Hey, it's me, Chrissy Clark.

I'm thinking about fennel sausage and cabbage.

I'm not actually hungry, but sausage and cabbage are kind of helping me make sense of what's

going on right now, you know, with the virus and with this economic disaster we're living

in.

Here's the story I'm thinking of.

Back in the 17th century, in Florence, some people were so poor you would see kids

nying on cabbage roots in the street.

But then came the bubonic plague.

People got forced into quarantine, like really forced, like bars on the doors of their

houses.

And city officials figured if we're going to lock people in, we're going to have to feed

them.

And what the people in quarantine got was fresh sausage with fennel and pepper and they

delivered bread and cheese, rice, wine and firewood.

And it turns out those people may have survived the plague better than the people in places

where they didn't get food.

But giving food to the people was controversial.

There was this fear that if what you give them is too good, they'll lose the will to work.

And that strikes me as kind of familiar.

We cannot pay people more to not work than to work.

This is basic common sense.

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