The Stream of Death and Bread in a Pandemic

"For a the last few weeks, my social media has toggled between two poles: Death and baking. There has been an immense amount of death and dying, dear friends losing parents they could not even visit in a hospital; zoom funerals with only a handful of mourners as the wind whips past an open grave. I have all but given up on knowing what to say in response to this flattening of suffering and pain. I type “I’m sorry,” and “I’m so sorry.” The rest of the feed is given over to baking. People are doing some spectacular things with cannellini beans. This past week was the sourdough week for my people, it seems. I am almost as useless in my responses to the food posts, to those I type “yum.” Sometimes I can’t recall what I am doing and post my “I’m sorry”’s and my “yum”’s in inappropriate spaces" Dahlia Lithwick