FROM OTHER SOURCES: NEWS AND FEATURES FOR AND ABOUT AMHERST (#20).
Editor’s Note: “From Other Sources” offers links to selected articles that might be of interest to Amherst readers. While so much of the news has focused lately on the COVID-19 emergency, there are lots of other things going on that might be of interest to Amherst readers and there is plenty of good writing out there to describe them. While we will continue to provide a daily rundown of pandemic news here, we will also present this roundup of other news and features, as well as a listing of our top five COVID-19 articles from the previous week.
ARTS
A Marxist Critique of Pandemic Films: The Virus Has Seized the Means of Production by Mark Bould (5/8/20). Contagious diseases do not cause social breakdown; they merely reveal the ways in which society is already broken. (Boston Review)
Thirty Unexpected Movie Masterpieces To Watch During The Pandemic. by David Sims (4/10/20). Some were blasted by critics, some flopped at the box office, and all are ripe to attain cult-classic status. (The Atlantic)
Amherst Cinema’s Virtual Cinema Lineup
It’s not on article but a schedule of good films that you can view and in so doing support our local cinema while it is closed for the pandemic
CLIMATE/ENERGY/ENVIRONMENT.
Against Headwinds, Connecticut Lays Out A Path To Put More Electric Vehicles On The Road by The Editors (5/6/20). A state report released last month sets out a pathway for getting at least 10 times as many electric vehicles on Connecticut roadways by 2025. Ramping up electric vehicle use from roughly 12,000 to at least 125,000 in five years is ambitious by any measure. But with the country now sliding into recession, gas prices in free fall, and unemployment at record highs, the goals outlined in the Department of Energy and Environmental Protection’s 109-page Electric Vehicle Roadmap appear especially daunting. (NEPR)
How Climate Change is Contributing to Skyrocketing Rates of Infectious Disease by Abrahm Lustgarten (5/7/20). A catastrophic loss in biodiversity, reckless destruction of wild land, and warming temperatures have allowed disease to explode. Ignoring the connection between climate change and pandemics would be “dangerous delusion,” one scientist said. (ProPublica)
COVID-19 TOP FIVE STORIES OF THE WEEK
Why Rush to Reopen? Georgia’s Experiment in Human Sacrifice. by Amanda Mull (4/28/20). The state is about to find out how many people need to lose their lives to shore up the economy. (The Atlantic)
Trump’s War On Science by Ed Pilkington (5/3/20). Three years of hostility to evidence-based policy have led to a crisis in which the president’s ill-informed, self-serving ‘hunches’ have deadly consequences. (The Guardian)
Helping One Another During the Pandemic: Californians Share Acts of Kindness by Marie Tae McDermott (4/28/20). A few weeks ago, we asked readers to send us stories of people helping one another during the pandemic. From the responses, it’s clear that across the state, acts of generosity and resilience are happening every day. (New York Times)
The Coronavirus is Rewriting our Imaginations by Kim Stanley Robinson (5/1/20). What felt impossible has become thinkable. The spring of 2020 is suggestive of how much, and how quickly, we can change as a civilization.(The New Yorker)
Can Children Spread Coronavirus? It’s Complicated by Alex Ward (5/2/20). The raging debate over how infectious children with the coronavirus are, explained. (Vox)
ECONOMY
US Unemployment Rate Soars To 14.7%, The Worst Since The Depression Era. by Heather Long and Andrew Van Dam (5/8/20). 20.5 million people lost their jobs in April, the Labor Department said Friday. Many analysts believe it could take years to recover. (Washington Post).
Baker Aims to Reopen Some Massachusetts Businesses By May 18. by Travis Andersen, Martin Finucane and Jaclyn Reiss and Globe Staff. (5/6/20). Our goal, starting on May 18, is to begin reopening certain types of businesses in a limited fashion where it can be done more safely than under normal operations,” Baker said. “But this phased-in process can’t begin until we see sustained downward trends in many of the data elements that we talk about every day.”Pressure to begin reopening swaths of the state economy that were shut to slow the spread of the virus appears to be mounting. The Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce on Wednesday urged Baker to quickly set reopening guidelines, so businesses can prepare. (Boston Globe)
Amherst Mulls Plans For Reopening Local Economy. by Scott Merzbach (5/5/20). Even with uncertainty about how soon the economy can safely reopen and whether college students will be returning in the fall, business leaders in Amherst are setting the stage for getting restaurant and shop owners back on their feet. In the “Creating a Resilient Amherst” plan, Claudia Pazmany and Gabrielle Gould, executive directors of the Amherst Area Chamber of Commerce and Amherst Business Improvement District, respectively, told the Town Council Monday that they envision restoring and restructuring Amherst’s commerce to a year-round economy following the decimation caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. (Daily Hampshire Gazette)
We Can’t Reopen The Economy Without Childcare. by Emily Peck (5/4/20). More than half the states in the U.S. are tentatively opening back up, easing restrictions on retail stores and other businesses shuttered to stop the spread of coronavirus. Most day cares and schools, however, are not reopening, and millions of Americans can’t get back to business as usual. They have children at home. No one is arguing that it’s actually safe to open the schools back up. In most states getting ready to relax restrictions, schools are closed for the rest of the academic year. It’s not clear whether summer camps will open. About half of child care centers around the country are closed. And while some higher-income workers can pull off the exhausting — and, let’s face it, pretty unsustainable — juggle of working at home and parenting at the same time, plenty of others must work outside the home. (Huffington Post)
