A Google Plan to Wipe Out Mosquitoes Appears to Be Working

An experimental program led by Google parent Alphabet Inc. to wipe out disease-causing mosquitoes succeeded in nearly eliminating them from three test sites in California’s Central Valley.

Stamping out illness caused by mosquitoes is one of Alphabet unit Verily’s most ambitious public-health projects. The effort appears to be paying off, according to a paper published in the journal Nature Biotechnology on Monday.

Verily is also running coronavirus triage and testing in parts of California. Bradley White, the lead scientist on the Debug initiative, said mosquito-suppression is even more important during the pandemic, so that outbreaks of mosquito-borne diseases such as dengue fever don’t further overwhelm hospitals.

Since 2017, the company has released millions of lab-bred Aedes aegypti male mosquitoes into several Fresno County neighborhoods during mosquito season. The insects are bred in Verily labs to be infected with a common bacterium called Wolbachia. When these male mosquitoes mate with females in the wild, the offspring never hatch.

In results of the trial published on Monday, Verily revealed that throughout the peak of the 2018 mosquito season, from July to October, Wolbachia-infected males successfully suppressed more than 93% of the female mosquito population at field test sites. Only female mosquitoes bite.

Working with the local mosquito abatement district and MosquitoMate, which developed the mosquitoes originally, Verily released as many as 80,000 mosquitoes each day in three neighborhoods from April 2018 through October 2018. In most collections, per night Verily found one or zero female mosquitoes in each trap designed to monitor the population. At other sites without the lab-bred bugs, there were as many as 16 females per trap.

“We had a vision of what this should look like and we managed to do that pretty perfectly,” said Jacob Crawford, a senior scientist on the Debug project.

In the arid climate of the Central Valley, disease is an unlikely result of a mosquito bite. But in the hot, humid regions of the tropics and subtropics, diseases caused by the Aedes aegypti, such as dengue fever, Zika virus and chikungunya, kill tens of thousands of people every year. Releasing masses of Wolbachia-infected mosquitoes into the wild might wipe out entire populations of deadly mosquitoes and the diseases they carry.

Verily is not the only organization pursuing an end to mosquito-borne disease. Microsoft Corp. co-Founder Bill Gates has pledged more than $1 billion to help wipe out malaria, including controversial efforts to genetically modify mosquitoes. Infecting mosquitoes with Wolbachia, which occurs naturally in some mosquito species, is a popular approach rooted in an old insect control strategy called sterile insect technique.

by Kristen V. Brown, Bloomberg |  Read more:

Image: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg

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Concrete Blonde

Never Say Never

An Oral History of Tiger Woods' Magical Fifth Masters' Victory

Where were you when it happened? Tiger Woods, 43 last April and 11 years removed from his last major-championship victory, turned doubters into believers again by winning his fifth Masters green jacket in the most emotional final day at Augusta National Golf Club since a 46-year-old named Jack Nicklaus won his sixth in 1986. We interviewed 34 of the key figures and observers in the hours, days, weeks and months after Woods’ powerfully poignant triumph. Even those gutted by Woods’ latest magic—and there were a lot of them so close to winning that day—professed feelings of wonder, grateful to have witnessed history. Here are their stories on what went on beyond the roars.

Prologue: The Long Way Back After Surgery

CURTIS STRANGE (on Woods’ spinal-fusion surgery in 2017): The consensus after that was that Tiger would never win another major. But you never say never.

ROCCO MEDIATE (who also has a history of back problems): If he had come back with the same golf swing he had before the injuries, you never would have heard of him again. But I was watching his tournament in the Bahamas, and I watched one swing, and I went, Oh, somebody figured it out. The club isn’t behind him. He’s not up and down as much. All of a sudden, now the back will hold.

PETER KOSTIS: His swing now is constructed to take pressure off his back. He used to control the club with his hands and arms; his body followed that swinging motion. Somewhere around the end of Hank Haney [as Woods’ teacher] and the beginning of Sean Foley, Tiger started to “body” his swing. He got more physical. He generated his arm swing through his body motion, rather than the other way around. And that’s when he lost his way. That’s when he hit a lot of foul balls. Since the last surgery, he has gone back to swinging his arms again. He lets his body accommodate itself to his arm swing. In that way, he was swinging in 2019 the way he swung in 1997, albeit with a different body and effort level.

FRANK NOBILO (CBS): Once the surgery took, he didn’t take as many risks. Go back to the [2018] Open Championship at Carnoustie. Oddly enough, none of us really agreed with his strategy—it appeared too conservative. He was more than a decade removed from winning a major championship. The other guys had watched, and they were a decade better, and they’re all playing aggressively. He just kept plugging away. So I think what he got out of Carnoustie was the fact that that type of golf, as proven in the Nicklaus era, would still work in the heat of the moment.

THOMAS BJORN: I thought the first 27 holes he played on the weekend at Carnoustie were the most telling indications that he was back. I remember thinking, Hang on—I know this guy. (...)

Foreshadowing A Big Final-Round Putt

TIGER WOODS: The one smart decision I think we really made was on Tuesday, when it just hosed down rain. All the guys who went out and played said it was useless to go out there because it was gonna be so much faster come Thursday. I just did drill work and worked on technique.

