CoViD-19 and I

My wife went to the supermarket good and early, and came home home with plenty of fruit, vegetables, even beer, and another bag of flour to make bread. A small victory, but a real confidence boost. Panic buying was never necessary; the system is working. Oh, and the loaf I made using pastry flour has turned out quite well, but I'll be glad to save it for pastries.  Today we ate leftovers mostly. This resulted in part from nobody making a plan to cook, but also from making generous portions during the past week. I am looking for a TED talk for the Sunday Assembly. This evening I've already found one that I think will do very well -- going to keep it a secret for a while -- and others that are interesting in themselves. My discussion group has four RSVP already, so I cannot doubt that people want some kind of contact. One of the talks I found bore the title "You are not alone in your loneliness." How better to describe the present situation? From the news, one lit...

I combined my morning walk with visiting the Farmers' Market, which counts as buying food. There were 10% to 20% fewer vendors than last Sunday, so I made a point of thanking the ones I bought from. It's hard to know how many are staying home because they want to stay safe and how many are simply getting fewer customers than before and so no longer find it worthwhile to come. Conceivably, some are running out of stock due to panic buying, but most of what they sell is too perishable to tempt panic buyers. I did see a line at a stall that sells bread, with people well spaced out. Some vendors wore gloves when handling money, but not all. It would be easy for a coin to spread virus; as it happened, I bought in whole numbers of dollars (and some vendors have long preferred to round the final amount pretty ruthlessly rather than hand out, or ask for, coins). It's three weeks to the next scheduled Sunday Assembly, so we held a meeting to plan what online platforms we would con...