If Long Island’s Car Free Day was good for anything at all, it was the irony of it coming on a day when Suffolk officials announced that the county’s low-cost bus service could be cut by nearly half.

In the economic wake of the novel coronavirus, few things have been more emotional — a roller coaster of concern, inspiration, and worry — than watching friends who own, manage, or work in restaurants struggle and pivot and improvise and roll with the punches in their fight to keep the kitchen fires burning.

Since we are all still feeling our way around remote work and online meetings, I thought that I would ask my high school junior for a few tips.

A creeping dread — of finding ourselves homebound again, wearing fuzzy slippers and harassed expressions around the kitchen table, bickering about who ate the last Klondike Bar — has driven me to wallow in as much outdoor time as I possibly can before the temperature falls.