Last night we went out for dinner at the rail yard. We were seated outside on the patio with a view of the rail yard plaza. The three of us couldn’t completely fill up the wooden bench table and about a half hour into our dinner a patron walked up and asked politely if he could join us at the table. We said yes, something we hadn’t done in almost two years. He shared that he was vaccinated and we told him we were, too. We struck up a conversation and it became the most wonderful human experience of community that we had in a while. It turned out that Joe was a local fellow who had lived in Santa Fe for his entire life. His kids were grown and had families of their own and he was enjoying the empty nester life style. We compared notes on various topics and had a grand time. The beer and conversation flowed and it became abundantly clear that this form of random human contact was what had been missing from our lives over the last 15 months. It’s striking how much we crave human connection – even random interactions like this one. After one and a half hours we left with a warm and fuzzy feeling. This was easily the high light of my vacation this year. Strange times we live in, thanks to COVID-19.

From Covid-19 Vaccines to Bluetooth, Europe Innovates but Profits Flow to U.S. and Asia https://www.wsj.com/articles/europe-proved-it-can-innovate-during-the-pandemic-now-it-has-to-figure-how-to-benefit-from-it-11620132179