• • • google suggested • • •
• • • some of the things I read in antisocial isolation • • •
How to Quarantine in a Ghost Town
Cerro Gordo has been abandoned since 1957. Now one man is social distancing there by himself.
Cerro Gordo by night. Embiggenable.
ON MARCH 18, 2020, BRENT UNDERWOOD arrived in the California ghost town of Cerro Gordo after driving 22 hours from Austin, Texas. The plan was to stay a few days, maybe a week, pinch hitting while the town’s usual caretaker left to visit his wife.
Then came the snow, as if sent from above to enforce social-distancing guidelines.
Today, some six weeks later, Underwood is still in Cerro Gordo—quarantined, snowed-in, and all by his lonesome. Without running water, he’s getting by on melted snow; without fresh food, a dwindling supply of canned goods and frozen chicken tenders; and without company, visits from a local bobcat and, perhaps, the occasional ghost.
It’s not exactly what Underwood had in mind when he purchased the town, with a friend, in 2018 for $1.4 million. “I kind of have this thing for history and hospitality,” says Underwood, who also owns an Austin hostel converted from a 19th-century mansion. For someone in that business, Cerro Gordo presented the ultimate, if not the easiest, opportunity: 22 buildings waiting to be made habitable, stark mountainous panoramas, and a literal bloodstain bearing witness to the town’s violent past as a mining community. Underwood recalls his first drive into the ghost town, along the final seven miles of winding dirt road. “My jaw dropped the entire time,” he says, as each turn revealed a new rock formation. “I’ve never seen anything like this in my life,” he thought to himself. After some fixing up, it would make a dream vacation destination. But, as we know, quarantine is not vacation.
Brent Underwood is “having the time of his life.”
Founded in 1865 by Mexican prospector Pablo Flores, Cerro Gordo enjoyed a brief but fruitful run as a silver-mining powerhouse. Indeed, by the end of 1869, tons of silver bullion had been transported from Cerro Gordo to Los Angeles, about 200 miles south. “What Los Angeles is, is mainly due to” Cerro Gordo, wrote The Los Angeles News that same year. The mining town, the paper continued, is “the silver cord that binds our present existence. Should it be uncomfortably severed, we would inevitably collapse.” …
Trump is marching meatpacking workers off to their deaths
The president’s executive order to keep meat plants open shows contempt for workers’ health and public health.
‘Donald Trump is in essence marching many meatpacking workers off to slaughter.’
In ordering the nation’s meat plants to stay open, Donald Trump is in essence marching many meatpacking workers off to slaughter. With his executive order on Tuesday night, the president is in effect overruling safety-minded governors and mayors who have pressured numerous meat, pork and poultry plants into shutting temporarily after they had become hotspots that were spreading Covid-19 through their surrounding communities. With such a move, Trump is – let’s not mince words here – is showing contempt for both workers’ health and public health.
What makes Trump’s order especially alarming and disdainful toward workers’ wellbeing is that he has ordered meatpacking plants to stay open or to reopen even though his business-friendly Occupational Safety and Health Administration (Osha) – overseen by the labor secretary, Eugene Scalia – has issued no requirements whatsoever that meatpacking plants take firm, specific steps to protect their workers against Covid-19. Instead, Trump’s Osha has merely issued a “guidance”, which is essentially a will-you-pretty-please-do-this request that meatpacking plants take sundry steps to improve safety. Considering that more than 700 workers at the Smithfield pork processing plant in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, have contracted Covid-19, it’s hard to have confidence that meatpacking companies – which have already done such a poor job protecting their workers from the virus and which traditionally put huge emphasis on line speed and productivity – will rush to take the voluntarily steps recommended to assure worker safety, steps that would cost money and slow down the plants’ all-important line speed.
“It’s a guideline. It’s not a regulation. They can do whatever they want,” Tony Corbo, an official with Food and Water Watch, told the New York Times. “The people are still standing next to one another in these plants. They’re still getting sick.”
At least 20 meatpacking workers have died from the coronavirus and 6,500 have tested positive or been quarantined, according to the United Food and Commercial Workers union. Twenty-two meat and poultry plants have been shut at some point in recent weeks after clusters of employees tested positive. …
RELATED: Trump the commander-in-bleach has been stripped of all feeling
As the death toll rises, the president seems incapable of empathy. Maybe the disinfectant knocked it out of him.
Donald Trump kindly obliged when a reporter asked last month if our commander-in-bleach saw America as being at war against the coronavirus.
