"Life's funny, chucklehead. You only get one and you don't want to throw it away. But you can't really live it at all unless you're willing to give it up for the things you love. If you're not at least willing to die for something - something that really matters - in the end you die for nothing."
"Food industry executives have just issued a dire warning to all Americans: buy food now because grocery costs will go up tremendously and things will only get worse in 2023. In 2022, U.S. shoppers have dealt with some of the steepest price increases seen since the hyperinflation crisis that marked the 1970s. We paid on average 20 percent more on meat, 40 percent more on eggs, 17 percent more on breakfast cereal, 11 percent more on peanut butter, 42 percent more on gas, 27 percent more on electricity, 32 percent more on propane, kerosene, and firewood, and 12 percent more on appliances. According to an estimate from Moody’s Analytics, soaring inflation forced American households to spend an extra $445 per month to buy the same items they did last year. And food industry executives say that conditions are going to get even tougher in 2023.
Supermarket CEO John Catsimatidis, the owner of Gristedes and D’Agostino Foods, warned that food giants such as Kraft Heinz, Pepsico, and Mondelez will keep on passing higher costs on to consumers in the next year. The executive had previously stated that double-digit price increases will affect thousands of different items, adding that the trend will not drop “anytime soon.”
Catsimatidis noted that inflation and supply chain problems will continue to plague grocery store chains and other retailers around the United States. “I see food prices going up tremendously,” he said, highlighting that in the coming months, promotions will become harder to find, and also revealing that food manufacturers are dropping the production of low-moving items, which will result in more empty shelves soon.
Meanwhile, Egg Innovations CEO John Bruunquell, who acquired the first US patent for reduced-fat and -cholesterol eggs, echoed Catsimatidis’ concerns that the lower supply coinciding with labor, freight, and vendor issues won’t be enough to meet consumers’ demand. Bruunquell said that his business is still filling at 100 percent capacity, but has asked employees to work extra hours or days in order to keep up with the market. “If that trend continues, it’s going to put us in a challenging situation with meeting the demand,” he admitted.
“Whether it’s the selectors, the drivers, the loaders, there are interruptions in the system,” Catsimatidis continued. During an interview with Fox & Friends' Brian Kilmeade, the executive urged Americans to "buy now” because food inflation will only get much worse. "Between price increases and shrinkflation -- where it used to be 32 ounces, now it's going to be 28 ounces – it's anywhere from a 12 to a 20% increase in food prices," the billionaire CEO laid out. He encouraged U.S. shoppers nationwide to stock up on their favorite products to "get a better return on your investment," especially considering that prices are set to soar over the next three to four months."
"FDA Criminally Approved Bioweapon as Safe & Effective Vaccine"
By Greg Hunter’s USAWatchdog.com
"Karen Kingston is a biotech analyst and former Pfizer employee who has researched and written about many aspects of Covid 19 and the so-called vaccines. It’s now become obvious, with dramatically rising death and injuries, the CV19 injections were bioweapons passed off as lifesaving vaccines. Kingston has many documents from the government and vax manufacturers to prove this point. Kingston says, “In America, you cannot legalize murder. The original timeline was they were going to submit for FDA approval (for the CV19 injection) in June of 2025. Because they were trying to push the mandates, and Americans were saying you cannot mandate an experimental product, they said, oh, it’s now FDA approved. They moved that timeline up exponentially. The reason why that is a problem is that it is legally distinct from an ‘emergency use’ product. Once the approval happened on August 23, 2021 (Comirnaty), that broke the liability shield for the ‘emergency use’ product. So, the FDA fraudulently and criminally approved a bioweapon as a safe and effective vaccine.
People were under the impression they were getting an approved product, they were actually getting a bioweapon. If they never had done the approval, you could not bring these civil charges against Pfizer, and there are dozens and dozens of them as well as criminal charges. Call these shots what they are. They are bioweapons. I don’t care what our government said in the past. I don’t care what little memo they got from HHS or their employer. What they have done is wrong, and they need to be held to account.”
Kingston goes on to say, “I know people are saying anyone who says there is technology in these shots is a conspiracy theorist or crazy. I just showed you Pfizer says on their website that this is technology. The lipid nanoparticles are technically called biohybrid microrobots. That sounds bad, so they call them lipid nanoparticles to make it not sound so scary. So, there is technology in the CV19 injections.”
