Our Pandemic Summer

“The fight against the coronavirus won’t be over when the U.S. reopens. Here’s how the nation must prepare itself.”

Author: Ed Yong
Source: The Atlantic
Published: Apr 14, 2020
Length: 20 minutes (5,150 words)

Family Man

“I never knew my uncle. But it’s the absence of inquiry that feels most disquieting.”

Published: Apr 15, 2020
Length: 6 minutes (1,556 words)

The New York You Once Knew Is Gone. The One You Loved Remains.

In this pandemic-inspired variation on the Goodbye to All That essay, Glynnis MacNicol writes about what it’s like to have stayed in the current ghost town version of New York City when so many other New Yorkers have departed for greener pastures, and considers the city’s, and city-dwellers’ history of resilience through hard times.

Source: GEN
Published: Apr 16, 2020
Length: 8 minutes (2,090 words)

The Shark and the Shrimpers

“A well-known attorney helped land a $2 billion settlement for Gulf Coast seafood-industry workers. But who was he really representing?”

Source: The Atlantic
Published: Apr 16, 2020
Length: 28 minutes (7,079 words)

The Slur I Never Expected to Hear in 2020

As Coronavirus leads to a rise in racism, Cathy Park Hong, author of the essay collection, “Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning,” reviews the history of slurs and hate crimes against Asians in America, and catalogues the growing number of them here and around the world — including her own experience of being called a “Chinese bitch” by a Latino delivery man.

Published: Apr 12, 2020
Length: 11 minutes (2,872 words)

“Everyone Is So Afraid”: COVID-19’s Impact on the American Restaurant Industry

“For Café Rakka in Tennessee and its fellow restaurants nationwide, the Coronavirus pandemic has become a crisis unlike any in living memory. With tolls both human and financial, there’s no guidebook for how to move forward.”

Source: The Ringer
Published: Apr 14, 2020
Length: 23 minutes (5,771 words)

The Maine Farmer Saving the World’s Rarest Heirloom Seeds

Will Bonsall has spent a lifetime scattering seeds across the country. But will his efforts fall among the thorns?

Source: Down East
Published: Apr 1, 2020
Length: 11 minutes (2,902 words)

Ordinary Insanity

America’s fetishization of reproductive risk is driving mothers mad. Excerpted from Ordinary Insanity: Fear and the Silent Crisis of Motherhood in America
Published: Apr 7, 2020
Length: 16 minutes (4,128 words)

The Pandemic’s First Wave

Behind every data point on a curve or chart is a name and story of the earliest victims.
Published: Apr 12, 2020
Length: 34 minutes (8,500 words)

In Troubled Times, Make Your Memories as Best You Can

Stuck indoors, one housebound food journalist seeks a nostalgic comfort food from his youth: the traditional stuffed pasta from Lombardia, Italy called marubini. First he has to adjust the flour in the recipe.

Source: Medium
Published: Apr 15, 2020
Length: 9 minutes (2,317 words)