Good morning. Since baseball is on hold, why not browse these vintage baseball cards at the Met online.

America is not as “divided as it has ever been.” Just look at the 1970s: “In 1974 alone, there were 2,044 bombings in America, with 24 people killed. Violent extremist groups dotted the political landscape in a way they simply do not today.”

Introducing the Hilary Teachout Grant: “Part of the havoc wrought by the coronavirus is that artists of all kinds now find it increasingly and fearfully hard to pay their bills and stay afloat. To help them, the painter Makoto Fujimura and his International Arts Movement have launched the Hilary Teachout Grant, an emergency relief grant for performing and other artists. It is named after my beloved wife Hilary, who died on March 31.”

Joseph Epstein finds himself thinking about death in literature: “The coronavirus has forced almost all of us, either in enforced or self-imposed quarantine, to sit quietly in our room, and the news of the continuing deaths it is causing — of the obscure and the celebrated — concentrates our minds on Pascal’s dark human condition. Montaigne, whom one does not think of as a dark writer, felt one couldn’t think too often or too much about death, especially one’s own.”

The art of the phone call: “The old-fashioned fuddy-duddy telephone—which once seemed as dated as Dorothy Parker’s short story ‘The Telephone Call,’ in which a young woman waits desperately for a man to call—is suddenly back in style. I’m sure I’m not the only one who finds myself spending hours on the phone with friends and editors I used to converse with minimally, if at all. Surely this has everything to do with the limited and mediated intimacy provided by our more recent modes of communication—email, texting, Twitter direct messages, chat apps, FaceTime, and now the suddenly ubiquitous Zoom—as well as with our longing for a more immediate, audible sense of connection . . . Although it seems as if the phone has been around since prehistoric times, it’s only a century and a half old—a technology that seemed nothing short of magical when it first appeared.”

List: Famous stolen artworks: “The first recorded art heist was in 1473 when Polish pirates nabbed The Last Judgment, a triptych by the German-born painter Hans Memling, during a journey to Florence.”

Alex Trebek to publish a memoir in July: “For years, ‘Jeopardy!’ fans have yearned to learn more about the behind-the-scenes life of their beloved host, the silver-haired, even-toned Alex Trebek. But so far he has been relatively tight-lipped about it. In July, those fans will get new insights into Mr. Trebek in a memoir that delves into the game show host’s thoughts on topics like marriage, parenthood and spirituality, the publisher, Simon & Schuster, announced on Tuesday.”

Essay of the Day:

Matt Labash can’t wait for social distancing to end . . . so he can be alone with a line and a pole:

“In this endless war against Covid-19, I have tried to be a dutiful soldier. I’ve mostly stayed home to binge-watch and binge-eat (bad news and Fig Newtons, respectively). I’ve yet to poleax any octogenarians as they dive-tackle the last pack of Cottonelle. I only sneeze on immediate family. I’m a regular Audie Murphy.

“But even we stoical war-hero types have our breaking point, and I’ve reached mine. My governor, Larry Hogan, banned recreational fishing in his recent stay-at-home order, intended to halt the spread of the coronavirus.

“As a proud citizen (now, inmate) of Maryland, once un-ironically nicknamed the “Free State,” I’ve always liked Mr. Hogan. He’s stout and feisty, more workhorse than show pony. He hates many of the same things I do, like high taxes and Pennsylvania (whose tributaries pollute our Chesapeake Bay). He’s that filthiest of words in the modern Republican Party — a centrist. I’ve voted for him twice.

“But now I’m rethinking my drink.”

Read the rest.

Photo: Lescun

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