The profoundly tragic Covid milestone

Barry Blitt illustration, The New Yorker

 
 

Barry Blitt is an outstanding artist/satirist/humorist. His work is featured regularly in The New Yorker; it appears often, notably, on the magazine's cover. This month, Mr. Blitt was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Cartooning.

His cover for the magazine's latest issue, published on Monday, is titled "Natural Ability."

The title (as noted in a New Yorker story, below) comes from remarks President Trump made in early March, during his coronavirus-related visit to the CDC, in Atlanta.

Mr. Trump said to reporters, at the time: "People are really surprised I understand this stuff.  Every one of these doctors said, 'How do you know so much about this?'  Maybe I have a natural ability."

The new issue of The New Yorker was published, as it happens, the same day Mr. Trump announced that he has, for more than a week, been taking hydroxychloroquine, the drug he has promoted for some time.

https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/18/politics/donald-trump-hydroxychloroquine-coronavirus/index.html 

Here is a brief interview with Barry Blitt, conducted by Françoise Mouly, the art editor of The New Yorker; the interview appeared yesterday, on the magazine's website:

A 1954 picture

This has always been one of my favorite photographs. It is from a Boston newspaper article, early 1954, and is of my mother holding my brother, Jed (the first of my parents' two children). At the time, he was seven months old. 

My mother died in 2001 (nineteen years ago today), at age 73.