When driving down Route 66, any traveler is bound to see scores of vintage cars. But likely, only one of those vehicles is parked on the roof of a salon.
Such is the case for the DeSoto’s AirBnB in Ash Fork, Arizona.
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It’s Thursday night in Midland, Mich. For one group of high school teachers, that means game night. Pre-pandemic, they met at a local bar for trivia, but now they play through laptop webcams in their homes. Some have changed their video feed backgrounds to aquariums or personal photos. John Mulvaney, a history and economics teacher, ironically wears a “Trump 2020” ballcap.
“I got it from the dollar store,” he says. “You overpaid,” says Shelli Wixtrom, a history teacher. Big news: I like La Croix now. Before the stay-at-home orders, it tasted like sucking on carbon with a lime seed stuck between your teeth. Now, I really like the sound of cracking the can open, which is a tiny tss. I like holding the cold aluminum and staring at the logo for hours and hours while thinking of the nothing I will do today and tomorrow. The bubbles are nice. God, life is so invigorating!
Discoveries like this have made me ponder our horrendously mundane existence during the COVID-19 pandemic. The top floor of the Mundelein Center for the Fine and Performing Arts in Chicago provides a glittering skyline view and a quiet, peaceful place to work or think. Unless it’s 7:30 on a Wednesday night, when one might hear nine students shouting:
“Anal beads! Insert! Insert! Anal beads!” The 45 Kings, Loyola University Chicago’s improv comedy group, hold practice on the 14th floor once a week from 7-9:30 p.m.. On the desk next to the shouting circle is a heavily iced, store-bought cake. It’s Ash Wednesday. “More like Ass Wednesday!” Ben Stringer said. Though the staff of Red Door Animal Shelter leave at 5 p.m. each day, someone is always watching over the cats. He wears a crooked smile and a plaid jacket, and his eyes peer through thick spectacles from a framed portrait reading, “Evanston’s Cat Whisperer Supreme.”
His origins are a mystery to the staff. “I just know that it was a guy who was heavily involved with the shelter,” assistant manager Laura Kiblin said. “I think after he passed away, some of his finances were donated to us. So we got a little photo with a plaque to commemorate him. But I never met him.” None of the staff on duty have. “I know the guy was pretty revered,” staff member Patrick Napier said. “Because a cat knocked the picture off the wall, and it was like no, we gotta put that back up.” The cats declined to comment. |