Notes from a Plague Year

Introduction

April 3, 2020

The past year has been a momentous one in New York and the world. There have been a few signs of renewal, as in the opening of Hudson Yards; there has been destruction like the fires at Notre-Dame in Paris and at 70 Mulberry Street in Chinatown; and there is now the pandemic and threat of recession or depression in the city and the world. This volume collects one person’s experiences and observations. Some of the notes here are simply brief posts that I made on Facebook sharing links to articles in such media as The New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. I am leaving out the occasional exposures I had to the various Democratic candidates for President, a primary competition that has ended with the familiar figure of Joe Biden as presumptive nominee. On America’s standoff with North Korea—a subject in previous books—my complaint reproduced here, Chen v. Mitchell et al., adds a little to the record. Today, the most pressing problems are the pandemic and the threat of recession or depression in the United States and other nations; I can only hope American and international leaders of whatever party can find a path to a better future. My own connections to these problems may be found in these notes, which assert that I have been used by “medical science” to stand for a “virus” such as now threatens the world. Whether this paper edition of my notes will have any practical effect I do not know, but I have found some satisfaction in producing the volume.