JOE LACAVA: Wednesday, we did nine with Fred [Couples] and JT [Justin Thomas]. You might not have heard the story, but the pin on No. 9 [in the final round] was basically out there on Wednesday, the same location. Tiger dropped one on the back of the green [about 70 feet from the hole] and challenged JT to a little putting contest, closest to the pin. So we basically hit the same putt on Wednesday that we did on Sunday. I mean, you can putt that thing off the green. You could leave it up top, which means you’re going to make a 5 or 6. Wednesday, it’s a pretty easy putt. Not on Sunday. You’ve got to barely carry the ridge to trickle it down there, and he did [to within a foot]. Amazing putt, really.

A Good Start

Woods shoots a first-round 70—matching his opening score in three of his four previous Masters wins—and was T-11, trailing co-leaders Bryson DeChambeau and Brooks Koepka by four strokes. The last Masters winner outside the top 10 after the first round had been Woods, who was T-33 and seven strokes behind Chris DiMarco after the opening 18 in 2005.

● ● ●

JOE LACAVA: It’s nice to get off to a good start by hitting that first fairway. It sounds weird—every hole counts just as much as the others. Make a good drive on 1, which might not be his favorite driving hole, and knock it safely on the green. A no-sweat 20-foot two-putt par is kind of nice, you know what I mean? He just had this demeanor about him, but he was still in a mood where he could talk to people and say hello. He wasn’t ignoring people, just a little more focused than he had been.

A Near-Disaster

Woods shoots a second-round 68 and moves up to T-6, trailing co-leaders Koepka, Jason Day, Francesco Molinari, Louis Oosthuizen and Adam Scott by a stroke, but the day has a scary moment: A security guard attempting to keep spectators back at the 14th hole slips on the wet turf and clips Woods’ ankle.

● ● ●

TIGER WOODS: He was just trying to do his job. Look, it was slippery out there. He tried to put the brakes on, and unfortunately my right knee went around my left. And that’s what hurt. It did hurt. My LCL in my right leg, I definitely felt it. But, I gotta go play, so off I went [and birdied the hole]. … You know, when you play in front of a lot of people, things happen.

JOE LACAVA: Friday is a round that could have been better. He birdies 11 [but misses opportunities at 12, 13, 17 and 18]. You know, you’re just happy to be in contention, but I always look at it as we should be better, if not running away with the tournament. (...)

‘The Perfect Storm’

A rainy forecast necessitates an early start on Sunday. Molinari enters the final 18 leading Woods and Finau by two shots, Koepka by three, and Ian Poulter and Webb Simpson by four. Dustin Johnson, Xander Schauffele, Oosthuizen, Matt Kuchar and Justin Harding are five back.

● ● ●

JOE LACAVA: With the weather moving in, we got a break by going in threesomes on Sunday—otherwise we wouldn’t have been in the last group. The fact that Tiger’s in the last group [with Molinari and Finau], and everyone’s pulling for Tiger, that certainly helped our cause. … People were texting me, going crazy ’cause Tiger said on the air that he had to get up at 3 o’clock to get that tee time. I said, “To be honest with ya, he’s usually awake at 3 or 4 in the morning.” So I’d much prefer to have a tee time at 9 o’clock, because by the time the 3 o’clock in the afternoon tee time comes, which is normally when it is, he’s been up for 12 hours; he’s exhausted almost. Most people sleep till 7 o’clock in the morning. He just doesn’t do that.

NICK FALDO: It was the perfect storm for Tiger. It really was. Jim [Nantz] asked me Sunday morning, “So what’s going to happen?” I said, “I think Tiger’s going to win.” Before we went on the air. I’ve never seen the patrons go from 10 deep to 12, to 15, to 20 deep, and he hadn’t arrived yet.

PADRAIG HARRINGTON: Sitting in the clubhouse, we knew he was coming 15 minutes before he appeared. The security started to get ready. And people lined up just to see him walk past. Then he arrived and made his way through the crowd. Everyone stepped out of his way. He had his head down. He made eye contact with nobody. And he smiled at nobody. He was the old Tiger.

by John Huggan, Dave Shedloski, Henni Zuel, Golf Digest |  Read more:

Image: J.D. Cuban

[ed. See also: This was supposed to be Masters week, and folks in Augusta are feeling the emotional and financial sting; and 'Surreal': Jennifer Kupcho looks back on winning the inaugural Augusta National Women's Amateur (Golf Digest).]

Wisconsin Election Held Amid Virus Fears: Here's What You Need To Know

After intense political back and forth, Wisconsin is set to hold its presidential primaries and elections for many state and local offices on Tuesday.

The controversial election day comes after the Wisconsin Supreme Court overturned an executive order issued by Democratic Gov. Tony Evers to delay in-person voting until June 9, followed by a U.S. Supreme Court order on Monday evening to cut off an extension for absentee voting.

The state had been the subject of criticism across the country throughout March, as more than a dozen other states delayed their elections due to coronavirus fears. Wisconsin officials issued a stay-at-home order for the state two weeks ago.

What is the structure of the election?

Wisconsin has an open primary, meaning that voters can request a ballot for either party's contest. Voters will have the option of casting their ballots in person Tuesday, but it may not be easy for those willing to go. Polling places were consolidated and modified to follow social distancing guidelines, and there's expected to be a shortage of about 7,000 poll workers as many decline to work amid the pandemic.

