The Providers

It is tough to run a retail business when there are no customers on the street. Very discouraging.

I have always had the shows and they have all been cancelled this year. But it might be even tougher for my wife and her store.

I feel for all the brick and mortar retailers, especially the one's that were just starting a new business when covid hit.

Talk about a double whammy, like things aren't hard enough. I was just going through a list of all the large retail chains that have filed for bankruptcy this year. Hurts the owners, hurts the workers, hurts everybody.

I am trying to stay busy every day, get my website more up to snuff, things like that. Today I polished silver. I try to do something productive everyday. Because this Covid and mask business will make you lose your mind. Everybody is so tired of it but we got no say in the matter, unfortunately. The pandemic is calling the shots. It has not been good for many of our psyches and self worth, will tell you that. But what can you do but hang on, grit your teeth and try to survive?

Of course, Covid 19 is just part of the problem. Amazon is the other part. People are getting awful used to punching a button on the keyboard and getting whatever they need, Main Street or Main Avenue is turning into quite the anachronism. First they came for the box stores...

A rich guy I know bought a second home and I asked him if he needed any cool furniture and he said that he was more of an Ikea guy. Of course he is. Ikea, Walmart and Amazon, is there really any need for anything else? People can dress the same, eat the same gruel and live in the same stucco box, sounds quite ideal to me. Never have to leave the house.

Made me think of one of my favorite Star Trek episodes, The Gamesters of Triskelion. This was the sixteenth episode of the second season, 1966. Do you remember it, three disembodied brains, the Providers, who lived under a glass dome on a table top, never moved and controlled a planet? They'd once had humanoid form, but after eons of devoting themselves exclusively to intellectual pursuits they had evolved into their present form, sans bodies. 

I don't think we are too far off. Jeff Bezos can be the overlord and we thralls can shove the poles in the holes or whatever Devo said that we would be doing. Brave new world.