From San Francisco to Chevy-in-the-hole – the Chevy Coupe helped to move America
By Teddy Robertson “Je-zus Christ!” Stress on the first syllable and heavy elongation of the “z” sound. I blurted out one of my father’s favored expletives. My mother had slammed on the brakes and I tumbled off the bench seat of our old Chevy coupe and hit the floor mat beneath. The brown and red threads of the tan plaid upholstery prickled as I clambered back onto the bench seat. It was 1951 and I was six years old. The car was a...
Village Life: Viral time revisited, 2021 — personal panic, wine, and the witching hour
By Teddy Robertson We were all so new at balancing mortal threat and daily life. Inept, but resourceful. That’s how it felt a year ago this May when East Village Magazine staff shared their first experiences of the COVID pandemic. That’s odder than you might think—reporters usually don’t want to be part of a story. I can hardly recall the details of Spring 2020 now; I had to look them up. Each new order blotted out memory of...
Village Life: Pierce Preschool connected us to our “Pandemic Village”
By Melodee Mabbitt Before the pandemic hit, I was the kind of parent who relied heavily on my village to help raise our child. Pre-pandemic, I was lucky to have a flexible schedule with the ability to work remotely. I even got away without needing a babysitter much of the time by going places where our three-year-old could socialize with other kids while I worked from my laptop. We had dance class on Thursdays, but the rest of the...
Village Life: “Among Us,” but Not Us — video game brings up painful American truths
By Vivian Kao My older son is eight years old, and like most eight-year-olds, he goes through phases in which he gets obsessed with certain things. About a year ago, it was professional wrestling. He had a group of friends at school who watched WWE, and through them, he learned the names of all the wrestlers, their signature moves, their costumes, their backstories. He checked out biographies of wrestlers from the library and created...
Village Life: A reclaimed piano reclaims grace in a time of plague
By Jan Worth-Nelson Some days, no matter how hard you try to stay sane, it’s just too much. Picture me roaming around my house — a sprawling old place with several routes for pacing and hiding — where we’ve been mostly cloistered, like any reasonable oldsters shrinking away from COVID-19, since March. Picture me agitated, limbs sort of flapping, arms akimbo from time to time. Picture me muttering and cussing. Picture my pandemic...
Village Life: 26 miles on foot in Flint, Connor Coyne’s walk is both ancient and intimate
By Connor Coyne On a Sunday at the end of June, my alarm goes off at three in the morning. I dress in the darkness, putting on the loose fitting shirt and shorts I’d selected the night before. I’m careful not to wake my wife who will sleep for several more hours in the antiseptic breeze of our air-conditioned bedroom. I tap out down the hallway, softly lit by the glow from the bathroom nightlight, past my daughters’ rooms, and...
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