Pandemic: Dispatches and Essentials Archive

SURVIVING THE PANDEMIC: “Okay, boomer” - PHOTO CAPTION: My daughter and I walk in a park two blocks away. To get there, we pass by Rao’s, the legendary restaurant that, it’s said, used to be a

SURVIVING THE PANDEMIC: Easter. All rise. Some soar. And then – can I really be saying this? — there are angels. - CAPTION: At Salem Moravian Graveyard — referred to as God’s Acre, as are all Moravian burial grounds --- there are graves for 7,000 men, women, and children. In death, all

SURVIVING THE PANDEMIC: I don’t want to “look inside.” I want to look inside the minds of great artists… and be inspired. - If you’re feeling the days are more or less the same now --- with your mood being the major variable --- I’m with you. My take: Two phenomena shape these

SURVIVING THE PANDEMIC: “Caffè sospeso.” “Tikkun olam.” “Pay it forward.” - CAPTION: Doctors have attached photographs of themselves to their chests so their patients will recognize them and know there's a person underneath the hazard suit. On Twitter, John Richardson, the

SURVIVING THE PANDEMIC: “Don’t pick up the rope.” - As I was thinking about the apparent strain some/many couples are having with mutual 24/7 presence, I recalled a passage in Married Sex, my 2015 novel, that resonated with a

SURVIVING THE PANDEMIC: “I need to get out more,” plus Easter music so fabulous a 17th century Pope kept it for himself - CAPTION: Alice Glass, a Head Butler reader, is an out of work theatre artist in Berkeley, now making high quality masks with a filter pocket. She wrote me: “I’m a

SURVIVING THE PANDEMIC: “It was like watching a Hollywood movie in which Gregory Peck straightens everyone out, only it was in my own house, and it was my husband” - CAPTION: The Kaufelt family. Rob is the former owner of Murray's Cheese. Nina is the author of the extremely useful Real Food: What to Eat and Why and other books.

SURVIVING THE PANDEMIC: “The garden center delivered flowers to my mother. And more: ‘We were worried you had no food, so we brought some.'” - USING EVERY LITTLE THING... AGAIN AND AGAIN I try to be generous with others. I’m tight about spending for myself. Like that little glass in the photo. I have a

SURVIVING THE PANDEMIC: “Who was that masked man?” (Hint: No longer just the Lone Ranger) - A million years ago, I wrote a novel with a Mafia guy. It was fascinating to hear how he put together the largest cash burglary in the history of

SURVIVING THE PANDEMIC: “Are they trying to kill all the gays right now? If one more iconic diva hits this Zoom, they’ll be scraping us off the floor.” - BUTLER’S BUSINESS MODEL: Patreon is a click-to-donate site. Sign in. Choose your level of support --- ignore the suggestion of $15 a month, anything is just fine --- and

SURVIVING THE PANDEMIC: “If you have a flexible attitude, you can help others quite easily.” - QUOTE OF THE DAY Jimmy Kimmel: “I’m starting to think these characters who support Trump might be suicidal. They seem to fight hardest for the things that will kill them.

SURVIVING THE PANDEMIC: “Sophie’s Choice” in 2020: “Work and very possibly die, don’t work and your family starves” - In 1979, William Styron wrote a novel about three people living in a Brooklyn boarding house. One is Sophie Zawistowski, who is Polish, Catholic, beautiful. And haunted. On the night

SURVIVING THE PANDEMIC: A Mother’s Day like no other - I cheered this news: Irish pubs will be closed until August 10. Maybe longer. Imagine that: a sacred privilege of Irish citizenship, postponed. I was also cheered by this, on

SURVIVING THE PANDEMIC: Chris Cuomo can save your life: “The fever softens you up. It makes your body hurt so you don’t move — and then it gets into your lungs. Stand up!” - Chris Cuomo got a call from “a friend of a friend of a friend,” who is a doctor and pulmonary expert. The doctor told him to get up, stretch his torso

SURVIVING THE PANDEMIC: Despair is contagious. There’s a lot of it going around. For a good time, call… - The Stanford marshmallow experiment was a 1972 study on delayed gratification. In this study, 32 children were offered a choice between one marshmallow or pretzel or two marshmallows or pretzels

SURVIVING THE PANDEMIC: Did Natalie Wood drown in an accident, or was she….? - The death of Natalie Wood in forever ago 1981 seems so unimportant today that my typing about it and your reading about it --- the word is “indulgence.” But HBO

SURVIVING THE PANDEMIC: Dispatches and Essentials, all in one place - Friends --- On the not so-genius-theory that this will be a long siege, it seemed smart to gather the key essentials --- vitamins, soaps and supplies -- I've identified and, in

SURVIVING THE PANDEMIC: Do You Use A Pulse Oximeter? (And If You Do, Why Didn’t You Tell Me?) - BUTLER’S BUSINESS MODEL: Patreon is a click-to-donate site. Sign in. Choose your level of support --- ignore the suggestion of $15 a month, anything is just fine --- and

SURVIVING THE PANDEMIC: Giving The Finger To “Time To Meditate… Slow Down… Reflect” - I’ve pretty much had it with rich white people who describe this catastrophe as an opportunity for personal growth and rich white people who are launching websites for writers to

SURVIVING THE PANDEMIC: Hi! I mean: Wow! High! (It’s April 20). Plus: why Vitamin D can help, and other reality-based Good News - CAPTION: Hospital workers who have been treating COVID patients for weeks stand in traffic in Denver to block cars of open-the-country protesters. Comment on Twitter: “Those people will show up