Two weeks after the comedy writer and performer Paula Pell moved to the Hudson Valley, last month, along with her wife, four dogs, and a cat, she heard a crash out back. “Five minutes later, there is a bleeding man on our front porch in swim trunks,” she recalled recently. “Second fucking week, and this guy is bleeding all over our porch, saying, ‘I got disoriented on the trail.’ And he was so lying. He had broken into the guesthouse and cut himself.” Pell called the paramedics, and the guy was arrested. “But the beautiful thing about it is that then we met all the neighbors,” she went on. “They were all coming over, going, ‘I’m vaccinated! Can I hug you? Don’t be scared!’”
The move was already chaotic, coinciding with…
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The New Yorker (Digital) - 1 Issue, June 28, 2021