Good morning, Substackers, and while I cannot say I feel exactly like Will Ferrell this morning, I am moving a little slow. That’s because…
When I told the nurse how excited I was that people were getting vaccinated so quickly - 1200 a day in this one spot in Brooklyn alone — she said, “We’re making history.” So a question, maybe more to the post-vaxxers but really to everyone: How are you handling the mask protocol? I’ve been pretty committed to getting them off our faces, considering the data — deaths have decreased every week for the past nine weeks, hospital admission rates (with some exceptions) are down, more than 115 million people are thus far vaccinated. Despite new mutations of the virus (it’s what viruses do), it’s nearly all good news on the Corona front. Maybe it’s because I do not incline toward crowd-fanned fear; maybe it’s because I think it’s pretty crummy that a grown woman, seeing my daughter pull down her mask to answer the phone when I called, said, “Bitch, are you trying to kill me?” But I am firmly on the side of, it’s time in large measure to take them off. “Now you can’t get it or give it,” the nurse told me yesterday, regarding Covid-19, and yes, people will say, how do you know that for sure? Well I don’t; we can’t; crazy things might happen. But the odds are in our favor, just as they are that the plane I’ll be on on Monday will land safely.
Wait, plane? you ask. Why yes, I am going to Minneapolis, to do some on-the- ground reporting for Reason and also — drumroll! — for you lovely people. When I set out last July to report from Portland (and how that happened in the video below), I was filing only for Reason, maybe adding a few videos on Twitter.
Since then, we’ve built a bunch of new platforms, including Paloma Media and this Substack right here, which means I have new places to put things, for you. (Toward that end, I’ve heard you when you say, Nancy! Your videos are giving me vertigo! and so bought myself a little camera stabilizer.) Anyway, a pitch, as above, to support the extras, either by paying for a subscription here, or hitting my Venmo (@nancy-rommelmann) or CashApp ($NancyRommelmann). Help me do the journalisms!
Speaking of Paloma Media, Matt Welch and I got in the studio last week. Did we have another tech fail? Yup! But our buddy Andrew Wimsatt managed to claw the video out of the maw of lost-land. In addition to hearing about my article for Reason, “The Dream of the ‘90s Died in Portland,” will you learn how many times Matt vomited during pre-dawn three-hour boat rides up the Columbia River with Grandpa Welch? I think you might!
I was also super, super-fortunate to have taped last week with the resplendent Bridget Phetasy, man this was a fun conversation. You can tune stream the podcast here; she’s so great.
I mentioned in the last newsletter that I’ll be co-hosting Passover with my friend Yael Bar tur. My dear friend Joanna Andreasson will be making the seating cards (which Yael has instructed we will promptly ignore) and needed us to send her the names. As it turns out, all of Yael’s Jewish invitees are booked with family, and all of the people I invited are, sort of weirdly, Catholic. Anyway, it will be a Yael and the Catholics passover tomorrow. Will post pics.
Last, What Tafv Sent, though what she in fact sent was a message from one of her best friends, who saw it with her own eyes and posted nine seconds of video on Instagram with the message, “Anybody else see this tonight? What is it?”
Until Minneapolis, with love and brisket (thinking I might sub out port for some of the merlot…) xx
Nice post