By April we had settled into an uneasy routine. 

But everything felt like a struggle.

We walked a lot.

But mainly we waited. 

At first, those of us who didn’t work in hospitals treated Covid like a weather disaster—let’s spend a few days inside, hang out with friends on zoom, and start some projects. 

But the numbers of people dying kept exploding.

The emptiness started to weigh on us all. We wandered through the vacant city not really knowing what to do feeling helpless.

When the morgue at the local hospital overflowed, they put a makeshift trailer morgue on 7th Avenue in Brooklyn. All over, memorials to the dead started to pop up. 

I was not blogging in public in 2020, but as the year went on I started to collect images and put them in draft folders. My first folder collected a few images from the weeks before New York City closed.

Feb 28

Had just pitched an animated TV show in LA, which got picked up and were celebrating with friends. Nobody was talking about Covid yet, but there were people from China at the airport wearing masks. I remember sitting with them on an airpot shuttle and worrying. The virus was in the ether, but we weren’t really thinking about it yet. 

March 1 the first case of Covid was found in NY. We were hanging out with family.

March 7 A state of emergency was declared in NY. We were still out and about doing things. Someone in the office lost his sense of smell and started feeling sick. At that point that symptom was unknown. One of my kids was in a darkroom photography class. On the 9th it was abruptly cancelled.

By March 12 the office was empty and New York was shutting down. Signs urging distancing started to appear around the city.

I was still in denial, but within a few days everyone had retreated.

It had started. 

The Archangel Ancient Tree Archive has cloned five ancient redwood stumps to create 75 saplings. After 2 years of propagation, the saplings were planted in the Presidio in SF in the hopes of creating a supergrove. I'm intrigued by the science behind this project . The short film Moving the Giants tells the story of Archangel scientist David Milarch an arborist on a quest to archive the genetics of the world’s largest trees before they’re gone.   

Watching Alfonso Cuarón's Roma, I couldn't help thinking about the woman who worked for my abuelito's family. We affectionately called her Cucita and loved her dearly. In northern Mexico, at least in our family the lines of class and race were not as clearly defined as they are in Mexico City as families in the north are a bit more mixed and close to the earth. This said the shape of relationships depicted were all deeply familiar.

Jamel Shabazz has been photographing Brooklyn since he was 15. His Instagram feed full of images of 1980's NY is a love letter to that time, the city and its people. He's working on a new book titled, "The Book of Life." I can't wait to see check it out.

Related: New York's Summer of '78

I like reading stories that change the way I look at the world, even if it's only a degree or two. I read Annie Correal's The Secret Life of the City Banana a year and a half ago, and now every time I pass a fruit stand I'm reminded of it. The writing is lively. Worth the read.

It's always hard to find vintage pictures of kids with their toys. I found this image from 1907 in the Library of Congress. This photo of Cheyenne girls playing displaying their dolls and doll-sized teepees is unusual in its casual empathy.

I wondered about the context of the image and found the photographer Julia Tuell was a young missionary assigned to the Lame Deer Agency in Montana. I haven't found a good complete archive of her photos, but many are striking in their intimacy such as this image of Cheyenne sun dance ceremony preparations. Scans of two of her photobooks can be found at the Buffalo Bill Center of the West: Julia Tuell 1, Julia Tuell 2. It's important to remember that adults in the community would have lived through Custer's massacres and were entering a period of bewildering change and oppression. Imagine the impression made by a Cheyenne-speaking white woman carrying a large Kodak camera.

More NASA dust devil images. HiRise dust devil images.

Having grown up in an area known as Gobbler's Knob I've always had a fondness for East Texas place names. Often the original towns have vanished, but the names persist.

East Texan historian Bob Bowman lists a few including:

Chickenfeather
Pinetucky
Yard
Grannie’s Neck
Lick Skillet
Weeping Mary
Cuthand

I also like the cities named after other places:

Africa
Asia
Athens
Brooklyn
Geneva
Old Boston
Palestine
Moscow

And then there are the weird ones:

Birthright
Black Ankle
Bobo (on the famous Tenaha, Timpson, Bobo & Blair [or alternately Wells] line)
Cheeseland
Coke
Climax
Ebenezer
Holcomb Store
Jumbo - Named for the elephant.
Latch
Mim's Chapel
Mutt and Jeff
Old Dimple
Quicksand
Rambo
Tinrag
Twin Groceries
Uncertain
Weeping Mary
Who'd Thought it

I love the weird and wonderful work of David Jien. His gallerist Richard Heller writes, "he takes inspiration from the infinite possibilities of science fiction, the storytelling of Henry Darger, the isometric perspective and narrative geography of Nintendo and Chinese scroll paintings, the eroticism of Japanese pillow books and the limitless transformations of graffiti..."

"When I taught you
at eight to ride
a bicycle, loping along
beside you
as you wobbled away
on two round wheels,
my own mouth rounding
in surprise when you pulled
ahead down the curved
path of the park,
I kept waiting
for the thud
of your crash as I
sprinted to catch up,
while you grew
smaller, more breakable
with distance,
pumping, pumping
for your life, screaming
with laughter,
the hair flapping
behind you like a
handkerchief waving
goodbye."

-by Linda Pastan

Soon after entering Iran:

And leaving towards Turkey: