Hello! Welcome to the next edition of my weekly habit of sharing.

Five things to share with you this week:

1. I KNOW we’re really tired of hearing about the coronavirus—almost as tired as sheltering in place. But I’m sharing JUST ONE Covid-19 article this week. It went viral because, I believe, it’s one of the best assessments out there right now: The Risks: Know Them and Avoid Them. (That chart showing how a virus spread through a restaurant is especially interesting).
   

2. Speaking of restaurants, you’ll enjoy this Letter to the Restaurant Industry. Something for us as consumers should support, I think.
   

   “There is a silver lining here… …because it takes catastrophic failure for human nature to change, I would like to point out that this is your moment as an industry. You have been gifted the golden goose of our life-time. There’s a short, medium and long game here. As you ponder viability and sustainability, it HAS TO BE with a new model where you have coalesced to offer your employees fair compensation, 40-hour work weeks, meaningful benefits, AND solutions that offer the entrepreneurial owners better than “less than 10% net profit.”

3. Speaking of the economy… these two posts seem to go hand in hand. First, you know it’s a problem when even middle class white men are struggling—and really, this was all pre-pandemic. And then the brilliant Douglass Rushkoff who wrote Team Human tells it like it is: Restoring the Economy is the last thing we should want.
   

   “If we approach this moment of pause mindfully, the post-Covid economy we create could turn out to be a whole lot more resilient than the old one. Beyond exposing the brittle nature of global supply chains, top-down monetary policy, and a vanquished domestic manufacturing sector, the Covid crisis is also unleashing a powerful drive by local and networked communities to rebuild business from the bottom-up. The mechanisms so many of us are now inventing and retrieving under duress may just survive after this crisis is over, and augur a new era of sustainable commerce and much better distributed prosperity. Think local farms, worker-owned factories, and companies for whom the bottom line has more to do with selling products than selling shares of its stock.”
   

4. Moment of Pause—and reset. I love Cal Newport’s work, especially his latest book, Digital Minimalism, Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World. In his blog lately he is focusing on how to take back our attention, avoid superficial (digital) distraction and work and live more deeply. In this post, he makes an important comparison to Odysseus:

5. “To varying degrees of severity, we’re all suffering through some version of Odysseus’s tragic journey. Many — too many — are struggling with devastating consequences to their health or livelihoods….But for many others, including a large part of my audience here, the moment has brought severe dislocation to much of what we’ve come to trust and expect, but falls short of immediate peril. The question then is what those who find themselves in this situation — marooned on a Netflix-themed island of the lotus eaters — should do about it?”
   
   (Spoiler alert: he has some ideas.)

Finally, just a random share. Here’s a lovely post from Austin Kleon celebrating Bob Dylan—on his 79th birthday.

Peace and joy until next week—

Denise

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