“I do. I actually do,” he admitted, as the official death toll reached just 145 Americans. “I view it as a, in a sense, a wartime president. I mean that’s what we’re fighting. I mean, it’s – it’s a very tough situation. You’re – you have to do things.”
Doing things is one of the great burdens of being a wartime president. Explaining things is another. Sometimes you’re even asked to feel things. And we’re not talking about models, OK? Not even pandemic models.
One of those weird feeling questions was lobbed Trump’s way on Tuesday, like a meatball dangling in the air of the East Room, waiting to be crushed in front of the cameras.
“You’ve spoken about your friend who passed away,” begged the hungry reporter. “I was wondering if you have spoken to the families of anyone else who has lost a loved one to Covid-19. If there’s any particular stories that have affected you.” …
It’s Too Early to Reopen Georgia
As the mayor of Atlanta, I’m unable to endorse the governor’s decision to reopen businesses before health experts say it’s safe to do so.
Atlanta faces unusual challenges as we cope with the ongoing pandemic. The political reality is that we are a blue city in a red state, trying to balance public-health concerns in a diverse environment while getting our economy back on track as soon as possible.
As the mayor of Georgia’s largest city, I expressed opposition to Governor Brian Kemp’s recent order allowing certain businesses—dine-in restaurants, gyms, hair and nail salons, barbershops, tattoo parlors and bowling alleys—to reopen before health experts say doing so is safe. I hope the day for Atlanta to endorse such a move will come soon, but it is not here yet.
Reopening the state and relaxing social-distancing measures now is irresponsible and could even be deadly. Our hospitals may not be stretched to capacity, but that does not mean we should work to fill the vacant beds. I strongly believe that our health-care system is not overwhelmed because we have been socially distancing. And while staying at home may be inconvenient for many people, there is nothing essential about going to a bowling alley during a pandemic. We need to continue to do whatever it takes to keep the number of cases from rising.
Although Governor Kemp and I have had a good working relationship, mayors across Georgia, including myself, were denied the opportunity to provide input on his decision to ease social-distancing restrictions, which directly affects the towns and cities that we lead. Even in COVID-19 hot spots such as Albany, Georgia, which has per capita infection rates on par with New York City’s, the mayor learned of the governor’s decision with the rest of the public, during an evening press conference last week. …
RELATED: Politics drive Georgia’s reopening gamble as coronavirus cases rise
The health risks of an early reopening could be even more risky than an economic one, economists say.
When John Gianoulidis, owner of the Kafenio Greek Diner, heard the Georgia governor, Brian Kemp, announce restaurants could offer dine-in services once again this week, he feared the worst for his restaurant and coffee shop in Atlanta.
Here’s the deal, he typed out on Facebook.
“Kemp mandates restaurants reopen, whether I reopen dining rooms or not. I file for business interruption insurance, it does not go through since I am ‘allowed’ to operate full capacity,” he hypothesized, adding further down in the now viral post, “If things blow up again, they are still on my tab not on the states, since they are no longer employed. Guys, this is about screwing the working class and small business, not about helping us.”
Economists are uncertain if Gianoulidis is entirely correct about the exact rationale behind the sudden announcement to reopen Georgia as coronavirus cases continue to rise, with nearly 25,000 confirmed in the state as of Tuesday afternoon. The state’s reopening has been so early that even Donald Trump urged Kemp not to do it.
But they can agree the most in danger from Kemp’s actions – both economically and healthwise – are those who open their businesses or return to work in Georgia’s new sudden easing of restrictions. …
Urban Legends Older Than You’d Think
If you’re like us, you’ll remember the first time you heard a famous urban legend. Sitting around a campfire, toasting marshmallows with your many attractive friends… okay, fine, we read them all online. Happy now? But we also learned that some of modern folklore’s creepiest stories are way older than you’d think, because our ancestors were a bunch of morbid weirdos too.
5. Long Before Alligators, Other Animals Were Rumoured To Live In Sewers
Before Stephen King invented sewer clowns, a long-standing urban legend told of more mundane monsters living beneath us. Supposedly, New Yorkers would buy baby alligators in Florida and then, somehow only just realising they don’t make good pets for city-dwellers, would flush them down the toilet. The gators would somehow survive New York’s tough winters, grow and breed and, in the more outlandish tales, mutate or fight ninja turtles. The gator myth dates back to the 1920s but, like America itself, has its roots in Merry Olde England.
