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#2. Eating. I guess you can call eating a thread.  My eating habits are a little irregular. I usually have three meals a day, but sometimes they are compressed into a period between noon and 6 o’clock. My typical breakfast is a smoothie and cereal. I always prepare my own breakfast unless Ellen prepares a special treat like pancakes and sausage (like this morning). Lunch often consists of leftovers. Sometimes I fix my lunch, sometimes Ellen does. She always prepares supper, unless she’s away, and even then she usually has something prepared for me in the fridge. Yesterday evening, she prepared a wonderful soufflé.

Ellen’s soufflé. She insists it’s really easy to make a soufflé.

Overall, Ellen certainly does most of the cooking. She also does a lot of cooking for other people. Needless to say, I am very fortunate to have Ellen preparing meals for me. I’m sure that I’m eating  far better than if I were eating alone. We eat very little processed food.

#3. Worship. Today was a little unusual in this category. We attended church three times. You might even say four, if you call the program On Being a kind of church, which it is. We listen to that on NPR  at 7 AM on Sundays.  But anyway, after On Being, today we attended a live stream from Saint Michaels Episcopal Church, and then a bit later the Guilford church pre-recorded service, and after that the service from the Dummerston Church, which was after the fact. Each was quite distinct in character. The Guilford church service is the most complex and richest in character with a combination of lots of things, all skillfully edited into a seamless whole. To compensate for the fact that it is pre-recorded, there is a live coffee-hour following the service where you can chat with your friends via Zoom. Everyone is in their own home, of course. These services are the heart of the week for me - like an anchor .

The Guilford services are still all available on YouTube - you just have to go to “Guilford community church” - and are done in collaboration with Brattleboro community television. Today, Paul Baker  called from Wyoming during the Dummerston service and we had a long FaceTime session with him. Worship during the week is more haphazard. There’s prayer sometime every day but we have never been able to establish any given time for meditation. I am hoping that is something we might actually achieve during this time of relative isolation.

Diane and Elliot during coffee hour