The most basic gratitude

As the whole USA freaks out about food and crushes the grocery stores, I confess to feeling a touch food insecure as I survey our pantry. We are not big preppers. Over the past few weeks we have stocked our larder pretty well, and are surely provisioned for a couple of weeks or so, but not much more than that.

So I look anxiously to the future and put my trust in the supply chain. Yesterday evening Senator Floyd McKissick of Durham made an appeal to everyone to stop hoarding, and I had to acknowledge it was a very good and noble thought. Then today President Trump tweeted the same appeal and I thought -- man things really are moving quickly if a sentiment goes from Floyd's lips to Trump's that quickly.

I am being mindful each time I eat now, newly appreciative of each meal and snack, each in turn infused with a special quality of scarcity. I don't know exactly what I'll be eating in 2, 3, 4 weeks. It will likely be different from what we are eating now, perhaps less grand, likely we will be accepting what's in the store and happy for it.

Certainly I take for my inspiration the experience of Weijian Shan's Out of the Gobi (my kids wish I would shut the fuck up about that book, that's for sure). The amount of arduous physical labor he describes doing on the most monotonous and calorie-constrained diet boggled the imagination. Somehow he got through it and flourished.