In Victorian London, there were people called Toshers. They made a living scavenging in the sewers, just like their descendant Daniel Tosh, and they livened things up with tall tales. According to one legend, a pregnant pig slipped into the sewers and popped out a bunch of little bacons, and they all lived off the garbage that washed down to them. The incestuous porkers then made more babies and became a vicious horde. While it’s a fun story, another Tosher tale told of a supernatural rat queen who transformed into a beautiful woman, took human lovers, and rewarded the men who boned the best with a string of good luck, so maybe they’re not the most trustworthy source.
But legends of monstrous sewer critters stretch back even further. Aelian, a Roman writer who lived between roughly 175 and 235, tells of Roman merchants who stored pickled fish in warehouses. The fish were repeatedly stolen, but there were no signs of a break-in. One night, a courageous servant kept watch and discovered a giant octopus sneaking in via the sewers to eat up all the merchandise. The next night, a small army waited for the creature and hacked it up like only the ancient Romans could. This, of course, brought down the wrath of PETA, and thus the fall of the Roman empire. …
COMPLETELY UNRELATED: Need To Fly Somewhere? Get Ready For Layovers Galore
We’ve all had that moment when we’re booking a flight and come across the most dreaded word in air-travel, outside of “hijacking,” possible: Layover. Now, thanks to COVID-19 (For us?! Oh, you shouldn’t have!), that nightmare is about to increase tenfold.
Between retiring jumbo jets ahead of schedule and a lack of traffic leaving room for tiny prop planes to land at big airports for fun, it’s clear that airlines are getting clobbered. They’re eligible for grant money from the government, but only if they meet certain conditions. One of those is not cutting cities off from air service just because they aren’t profitable. To accommodate this, they’ve had to get a little creative with route planning, and start adding more “tag flights.”
In the simplest of terms, it means that there are going to be fewer direct flights — even between bigger cities and hubs — and more legs added to each trip. Effectively, all passengers’ lives are about to turn into this …
… but on one trip. …
‘Totally Absurd’: Spanish Officials Douse Beach With Bleach to Fight Coronavirus
Zahara de los Atunes.
A picturesque beach in the Spanish province of Cádiz has been sprayed with diluted bleach, in a misguided and environmentally unfriendly attempt to protect children from the novel coronavirus.
“It’s totally absurd,” María Dolores Iglesias Benítez, head of a local environmental volunteer group, told the Guardian. “The beach is a living ecosystem. And when you spray it down with bleach, you’re killing everything you come across.”
The beach, Zahara de los Atunes, was doused in bleach last week in preparation for an easing of lockdown measures brought on by the covid-19 pandemic. Speaking to the BBC, local official Agustín Conejo said the decision to spray the beach with the powerful disinfectant was “a wrong move” and a “mistake,” but that it was “done with the best intention” to protect children.
The novel coronavirus has hit Spain very badly. The country has reported 24,275 deaths and more than 230,000 confirmed infections, according to Johns Hopkins University. Spain has implemented some of the toughest social distancing measures in the world, but it has announced a four-phase plan to ease restrictions in the coming weeks and months after appearing to bend the curve of confirmed cases over the past month. Among these measures is a stipulation allowing children under the age of 14 to go outside each day for an hour, after having spent weeks indoors. …
SOMEWHAT RELATED: Swedish city to dump tonne of chicken manure in park to deter visitors
Lund council hoping ‘stink’ keeps people away on Walpurgis Night.
The university town of Lund in Sweden is to dump a tonne of chicken manure in its central park in a bid to deter up to 30,000 residents from gathering there for traditional celebrations to mark Walpurgis Night on Thursday.
“Lund could very well become an epicentre for the spread of the coronavirus on the last night in April, [so] I think it was a good initiative,” the chairman of the local council’s environment committee, Gustav Lundblad, told the Sydsvenskan newspaper.
“We get the opportunity to fertilise the lawns, and at the same time it will stink and so it may not be so nice to sit and drink beer in the park,” Lundblad said, adding that the only potential drawback was that the smell may not be confined to the park.
“I am not a fertiliser expert, but as I understand it, it is clear that it might smell a bit outside the park as well,” Lundblad admitted. “These are chicken droppings, after all. I cannot guarantee that the rest of the city will be odourless. But the point is to keep people out of the city park.” …
The editor of Taco Bell Quarterly explains how to make art out of a fast food brand
“They slather another layer of nacho cheese on their product and call it a new product. There’s something about that that’s similar to writing, metaphorically.”
