Jim Davis remembers one of the last games he played with elderly residents at White Oak Manor in Newberry, S.C., before the threat of the coronavirus largely confined the vulnerable population to their rooms for the foreseeable future.

On a pleasant afternoon, Davis—the facility’s activities director—led a group through a word game about flowers and pies. Between turns, the residents talked about their favorite blossoms. Some chatted about the tastiest desserts. 

Editor’s Note: This is an update to a story that originally published March 13, 2020.

On Sunday morning, churches across the nation went virtual: Many congregations livestreamed worship services in the wake of the coronavirus crisis that has jolted daily life in the U.S. to an unprecedented halt. 

On the morning after a bruising Democratic debate in Charleston, S.C., former Vice President Joe Biden stood in the fellowship hall of a local Baptist church with a dark smudge on his forehead. 

It was Ash Wednesday, and Biden had dropped by a Catholic church earlier, where a priest applied ashes in the shape of a cross—a traditional symbol of repentance at the beginning of Lent. “Remember that you are dust,” a priest often says during the service. “And to dust you shall return.”

In his classic book about the volatile presidential election of 1968, journalist Theodore White compared Republican Richard Nixon to Ebenezer Scrooge’s partner Jacob Marley: “Political clerks, clergymen, undertakers, and mourners had all signed the register. Nixon was as dead as a doornail.”

Except he wasn’t.

On the night before winning the Democratic presidential primary in South Carolina, Joe Biden was losing parts of a crowd at a campaign rally in Spartanburg.

Biden gave sprawling answers to audience questions, and small groups of onlookers drifted out of the gymnasium at Wofford College. Halfway through an especially prolonged monologue, the former vice president told the crowd: “Look, I know this is boring, but it’s important.” 

It was an honest but uninspiring line for a candidate betting his political future on his success in South Carolina.

As Patricia Schroeder cooked eggs for her children one morning in 1983, the Democratic congresswoman from Colorado contemplated her non-stick pan and created a moniker for President Ronald Reagan. 

In a speech on the House floor, Schroeder called Reagan a “Teflon” president—nothing seemed to stick to him. Schroeder didn’t mean it as a compliment, but the nickname stuck. Admirers of Reagan later said he transcended criticism in part because of his calm demeanor. 

The race for the Democratic presidential nomination appears wide open after New Hampshire held a razor-thin primary contest on Tuesday night. 

Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., narrowly grabbed the victory in New Hampshire, days after finishing slightly behind Pete Buttigieg in the Iowa caucuses. 

On Tuesday night, Buttigieg finished slightly behind Sanders, dislodging Sanders’ hopes of taking a commanding lead in the early primaries.