A photo essay from the once and current center of the world
May 3, 2020
I am in northern New York, the once and current center of the world. Relatives stop by at a distance, and we drop off yogurt containers of red sauce, shouting at each other through closed doors. My 93-year-old aunt tells me, over the phone, that she has been barricaded in her apartment since the ides of March. “Just stop by the window and I will blow you a kiss.”
I pass by a friend’s house and find him clearing brush. Everyone is healthy, he tells me, and he wears a mask. The only person he knows that “has it” is his cousin who works as a prison guard. Maybe north in Comstock, but it might have been in Coxsackie.
Much of this place was effectively abandoned decades ago, and empty streets are familiar. The hospital was shut down in 2003, three years after the last prison opened. That was the year they built the new county jail, the same year James overdosed. In the evening I walk by his grave and see the names and birth years of his family in the stone. His is the only name with a closing date. The rest of us will have to make our own way.