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Doritos Locos Tacos at Taco Bell.
Move over, Paris Review. The hot new literary mag on the scene is Taco Bell Quarterly, a magazine in which every single piece of writing is inspired by Taco Bell.
Unaffiliated with Taco Bell itself, Taco Bell Quarterly is perhaps the only place where writers can publish poetry about Taco Bell’s discontinued dessert menu, essays on the Crunchwrap Supreme and queer politics, and short stories about a skeleton cop who wants a spicy bean burrito. It is, per its statement of purpose, “a reaction against everything. The gatekeepers. The taste-makers. The hipsters. Health food. Artists Who Wear Cute Scarves. Bitch-ass Wendy’s.”
Last week, I spoke over the phone with Taco Bell Quarterly’s Editor Grande Supreme, MM Carrigan. We talked about why fast food is a powerful venue for art, how to deconstruct the parasocial relationships brands try to develop with us on Twitter, and what makes the Crunchwrap Supreme so delicious. Highlights from our conversation follow, loosely edited for length and clarity.
Constance Grady
So you’re the editor of Taco Bell Quarterly. Explain to me what that means.
MM Carrigan
We are the literary magazine for Taco Bell literature. I also say celebrating the Taco Bell arts and letters. We’re not a gimmick, we’re not a viral sensation. We are real fiction, real essays, real poetry, real art, inspired by Taco Bell. …
Ed. Home Depot, via Google, has been trolling me with lawnmowers almost everywhere I’ve visited today. Inconveniently for them, I recently purchased a new lawnmower at Lowe’s.
RELATED: Crunchwrap Supreme and Me: The Queer Politics of Fast Food, Fatness, Failing, and Not Giving a Fuck
The Crunchwrap Supreme, according to Taco Bell
Crunchwrap Supremes are so hot right now. But they weren’t always living the best life. They too had their rough patches, as we all may have had. But one day, the Crunchwrap had enough and had to show everyone who was boss.
Me too, Crunchwrap. Me too. The struggle is real.
The Crunchwrap has that type of attitude that your mama warned you about.
Reminds me of a patch I saw at Pride that read: “We’re the queers your mama warned you about.”
I imagine the Crunchwrap flipping me off and scoffing at my doctoral education. To be honest, I’m sick of this elitist shit, too.
It knew what it wanted and it knows it’s hot. But hey, flaunt it if you got it, right?
The Crunchwrap is a slut with no fucks to give. …
CAUTION: Some language may not be appropriate for work or children.
Groundhog Day Was a Horror Movie All Along
The 1993 existential comedy has become a meme and a metaphor for this moment. But that’s only partly because of its exploration of monotony.
In February, during the Super Bowl, Jeep ran an ad doing what Super Bowl ads so often will: It converted a beloved cultural product into a marketing message. This time around, the alchemy on offer involved the 1993 film Groundhog Day. Cheerfully soundtracked with the film’s most memorable song, Sonny and Cher’s “I Got You Babe,” the spot featured Bill Murray reprising the role of Phil Connors, the misanthropic weatherman who relives the same day (and relives it, and relives it, and relives it). Instead of the existential agony posited in the original film, however, the commercial Murray delighted in the repetition. Because this time around, he faced his monotonous eternity as the owner of a Jeep.
A lot has changed since February. This month, acknowledging the shift, Jeep came out with another edit of its ad. In place of scenes of Murray joyfully navigating Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania, in a candy-colored four-wheel drive, this version begins with a black screen and sober text: “We understand that every day is starting to seem the same,” it reads, flashing briefly to Murray waking—again—at 6 a.m. The text shifts, abruptly, to the imperative: “Stay home. Stay healthy. When this is all over, the trails will be waiting. Jeep: #StayOffTheRoad.”
At the start of the coronavirus pandemic, the movies that were most resonant for many people were ones that directly confronted the calamity: Contagion. The Thing. Safe. Outbreak, for a time, was one of the most popular movies on Netflix. But Jeep understood, with the canny intuition of the advertiser, that as the emergency became more permanent, viewers might be seeking a different kind of catharsis. As the days blend and blur—as the weeks become months and the tidy boxes of the calendar melt into formless liquidity—Groundhog Day, now more than 25 years old, has adopted a new kind of urgency. Earlier this month, the Today show featured a video essay explaining “Why Every Day Feels Like Groundhog Day Lately.” Esquire offered tips on “How to Avoid Groundhog Day During Social Distancing.” On Facebook and Twitter, a meme has been proliferating: an image of Murray, as Phil, announcing, “It’s quarantine day … again.”
