Max Brooks is getting a little tired of being proved right. An author with cult appeal and massive sales, he is regularly referred to as “a soothsayer” and “a genius”. His 2006 novel, World War Z, was about a deadly virus originating in China that causes global devastation, and his compulsive new one, Devolution: A Firsthand Account of the Sasquatch Massacre, is about people forced into self-isolation, huddling in terror from an unimaginable threat outside. But Brooks, 47, is dismissive of the hyperbole: “Everything I write about has already happened. The history of pandemics tends to come in extremely predictable cycles. So if I’m the smartest guy in the room, we’re in big trouble,” he tells me over Skype from his home in Los Angeles (our interview was in May, before the national protests after the killing of George Floyd, but well after lockdown started.). He has the jittery energy of the chronically anxious, and the easy confidence of one who has been thoroughly validated.
He certainly saw the coronavirus coming long before most politicians, and was making preparations in January. On 16 March, when most people in the western world were barely getting to grips with the lockdown, he made a video about the importance of social distancing to protect the elderly. He enlisted the help of the oldest person in his life, his father, comedy god, Mel Brooks. “If I get the coronavirus, I’ll probably be OK. But if I give it to him, he could give it to Carl Reiner, who can give it to Dick Van Dyke, and before I know it, I’ve wiped out a whole generation of comedic legends,” says Brooks, pointing to his father behind a glass door and listing his closest friends. The video has been watched more than 16m times. “I wasn’t given some secret information. I got my information from the news. Really deep state: turning on CNN and watching Wuhan getting locked down,” he says dryly.
.
‘Everything I write about has already happened’ … Max Brooks. Photo by Valerie Macon / Getty Images.
Shirley Jackson was born more than 100 years ago on December 14, 1916. During her lifetime, she wrote “The Lottery,” and The Haunting of HillHouse and We Have Always Lived in the Castle, the latter of which features what I consider to be the best first paragraph of all time, or at least of any novel that I have ever read. Here it is:
My name is Mary Katherine Blackwood. I am eighteen years old, and I live with my sister Constance. I have often thought that with any luck at all I could have been born a werewolf, because the two middle fingers on both my hands are the same length, but I have had to be content with what I had. I dislike washing myself, and dogs, and noise. I like my sister Constance, and Richard Plantagenet, and Amanita phalloides, the death-cup mushroom. Everyone else in my family is dead.
It almost seems like overkill to explain why this paragraph is so wonderful. It either strikes you or it doesn’t. You must have a certain sensibility to truly appreciate its charms. The rhythm is key. But let’s make an attempt, shall we?
Three decades after the Chernobyl disaster—the world’s worst nuclear accident—signs of life are returning to the exclusion zone.Wild animals in Chernobyl are flourishing within the contaminated region; puppies roaming the area are capturing the hearts of thousands. Tourists who have watched the critically acclaimed HBO series Chernobyl are taking selfies with the ruins. Once thought to be forever uninhabitable, the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone has become a haven for flora and fauna that prove that life, as they say in Jurassic Park, finds a way.
In 1998, Boston Youth Symphony Orchestras launched the Intensive Community Program (ICP) as a response to the barriers keeping classical music training out of reach for many would-be musicians, including African Americans and Latinxs, who are underrepresented in orchestras.
The program lowers those barriers in Massachusetts by providing top-tier orchestra training to students in kindergarten through twelfth grade from underserved communities in and around Boston. ICP serves as an audition-based feeder program for BYSO’s six performance ensembles — 12% of BYSO musicians attend ICP.
First Republic spoke with ICP Artistic Director Nicole Cariglia and students Kensie Carroll and Noanddi Manigat to learn about their intensive music community, which adapted to virtual performances in the wake of the pandemic.
Waking up to music
As a very young child, 9-year-old Kensie Caroll woke up each morning to the sounds of cello and viola as her two sisters, twins six years older than Kensie, practiced their respective instruments for ICP.
“She was in a stroller, going to Sydney and Sadie’s auditions,” said Kensie’s father, Marc. Born into their music and the ICP lifestyle, when Kensie auditioned for the program at the age of four, she was ready.
But five years ago, as Kensie’s parents considered having her audition for ICP, Artistic Director Nicole Cariglia was a bit concerned: “I said, ‘Marc, she’s really young.’” Most four-year-olds don’t earn one of the selective program’s 90 slots. Kensie did. And as she began her own cello training, the demands didn’t surprise her. “By default, she knew what she had to do: Get up, practice, then go to school, and then go to the rehearsals and lessons,” Marc said.
In America’s bloody history of racial violence, the little-known Elaine Massacre in Phillips County, Arkansas, which took place in October 1919, a century ago this week, may rank as the deadliest. The reasons why the event has remained shrouded and obscure, despite a shocking toll of bloodshed inflicted on the African-American inhabitants of Phillips County, speak to a legacy of white supremacy in the US and ruthless suppression of labor activism that disfigures American society to this day.