Voters can submit absentee ballots in person until 8 p.m. CT on Tuesday, the result of the last-minute U.S. Supreme Court ruling, overturning a federal judge's ruling that had extended the deadline until April 13. Absentee ballots submitted by mail will be accepted until 4 p.m. CT on that date, but must be postmarked by Tuesday (April 7).

A lower court ruling said that county clerks have to hold results until April 13, and yesterday's court action did not appear to change that.

What does a Wisconsin win mean for Sanders and Biden?

Former Vice President Biden maintains a significant delegate lead over Vermont Sen. Sanders, after winning a majority of state primaries in March.

According to NPR's delegate tracker, Biden has 1,217 pledged delegates and Sanders has 914 pledged delegates. Sanders would need 64% of the remaining delegates in play to win the nomination, while Biden needs 46% of remaining delegates.

Biden has solidly led polling in Wisconsin since early March.

by Elena Moore, NPR |  Read more:

Image: Scott Trindl/AP

[ed. To be honest, with everything going on, I haven't been giving much attention to politics - especially politics in Wisconsin. However, from what I can tell, Biden has been opposed to delaying the election and somewhat ambiguous about closing in-person voting stations. I can understand wanting to maintain campaign momentum, but that kind of ambiguity in a pandemic doesn't exactly inspire a lot of confidence (in his leadership or the validity of the election). See also: Biden: Voting in Wisconsin Is Safe. Locals: It Could Kill Us (Yahoo News/Daily Beast); Wisconsin voters go to the polls in controversial election; and ‘I know what's at stake’: can Biden win over skeptical Sanders supporters? (The Guardian).]

A Practical Guide to Building a Country on the Internet

Building a country on the internet is one of those ideas that people almost always get interested in when I mention it. For some reason, the idea has a lot of charisma.

But what does a country on the internet mean?

In short, a country on the internet means that a virtual entity provides most of the functions that you today would get from a nation state.

But more deeply, what it really means is that there is the possibility of making a much better life for everyone. To help ensure freedom and equal opportunities for all the fine people on this good earth.

So, how can someone make a country on the internet?

A good place to start is to see what the current criteria are for establishing a new country.

by Sondre Rasch, Medium | Read more:
Image: uncredited

[ed. Crazy? Who knows these days. This isn't a particularly convincing or well thought-out proposal, but an intriguing concept nevertheless.]

What the Caribou Taught Me About Being Together, and Apart

Over the past week, as each thread of our ordinary existence unravels and travel feels like something we used to do, I’ve been holding tight to a single mental image. The deep brown gaze of a caribou calf as it passed inches from my face. The whites of its eyes as it glanced at me in surprise. The animal’s fear of the unknown dwarfed by its clarity of purpose.

On St. Patrick’s Day, 2012, my husband and I had set out on a 4,000-mile, human-powered journey from Bellingham, Wash., in the Pacific Northwest to Kotzebue, Alaska, far above the Arctic Circle. For nearly six months, traveling by rowboat, ski, packraft, foot and canoe, we’d made our way across some of the most remote landscapes on earth.

In the last days of our trip, we were canoeing down the swollen Noatak River in the Brooks Range of northern Alaska. Winter had arrived early that year and we paddled through the damp chill of rain turning to snow. Bundled and shivering, we never imagined we’d find ourselves hunkered down on a riverbank surrounded by caribou, our breath mingling with theirs.

But late one afternoon, as we rounded a bend in the river, I noticed what looked like a branch floating downstream. And then another. By the time we realized we weren’t seeing branches, but antlers, two caribou had landed on the far shore. They pranced and shimmied, water flying in beads off their coats. Waiting at the river’s edge were dozens more animals, poised to cross. We pulled our canoe out at the next eddy and stopped to watch. When the last of the animals had finished their swim, we hiked along the brushy bank to find the trail they’d followed to the river. At our feet was a crisscross of tracks, pressed freshly into the soft mud.

At first, everything was still. Then a wave of sound approached like a squall across the water and we crouched down to hide in the bushes. We felt the wave of energy before we saw the first animals, funneling down the hillside toward us. Suddenly we were embedded in the migration of the Western Arctic Caribou Herd. So close I could have reached out and touched their backs, the animals passed in single file on the path beside us. There were dozens of caribou, then hundreds, and soon we lost count. Breath steamy in the cool air, tendons in their legs clicking audibly, black noses moist and shiny, the urgency of their motion was palpable. They stopped only briefly to gather at the riverbank before crossing.

In magazine spreads and documentary footage, caribou migrations look perfectly choreographed. From the air, tens of thousands of animals move synchronously as they dance across the tundra in sinuous waves. On the ground, backstage with the dancers, I discovered a different scene entirely. Instead of an orderly procession, the migration felt jumbled and jostling, anarchic and frenzied. Picture a schoolyard of kindergartners lining up from recess, limbs flailing, bodies in motion, all jockeying for position.