Pandemic Crash Shows Worker Co-ops Are More Resilient Than Traditional Business . by Brian Van Slyke. (5/8/20). While we have no way to know yet the full extent of the economic fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic, by all accounts it could be as bad — if not far worse — than the 2008 crash. In fact, in terms of unemployment alone, the numbers are already staggering: more than 33 million jobs have been lost so far in the U.S. during the coronavirus shutdowns, compared to the roughly 8.6 million lost in the Great Recession. Following that crisis, many working people turned to the worker cooperative model as a way to build economic resiliency and stability for themselves. In the decade after 2008, the number of worker-owned cooperatives in the United States nearly doubled, increasing from 350 to 600. I know, because I am a member of one of those cooperatives that formed: The TESA Collective, which creates tools and games for social change. (Truthout)
Return To Work Or Else! by Judd Legum (5/7/20). Each day, thousands of Americans are dying from the coronavirus, and tens of thousands of new cases are reported. Therapeutics that reduce mortality from COVID-19 are not yet available, and a vaccine is, optimistically, many months away. Nevertheless, dozens of states are relaxing regulations and reopening their economies. But as businesses choose to open their doors, employees are being coerced to show up. (Popular Information)
EDUCATION
Hampshire College Plans To Welcome Students Back To Campus This Fall. by Jacquelyn Voghel (5/6/20). Hampshire College announced on Tuesday that it intends to have students back on campus for the fall semester “as long as the State of Massachusetts allows colleges to open.” Several factors make social distancing “viable” at Hampshire, college president Ed Wingenbach wrote in an update posted to the college’s website, such as an anticipated fall enrollment of 550 to 600 students on the college’s 800-plus acre campus. (Daily Hampshire Gazette)
The Pandemic Is The Time To Resurrect The Public University. by Corey Robin. (5/7/20). For decades, a handful of boutique colleges and powerhouse universities have served as emblems of our system of higher education. If they are not the focus of discussion, they are the subtext, shaping our assumptions about the typical campus experience. This has remained true during the pandemic. The question of reopening has produced dozens of proposals, but most of them are tenable only for schools like Brown; they don’t obtain in the context of Brooklyn College. The coronavirus has seeded a much-needed conversation about building a more equal society. It’s time for a similar conversation about the academy. (The New Yorker)
Are Colleges Seriously Equipped For On Line Learning? Not Many. by Deirdre Fernandes. (5/7/20). Colleges and universities have made do in recent weeks with video conference calls and pre-taped lectures, but that is unlikely to satisfy students or families who are footing significant tuition bills, if it continues into the fall. Already students across the country have filed class-action lawsuits against more than two dozen institutions, including Boston University, Northeastern University, Brown University, and the University of California Berkeley, demanding tuition refunds because of what they say is the inferior quality of online education. (Boston Globe)
MEDIA
Disappearing Ink: How Will We Preserve Local News in The Valley In A Changing Economy? by Jules Marsh. (4/18/20). COVID-19 has brought our local economy to a halt, revenue at the Daily Hampshire Gazette is down, and consequently, last month the paper laid off 10 employees, cut hours for its press operators, and cut management pay across-the-board. According to publisher Michael Moses, who The Shoestring interviewed, the recent decision to downsize staff and cut hours is, “100% associated with a significant reduction in advertising revenue.” He expects the model of, “investing in local news gathering,” to work post-COVID, claiming, “This model was working up until COVID-19; and when we emerge on the other side of this, I expect it to continue to work.” But, mirroring other local publications nationwide, western Massachusetts news publications have been in an existential crisis for some time pre-COVID resulting in layoffs, office closures, and limited print distribution. (The Shoestring)
RECREATION
Easthampton Nixes Summer Camps And Pools For 2020. by Bera Dunau (5/7/20). Diving into a public pool or going to summer camp are among the hallmarks of the season for many people. But those activities might not happen in the city this year. A Monday order from the chair of the city’s Board of Health forbids recreational camps for children and public pools from opening in Easthampton for the rest of 2020, in order to combat the spread of COVID-19. (Daily Hampshire Gazette).
Golf Courses Reopen In Massachusetts: These Are The Guidelines, Restrictions In Place During Coronavirus Pandemic. by Michael Bonner (5/7/20). Massachusetts allowed golf courses to reopen on Thursday – amid the coronavirus pandemic – with strict guidelines and restrictions such as prohibiting golf carts, bunker rakes and caddies. The state still labels golf courses as non-essential, however, private operators may allow individuals access to the property as long as social distancing guidelines are followed and large gatherings are avoided. Employees are not allowed to work if their role is part of the recreational aspect of the sport. (MassLive)