Phillips County, located deep in the Arkansas Delta, was largely rural and three-quarters African-American; in the small town of Elaine, there were ten times as many black residents as white. The African Americans of Phillips County, like those throughout the South, were subjected to segregation and disenfranchisement, those twin pillars of white supremacy. But the black sharecroppers and tenant farmers there were also the victims of a particularly harsh form of repression known as “debt peonage.” Under this system, they were loaned money or rented land by plantation owners; they were then forced to sell their crops to the owners at below-market rates and to purchase their food and other supplies from over-priced plantation stores, trapping them in a cycle of perpetual debt, with the owners keeping—and often doctoring—the accounts.
In the spring of 1919, a group of Phillips County African-American sharecroppers and tenant farmers, many of them veterans who had recently returned from service overseas in World War I, decided to challenge this system by joining a union called the Progressive Farmers and Household Union of America (PFHUA), which had been founded the year before by army veteran Robert Lee Hill, a black tenant farmer in Winchester, Arkansas. The union’s goal was “to advance the interest of the Negro, morally and intellectually,” and its constitution ended with a proclamation: “WE BATTLE FOR THE RIGHTS OF OUR RACE; IN UNION IS STRENGTH.”
.
Arkansas State Archives
The body of Frances Hall, one of the few victims of the massacre who can be identified by name, thanks to the journalists Robert Whitaker and Ida B. Wells, near Elaine, Arkansas, October 1919
There are plenty of things we hold onto for good reason. Treasures from our travels, family heirlooms, sentimental birthday cards—all justifiable keepsakes. Then there are the odds and ends we accumulate just because we have the space to store them. You know, the “But what if I need this one day?” items. It seems like a rather harmless habit—until those nonessentials add up and turn your cabinets and closets into living nightmares. The chaos stops here. It’s time to repurpose, recycle, or kick ’em to the curb.
While we aren’t here to push a hyper-minimalist agenda, we do believe every object in your home should serve a distinct purpose or, at the very least, brighten your day a little. We doubt your excessive tote bag collection or rubber band–filled junk drawer is offering you much.
In the world, human beings are facing various problems. People who are full of greed, anger, and ignorance are seen to be fighting with each other in words and deeds. As the fighting continues, various problems such as civil wars, wars of aggression, and wars of aggression are occurring. As world peace is being destroyed, humans are facing unbearable problems. Innocent children and women are not getting the rights they deserve and deserve. I can't think of one thing every time. What is it? The United Nations. If we look at the responsibilities and duties of the United Nations, I think it is not suitable for solving the problems that are happening in the world today. In fact, the United Nations and the World Security Council, such an organization must rule the world, must be able to give orders, and must have various ways to obey orders. There must be no organization that can influence more than that organization. There should be experts from each country. They can even dominate the superpowers like the US, China, and Britain. Only then will global peace be achieved quickly. Now, if a country with power develops more militarily, economically, or socially than its own country, then powerful countries will jealously seek out enemies and wage war. Or they will attack with fighter jets. In this, innocent people are losing their lives. No one understands the value of a life. You should think about how to achieve global peace by controlling these. If the US continues to be the permanent president of the UN, world peace will never be achieved. If you think carefully, no one sees that they are working for the common good, but for their own benefit, for the benefit of their own country. The permanent president of the UN and the Security Council has rejected this, As a young Rohingya, I have come to realize that only by electing the president and secretary from among the countries in the world through a secret ballot system and governing the world fairly can we achieve global peace. The United Nations and the Security Council are organizations in which any country must govern, give orders, and make them obey their orders. For example, only when a defendant is tried in court can we hold the leaders of the countries in check and control them, can we achieve global peace smoothly. Otherwise, it will not be easy for powerful countries to use various excuses to end this war every year, every year, for the benefit of themselves and their countries. No country's leaders pay any attention to the words of the United Nations and the Security Council. If we look at it in practice, look at the Rohingya issue. Myanmar is a small country. Even that country has been under siege for 8 years. What action can be taken? Why is the UN and the Security Council Powerless? Without such Power, how can the organization bring about global peace? Everyone should think about it. Whether there is a veto or a strong one, all countries in the world can only achieve global peace if they are subject to the UN and the Security Council. Seek peace in the quiet embrace of nature. Peace is an indispensable need of the human race. It is not as if one person can kill another person, and it is as if one country can attack another country, but instead of trying to build peace, we must try to destroy the peace now, and the world is getting hotter and is on the verge of collapse. I especially appeal to all the world experts to urgently try to bring about peace in all parts of the world. Mr, Noor Muhamed Arkhan Rohingya Youth Myanmar
Film and Writing Festival for Comedy. Showcasing best of comedy short films at the FEEDBACK Film Festival. Plus, showcasing best of comedy novels, short stories, poems, screenplays (TV, short, feature) at the festival performed by professional actors.
‘Everything I write about has already happened’ … Max Brooks. Photo by Valerie Macon / Getty Images.
Merricat