This was made worse by the fact that the river crossing had formed a bottleneck: Each caribou had to decide whether to leap from a six-foot bank into the swirling gray water below or to continue down the trail to another entry. In the moments of indecision, it was almost always a cow and calf that first took the plunge. The calves held tightly to their mothers’ sides, each pair exchanging quiet grunts as they splashed in the swift current. They were the ones with the most at stake; they were also the ones that couldn’t afford to delay. Still, they hesitated and stumbled, sometimes stepping forward only to jolt back a moment later, letting another caribou pass. I hadn’t ever imagined such disorder among these highly social animals, such chaos in their movements.

But the longer I sat and watched, the more I began to notice the nuances of the herd’s dynamics. Each animal’s actions were driven by something larger than itself. Behind the chaos was the collective need to move. And no matter how frantic the motion felt, no matter how many more animals came down from the hills and joined the bottleneck of the river crossing, I never saw a single shove. No caribou were pushed into the water or trampled against the bushes. It was as though a safety bubble hovered around each animal, with an unspoken, absolutist rule shared among the herd: Do not harm thy neighbor. One large bull even stepped carefully over my husband’s outstretched legs, adjusting his gait to whatever obstacles lie in his way. The caribou’s movements might not have been synchronous but I could see how they were intimately and essentially connected.

by Caroline Van Hemert, NY Times | Read more:
Image: Patrick Farrell

April Pink Moon

We are currently in the middle of a miniseries of supermoons – the full moons of March, April, and May swing closer in their elliptical orbit to Earth (known as perigee), making them appear larger and brighter. But of the three, April's full moon will be the one that comes closest to our home planet, and it will be the closest full moon for the entire year. She will pass by a mere 221,772 miles away; for context, at its farthest point this year, which happened in March, the moon was 252,707 miles away.

Why it is called the Pink Moon

Unfortunately, despite its rosy name, the full Pink Moon will be its normal golden wan self. However, the name does have a poetic origin. Many early Native American tribes kept tabs on time by naming full moons rather than the calendar months as we know them. And since the moons helped keep track of the seasons, their names generally aligned with nature. In the case of April, the pink full moon ushered in the arrival of creeping phlox (Phlox subulate) and its early waves of pink.

Full moon names varied from tribe to tribe, others for April include the Sprouting Grass Moon, the Egg Moon, and the Fish Moon.

It will be lovely from sunset to sunrise

The (not so) blushing beauty will be visible toward the east after sunset on April 7, and will reach peak illumination at 10:35 P.M. EDT. It will be at its highest around midnight, and will then begin slinking back down to set in the west around sunrise on April 8. Because of the “moon illusion,” it will look especially large when it is close to the horizon. (...)

Some may complain that we supermoon superfans like to make a big deal over nothing. At its largest, a supermoon appears 14 percent larger in diameter than the smallest full moon. As for the illumination factor, its brightness can increase up to 30 percent. So it may not be enormous and as bright as the sun, but I think there’s something lovely about knowing that Earth’s only natural satellite is just a bit closer to the mothership. And anytime anyone has a chance to look up in the sky and marvel at its wonders – well I would say that’s cause for celebration.

by Melissa Breyer, TreeHugger |  Read more:

Image: NASA

Lucian Freud, Still Life with Zimmerlinde , c.1950

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Putting Jared Kushner In Charge Is Utter Madness

Reporting on the White House’s herky-jerky coronavirus response, Vanity Fair’s Gabriel Sherman has a quotation from Jared Kushner that should make all Americans, and particularly all New Yorkers, dizzy with terror.

According to Sherman, when New York’s governor, Andrew Cuomo, said that the state would need 30,000 ventilators at the apex of the coronavirus outbreak, Kushner decided that Cuomo was being alarmist. “I have all this data about I.C.U. capacity,” Kushner reportedly said. “I’m doing my own projections, and I’ve gotten a lot smarter about this. New York doesn’t need all the ventilators.” (Dr. Anthony Fauci, the country’s top expert on infectious diseases, has said he trusts Cuomo’s estimate.)

Even now, it’s hard to believe that someone with as little expertise as Kushner could be so arrogant, but he said something similar on Thursday, when he made his debut at the White House’s daily coronavirus briefing: “People who have requests for different products and supplies, a lot of them are doing it based on projections which are not the realistic projections.”

Kushner has succeeded at exactly three things in his life. He was born to the right parents, married well and learned how to influence his father-in-law. Most of his other endeavors — his biggest real estate deal, his foray into newspaper ownership, his attempt to broker a peace deal between the Israelis and the Palestinians — have been failures.

Undeterred, he has now arrogated to himself a major role in fighting the epochal health crisis that’s brought America to its knees. “Behind the scenes, Kushner takes charge of coronavirus response,” said a Politico headline on Wednesday. This is dilettantism raised to the level of sociopathy.

The journalist Andrea Bernstein looked closely at Kushner’s business record for her recent book “American Oligarchs: The Kushners, the Trumps, and the Marriage of Money and Power,” speaking to people on all sides of his real estate deals as well as those who worked with him at The New York Observer, the weekly newspaper he bought in 2006.

Kushner, Bernstein told me, “really sees himself as a disrupter.” Again and again, she said, people who’d dealt with Kushner told her that whatever he did, he “believed he could do it better than anybody else, and he had supreme confidence in his own abilities and his own judgment even when he didn’t know what he was talking about.”