The CV19 bioweapons can cause a variety of deadly health effects. Kingston thinks, “25% of the fully vaxed could die of a heart attack or end up with severe heart problems such as Myocarditis.”
Kingston lists many other deadly or debilitating effects of these bioweapons such as neurological disease, autoimmune disease, extreme and fast spreading cancers and severely weakened immune systems, just to name a few. The shots did zero good and massive damage that people are now waking up to. According to Kingston, this is what these CV19 bioweapons were supposed to do.
Kingston says, “More experts are coming together in January and calling these bioweapons. They will be sharing this evidence from the manufacturers and our government. People also need to recognize there was never a virus. We were attacked with a nano-weapon. Not only is the so-called vaccine a bioweapon, you cannot vaccinate against a technology. The whole thing was a lie.” There is much more in the 1-
Join Greg Hunter on Rumble as he goes One-on-One with biotech analyst Karen Kingston as she gives an update on the bioweapon injections and criminals behind them.
"Don't wonder why people go crazy. Wonder why they don't. In the face of what we can lose in a day, in an instant, wonder what the hell it is that makes us hold it together."
"For nothing is fixed, forever and forever and forever, it is not fixed; the earth is always shifting, the light is always changing, the sea does not cease to grind down rock. Generations do not cease to be born, and we are responsible to them because we are the only witnesses they have. The sea rises, the light fails, lovers cling to each other, and children cling to us. The moment we cease to hold each other, the sea engulfs us and the light goes out."
"The most incomprehensible talk comes from people who have
no other use for language than to make themselves understood.”
Karl Kraus, "Half-Truths & One-and-a-Half Truths"
"Things, possessions, life on the installment plan or credit card. This is the season to buy, to accumulate more folderols, to give things to one’s children and each other, which, we like to believe, will bring joy. It’s make-believe, of course, an adult lie conjured up out of guilt and fear that our lives, the stories we live, the stories we dream, and those that dream us, are insufficiently meaningful to bring our children and ourselves the joy we say we seek.
Driven by a pure sense of guilt devoid of any sense of redemption in a capitalist materialist culture, we buy and buy, accumulate and accumulate, in the vain hope that such tangible “gifts” will bring a magic that we can possess. Our exchange of gifts is a consumer culture’s parody of the true meaning of a gift: that gifts are given to be given away, to be passed around, like the peace pipe of native American Indian tribes.
As Lewis Hyde writes in his extraordinary book, "The Gift: Imagination and the Erotic Life of Property: "…a gift that cannot be given away ceases to be a gift. The spirit of a gift is its constant donation.” What we are given, in the inner and outer world, must be shared, allowed to circulate. But we like to own, to stop the flow. As a result, we have become stuck, selfie people who can’t understand that to possess is to be possessed. Stop, pose, click. Got it!
Describing art as a way of life, or walking life’s way as an art, the German poet Rainer Maria Rilke put it thus: "Not any self-control or self-limitation for the sake of specific ends, but rather a carefree letting go of oneself; not caution, but rather a wise blindness; not working to acquire silent, slowly increasing possessions, but rather a continuous squandering of all perishable values. This way of being has something naïve and instinctive about it, and resembles that period of the unconscious best characterized by a joyous consciousness , namely the period of childhood."
The truth is that we are sustained by stories – oral, written, existential – not by things, as a commercial civilization would have us believe. From infancy to old age, we crave stories that will allow us to make sense of our lives, to give them shape and spiritual significance.
And the greatest gifts we can give each other are stories that draw on the mystery and sacredness of existence, stories that express, in ravishing language and a musical spirit, clarification for our lives. Stories that help us resist the nihilistic ethos of our times, the violence and deceit that defines them.
For example, long ago a Jewish boy was born in a stable because his parents couldn’t get a room anywhere. The parents then had to flee with the boy because the government was murdering children and was out to get him. Later in life, this child Jesus, became a radical opponent of church and state, preached peace, love, non-violence, and living by faith, not money; he embraced the outcasts, condemned the hypocrites, and was finally executed as a radical criminal by the state. But his spirit was undefeated; he conquered death; and his name has become synonymous with love and kindness to such a degree that we celebrate his birth as the light of the world as the darkest days of the year turn brighter.
It’s a beautiful story from beginning to end, and if heeded, would bring massive resistance to the way things are throughout the world. No wonder it has touched the hearts of so many for so long. Sadly, however, Wordsworth put it perfectly when he said that, “getting and spending we lay waste our powers.” And the consumer-gift-stories we indirectly tell our children by participating in the madness of holiday shopping are tales unfit for young ears. To live to buy is to tell them lies.
