The Washington Post - USA (2020-07-28)

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TUESDAY, JULY 28 , 2020. WASHINGTONPOST.COM/STYLE EZ SU C

BY KAREN HELLER

scranton, pa. — “ The joke is that everything happens in

Scranton 20 years later,” says Bob Durkin. Mind you, he’s the

head of the Chamber of Commerce. He loves his city. His job

is to promote his city. But everyone in this Northeastern

Pennsylvania city says this. They say it a lot, even proudly.

“Scranton doesn’t have six degrees of separation; we have

two degrees,” says Maureen McGuigan, Lackawanna Coun-

ty’s deputy director of arts and culture. No, counters Durkin,

it’s only one.

“What was our biggest export after coal?” asks unofficial

historian Dominic Keating, a font of all Scrantonia. “It was

our people.”

Scranton may be the best-known small city in America, a

home to nearly 77,000 that looms large in the nation’s

imagination, yet its reputation is often rooted in political

rhetorical flourishes, 1950s nostalgia and a Van Nuys televi-

sion studio take on the town.

The sepia-tinted myths often overshadow its contempo-

rary truths, making it as much an idea as a locale. This

mythology has been promoted by “The Office,” by Hillary

Clinton, by President Trump and, of course, by native son

Joe Biden, who’s now the presumptive Democratic presi-

dential nominee. Says county historical society director

Mary Ann Moran-Savakinus, “It is the ancient history that

has created the image of Scranton today.”

The city has long been the foundation of Biden’s origin

story, though he left Scranton at age 10. In 2008, Barack

Obama introduced his vice presidential pick as “still that

scrappy kid from Scranton who beat the odds,” when that

SEE SCRANTON ON C2

Welcome to Scranton,

the town you think you know

‘The Office’ and stump speeches have made the Pa. city an idea as much as a place

ILLUSTRATION BY HAYLEY WARNHAM; ISTOCK; CAROLYN VAN HOUTEN/THE WASHINGTON POST; SHUTTERSTOCK; BYRON COHEN/NBC/MPTV IMAGES; JAMIE MCCARTHY/GETTY IMAGES

BY JADA YUAN

Ninety-nine days before the
election that will determine
whether President Trump has a
second term in office, first lady
Melania Trump made a rare ap-
pearance in the spotlight Monday
to announce she’d be overseeing
the first renovation of the White
House Rose Garden in 58 years.
The first lady’s plans are a
throwback to the era of Jacque-
line Kennedy, whom Trump has
said she admires. According to
the White House, Trump aims to
restore the garden’s original foot-
print to its 1962 redesign, which
Kennedy helped oversee and
which President John F. Kennedy
commissioned from his friend
Rachel “Bunny” Mellon, an heir-
ess to the Listerine fortune who
was an amateur authority on hor-
ticulture and landscape architec-
ture.
While many presidents have
held events in the garden, Donald
Trump has been especially in-
clined to use its dramatic back-
drop of colorful flowers and white
neoclassical columns to hold out-
door news conferences. Similar to
the way he has touted the benefits
of incandescent lightbulbs, the
president seems to see the natural
light of the garden as favorable to
his complexion, according to a
New York Times report. The reno-
vation, which will include excava-
tion, will put the Rose Garden out
of commission for such events for
approximately the next three
weeks.
In the faraway, pre-covid world
of last September, the Rose Gar-
den was the site of what could end
up being the defining social event
of the president’s term, when the
first lady hosted Australian Prime
Minister Scott Morrison, and his
wife, Jenny, for the second of two
SEE ROSE GARDEN ON C3

The R ose

Garden will

undergo

renovation

BY PETER MARKS

It’s the rarest of honors, on the

barest of stages. A casket be-

decked with the Stars and Stripes,

resting on a platform of black

drapery with black trimming,

placed in the center of the Rotun-

da at the U.S. Capitol. The plot is

always the same: Wearing expres-

sions of solemnity, officials and

members of the public file

through, pausing briefly in prayer

or out of respect. As a witness

observed 150 years ago, gazing

down from the Rotunda dome at

Abraham Lincoln’s casket, the

crowd in mourning clothes

looked “like black atoms moving

over a sheet of gray paper.”

But if the ritual is rote and

simple, the human stories occa-

sioning it are the opposite. They

are singular and rich. These de-

scriptives certainly apply to Rep.

John Lewis (D-Ga.), the civil

rights hero whose death July 17

set in motion a parade of mean-

ing-drenched ceremonies in his

native South and, on Monday and

Tuesday, in the Capitol, to lie in

state. Before arriving at the Capi-

tol, the motorcade carrying his

casket stopped at the newly chris-

tened Black Lives Matter Plaza

near the White House, a

m ediagenic act laden with emo-

tional subtext and political reso-

nance.

And the ensuing Rotunda cere-

mony — with family and mem-

bers of Congress of both parties in

masks and socially distant seat-

ing — proved as passionate as it

was emotional. It culminated in a

recorded speech of Lewis exhort-

ing Americans to “be bold, be

courageous, stand up, speak up,

speak out.” And a rendition of

“Amazing Grace” by the Rev. Win-

SEE LEWIS ON C4

CRITIC’S NOTEBOOK

Rotunda

service for

Lewis was

a blessing

BY MAURA JUDKIS

Part of a series of stories on experiences that

the pandemic has curtailed — and whether

they’re worth saving.

Natalie Pariano was feeling some pandem-

ic-related wanderlust and found herself look-

ing through old travel photos when something

stopped her scrolling finger dead in its tracks.

It was a shot of her head poking out of a

pool of pastel-colored balls.

The picture was from a 2019 trip to the

Color Factory, an immersive, Instagrammable

attraction in New York City that features

rooms full of colorful installations.

At the time, it had felt perfectly natural to

dive in. But now?

“I just stopped at that photo and thought,

‘Oh, I’ll never get in a ball pit again,’ ” she says.

What once looked like an ocean of color is

now a sea of respiratory droplets. Unsafe

waters. A breeding ground for extremophile

bacteria, like the darkest crevices of the

Mariana Trench.

When it comes to the risk of coronavirus

SEE BALL PITS ON C3

ENDANGERED EXPERIENCES

Will we ever be able to dive back into ball pits?

THE WASHINGTON POST; BASED ON ISTOCK IMAGERY

BOOK WORLD

In an almost-too-real

setting, a mother and son

are on the lam in a post-

pandemic America. C4

CAROLYN HAX

A father’s new girlfriend

spews inappropriate

comments at first holiday

gathering with family. C8

KIDSPOST

To best see the brilliance

of the night skies, you’ll

need to escape the bright

city lights. C8