1910

Only connect! That was the whole of her sermon. Only connect the prose and the passion, and both will be exalted, and human love will be seen at its height. Live in fragments no longer. Only connect, and the beast and the monk, robbed of the isolation that is life to either, will die.

—E.M. Forster, Howard’s End

March 2020

Friday the 13th is too obvious a date, and too ominous. So it is either Wednesday, March 11th or Thursday, March 12th when I leave the office with a feeling that things are getting weird, that I might not be back for a little while. The spread of the novel coronavirus has taken hold in the news and in the national consciousness, though the World Health Organization is yet to declare a pandemic.

I am halfway across the stone courtyard of my office building before remembering that I left my laptop at my desk. I backtrack through the courtyard and ride the elevator to the fourth floor to retrieve it in the event my office closes for a few days. Then I go grocery shopping (just in case). An air of anxiety hangs over depleted supplies of fruits and vegetables. In the bread aisle loaves lie strewn about the floor as people sift urgently through the shelves.

One loaf looks particularly sad and deflated, its middle flattened by the wheel of a shopping cart. The image sticks in my mind as I drive home, wondering what kind of frenzy turns bread loaves into casualties in its wake.

1917

On March 8, 1917, demonstrators clamoring for bread took to the streets in the Russian capital of Petrograd (now known as St. Petersburg). Supported by 90,000 men and women on strike, the protesters clashed with police but refused to leave the streets. On March 10, the strike spread among all of Petrograd’s workers and irate mobs of workers destroyed police stations.

—This Day in History, History.com

1981

I am fifteen when my parents take me to see the movie Reds. I have been inducted into the tradition of epic films from an early age, so it is not unusual for me to hold up for a three-hour love story that unfolds amid grand historical events.

The messy, creative, bohemian lives of writers and lovers John Reed and Louise Bryant appeal to me. I marvel at their courage and willingness to be swept into the current of their times. Writing and reporting from the front lines of the Russian Revolution in the fall of 1917 was not for the faint of heart.

Reds romanticizes social unrest through sweeping, sepia-toned filmography—there are hopeful ballads, political rallies, the crunch of boots in snow-laden streets. The movie theater, a double-decker, is packed. When the credits finally roll the audience breaks into applause. For a moment there is human electricity in the air—the kind of invisible connection that comes from shared experience.

1918

PUBLIC NOTICE
Treasury Department, United States Public Health Service
INFLUENZA:
Spread by Droplets sprayed from Nose and Throat
Cover each COUGH and SNEEZE with handkerchief
Spread by contact.
AVOID CROWDS.
If possible, WALK TO WORK.
Do not spit on the floor or sidewalk.
Do not use common drinking cups and common towels.
Avoid excessive fatigue.
If taken ill, go to bed and send for a doctor.
The above applies to colds, bronchitis, pneumonia, and tuberculosis.

1985

In my senior year of high school, I make an unusual choice to eschew the camaraderie of after-school sports for a job shelving books at the regional library. Working amid the stacks, lulled by the library’s hushed tones and soft window light, is reverie for me. The Dewey Decimal system appeals to my sense of order. The librarians appreciate my eagerness to talk with patrons about the books they are seeking.

But I am a plodding docent, examining the dust-jackets and opening the pages of each volume before fitting it snugly into its home on the shelf. Time permeates the library, the steady progression of clocks, the ponderous advancement of my cart down carpeted aisles. I pay attention to the books I handle; through them, Time reveals itself as an invisible yarn that spindles between subjects. Biographies connect with periods in history, history intersects with literature, art, and science. Book after book, cart by cart, hour upon hour, I see the threads of the world, woven together like a dense rug.

1918

After the flu, I was a pretty lonely kid. All my friends had died. These were the friends I had played with for years, gone to school with. When I lost them, my whole world changed. People didn’t seem as friendly as before, they didn’t visit each other, bring food over, have parties all the time. The neighborhood changed. People changed. Everything changed.

