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Local Efforts in a Time of Extreme Global Stress
The theme in this “Our Towns” space has been, and remains, the sources of vitality, practicality, generosity, and renewal in local-level America, despite bitter polarization in national-level...
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2020 Time Capsule #8: ‘Light at the End of the Tunnel’
In the second of his two extended live-TV performances yesterday—a White House coronavirus update, following a Fox News “virtual town hall”—Donald Trump said that prospects in the effort to control the...
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‘Years of Effort, Undone in Weeks’
It has been nearly half a century since Erie, Pennsylvania, was officially recognized as an “All-American City.” But beginning with the first of our repeated visits nearly four years ago, Deb Fallows...
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2020 Time Capsule #9: ‘The Woman in Michigan’
Just before the 2016 election, and then again after its results became clear, I did a series of Atlantic items on a challenge I thought the press was not prepared for.The challenge was dealing with a...
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2020 Time Capsule #10: Projection
At his rally/press conference this evening, March 29, Donald Trump effectively said that doctors and hospitals in New York are selling masks “out the back door,” accounting for current shortages.You...
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2020 Time Capsule #11: ‘Captain Crozier’
The episode I’m about to mention has been receiving saturation social-media attention for the past few hours, as I write. But because the accelerating torrent of news tends to blast away each day’s...
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2020 Time Capsule #12: Do As They Say, Not As I Do
In his rally-briefing yesterday at the White House, Donald Trump announced that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was recommending that Americans wear masks or similar face coverings when...
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Thank You, Captain Crozier
Two days ago I wrote about Captain Brett Crozier, who as commander of the USS Theodore Roosevelt urged his Navy superiors to let him take his ship into port, because the coronavirus was spreading...
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A New Way for Californians to Serve
The coronavirus peril is global. Much of the response must, of course, be international or national if it is to matter at all. In the United States, only the federal government can pump out stimulus in...
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Books for This Moment
The past weeks have of course meant economic devastation for small and local businesses of all sorts, as discussed here in an item about Erie. The pressures on local bookstores and publishers, and...
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2020 Time Capsule #13: The Struggle is Over
This week Donald Trump announced the departure of a press secretary who differed from all predecessors in a basic way: She didn’t do the job.In more than eight months in office, this press secretary,...
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This Is How It Looks When You're Not Afraid
This article was updated on April 13, 2020, at 6:59pm.Anthony Fauci has been different from any other prominent official Donald Trump has dealt with in his time as president. The difference is that...
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2020 Time Capsule #14: ‘The Authority Is Total’
In a rally-briefing lasting more than two hours this past Monday afternoon, Donald Trump issued a royalist view of executive power not once but several times. (Which is of course his tendency, with any...
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2020 Time Capsule #15: ‘Liberate’
On Friday, April 17—yesterday, as I write—Donald Trump sent outthreetweets that were unusual even for him. They followed angry protests by groups objecting to the shut-down orders in several states;...
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The Meaning of Today’s Political ‘Street Theater’
On Saturday (yesterday, as I write) I mentioned Donald Trump’s tweets implicitly cheering the protestors trying to “liberate” Michigan, Minnesota, and Virginia by resisting stay-at-home orders from...
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A Different Kind of Civil-Service Organization
The U.S. national government is failing in its response to the pandemic. One recent example: A month ago, on March 20, the United States and South Korea had about the same number of coronavirus deaths:...
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From Military Service to Civilian Leadership
Here’s another installment in the chronicle of people who are trying to take up the slack, while the national government flails rather than coping with a pandemic.Previously in this series: innovations...
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2020 Time Capsule #16: Disinfectant
On the day when the Access Hollywood tape came out, one month before the 2016 election, I wrote a “Trump Time Capsule” item whose first paragraph, in its entirety, was:“Good God.”That tape, of course,...
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Sparking a Small-Town Business Ecosystem
The national-level response to the coronavirus pandemic descends from tragedy into catastrophe. The black granite slabs of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington display the names of more than...
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A Company That Helps You Find Job B
The tech-training and incubator company Bitwise, based in Fresno in California’s agricultural Central Valley, has been an important test case for the proposition that new, valuable, job-creating, and...
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