Our children (and all of us) wish not things but stories that will help them face life with enthusiasm and courage. When I was a young boy, my father would ease me to sleep with “Jiminy Cricket Stories,” imaginary improvisations on Pinocchio and his conscience. They were in no way trendy like the most recent Pinocchio film adaptation, but fundamentally sound as in the song "As Time Goes By "– it’s still the same old story.
I can’t remember any of his stories today, but what stays with me is their underlying theme, their spirit: to become a real boy, a genuine person, one must determine to tell the truth. One must be brave, truthful, and unselfish. Yet even more, when I think of them, I feel my father’s unconditional love and the timbre of his lilting voice.
These stories about truth and bravery contained hard but vital lessons for a father to pass on to a son, but he did it in such an entertaining way that I took the lessons to heart. Ever since, in gratitude and wonder, I have been trying to make my story adhere to that spirit of truth. Trying; for as we all know, truth is a hard taskmaster. We never hold it, only seek it, and can only approach it if we are possessed by language and allow its musical spirit to carry us on into the unknown.
When I became a father myself, I tried to pass on to my children a love for stories and the words we use to express our lives. Without words, and the ability to use them meaningfully, we are lost in the world of things, a place where consuming replaces creating. So from infancy onward, my wife and I would read to them, and eventually I began to tell them imaginary stories of my own, “Willy Daly Stories,” inspired by a boyhood pal. They would hang onto each word, and swing into depths of reverie as I strung them together into tall tales.
“At the bottom of each word/I’m a spectator at my birth,” wrote the French poet Alain Bosquet. Entering into this creative spirit, Susanne and Daniel would ask me. “Is that really true?” And I could not lie and say no. So they would laugh, I would grin, and we would go on.
Like all children, they loved these stories, the ones I told and the ones we read. They entered into them, and they, into them; their inner worlds germinated. When they were very young, each started to read, not haltingly but fluently and with amazing comprehension. “Out of the blue” something clicked (and neither was “taught” to read, but was read and talked to by my wife and me as though they comprehended everything, even the most abstruse words), and from that day on the words that they previously heard became theirs. They received the gift, even when they didn’t understand the meaning, they grasped the music.
Now it has passed to my grandchildren, Sophie and Henry, who are children of the word, lovers of the epiphanies stories can disclose. “The bright book of life,” as D.H.Lawrence called the novel, opened to them. Novel: New. New life forever arising out of the old. Miraculously (is there any other word for it?), they were in possession of the gift of words that they could pass on; they had the power to hear and tell their own stories, to understand their lives, not as the pursuit of things, but as the pursuit of meaning. They felt proud and I felt blessed.
“Art tells the truth,” wrote Chekhov. Indeed. And the wheel of life turns with the seasons. The gift of stories is passed on. Christmas turns to New Year’s. People pass on, but so do stories. The things are forgotten.
The wordsmith Leonard Cohen sang in his song, “Famous Blue Raincoat,” that “I hope you are keeping some sort of record.” The words stick on the page, but the beautiful melody carries them into our present and into the future and we imagine stories carrying us on as the music and the words don’t stop and we keep humming the tune and imagining as we move along to that which cannot be said and about which it is impossible to be silent, to paraphrase Victor Hugo.
My daughter: Susanne. Leonard Cohen’s Suzanne: “There are children in the morning/they are leaning out for love/and they will lean that way forever/while Suzanne holds the mirror.”
My son: Daniel. Like brave Pinocchio being swallowed by Monstro, and Daniel in the Lion’s den, the stories of courage and derring-do, told indirectly.
Daniel Berrigan, S. J., a friend and mentor, the puckish fierce poet of beauty and peace, whose fierceness belied his tenderness.
The Biblical Susanna, the falsely accused, and Daniel her liberator.
Names contain multitudes, tales never told, stories traveling on. The gifts must be given away, like playing or listening to live music. Here and gone; one time only. Like life.
I recently saw a book for sale at my local library – "From my Father, Singing" by David Bosworth – a beautiful book, a true work of art. I read it once at the suggestion of my storyteller father, and have just reread it. I am grateful to Bosworth for his gift and to my father for passing on the word. It is a tale in the form of a letter from a father to a son, a father in search of the meaning of his own father’s life, that elusive gift that can only be found in a story, in the telling.
