Links, things happening here, and not much new stuff.

First of all, here's a link to an interesting article about the comparisons of the Black Death to our current Corona pandemic, written by Going Medieval.  And while I'm throwing things at you to read, here is a long blogpost about Macchiavelli, written by Ada Palmer. Just so you have something to do, in case you haven't.

Here, things had more or less settled into a new routine, with both of us working in the home office - but now things have changed up a bit again, as the Most Patient Husband's company has shut down for the Easter holidays. Which means that this week and next week, he has time off work, so I'll probably cut down on my own worktime a bit as well, so we can make good use of his free time. (Which also means that I might accidentally skip a blogpost or two. I don't plan to, currently, but it might happen.)

Otherwise, nothing really newsworthy is going on here. Well, unless you count little things; little things that brightened up our weekend, and make things somehow much nicer and much better. Little things like a few new plants for our garden, ordered from that local nursery, which arrived on Friday and were duly re-potted on Saturday. Activities on that day also included a very, very fun bread-baking action:

One of our friends had offered via his Whatsapp-Status to bake bread together; nice, simple, down-to-earth rye bread with sourdough. He'd prepare a sourdough starter for the local people (which we collected contactless, of course), and then on Saturday, there was a video group call at several points in time, with explanation and instructions on what to do to bake the bread.

Many years ago, I used to make my own bread purely for fun, so it wasn't all new to me - but it was definitely something else to do it in a group, with a few hilarious technical issues, and a number of lovely rye breads at the end of the action.

This was my result:



It's a nice, proper sourdough rye bread, tasting just like it is supposed to be. I also have a starter in the fridge now, and I do suspect there will be a bit more bread-baking in my future again...