It’s hard to overstate the extent to which this confidence is unearned. Kushner was a reportedly mediocre student whose billionaire father appears to have bought him a place at Harvard. Taking over the family real estate company after his father was sent to prison, Kushner paid $1.8 billion — a record, at the time — for a Manhattan skyscraper at the very top of the real estate market in 2007. The debt from that project became a crushing burden for the family business. (Kushner was able to restructure the debt in 2011, and in 2018 the project was bailed out by a Canadian asset management company with links to the government of Qatar.) He gutted the once-great New York Observer, then made a failed attempt to create a national network of local politics websites.

His forays into the Israeli-Palestinian conflict — for which he boasted of reading a whole 25 books — have left the dream of a two-state solution on life support. Michael Koplow of the centrist Israel Policy Forum described Kushner’s plan for the Palestinian economy as “the Monty Python version of Israeli-Palestinian peace.”

Now, in our hour of existential horror, Kushner is making life-or-death decisions for all Americans, showing all the wisdom we’ve come to expect from him. (...)

Disaster response requires discipline and adherence to a clear chain of command, not the move-fast-and-break-things approach of start-up culture. Even if Kushner “were the most competent person in the world, which he clearly isn’t, introducing these kind of competing power centers into a crisis response structure is a guaranteed problem,” Jeremy Konyndyk, a former U.S.A.I.D. official who helped manage the response to the Ebola crisis during Barack Obama’s administration, told me. “So you could have Trump and Kushner and Pence and the governors all be the smartest people in the room, but if there are multiple competing power centers trying to drive this response, it’s still going to be chaos.”

Competing power centers are a motif of this administration, and its approach to the pandemic is no exception. As The Washington Post reported, Kushner’s team added “another layer of confusion and conflicting signals within the White House’s disjointed response to the crisis.” Nor does his operation appear to be internally coherent. “Projects are so decentralized that one team often has little idea what others are doing — outside of that they all report up to Kushner,” reported Politico.

by Michelle Goldberg, NY Times |  Read more:

Image: Tom Brenner/Reuters
[ed. See also: Jared Kushner and His Shadow Corona Unit (The Guardian); and He Went to Jared (NY Times).]

Charlie Parker Plays Bossa Nova

Bird is back.

How fantastic that sounds! Yes indeed, the Bird you know and love has returned, his powerful wings beating the air. In every corner of this planet – from Novosibirsk to Timbuktu – people are going to gaze up at the sky, spy the shadow of that magnificent Bird and cheer. And the world will be filled once more with radiant sunlight.

The time is 1963. Years since people last heard the name Charlie ‘Bird’ Parker. Where is Bird, and what is he up to? Jazz lovers around the world whisper these questions. He can’t be dead yet, can he? Because we never heard about him passing away. But you know, someone might say, I haven’t heard anything about him still being alive either.

The last news anyone had about Bird was that he had been taken into the mansion of his patron, Baroness Nica, where he was battling various ailments. Jazz fans are well aware that Bird is a junkie. Heroin – that deadly, pure white powder. Rumor had it that on top of his addiction he was struggling with acute pneumonia, a variety of internal maladies, the symptoms of diabetes and even mental illness. If he was fortunate enough to survive all this, he must have been too infirm to ever pick up his instrument again. That’s how Bird vanished from sight, transforming into a beautiful jazz legend. Around the year 1955.

Fast forward to the summer of 1963. Charlie Parker picks up his alto sax again and records an album in a studio outside of New York. And that album’s title is Charlie Parker Plays Bossa Nova!

Can you believe it?

You’d better. Because it happened.

It really did.

This was the opening of a piece I wrote back in college. It was the first time that anything I wrote got published, and the first time I was paid a fee for something I’d written, though it was only a pittance.

Naturally, there’s no such record as Charlie Parker Plays Bossa Nova. Charlie Parker passed away on 12 March 1955, and it wasn’t until 1962 that bossa nova broke through, spurred on by performances by Stan Getz and others. But if Bird had survived until the 1960s, and if he had become interested in bossa nova and performed it . . . That was the setup for the review I wrote about this imaginary record.

The editor of the literary magazine at the university who published this article never doubted it was an actual album and ran it as an ordinary piece of music criticism. The editor’s younger brother, a friend of mine, sold him on it, telling him I’d written some good stuff and that they should use my work. (The magazine folded after four issues. My review was in issue no. 3.)

A precious tape that Charlie Parker left behind had been discovered by accident in the vaults of a record company and had only recently seen the light of day – that was the premise I cooked up for the article. Maybe I shouldn’t be the one to judge, but I still think this story is plausible in all its details, and the writing has real punch. So much so that in the end I nearly came to believe that the record actually existed.

There was considerable reaction to my article when the magazine published it. This was a small, low-key college journal, generally ignored. But there seemed to be quite a few readers who still idolized Charlie Parker, and the editor received a series of letters complaining about my moronic joke and thoughtless sacrilege. Do other people lack a sense of humor? Or is my sense of humor kind of twisted? Hard to say. Some people apparently took the article at face value and even went to record shops in search of the album.

The editor kicked up a bit of a fuss about my tricking him. I didn’t actually lie to him, but merely omitted a detailed explanation. He must have been secretly pleased that the article got so much attention, even though most of it was negative. Proof of that came when he told me he’d like to see whatever else I wrote, criticism or original work. ( The magazine disappeared before I could show him another piece.)