The letter writer, our author, is in flight from a life lived “according to script,” a wife in love with money, shopping, and things, his dead-end job – “the place where I pretended to earn our living” – a life of pretense and lies, a living death in which all efforts were made to deny its meaninglessness: “to have fun, to keep busy, to buy something, to face the bleak descent of Sunday evening by preparing already for the following weekend.”
In order to explain himself to his son, a young infant, he explores his own childhood, the life he lived caught between his parents’ conflicting worlds. In the end, by fashioning this letter, by putting word behind word behind word, he comes to understand and appreciate his father and consequently himself; he composes a letter to his son (who cannot yet read but whom we know will) “intended as a gift, a living legacy in words.”
Yes, art tells the truth. Pass on the word, the true gift. Here is Billy Joel’s gift to his daughter:
The tragedy of modern war is that the young men die fighting each other -
instead of their real enemies back home in the capitals.”
- Edward Abbey
“You are standing up to your knees in the slime of a waterlogged trench. It is the evening of 24 December 1914 and you are on the dreaded Western Front. Stooped over, you wade across to the firing step and take over the watch. Having exchanged pleasantries, your bleary-eyed and mud-spattered colleague shuffles off towards his dug out. Despite the horrors and the hardships, your morale is high and you believe that in the New Year the nation’s army march towards a glorious victory.
But for now you stamp your feet in a vain attempt to keep warm. All is quiet when jovial voices call out from both friendly and enemy trenches. Then the men from both sides start singing carols and songs. Next come requests not to fire, and soon the unthinkable happens: you start to see the shadowy shapes of soldiers gathering together in no-man’s land laughing, joking and sharing gifts. Many have exchanged cigarettes, the lit ends of which burn brightly in the inky darkness. Plucking up your courage, you haul yourself up and out of the trench and walk towards the foe…
The meeting of enemies as friends in no-man’s land was experienced by hundreds, if not thousands, of men on the Western Front during Christmas 1914. Today, 106 years after it occurred, the event is seen as a shining episode of sanity from among the bloody chapters of World War One – a spontaneous effort by the lower ranks to create a peace that could have blossomed were it not for the interference of generals and politicians.
The reality of the Christmas Truce, however, is a slightly less romantic and a more down to earth story. It was an organic affair that in some spots hardly registered a mention and in others left a profound impact upon those who took part. Many accounts were rushed, confused or contradictory. Others, written long after the event, are weighed down by hindsight. These difficulties aside, the true story is still striking precisely because of its rag-tagged nature: it is more ‘human’ and therefore all the more potent.
Months beforehand, millions of servicemen, reservists and volunteers from all over the continent had rushed enthusiastically to the banners of war: the atmosphere was one of holiday rather than conflict. But it was not long before the jovial façade was torn away. Armies equipped with repeating rifles, machine guns and a vast array of artillery tore chunks out of each other, and thousands upon thousands of men perished. To protect against the threat of this vast firepower, the soldiers were ordered to dig in and prepare for next year’s offensives, which most men believed would break the deadlock and deliver victory. The early trenches were often hasty creations and poorly constructed; if the trench was badly sighted it could become a sniping hot spot. In bad weather (the winter of 1914 was a dire one) the positions could flood and fall in. The soldiers – unequipped to face the rigors of the cold and rain – found themselves wallowing in a freezing mire of mud and the decaying bodies of the fallen.
The man at the Front could not help but have a degree of sympathy for his opponents who were having just as miserable a time as they were. Another factor that broke down the animosity between the opposing armies were the surroundings. In 1914 the men at the front could still see the vestiges of civilization. Villages, although badly smashed up, were still standing. Fields, although pitted with shell-holes, had not been turned into muddy lunarscapes. Thus the other world – the civilian world – and the social mores and manners that went with it was still present at the front. Also lacking was the pain, misery and hatred that years of bloody war build up. Then there was the desire, on all sides, to see the enemy up close – was he really as bad as the politicians, papers and priests were saying? It was a combination of these factors, and many more minor ones, that made the Christmas Truce of 1914 possible.
