Body & Mind Archives - Page 12 of 16

Body & Mind

The World Is Absolutely Full of Wonder

An interview with Mary Ruefle

April 30, 2020 • by Mary Ruefle and Gina Chung

In Dunce, Mary Ruefle examines death, endings, and our relationship to the everyday objects and rituals that remind us, even while they provide comfort and solace, of the fundamental frailty and uncertainty of life. We spoke recently by phone (the “Contact” section of Ruefle’s website states, wonderfully, that she does not own a computer and that ...

Public Health

The Rebirth of Tragedy

We are all existentialists now, knowing only that we must try to carry on

April 28, 2020 • by Arthur Goldhammer

Today we find ourselves in the midst of another great calamity. Once again we are compelled to ask whether our rational faculties are capable of coping with a virus about which we know far too little. The measures we think we need to take to keep untold numbers from dying are themselves so painful ...

Activism

Hong Kong Under Lockdown

From the masks of protesters to the mask of public health

April 28, 2020 • by Mark Frazier

The mask ban, based on a century-old colonial emergency ordinance, was largely upheld earlier this month in a controversial ruling by Hong Kong’s Court of Final Appeal. By then, the Covid-19 crisis had stopped the mass protests, accomplishing what Carrie Lam and her officers could not during much of 2019. ...

Public Health

A Jesuit Went to Milan to Learn Italian

Covid-19 taught him something more

April 28, 2020 • by Patrick Gilger, S.J.

After sunset each night teenagers gather in the piazza below the windows of my fifth-floor room. They are not rowdy, not really. They are just young. And here, apparently, that means they talk and sing a bit, and then drink a bit and sing a bit more. Then they sit and laugh and ...

Fashion

The Meaning(s) of Medical Masks

Hygiene, fashion, solidarity — and care

April 27, 2020 • by Tina Sikka

It is startling to see the ways in which medical masks have taken on a multiplicity of meanings: They were initially objects of confusion (to wear, or not to wear?), they have been in short supply -- and now, in many states, citizens by law must wear them in public. ...

Kinships

COVID-19 Paused Family Reunification Cases

They’re resuming, but at what pace?

April 24, 2020 • by James Parrott

Abigail Kramer is a senior editor at the Center for New York City Affairs at The New School. She specializes in policy issues impacting low-income children, youth, and families in New York City—especially those in the foster care and juvenile justice systems.

COVID-19 Paused Family Reunification Cases

Art & Design

Evoking Artist As Mother

An Interview With Myla Goldberg

April 23, 2020 • by Myla Goldberg and Hayleigh Santra

Hayleigh Santra [HS]: How did you come up with the idea for Feast Your Eyes? Myla Goldberg [MG]: For me, the book started with a question: Is it possible to be both an excellent artist and an excellent parent, or to be one of those, do you have to kick the ...

Migration

In Limbo

My journey through the pandemic

April 21, 2020 • by Pawel Knut

That is how my personal journey through the pandemic began. I was spending the academic year in New York City on a Fulbright scholarship at The New School. After living in the city all fall and winter, my wife and I were planning to leave at the end of April. ...

Interviews

Elegies for Lost Children

An Interview With Valeria Luiselli

April 20, 2020 • by Valeria Luiselli and Vanessa Chan

Eventually, the narrator’s own children go missing, culminating in a 20-page single sentence climax that breaks every convention, and that the reader is unable to look away from. On top of this wide range of themes, Luiselli also creates a novel-within-a-novel – a book called “Elegies for Lost Children” that ...

Public Health

What Thucydides Can Teach Us

Ancient reflections on a time of plague

April 20, 2020 • by Daniel Schillinger

Coronavirus will end the Trump presidency – or it will boost his chances of reelection. COVID-19 will provoke a revolution – or it will restore trust in liberal democratic institutions. It will make us more distant – or it will bring us closer together. Thucydides, the ancient Athenian author of the History of the Peloponnesian War, ...

Democracy

Steve Bannon and the Struggle for America’s Post-Pandemic Soul

Why populist-nationalist movements detest international cooperation

April 16, 2020 • by Robert Wright

But however grave Bannon’s crimes, to write him off back then—to assume he would never again be a significant force within Trumpism—would have been to underestimate his resourcefulness and determination. A pandemic is a time of opportunity as well as tragedy, and Bannon is seizing the moment. And the way ...

Steve Bannon and the Struggle for America’s Post-Pandemic Soul

Labor

Sick From Work

COVID-19 and the crisis of occupational safety and health in meatpacking

April 14, 2020 • by Paul Apostolidis

“The guy at the plant said they had to work to feed America.” That’s what The New York Times reported Willie Martin said about his mother, Annie Grant. She had been one of the latest of a growing number of meatpacking workers to contract the coronavirus: in her case, it ...