Gluing back the bits in a post-COVID myriad of human divides

Rebuilding the post-pandemic world will be a colossal human effort aimed at gluing back the pieces of human divides

PARIS -- The musical notes waft through the apartment window, from the fast-moving fingers of the accordion player serenading restaurant diners below. For years, the wandering minstrel has been part of the decor in Montmartre, the bohemian Paris neighborhood where Edith Piaf warbled and Pablo Picasso kept a pet mouse in the disheveled studio where he revolutionized art. The accordionist vanished during the height of the coronavirus pandemic in France, as if swept away. For 15 months, not a peep was heard from the buttons and keys of his squeezebox. Then, in late May, he suddenly reappeared. And the crazy thing: In a world where so very little is as it used to be, his repertoire is — note-for-note — exactly as it was.