Last week a friend said something like “actions demonstrate patrimony”, and recently I’ve seen its truth played out in two very different ways.

“Yeast is the new gold” chuckled the manager of a nearby farmer’s market when I called last week to ask about availability of yeast and flour. They had it and I made a socially distanced foray to their parking lot to do a pickup. It was like doing a drug deal with the scarcity of items so normally accessible.

We have a Nova Scotia tartan displayed on our front lawn to help us connect to the sorrow felt by so many in the face of the massive murder spree last weekend. Lots of questions and speculation around it all but deep pain is at the centre.

Pickup Space #1 was mine at 8:00 on Saturday morning. The online grocery order had been delayed a couple of days, but things were looking up. And then, orders were delivered to cars all around me for 90 minutes until mine arrived. What is the appropriate pandemic response to this?