My article went on as follows:

. . . Who would ever have imagined a lineup as unusual as this – Charlie Parker and Antônio Carlos Jobim joining forces? Jimmy Raney on guitar, Jobim on piano, Jimmy Garrison on bass, Roy Haynes on drums – a dream rhythm section so amazing it makes your heart pound just hearing the names. And on alto sax – who else but Charlie ‘Bird’ Parker.

Here are the names of the tracks:

Side A
(1) Corcovado
(2) Once I Loved (O Amor em Paz)
(3) Just Friends
(4) Bye Bye Blues (Chega de Saudade)

Side B
(1) Out of Nowhere
(2) How Insensitive (Insensatez)
(3) Once Again (Outra Vez)
(4) Dindi

With the exception of ‘Just Friends’ and ‘Out of Nowhere’ these are all well-known pieces composed by Jobim. The two pieces not by Jobim are both standards familiar from Parker’s early, magnificent performances, though of course here they are done in a bossa nova rhythm, a totally new style. (And on these two pieces only the pianist wasn’t Jobim but the versatile veteran Hank Jones.)

So, lover of jazz that you are, what’s your first reaction when you hear the title Charlie Parker Plays Bossa Nova? A yelp of surprise, I would imagine, followed close on by feelings of curiosity and anticipation. But soon wariness must raise its head – like ominous dark clouds appearing on what had been a beautiful, sunny hillside. (...)

I’ll omit the rest of the article, which is simply a further description, with all the suitable embellishments. The above gives you an idea of the kind of music I was talking about. Of course it’s music that doesn’t actually exist. Or at least, music that couldn’t possibly exist.

I’ll wrap up that story there and talk about something that took place years later.

For a long time I’d totally forgotten that I’d written that article back in college. My life after school turned out to be more harried and busy than I ever could have imagined, and that review of a make-believe album was nothing more than a lighthearted, irresponsible joke I’d played when I was young. But close to fifteen years later, the article unexpectedly re-emerged into my life like a boomerang you threw whirling back at you when you least expect it.

I was in New York on business and, with time on my hands, took a walk near my hotel, ducking inside a small, secondhand-record shop I came across on East 14th Street. And in the Charlie Parker section I found, of all things, a record called Charlie Parker Plays Bossa Nova. It looked like a bootleg, a privately pressed recording. A white jacket with no drawing or photo on the front, just the title in sullen black letters. On the back was a list of the tracks and the musicians. Surprisingly, the list of songs and musicians was exactly as I’d invented them in college. And likewise, Hank Jones sat in for Jobim on two tracks.

I stood there, stock-still, speechless, record in hand. It felt like some small internal part of me had gone numb. I looked around again. Was this really New York? Yes, this was downtown New York – no doubt about it. And I was actually here, in a small used-record shop. I hadn’t wandered into some fantasy world. And neither was I having a super-realistic dream.

I slipped the record out of its jacket. It had a white label, with the title and names of the songs. No sign of a record company logo. I examined the vinyl itself and found four distinct tracks on each side. I went over and asked the long-haired young guy at the register if I could take a listen to the album. No, he replied. The store turntable’s broken. Sorry about that.

The price on the record was $35. I wavered for a long time about whether to buy it. In the end I left the shop empty-handed. I figured, it’s got to be somebody’s idea of a silly joke. Somebody, on a whim, had faked a record based on my long-ago description of an imaginary recording. Took a different record that had four tracks on each side, soaked it in water, peeled off the label and glued on a homemade one. Any way you looked at it, it was ridiculous to pay $35 for a bogus record like that.

I went to a Spanish restaurant near the hotel and had some beer and a simple dinner by myself. As I was strolling around aimlessly afterwards, a wave of regret suddenly welled up in me. I should have bought that record after all. Even if it was a fake, and way overpriced, I should have gotten it, at the very least as a souvenir of all the twists and turns my life had taken. I went straight back to East 14th Street. I hurried, but the record shop was closed by the time I got there. On the shutter was a sign that said the shop opened at 11.30 a.m. and closed at 7.30 p.m. on weekdays.

The next morning, just before noon, I went to the shop again. A middle-aged guy – thinning hair, in a disheveled, round-neck sweater – was sipping coffee and reading the sports section of the paper. The coffee seemed freshly brewed, for a pleasant smell wafted faintly through the shop. The shop had just opened, and I was the only customer. An old tune by Pharoah Sanders filtered through the small speaker on the ceiling. My guess was the man was the owner.

I thumbed through the Charlie Parker section, but the record was nowhere to be found. I was sure I’d returned it to this section yesterday. Thinking it might have got mixed in elsewhere, I rifled through every bin in the jazz section. But as hard as I looked, no luck. Had someone else bought it? I went over to the register and spoke to the middle-aged guy. ‘I’m looking for a jazz record I saw here yesterday.’

‘Which record?’ he asked, eyes never wavering from the New York Times.

‘Charlie Parker Plays Bossa Nova,’ I said.

He laid down his paper, took off his thin, metal-framed reading glasses and slowly turned to face me. ‘I’m sorry. Could you repeat that?’

