"Perhaps this is because it reminds me of the East Village I moved into 40 years ago, when streets were deserted at night; when you could make out on your doorstep for an hour and not a soul would pass to catcall; when you knew your neighbors, knew the shopkeepers. We’re all in this together, that was the feeling. Despite the dirt, the rampant crime (one block west boasted one of the city’s highest murder rates, as drug gangs fought for turf), we were a community. Just by buying bread at the bakery around the corner (sturdy semolina, nothing fancy), I was invited to dinner at Phyllis’s, the counterwoman’s, house and later to her granddaughter’s wedding. The block was bustling with seemingly indestructible old women—Polish, Sicilian, Irish, Spanish—who would, before sunset, drag folding chairs to the sidewalk to watch another day dwindle.... This is how it felt during lockdown. Passers-by might be few, but those of us remaining, we were in it together. Fear of crime might be replaced by fear of contagion, but if fear doesn’t drive people apart, it can drive them together."
From "'Sometimes I Miss the Lockdown' On silence, solidarity and a feeling, a year later, of life on thin ice in the city" by Thomas McKean
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3 comments:
Dorothy emails: "This was a strangely beautiful article. I have not read The Nation since I quit subscribing back in college. It was the first magazine I ever subscribed to, and I did it because like all good college students I was a liberal and saw a nostalgic idealism in their message. It didn’t take long for me to become disillusioned by a certain mean-spiritedness to start shining through, and had the good sense to cancel after a year. I was tempted to read the rest of Mr. McKean’s article by the thoughtful, elegiac tone of the passage you quoted. The rest of the article was just as poignant. Sadly, by the time I finished reading the article, the militant pop-up ad urging me to subscribe reminded me of why I left….. but I enjoyed Mr. McKean’s article. Thanks for the memories! "
Cheryl writes:
This seems to be a new genre in articles: lockdown nostalgia. It’s disgusting.
Lockdowns stole 1/3 of my kids’ high school and college experience. It was horrible. My dad is 83. He and my mom lost more than a year of what is statistically a short lifespan. Time they couldn’t travel, or see friends (their friends were scared), or enjoy the milestone events of their grandchildren. Time they couldn’t go to church and take communion except with a foil-wrapped wafer and plastic cup.
The peacefulness of a lockdown life was always available to a person. My family had a good, full life and we want to go back to it.
Ann, honestly, and I almost never ever use profanity in writing or in real life, my first response to these lockdown nostalgia pieces is : F*** You. I probably will have to work on my anger but that’s the truth.
Best to you and Meade!! I like the format with your posting comments in the comments section now.
By the way, posting email in this location is much easier for me. Opening up a post and then republishing it is slow for some reason. The comments section, by contrasts, opens up quickly and publishes quickly.
Also I make tags when I "front page" someone but not for what appears in the comments.
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