On the eve of the Truce, the British Army (still a relatively small presence on the Western Front) was manning a stretch of the line running south from the infamous Ypres salient for 27 miles to the La Bassee Canal. Along the front the enemy was sometimes no more than 70, 50 or even 30 yards away. Both Tommy and Fritz could quite easily hurl greetings and insults to one another, and, importantly, come to tacit agreements not to fire. Incidents of temporary truces and outright fraternization were more common at this stage in the war than many people today realize – even units that had just taken part in a series of futile and costly assaults, were still willing to talk and come to arrangements with their opponents.
As Christmas approached the festive mood and the desire for a lull in the fighting increased as parcels packed with goodies from home started to arrive. On top of this came gifts care of the state. Tommy received plum puddings and ‘Princess Mary boxes’; a metal case engraved with an outline of George V’s daughter and filled with chocolates and butterscotch, cigarettes and tobacco, a picture card of Princess Mary and a facsimile of George V’s greeting to the troops. ‘May God protect you and bring you safe home,’ it said. Not to be outdone, Fritz received a present from the Kaiser, the Kaiserliche, a large meerschaum pipe for the troops and a box of cigars for NCOs and officers. Towns, villages and cities, and numerous support associations on both sides also flooded the front with gifts of food, warm clothes and letters of thanks.
The Belgians and French also received goods, although not in such an organized fashion as the British or Germans. For these nations the Christmas of 1914 was tinged with sadness – their countries were occupied. It is no wonder that the Truce, although it sprung up in some spots on French and Belgian lines, never really caught hold as it did in the British sector.
With their morale boosted by messages of thanks and their bellies fuller than normal, and with still so much Christmas booty to hand, the season of goodwill entered the trenches. A British Daily Telegraph correspondent wrote that on one part of the line the Germans had managed to slip a chocolate cake into British trenches. Even more amazingly, it was accompanied with a message asking for a ceasefire later that evening so they could celebrate the festive season and their Captain’s birthday. They proposed a concert at 7.30pm when candles, the British were told, would be placed on the parapets of their trenches. The British accepted the invitation and offered some tobacco as a return present. That evening, at the stated time, German heads suddenly popped up and started to sing. Each number ended with a round of applause from both sides. The Germans then asked the British to join in. At this point, one very mean-spirited Tommy shouted: ‘We’d rather die than sing German.’ To which a German joked aloud: ‘It would kill us if you did’.
December 24 was a good day weather-wise: the rain had given way to clear skies. On many stretches of the Front the crack of rifles and the dull thud of shells ploughing into the ground continued, but at a far lighter level than normal. In other sectors there was an unnerving silence that was broken by the singing and shouting drifting over, in the main, from the German trenches. Along many parts of the line the Truce was spurred on with the arrival in the German trenches of miniature Christmas trees – Tannenbaum. The sight these small pines, decorated with candles and strung along the German parapets, captured the Tommies’ imagination, as well as the men of the Indian corps who were reminded of the sacred Hindu festival of light. It was the perfect excuse for the opponents to start shouting to one another, to start singing and, in some areas, to pluck up the courage to meet one another in no-man’s land.
By now, the British high command – comfortably ‘entrenched’ in a luxurious châteaux 27 miles behind the front – was beginning to hear of the fraternization. Stern orders were issued by the commander of the BEF, Sir John French against such behavior. Other ‘brass-hats’ (as the Tommies nick-named their high-ranking officers and generals), also made grave pronouncements on the dangers and consequences of parleying with the Germans. However, there were many high-ranking officers who took a surprisingly relaxed view of the situation. If anything, they believed it would at least offer their men an opportunity to strengthen their trenches. This mixed stance meant that very few officers and men involved in the Christmas Truce were disciplined. Interestingly, the German High Command’s ambivalent attitude towards the Truce mirrored that of the British.
Christmas day began quietly but once the sun was up the fraternization began. Again songs were sung and rations thrown to one another. It was not long before troops and officers started to take matters into their own hands and ventured forth. No-man’s land became something of a playground. Men exchanged gifts and buttons. In one or two places soldiers who had been barbers in civilian times gave free haircuts. One German, a juggler and a showman, gave an impromptu, and given the circumstances, somewhat surreal performance of his routine in the centre of no-man’s land.
Captain Sir Edward Hulse of the Scots Guards, in his famous account, remembered the approach of four unarmed Germans at 08.30. He went out to meet them with one of his ensigns. ‘Their spokesmen,’ Hulse wrote, ‘started off by saying that he thought it only right to come over and wish us a happy Christmas, and trusted us implicitly to keep the truce. He came from Suffolk where he had left his best girl and a 3 h.p. motor-bike!’ Having raced off to file a report at headquarters, Hulse returned at 10.00 to find crowds of British soldiers and Germans out together chatting and larking about in no-man’s land, in direct contradiction to his orders. Not that Hulse seemed to care about the fraternization in itself – the need to be seen to follow orders was his concern. Thus he sought out a German officer and arranged for both sides to return to their lines.
