The Saturday Evening Post September/October 2020

After several months of hunkering down, we’re not just stir-crazy, we’re numb. Grieving for the freedoms we have lost, for the chance to shake someone’s hand, much less give them a hug. Those of us with any sense of social responsibility are staying home for the most part — the days a blur of meals, sleep, and a bit too much TV. It’s essentially jail. A very comfortable jail to be sure — at least for the ones who can put food on the table and pay the rent. But after days and weeks and months, the restrictions take a toll as resentment and anger build. Recently this exploded in me when I had an argument with my wife about something in the news. I took one side of the argument;…

Larry Tye “Historians have given President Eisenhower an undeserved free pass regarding Senator Joe McCarthy, saying he was right to let the senator do himself in rather than face him head-on,” says Tye, whose new biography of McCarthy, Demagogue, was released in July. “That might be okay if McCarthy hadn’t ruined so many lives in the interim.” In “The President and the Bully” (page 38), Tye tries to rebalance the narrative “by faulting our war-hero president for not directly confronting the rabble-rousing senator.” Peter Lovenheim “Neighborhoods are the building blocks of a healthy civil society — a place where we can get to know people with whom we might otherwise have little in common,” says the author of “Get to Know the Folks Next Door” (page 10). “As we face a pandemic and…

Echoes of the Past “Gone but Not Deleted” (In My Life, Jul/Aug) hit home. I keep a cellphone message from my mom leaving her usual voicemail, “This is your mother, call me.” Mom died last February, and at times I listen to her message — I wish I could call her one more time. Danna H. Viscanti, Latham, New York I keep a message that my mother left me on the phone before she died. She’s singing “I Just Called to Say I Love You.” Kathy Tobin, online comment My husband died unexpectedly three years ago, and just this year I decided it was time to delete the text messages between us. I also closed his private email and Facebook accounts. I’m keeping my passwords in a file so my kids can close my digital…

My book In the Neighborhood, published 10 years ago this spring, asked how Americans live as neighbors — and what we lose when the people next door are strangers. These questions are just as timely today. Not only is the country dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic, it is also facing a political crisis. And on top of these global and national issues, there are often painful personal matters, such as the sort of health crisis that my own family recently experienced. In each instance, neighborhoods have a critical role to play in easing adversity and averting disaster. The inspiration to write my book came from the murder-suicide of a couple — both physicians — who lived on my suburban street in Rochester, New York. One evening the husband came home and…

It was a long time coming, but the Slow movement has lately picked up momentum in America. Suddenly — too quickly? — it’s a thing. The coronavirus pandemic is, of course, the explanation. It accelerated a trend that has been simmering for years — the desire to ease back a bit and live more fully in the moment, to seek greater balance, to satisfy the impulse to get in touch with one’s inner tortoise. In other words, to … slow … down. This year much of the world was jolted into an involuntary disruption of familiar rhythms. It has been a particularly harsh reality in America, where we worship nonstop speed. Fast meals, fast deals, fast cars, fast internet, fast divorces. Don’t dawdle! Race to the finish line. But ever since the virus…

I have lots of friends who work in the medical field and are exhausted by the extra burden they’re shouldering in these virulent times. Most of the things I do as a pastor are now discouraged — meeting people face to face, visiting hospitals and nursing homes, tending to the sick and shut-in. Electronic interaction is helpful, but it lacks the spiritual and emotional quality of holding someone’s hand. Still, it’s better than nothing, and I’ve found other ways to pass the time, chief among them wondering if I have the coronavirus and how soon I’ll die. Being a hypochondriac, I have something of a talent for hysteria and regularly (several times a day) remind my wife how tenuous is my grasp on life. Every tickle in the throat, every bead…