I did. The man said nothing and took another sip of coffee. He shook his head slightly. ‘There’s no such record.’

‘Of course,’ I said.

‘If you’d like Perry Como Sings Jimi Hendrix, we have that in stock.’

‘Perry Como Sings –’ I got that far before I realized he was pulling my leg. He was the type who kept a straight face. ‘But I really did see it,’ I insisted. ‘I was sure it was produced as a joke, I mean.’

‘You saw that record here?’

‘Yesterday afternoon. Right here.’ I described the record, the jacket and the songs on it. How it’d been priced at $35.

‘There’s gotta be some mistake. We’ve never had that kind of record. I do all the purchasing and pricing of jazz records myself, and if a record like that crossed my desk, I would definitely have remembered it. Whether I wanted to or not.’

He shook his head and put his reading glasses back on. He returned to the sports section, but then, as if he’d had second thoughts, he removed his glasses, smiled and gazed steadily at me. ‘But if you ever do get hold of that record,’ he said, ‘let me listen to it, okay?’

by Haruki Murakami, Granta |  Read more:

Image: gray318

Bill T. Jones

[ed. I'll admit there are certain elements of my cultural life that are complete black holes (dance and poetry being a couple of examples). Until this morning I'd never heard of Mr. Jones, yet apparently he's one of the world's most celebrated artists (a MacArthur Fellowship 'Genius', and National Medal of Arts recipient, among others). Here he demonstrates the process of creating fluid motion from minutely choreographed details. I wonder if any of this could help my golf swing? See also: Bill T. Jones: A Life Well-Danced.]

Julian Rapp
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Double Standard: Essential But Unwanted

The coronavirus sure has got our number.

Maybe nowhere has the onset of the pandemic spotlighted the hypocritical realities of modern American life more clearly than in the farm fields of Washington.

Farmworkers, many of them undocumented and for decades relegated to live in the shadows, suddenly have been classified, by the federal Department of Homeland Security, as “essential critical infrastructure workers” in the fight against the disease.

Many migrant workers are now being given letters — papers, if you will — that grant them special license to violate stay-at-home orders so they can freely go to work to pick vegetables and fruit.

“The fact that there is that cognitive recognition that we have to allow these individuals to travel to and from work because they are critical — that’s the complete opposite of what they’ve heard for nearly their entire lives,” a Northwest dairy farmer told The New York Times.

So the people we’re building a wall to keep out — it turns out we need them now?

Of course we’ve always needed them — the fruit pickers, the asparagus cutters, the roughly 200,000 campesinos who help keep Washington state’s grocery stores stocked with produce and milk. It’s just the pandemic now is forcing our two-faced system to admit it.

“We will continue to work because we understand that in times of crisis we must show solidarity,” said Familias Unidas por la Justicia, a small union of Mexican farmworkers in Skagit and Whatcom counties. “However we ask ourselves, we are working for what exactly? To maintain the status quo? Get sick and no health care plan for us? Getting paid at poverty levels? Hunted down by ICE?” [ed. Emphasis added.]

These are great questions. But they’re great questions whether we’re having a national emergency or not. Can we go back, once this is over, to trying to deport millions of people who the government just acknowledged are a critical national resource?

That’s a question I asked last week: Will we go back? I asked it in respect to how local government suddenly is responding with more alacrity to “crises long in plain view, like homelessness,” as well as “absurd, gouging rules” such as airline fees and airport security.

“The COVID-19 crisis has stripped away the mask,” wrote Guy Hoyle-Dodson, of Lacey, in response to that column, one of hundreds of Seattle Times readers to do so.

“Guaranteed income? Not a problem, if only to save our consumer economy,” he went on. “Housing the underclass? Only makes sense, to protect the overclass.”

Wrote reader Cheryl, no last name: “Define your emergency — when it hits the right people, it’s an emergency,” she said. “Before that it’s a line item we may or may not have the resources for.”

Tacoma’s John Gizzi was blunter.

“Yeah, we’ll go back,” he wrote. “That’s the one thing we can count on: America returning to its comfortable place of ignorance and willful blindness.” (...)

Yes, the great leveler. In its attack, the coronavirus has shown zero interest in our usual divisions of politics, class or culture. I’m not saying everyone is experiencing its harms equally. But it is uniquely a communitywide problem. So once it ebbs, once we’re through to the other side, will we take up our tribal resentments quite so vigorously as before?

I don’t know. But if you’d predicted to me that the Department of Homeland Security would declare the long-maligned farm fieldworkers to be a critical national resource, in the middle of an election year in a country that two minutes ago was inflamed about wall-building and immigration, I would have said: You’re dreaming.

by Danny Westneat, Seattle Times |  Read more:

Image: Rich Pedroncelli/AP

If Only

There has never been a more important time, since perhaps World War II, for the President of the United States to bring the country together. Here is what he should say.

Recently, a reporter at the daily White House coronavirus briefing asked US President Donald Trump what he would say to his fearful fellow citizens.

Here is what America still needs to hear from its leader.

“My fellow citizens, this is a terrible time for our country and for the world. We are in the midst of a brutal war as challenging as any that humankind has fought. But this fight is not between countries. It is between human civilization and a virus that threatens to upend it.

