March 21, 2020 We're all in this together

Ann and I don't watch the news, we don't have cable television, and we don't believe that the COVID19 panic is really worthy of a panic at all. But it seems the rest of the world doesn't share our passive attitude so I am devoting a few paragraphs to this mass hysteria just to mark the week in our history.

I have always been a big believer in the power of stupid. Americans (a bunch of us anyway) are a bit too wealthy, entirely too accustomed to luxury, and mostly oblivious to how our actions effect our neighbors. This COVID19 panic is a great example of this, the best metaphor being toilet paper hoarding.

Nobody wants to be caught without toilet paper. So some people in the past few weeks have bought the store shelves clean. The result is an informal ban on over-purchasing at the store level and supply chains straining to push more product out from warehouses. The COVID19 pandemic likely won't allow restocking of the warehouses in the short term, so the people who bought too much may be proven correct after all.

I'm not going deeper into this today since it does no good to worry over things out of our control. As I wrote above, this article is  merely to mark the calendar at the onset of whatever will or will not happen as the result of COVID19 pandemic.

If things go as I believe they might, now that the stampede has begun, all I can do is offer a bit of advice for the potentially murky days ahead. You might use a few unplanned vacation hours going outside and planting some potatoes.

My next article is going to be devoted to information on how everyone can plant potatoes cheaply, using very few resources, and do so with very little space. Potatoes are simple plants, not much to learn before you might be very successful. Most of this next article won't be new information but there are a few real simple improvements to raising spuds that might be fun to do and make growing potatoes more deeply satisfying. The worst that will happen is that you will have grown some of your own food. Whether the COVID19 panic proves itself necessary, or seems absurd in retrospect, having some spuds around will be a good investment of your time.