pandemic 2

APPENDIX
TWO HELPFUL LETTERS
FROM FRIENDS
Let me begin with a personal confession: I like the idea
of being confined to one’s apartment, with all the
time needed to read and work. Even when I travel, I prefer
to stay in a nice hotel room and ignore all the attractions
of the place I’m visiting. A good essay on a famous painting
means much more to me than seeing this painting in a
crowded museum. But I’ve noticed this makes now being
obliged to confine myself more difficult. To help explain
this let me recount, not for the first time, the famous joke
from Ernst Lubitsch’s Ninotchka: “‘Waiter! A cup of coffee
without cream, please!’ ‘I’m sorry, sir, we have no cream,
only milk, so can it be a coffee without milk?’” At the
factual level, the coffee remains the same, what changes
is making the coffee without cream into coffee without