The day after the election was called for Joe Biden I saw a caravan of cars driving down 106 avenue in Hicksville, Long Island, honking, some holding balloons and all with ludicrous slogans crudely written on their windows in what appeared to be white-out. One of the cars, driven by a husky middle-aged caucasian man, had a passenger-side window painted with the words “Let The Healing Begin!,” & upon seeing it I burst out laughing. This pretty sums up how I felt about the closing months of 2020; mostly a deep sense of foreboding & feeling unmoored from reality.
I was in the grocery store the next week and I overheard, because they were more or less shouting and I thought something was “happening,” two white women and one white male clerk, who was stocking food, yelling about voter fraud. The clerk said a bunch of ballots were driven out the bank entrance of a polling location. “It’s called fraud, that’s what it is,” said one of the women. “What about all the dead people that voted?,” said another. “I just want them to get rid of the fraud, I don’t even care who wins,” said the clerk, earnestly.
My therapist said I did the right thing by not starting an argument with them, but what really pulled at me was not so much that they were in a disinformation spiral but that they felt so confident about it, the three of them openly shouting about it at the intersection of the poultry section and the condiment aisle as if all the other customers were going to gather around them and commiserate in unison. It seemed like they thought they were just reciting uncontroversial facts; it was like they were just talking about the weather.
Sometimes it’s even more infuriating when the people in charge seem fairly aware of reality but willfully ignore it, one of the more bitter pills of the past 12 months. We are now neck-deep in a mostly baffling vaccine rollout where the people most in need have the least access and where young, affluent people with no co-morbidities can maybe get a vaccine if they refresh a website enough times or call at weird hours, or something.
From the beginning of the pandemic states and counties were urged to reduce their jail and prison populations to reduce risk of spread; some counties did reduce their jail populations consisting mostly of pre-trial detainees, but state prisons, where people are mostly post-conviction with longer sentences, mostly did not. The predictable result was widespread outbreaks behind bars that often spread into neighboring communities.
In prisons, the strategy to deal with Covid has been to tighten visitations and restrictions on people who are incarcerated, which has had a terrible and ongoing psychological toll. If you regularly communicate with people who are incarcerated, it is very likely that the people you are speaking to, if you’re able to get in touch with them at all during increased lockdowns, have had Covid.
Two incarcerated people I regularly talk to on the phone have been Covid positive, although one was asymptomatic. One man who I will call V., in a Colorado prison, said 900 of the 1200 people in his prison had tested positive. He is HIV positive and has other co-occurring illnesses. He was hospitalized for several day after contracting the virus and was hooked up to a nebulizer to help him breathe. But V. doesn’t always reply to my messages (we use the prison messaging site, JPay) because he and everyone else in his prison has been in near-constant lockdown, with little or no recreational time, no visitors for nearly a year, in conditions similar to solitary confinement. Presumably, this is a Covid precaution, but 75 percent of his prison population has already contracted the virus, so...it’s not working?
Another person I speak to in a Michigan prison said that guards were lax about wearing masks early in the pandemic, despite insisting prisoners wear theirs. A year into lockdown, he has been noticing more suicides. He doesn’t know why but suspects it could be lack of visitations and the overall stress of covid.
Despite this, only about half of states have been prioritizing incarcerated people for vaccines. Terrible coverage of prison vaccine rollout like this exists. Colorado, where V. is imprisoned, deprioritized people in jails and prisons in response to political pushback. Lawsuits have been popping up and unrest, including a prison riot in St. Louis, have been drawing attention to the safety of prisoners during the pandemic. In New York, our notoriously bullying-prone and by all accounts petty and vindictive Governor refuses to prioritize incarcerated people. for vaccinations, or release any plan as to when they will be vaccinated, defying logic and public health guidance, including the American Medical Association and a letter from all these health professionals. The state only started vaccinating incarcerated people with pre-existing conditions on March 4, three weeks after all New Yorkers in that category were eligible.
What do you do when large swaths of people are denying reality? One of the more depressing realizations about the past four years is that reality does not, it turns out, have a way of asserting itself. The truth doesn’t become undeniable over time, even when it’s inches from your face & screaming like that painting where the person screams. Probably because the truth brings with it pain, guilt, confusion, terror, and because it begs us to work to change the reality we’ve accepted, rather than calmly die in it, with sunglasses on and a thumbs up as we are slowly lowered into liquid metal like the Terminator, in the popular movie Terminator 2, the sequel to The Terminator. My therapist told me that I can’t change other people’s minds and I will need to accept that, which is unfortunate because that means I’ll never have a popular newsletter.
What I’ve Been watching:
I continue to mostly watch cartoon shows. I like escapism and bright colors.
Over the Garden Wall - Watch this if you get a chance, it is a beautiful and funny and artfully told fantasy comedy that traipses through a weird Appalachian landscape filled with surreal characters who feel like they’re from old folktales. The soundtrack - every episode has an original song - hearkens to early twentieth century folk, gospel and ragtime. It’s a self-contained series with only 10 short (around fifteen minutes each) episodes. I was not expecting it to end in a satisfying way since it is so short, but all the threads come together to create a really *chefs kiss* conclusion.
Summer Camp Island - I love this! It’s like a cuter., more all-ages, and less druggy & psychedelic version of Adventure Time. Genuinely funny and wholesome and comforting.
Kipo in the Age of Wonderbeasts - This show is pretty adorable and makes great use of music, although it is maybe not for everyone. I don’t think I would have watched it if there wasn’t a pandemic but I would endorse it for my tween child if I had a tween child.
Infinity Train - I like the premise even though the first few seasons were iffy. The third season is quite a ride though.
I also slowly started dipping my toes into live-action again watching the Haunting of Bly Manor which I honestly thought was wonderful. This did not get the same rave reviews as Haunting of Hill House although it is arguably better. There are less characters and the story is less busy and convoluted. The acting is way better. The overarching themes of the story come across more clearly in the plot, whereas Hill House felt muddled at times. This season is about grief, which is really just love enduring.
I also watched Wandavision which was entertaining if predictable. It’s about witches and robots fighting over sitcoms, a timeless theme for sure but not one I connected with.
What I’m reading:
Blackspace - An Duplan
Annihilation of Caste - Ambedkar, intro by Arundhati Roy
How to Cure A Ghost - Fariha Róisin
Soft Science - Franny Choi
Music I’m listening to:
These three albums have been giving me life:
Jeff Parker - Suite For Max Brown (2020)
Alice Coltrane - World Galaxy (1972)
Rachika Nayar - Losing Too Is Still Ours (single) (2021)
I’ve also been listening to these great albums:
Bad Bunny - YHLQMDLG (2020)
Bad Bunny - El Ultimo Tour Del Mundo (2020)
Arca - KiCk i (2020)
Kamaiyah & Capolow - Oakland Nights (2020)
Alice Coltrane - Eternity (1976)
Pharoah Sanders - Thembi (1971)
Ornette Coleman - The Complete Science Fiction Sessions (1971)
Yaeiji - What We Drew (2020)
DJ Maphorisa, Kabza De Small - Scorpion Kings (2019)
Max Roach - M’Boom (1980)
JWords - Sonic Liberation (2021)
Plugs:
If you have not already, please read this article I wrote for City Limits on the long-term mental health effects of solitary confinement. I spent over a year working on it, off and on. It was funded by a grant from the organization Solitary Watch, James Ridgeway, a legendary investigative reporter and founder of Solitary Watch, who died this February, selected this story for funding and sheparded it to completion. Thank you James.