The comparisons are signs of privilege; they are typically made by and for the people who have the luxury of doing their jobs remotely, of schooling their children from home, of counting boredom as a hardship. But the comparisons are reminders, too, of how easily quarantine, that act of physical separation, can also cause people to feel distanced from time itself. …
Video Goodnesses
and not-so-goodnesses
and not-so-goodnesses
Congressman Eric Swalwell, who sits on the House Intelligence Committee, told VICE News that the powerful committee, which played a major role in the impeachment of President Trump, wants more answers and admits that in their current state, Congress can’t get them.
“The intelligence committee is actually gearing up to do that oversight. We met in person last week on the democratic side, and we have a plan to look at how prepared we were for a pandemic,” he told VICE News.
THANKS to SHOWTIME and VICE News for making this program available on YouTube.
A look at the coronavirus pandemic’s impact on food supply chains: meatpacking plants are closing due to contagion risks, and shuttered restaurants have farmers and manufacturers throwing their products away.
THANKS to Comedy Central and The Daily Show with Trevor Noah for making this program available on YouTube.
The coronavirus has now taken more American lives than the Vietnam War, but presidential son-in-law Jared Kushner wants people to believe Donald Trump’s handling of the pandemic has been nothing less than a triumph.
THANKS to CBS and A Late Show with Stephen Colbert for making this program available on YouTube.
Ed. YouTube, via Google, is now trolling me with this:
Leslie Knope wants to let you in on a secret… On April 30, #ParksAndRec is returning to NBC for “A Parks and Recreation Special”. Our workplace proximity associates, along with our neighbors at @StateFarm, are raising money for @FeedingAmerica. Join us!
— Parks and Recreation (@parksandrecnbc) April 28, 2020
Contrary to what you might think, eliminating the Postal Service wouldn’t just pose a threat to the letters filled with cash we all still get from our grandparents. It would also threaten our democracy!
THANKS to TBS and Full Frontal with Samantha Bee for making this program available on YouTube.
Senator and potential VP candidate Kamala Harris sits down with Sam to discuss all the ways she is working hard to make sure our country (and democracy, in general) make it to 2021.
Seth takes a closer look at how the president ignored repeated warnings in his intelligence briefings that the coronavirus pandemic could be devastating.
THANKS to NBC and Late Night with Seth Meyers for making this program available on YouTube.
FINALLY . . .
The Great Antarctic Escape
How Spanish scientists and soldiers made an epic journey home as the world locked down around them.
Scientists and soldiers were evacuated from two Antarctic research bases to a Spanish Navy vessel. Embiggenable.
ON MARCH 11, THE WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZATION announced at a news conference in Geneva, Switzerland, that the coronavirus outbreak had officially become a pandemic. A few days later, and over 8,000 miles away, the Spanish scientific research vessel Hespérides was blasting through 16-foot-high waves in the Drake Passage, the tempestuous waters between South America and Antarctica.
Its passengers, around three dozen scientists and military personnel, had been evacuated from two Spanish research bases in Antarctica—and they found themselves in a race against the imminent closure of the world. If they didn’t reach Argentina before its borders were shut and its flights were grounded, they risked being stranded in a far-flung harbor while a highly infectious virus stampeded across the planet.
While most of us had spent several weeks beginning to come to grips with the enormity of the COVID-19 crisis, those aboard the Hespérides were leaving the only continent on Earth not to be touched by it. Should they make it to shore, they were to be thrust into a world transformed, one that made their journey home to their families newly perilous. For many of them, the coronavirus itself was a greater source of fear than being inadvertently imprisoned at the icy ends of the Earth.
Their voyage would be an improvisational gauntlet, one in which every on-the-fly navigational decision could make the difference between success or failure, home or the unforgiving sea, staying healthy or risking bringing the virus home to their loved ones. …
Ed. More tomorrow? Possibly. Probably. Maybe. Likely, if I find nothing more barely uninteresting at all to do.
Good times!
Need something more barely uninteresting at all to do?
Right now there’s one bird sitting on what appears to be a bunch of eggs. The other bird seems to be looking for something tasty to kill.
Ed. Yes, that’s a cut-and-paste of another day.
It’s so sad that someone would take on this persona in a public space! You are completely bored when you stoop so low!
— Ruth (@BlmoRuth) April 30, 2020