This week: The reality and history of the coronavirus / Spring comes early / A new map of the Milky Way / The rise of IKEA meatballs / The literature of Chernobyl
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1. Yan Lianke: What Happens After Coronavirus?
By Yan Lianke | LitHub | March 2020
“On Community Memory and Repeating Our Own Mistakes”
Also see, from The New Yorker: The Deadliest Virus Ever Known
Also see, from Vox: How canceled events and self-quarantines save lives, in one chart
Also see, from Intelligencer: Reality Arrives to the Trump Era
Also see, from Slate: The Infectious Pestilence Did Reign
2. Spring Starts Today All Over America, Which Is Weird
By Rebecca Hersher | NPR | March 2020
“Perhaps you are mildly surprised to learn that March 19 is the first day of spring. Perhaps you learned as a child that the spring equinox– when day and night are roughly the same length — occurs on either March 20 or March 21.”
3. A New Map of the Milky Way
By Mark J. Reid and Xing-Wu Zheng | Scientific American | March 2020
“High-resolution surveys chart the spiral structure of the galaxy and the location of our solar system”
4. How IKEA helped Swedish meatballs go global
By Josie Delap | 1843 :: The Economist | April / May 2020
“The country’s meatballs are a classic domestic dish. But one giant furniture brand made them popular around the world”
5. Biden’s Top 12 Running Mates, Ranked
By Bill Scher | Politico Magazine | March 2020
“He says he’s going to pick a woman. So which woman should it be?”
6. Chernobyl’s Literary Legacy, 30 Years Later
By Michael Lapointe | The Atlantic | April 2016
“The best works written about the accident express profound doubts about language’s ability to capture the disaster’s magnitude”
7. 3 in 4 women will experience painful sex. What’s with the impulse to just ‘grin and bear it’?
By Carolina Kitchener | The Lily | February 2020
“‘Women are not typically told that their orgasm matters, that their pleasure matters’”
8. A Dark Horizon
By Christian Wallace | Boomtown :: Texas Monthly | February 2020
“Christian talks with renowned business writer Bethany McLean about how the finances of fracking aren’t what they’re cracked up to be.”
9. On the Trail of Hollywood’s Stolen Oscars
By Olivia Rutigliano | Crime Reads | February 2020
“In case you were wondering, Oscars are made from basically nothing of any material value. Maybe that’s the point”
10. La Dolce Vita at 60: the fame, the fortune, the fountain
By Charles Bramesco | The Guardian | February 2020
“Federico Fellini’s sumptuous yet existentially punishing drama offers up a view of an elite class that has since gone rotten”
Tell your friends!
stillness of heart 
Thanks and stay well.