It was in the not-too-distant pandemic past, in the days of Zoom lectures and distance learning, that UC Berkeley Professor Alan Ross would take daily long walks through the Berkeley Hills to help relieve some of the stay-at-home stress.
It was on one of those walks that Ross came across a little girl behind a little stand.
It was not the classic scene of a young person selling lemonade. For one thing, the girl had cookies on the table. More important to Ross, however, was the fact she wasn’t selling them.
“I realized the cookies were free,” Ross said. “Here during this dark time,