Quarantine days
I miss seeing people so much
When I started this newsletter last year, I thought I’d talk about any number of things. Sports. Men’s style. My life, my struggles, my triumphs. Tech. Politics. The world. The horizons seemed limitless.
Over the last few weeks, that horizon has narrowed, just as life as narrowed. Everything centers on the contagion; it is inescapable, even if you’re like me and shuttered inside. I’m lucky to work from home; my housemates weren’t so fortunate — one left to go home to New Zealand, the other is idle after New York ordered all bars and restaurants closed on Tuesday, March 17. About 154,400 people work in the city’s bars, restaurants, cafes and food trucks, earning $4.7 billion in wages a year, according to a 2019 city study. They are now, the vast majority, unemployed.
That was the line outside my grocery shop in Queens yesterday morning. I’d left my house for the second time in a week to stroll there. I needed to stock up on some things, and of the four supermarkets in my neighborhood, that’s the biggest.
It was good to see them enforcing social distancing; people were still getting used to it, and you can see that from the knot of people all bunched together. But you could feel the tension. Something like this is sustainable for days, perhaps weeks. But months? And yet, that’s the reality: my state’s governor, Andrew Cuomo, slipped it in his brief today — “4, 6, 9 months”.
The world is upside down; at that point, I think it’ll become the new right-side-up. If my housemate returns to bartending, it’ll certainly be to a radically different world.
I’m struggling with this, and so I think that will be the new story of this newsletter: how we struggle with the new world coming. I’m Raf, and you’re reading The Miscellanies. Thank you.
“There are four children, a pair of grandchildren, four ex-husbands and an ex-boyfriend, Frank, who lives a short walk down Strand Road with their son, Yeshua, 13. There is her father, a sister and three brothers, all within a drive. They know her not as the pop star who rose to fame singing “Nothing Compares 2 U,” but as a witty, compassionate, difficult, fearless, playful and unpredictable woman who has struggled, personally and professionally, ever since she ripped up that photograph of the pope on “Saturday Night Live” in 1992. And they remember the last time O’Connor left home.” Geoff Edgers writes that Sinéad O’Connor is still in one piece.
What We Need Now Is Also What Can Harm Us Most. Skin hunger is a real thing. It’s going to be one of the toughest things about this quarantine, especially when it stretches into months instead of weeks or days. This is a beautiful cartoon by Kristen Radtke. It’s incredibly tough for me, since I haven’t been with someone for over three years, and I don’t know when that will end.
Real estate for the apocalypse: my journey into a survival bunker. This is just a chilling and fascinating look at how rich people are planning to ride out catastrophe.
How lost classic Doom 64 was revived for modern platforms. I haven’t gotten into gaming much yet in this quarantine, but this was really interesting for me to read.
"[P]lenty of folks—myself included—have been confused or curious about the safety of allowing restaurants to continue preparing and serving food. Is it actually safe? Should I reheat the food when I get it home? Is it better to support local businesses by ordering food, or am I only putting workers and delivery people at risk? And if I’m cooking my own food, what guidelines should I follow?" J. Kenji López-Alt, of Serious Eats, gives us answers in Food Safety and Coronavirus: A Comprehensive Guide.
"On the 11th of January 1982 twenty-two computer scientists met to discuss an issue with ‘computer mail’ (now known as email). Attendees included the guy who would create Sun Microsystems, the guy who made Zork, the NTP guy, and the guy who convinced the government to pay for Unix. The problem was simple: there were 455 hosts on the ARPANET and the situation was getting out of control." The History of the URL.
Listen: I love you. I think things suck, and everything is scary - both in terms of the pandemic and the economy. I spent much of early Sunday morning - like, early morning, 3 a.m. and the like - sleepless, literally praying. Praying that everyone I love and care about be spared, that God - in whatever manifestation you think They exist - take care of us all.
I don’t know what else to do. I’m here for you, and I hope you’re here for me. I love you, and what I do know - if only through faith - is that love, compassion, and each other are what will see us through. Let’s take care of each other.