Comfort & Strife

Here’s an unsurprising headline from nypost.com: “The diet industry is getting fat off the pandemic.” I’ve been dipping into the comfort food zone more often than usual. So far it hasn’t led to weight gain, probably because I no longer overeat. I sometimes have a muffin or piece of apple pie for lunch. I rarely eat what’s in the picture below anymore.

Here’s another unsurprising headline: “COVID-weary NYC diners flee out of state to eat indoors.” Today a woman passed, mask pulled down, smoking a cigarette, as many do. On the way back, she scolded someone for not wearing a mask. Scanning the news at various sites, the battles between the totalitarian governors who impose lockdowns and the business owners who defy them are fascinating. If cops soon tell me to stop selling books curbside at a certain area, I will comply, hoping I will get away with it at another.

Amazon gets a lot of heat from know-it-alls such as AOC. Rich Lowry responded to that in an op-ed piece. Here are excerpts, juxtaposed by yours truly: “Since July, the online retailer has hired 350,000 workers and now employs 1.2 million people globally… If someone had said early in 2020, ‘A company is going to hire hundreds of thousands of non-college-educated workers during the pandemic at well above the minimum wage,’ you’d think there’d be huzzahs all around.” Kudos, sir. Full disclosure, my current bank statement reflects a royalty payment of $2.96 for three books, two print, one Kindle, that sold at the website.

It was a gorgeous day to do business curbside, plenty of sunshine to take the bite out of the cold. There wasn’t much action during the first two-plus hours. Three books in Russian sold. Then I decided to try the ridiculous. Rhonda Byrne’s The Secret, her interpretation of the Law of Attraction, states that simply asking the universe for something will bring it. Ever since I read it, I’ve been doing it every morning, going through a list of about five desires and ancillary aspects. About 15 minutes before packing up this afternoon, I asked for more books sales, as I do each morning and which seemed to work until the past two days. Darn if eight didn’t sell. Most of the session’s sales were, as usual, in Russian. Here are the titles in English that went: 1984 by George Orwell, Sphere by Michael Crichton, two kids books, and How to Solve Sudoku: A Step-by-step Guide (52 Brilliant Ideas) by Robin J. Wilson. My thanks to the kind folks who made purchases, especially the couple who gushed about one of my own books, which each read, either Killing or Close to the Edge.

Meanwhile, I had a much-welcomed visit from my buddy Bags. Here are a couple of pics he took with his iphone:

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