Jane survived Covid-19. Her roommate, Elida, did not. — “I‘m not going to start the blame game … except to blame the government for sabotaging the CDC and science.” Editors’ Note: Violinist Jane Soyka lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico, where Covid-19 spiked dramatically in November. Her story shows how quickly symptoms can go from mild to severe, how dire…

Dr. Leslie Hayes took every precaution, but she still caught COVID — her thoughts on contagion, masks, the vaccine, and the holidays. — “The virus had gone through 50 people before I got it. Many of them took precautions and then just got unlucky, but some of them were careless or didn’t think the rules applied to them …” Leslie Hayes, M.D., treats patients in Española, New Mexico, a state experiencing one of…

“… I don’t know if his hands are moving but I bet they are somehow I’d feel washed over like that too and be so proud of us” who we were when . Isn’t it a great country he asks me as we cross the Panhandle for the second time in three days …

A young family takes a risk to return from abroad. — “In the last few years, when I’ve gone abroad it has become an increasingly bigger test of courage to state I’m from the U.S.” Shortly before leaving England, I took my daughter to our favorite park to…

A pandemic and other global breakdowns inspire a visual journal of diverse styles and influences. — “I think for me what is interesting about this series of work is the diversity of voices within myself.” Editors’ Note: Alexandra (Ali) Blum is a California-based artist who draws on influences from around the world. When the quarantine was put in place, she started a series of paintings…

We give thanks for good work in a difficult time. — We at Broad Street are proud of everything we publish, and we wish we could nominate all of it for every award out there. Alas, we can choose only a handful. For Best of the Net, some nominees come from our Summer/Fall 2019 “Birth, School, Work, Death” issue, some from…

It’s as welcoming as a mother, but none of this was personal. — When a tsetse fly - chews your skin with its scissor teeth, through delicate capillaries for the sweet stain of red, it does so completely in earnest. - It ushers in the flagellate protozoan Trypanosoma brucei gambiense. Those misshapen parentheses swim — and they must swim — through passageways, the secrets of your…

Nobody wants to live with a corpse … — Screaming at the Brooklyn Bridge After Robert Lowell’s “Waking in the Blue” * I weigh one hundred and five pounds after my New York breakfast of vanilla Soylent, all I can keep down these days, thanks to the anti-depressant. I swallow it, beige smoothie, every four to six hours. SSRI? Every twenty-four. * My…

Going meds-free when the world is having a major depressive episode. — “Maybe depression is a normal response to a global pandemic. We don’t really have benchmarks for such an event. If I get down, what can I use to help me bounce back?” I do not plan to cry. I am lying on my back, watching my husband put on his…