“COVID-19 is deadly. It is not to be taken lightly, even if you are young and healthy. I have heard comments dismissing the danger it poses – this virus should not be underestimated. It is a real threat not just to your life, but also to your loved ones.

“But be assured, we will defeat it. Just as we have faced down lethal health threats before, from polio to SARS, we will come through this dark period and return to a better way of life.

“From this day forward, I am committing every available resource at the US government’s disposal to ensure that everyone in America receives the medical care they need. Everyone is precious. We will not trade one life for another, nor will we leave anyone behind.

“Let me repeat: We will leave no one behind.“ In 1961, President John F. Kennedy used his inaugural address to pledge this country to ‘bear any burden … in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty.’ Sixty years later, it is fitting that we re-commit to the same lofty goal.

“We should have been more prepared for this pandemic. When we get through the immediate crisis, we will make the necessary changes to ensure we are never caught off guard again.

“Here is what your government is doing now. First, we are mobilizing the full might of the private sector. Exercising my authority under the Defense Production Act of 1950, I have ordered our pharmaceutical, manufacturing, and textile companies to produce 300 million COVID-19 tests, one million ventilators, and enough personal protective equipment for 20 million health-care workers.

“Second, I have ordered that all military and Department of Veterans Affairs hospitals be made available for COVID-19 patients.

“Third, the Army Corps of Engineers is building temporary hospitals in the country’s 50 largest cities. We will have about 200,000 new hospital beds ready within a month, and more than one million new beds just a few months after that. We will double our nation’s hospital capacity.

“Fourth, all military medical professionals not engaged in urgent tasks will be assigned to support civilian medical staff.

“Fifth, I have called up specialized military reserve units – including engineer battalions, chemical-biological response units, and other relevant groups – to oversee testing sites in every county that has more than a minimal number of cases. The same mobilization force will also oversee testing in every major city (in partnership with local authorities), as well as in every transportation hub of towns with more than 20,000 people.

“Sixth, I have ordered the US Navy to deploy every available amphibious vessel, aircraft carrier, hospital ship, and support vessel to the harbors of our major coastal cities. Each of these is equipped with state-of-the-art medical facilities.

“To operationalize these plans, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs will lead the military’s efforts, in partnership with the National Guard.

“We thank our selfless military personnel for their help. We also thank our church and community leaders, non-profits, and ordinary citizens, who together are consoling the bereaved, providing emotional and mental support for those struggling to cope, and pitching in to make meals and deliver food to the elderly, the indigent, and others in need. You are the backbone of this country.

“And we have your back. Beginning now, every American will receive free testing and free treatment for COVID-19. Medicare will be made available to everyone who lacks health insurance.

“But we must do more...

by Alexander Friedman, Charles C. Krulak, Project Syndicate | Read more:

Image: AP via

In Rural Towns and on Remote Farms, the Virus Creeps In

Photos: In Rural Towns and on Remote Farms the Virus Creeps In (NY Times)
[ed. Excellent photo-essay.]

Lawsuits Swell as Owners, From Gun Shops to Golf Courses, Demand to Open

Blueberry Hill Public Golf Course & Lounge became a community institution almost the day it opened in western Pennsylvania in 1961, with one generation of players succeeding the next on the wooded, undulating course bordering the Allegheny National Forest.

It had its share of misfortune — last spring a tornado roared through its 400 acres, leaving $100,000 in damages across its 18 holes. With spring now budding early, Jim Roth, the general manager, anticipated a boom year even as coronavirus fears escalated — people still needed exercise, didn’t they?

“I thought I had a little bright light starting to shine, then somebody turned the light bulb off,” Mr. Roth said.

That somebody, as far as he was concerned, was Gov. Tom Wolf of Pennsylvania. On March 19, Mr. Wolf introduced an initiative to categorize businesses as “life-sustaining” or not, shuttering golf courses among the latter.

So Mr. Roth sued, joining a lawyer, a realtor, a logger, a politician and a laundry owner in demanding that the governor not hold absolute power to open and shut segments of the Pennsylvania economy like a spigot.

“I do not understand why Mr. Wolf is able to deem this business life-sustaining and this one not,” Mr. Roth said. “I think the governor might have overstepped his boundaries.”

It is a growing refrain across the United States as more governors invoke their “police powers” to take extraordinary measures to protect public health. Some Americans, many hoping to protect their livelihoods and others suspicious of such sweeping powers, are turning to the courts.

by Neil MacFarquhar, NY Times | Read more:
Image: Libby March for The New York Times

[ed. Our local course officially closed a couple weeks ago but still let golfers out for free, allowing for exercise and much needed outdoor relief. Everybody learned to respect social distancing (6 ft. or more), no carts were rented, just walking, and all pins were pulled so no one would repeatedly touch anything. Nevertheless, a few days ago a new guidance proclamation (pdf) came out stating that among other activities, "neither the operation nor enjoyment of a golf course qualifies as an essential business or activity." This follows the closing of state parks, trails, and other forms of outdoor recreation (even fishing). People are eventually going to go nuts. I've agreed with just about everything our Governor has done so far, but this seems like a little too much.]

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[ed. See also: Celebrity Culture Is Burning (NY Times).]

Giving Her All She's Got

[ed. Now's the time, Scotty.]