While this was going on he still managed to keep his ears and eyes open to the fantastic events that were unfolding. ‘Scots and Huns were fraternizing in the most genuine possible manner. Every sort of souvenir was exchanged addresses given and received, photos of families shown, etc. One of our fellows offered a German a cigarette; the German said, “Virginian?” Our fellow said, “Aye, straight-cut”, the German said “No thanks, I only smoke Turkish!” It gave us all a good laugh.’ Hulse’s account was in part a letter to his mother, who in turn sent it on to the newspapers for publication, as was the custom at the time. Tragically, Hulse was killed in March 1915.
On many parts of the line the Christmas Day truce was initiated through sadder means. Both sides saw the lull as a chance to get into no-man’s land and seek out the bodies of their compatriots and give them a decent burial. Once this was done the opponents would inevitably begin talking to one another. The 6th Gordon Highlanders, for example, organized a burial truce with the enemy. After the gruesome task of laying friends and comrades to rest was complete, the fraternization began.
With the Truce in full swing up and down the line there were a number of recorded games of soccer, although these were really just ‘kick-abouts’ rather than a structured match. On January 1, 1915, the London Times published a letter from a major in the Medical Corps reporting that in his sector the British played a game against the Germans opposite and were beaten 3-2. Kurt Zehmisch of the 134th Saxons recorded in his diary: ‘The English brought a soccer ball from the trenches, and pretty soon a lively game ensued. How marvelously wonderful, yet how strange it was. The English officers felt the same way about it. Thus Christmas, the celebration of Love, managed to bring mortal enemies together as friends for a time.’
The Truce lasted all day; in places it ended that night, but on other sections of the line it held over Boxing Day and in some areas, a few days more. In fact, there were parts on the front where the absence of aggressive behavior was conspicuous well into 1915.
Captain J C Dunn, the Medical Officer in the Royal Welch Fusiliers, whose unit had fraternized and received two barrels of beer from the Saxon troops opposite, recorded how hostilities re-started on his section of the front. Dunn wrote: ‘At 8.30 I fired three shots in the air and put up a flag with “Merry Christmas” on it, and I climbed on the parapet. He [the Germans] put up a sheet with “Thank you” on it, and the German Captain appeared on the parapet. We both bowed and saluted and got down into our respective trenches, and he fired two shots in the air, and the War was on again.’ The war was indeed on again, for the Truce had no hope of being maintained. Despite being wildly reported in Britain and to a lesser extent in Germany, the troops and the populations of both countries were still keen to prosecute the conflict.
Today, pragmatists read the Truce as nothing more than a ‘blip’ – a temporary lull induced by the season of goodwill, but willingly exploited by both sides to better their defenses and eye out one another’s positions. Romantics assert that the Truce was an effort by normal men to bring about an end to the slaughter. In the public’s mind the facts have become irrevocably mythologized, and perhaps this is the most important legacy of the Christmas Truce today. In our age of uncertainty, it comforting to believe, regardless of the real reasoning and motives, that soldiers and officers told to hate, loathe and kill, could still lower their guns and extend the hand of goodwill, peace, love and Christmas cheer. The Irish poet, Thomas Kettle, who was killed in the War in September 1916, captured that spirit in a poem he wrote to his little daughter, Betty, shortly before he died:
"The U.S. retail apocalypse is a slow-motion disaster that never seems to end. While several brands spent decades building their businesses, attracting their base of customers, investing in real estate space, and perfecting their products to become respected household names, the advent of e-commerce changed the entire game in just a few years, and everything businesses thought they knew was put into question as they rushed to adapt to a new market that moved much faster and where shoppers had significantly more choices. The after-effects of the financial crisis led to several waves of mass layoffs and store closings that left many companies standing on very thin ice, and the stock market volatility that followed ended the journey of many retailers that were on our landscape for over a century. In 2017, the period commonly known as the start of this whole process, over 9,000 stores were permanently shut down as foot traffic at shopping malls drastically declined. But the truth is that this crisis had been developing for nearly fifteen years before the industry finally reached its breaking point.
