloved. This does not seem to describe our relationship. Should I talk to her about this?
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