—John Delano, New Haven, Connecticut, Influenza 1918

April 2020

More than 2,000 Americans are dying every day from Covid-19. More than a million are infected with the coronavirus. The Washington Post calls the disease a “swift executioner” and describes “bodies stacked, mothers and fathers discarded in bags piled onto refrigerator trucks in hospital parking lots.”

Nature appears blithely ignorant, even cruel in its determination to bloom in accord with the season: showy azaleas, magenta magnolia buds, white-star crabapple blossoms with feathery centers. Everything is buzzing, humming, hovering, alive—even the cobalt blue spring sky. To read the news and look outside is cognitive dissonance as death plaits together with the vibrant, palpable spring.

Fear and beauty make odd bedfellows.

1951

What makes loneliness so unbearable is the loss of one’s own self, which can be realized in solitude, but confirmed in its identity only by the trusting and trustworthy company of my equals. In this situation, man loses trust in himself as the partner of his thoughts and that elementary confidence in the world which is necessary to make experiences.

—Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism

2020

I am not a healthcare provider or an essential worker, but a nonprofit marketing professional who adapts a basement back room into an office where I work five days a week for an indeterminable time. There is a window that overlooks a grove of trees and a lawn. During Zoom conference calls I see groundhogs, squirrels, hawks and deer. I am acutely aware of the advantage and the perquisites of my situation. Meanwhile exhausted doctors, nurses, and grocery store workers brave the front lines to outmaneuver a capricious enemy they do not understand and cannot see.

Because I am no longer commuting to work, I gain back two hours each day. In the early morning or late afternoon I take up E.M. Forster’s Howard’s End. It is a lush novel about three families: the commercially successful Wilcoxes, the scholarly and artistic Schlegels, and the poverty-stricken Basts. Though their lives become intertwined in permanent ways, their ability to relate and connect with one another remains elusive. The story unfolds amid imagery of encroaching development, frequent train travel, social and cultural longing—all metaphors for the corrosive effects of technology and capitalism upon home, hearth, and most of all, belonging.

During the day, my phone lights up with alerts about the rampant spread of the coronavirus. My colleagues and I stare across digital divides that blunt our expressions. Fear and anxiety are universal, yet amid the absence of body language and a direct gaze it is hard to discern, until one of our voices breaks, or our eyes well up.

Zoom squares are neat and clean; they encase emotion so that it cannot spill over.

May 2020

George Floyd is killed on a street in Minneapolis on May 25. I watch the video twice: once, because I need to see it, then again because I want the horror to imprint itself upon my brain, to slap me out of my fog. Floyd’s death does what nothing else has been able to: it transcends the coronavirus and shatters the digital dome under which white-collar workers like myself are living. It wakens America to its sins and deficiencies.

2015

The civic commons, the places we share with the rest of society, are where interaction underpins opportunity and democracy. While cities continue to fulfill this critical role, there is compelling evidence that the connective tissue that binds us together is coming apart. In particular, it appears the level of social capital—the connections and norms of reciprocity that smooth interpersonal actions and support community—has declined in the United States over several decades.

—Joe Cortright, “Less in Common,” City Report, cityobservatory.com

July 2020

The New York Times reports at least 150,000 people have died from the coronavirus at a rate of roughly 1,000 deaths per week. Unprecedented numbers of Americans resort to food banks as the pandemic spawns mass unemployment.

George Floyd solidarity protests erupt in major U.S. cities and suburbs. Some demonstrations are violent as unidentified, camouflaged federal agents clash with citizens in public streets and spaces.

In some parts of the country the heat indexes have reached triple digits in one of the warmest Julys on record.

Alchemy is change, it requires heat.

I look at my calendar to see that I have four Zoom meetings scheduled this afternoon. Outside, the sound of cicadas. Normally a delightful harbinger of the season, their low, constant din reminds me of a buzzing fiber optic network in this summer of discontent.