Drawing in the Time of Cut Flowers

On Grief, Loss, and Renewal in the Wake of the Pandemic

My first instinct when my grandma died was to purchase and draw flowers for her. A traditional gesture of sympathy, the flowers seemed fitting—but the circumstances were unprecedented.

It was April 2020. My grandma was exposed to COVID in the memory unit of her nursing home and died within the week. Like so many families, we would not be able to gather to mourn her or to say goodbye in person.

I continued to buy flowers in the weeks that followed to enliven that cavernous spring. Time, or what I had understood …

My Year of Sitcoms

It’s Easy to Be Seduced by the Rosy Glow of These Syndicated Fictions—But They Channel a Reality That Never Really Existed

It didn’t start out intentionally. A little 30 Rock to help me get out of bed in the morning. Some New Girl with dinner. A nightcap of Frasier (as others …

How Do Pandemics End? | Zocalo Public Square • Arizona State University • Smithsonian

How Do Pandemics End?

Argentina’s 19th-Century Cholera Outbreaks Show the Myth of a Single, Definitive Conclusion

The study of epidemics has routinely centered around what medical historian Charles Rosenberg calls a “dramaturgic structure”: a story of infection that builds to a climax of widespread illness and …

The Buffet Is Dead. Long Live the Buffet!

The Swedes Have the Smorgasbord; Americans, Vegas and Sizzler. Can All-You-Can-Eat Return Responsibly?

Growing up, few things loomed quite as large as a trip to the buffet. I say the buffet because the chafing dishes all blur together—part and parcel of one great, …

Party Like It’s 1999, Again

What Gen Z’s Displaced Nostalgia for the Decade of Mixtapes, Friends, and Ripped Jeans Says About Us

At the end of the 1990s, all anyone could talk about was the impending Y2K doomsday—that moment on January 1, 2000, when computers would think our calendars had all flipped …