Momentum

No, for once, not the physics equation about momentum , but the momentum of societies. Societies are a group of individuals, so this is also the momentum of individuals.

Starting last October, I have been leasing a car and spending a few days in St. John’s. St John’s has a greater range of consumables than does Bonavista, and the prices are lower too. Since the car lease costs me money, as does the hotel room rental, I thought that I would try to recoup a small fraction of costs by purchasing non-perishable groceries while I was in St John’s.

So it was that back in October I entered No Frills with a credit card and walked out with five wagon-loads of groceries. There was little science in my grocery shopping; I use a lot of tomato paste, so I grabbed two dozen 370 ml cans of tomato paste by default. I bake my own bread, so I bought about a dozen 2.5 Kg bags of bread flour and whole wheat flour. I might have spent close to $500 on groceries.

That was in October 2024.

Here we are in the end of April 2025 and I am bout to make another trip to St John’s. I shall spend a couple of hours doing another big grocery shop.

As well I shall buy hardware from the couple of dozen hardware outlets.

Of course when I enter the supermarkets in Bonavista I am greeted with “Where ya been?”, because throughout the winter I have been eating up the preserved foods I bottled last summer, eating mung bean sprouts as greens, enjoying my own bottled fruit.

My habits have changed. This momentum has shifted my buying habits.

As folks discover that cars and gasoline are rising in price, they will consider keeping their vehicle beyond the traditional two-year mark, and discover the joy of living without depreciation, and free of car lease payments.

Their vehicle habits will shift. That’s momentum.

On a larger scale we see nations developing new weapons systems and new alliances, breaking away from dependence on their mother country. This too is a change of course, a shift in momentum.

To my mind a great many changes in momentum are under-valued.

When I switched to eating dandelion leaves (May to November) and mung bean sprouts (December-April), I stopped buying three narrow romaine lettuce hearts at three dollars.

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