Since then, thousands of popular brands have filed for bankruptcy and gone out of business, and for the first time in history, shopping malls actually faced the threat of extinction. One thing all retail experts note is the fact that neither the rise of online shopping platforms nor the financial turbulence that marked this period can completely explain why so many successful businesses failed almost overnight. One of the most notable trends driving the downfall of retailers is the steady decline of the U.S. middle class. Since the year 2000, it is estimated that U.S. middle-class Americans lost 35% of their purchasing power, with 5% of that loss happening over the last two years. From that period to this day, almost 22 million workers have fallen out of the middle class given that wages stagnated but the cost of living has increased by almost 4.5 times only in the past decade.
Of course, the advent of the pandemic caused even more damage to the retail industry and this income group. In fact, this holiday season is the first in nearly 14 years where businesses in all categories saw sales contracting instead of rising. The troubles faced by retailers were exposed and aggravated by the effects of the health-crisis-induced downturn, and after things started falling apart, one problem led to another and another and another, creating a downward spiral that companies are making this scenario even scarier for many businesses up until this day.
With mass layoffs being announced on a weekly basis, businesses facing the tighter credit conditions in decades, and consumers rolling back their spending amid rising living expenses, it's safe to say that a series of disappointing corporate earings results is coming next, and with it more announcements of store shutdowns and bankruptcy fillings are likely to arise. A lot is at stake still, and we will watch many more developments in 2023 as we head towards another economic recession, but today, we decided to gather 20 surprising facts about the U.S. retail apocalypse that many of you out there may not know yet."
“Pamela and Randy Copus are the duo known as 2002. Randy Copus plays piano, electric cello, guitar, bass and keyboards. Pamela Copus plays flutes, harp, keyboards and a wind instrument called a WX5. Both musicians also provide all of the vocals on their albums, recording their voices many, many times and layering them to create a "virtual choir" with a celestial, angelic quality.”
Also known as the Cigar Galaxy for its elongated visual appearance, M82 is a starburst galaxy with a superwind. In fact, through ensuing supernova explosions and powerful winds from massive stars, the burst of star formation in M82 is driving the prodigious outflow of material. Evidence for the superwind from the galaxy’s central regions is clear in this sharp composite image, based on data from small telescopes on planet Earth.
The composite highlights emission from filaments of atomic hydrogen gas in reddish hues. The filaments extend for over 10,000 light-years. Some of the gas in the superwind, enriched in heavy elements forged in the massive stars, will eventually escape into intergalactic space. Triggered by a close encounter with nearby large galaxy M81, the furious burst of star formation in M82 should last about 100 million years or so. M82 is 12 million light-years distant, near the northern boundary of Ursa Major.”
"In 1880, Theodore Roosevelt wrote to his brother, “My happiness is so great that it makes me almost afraid.” In October of that year, life got even better. As he wrote in his diary the night of his wedding to Alice Hathaway Lee, “Our intense happiness is too sacred to be written about.” He would consider it to be one of the best years of his life: he got married, wrote a book, attended law school, and won his first election for public office.
The streak continued. In 1883, he wrote “I can imagine nothing more happy in life than an evening spent in the cozy little sitting room, before a bright fire of soft coal, my books all around me, and playing backgammon with my own dainty mistress.” And that’s how he and Alice spent that cold winter as it crawled into the new year. He wrote in late January that he felt he was fully coming into his own. “I feel now as though I have the reins in my hand.” On February 12th, 1884 his first daughter was born.
Two days later, his wife would be dead of Bright’s disease (now known as kidney failure). His mother had died only hours earlier in the same house, of typhoid fever. Roosevelt marked the day in his diary with a large “X.” Next to it, he wrote, “The light has gone out of my life.”
Life comes at us fast, don’t it? It can change in an instant. Everything you built, everyone you hold dear, can be taken from you. For absolutely no reason. Just as easily, you can be taken from them. This is why the Stoics say we need to be prepared, constantly, for the twists and turns of Fortune. It’s why Seneca said that nothing happens to the wise man contrary to his expectation, because the wise man has considered every possibility—even the cruel and heartbreaking ones.
And yet even Seneca was blindsided by a health scare in his early twenties that forced him to spend nearly a decade in Egypt to recover. He lost his father less than a year before he lost his first-born son, and twenty days after burying his son he was exiled by the emperor Caligula. He lived through the destruction of one city by a fire and another by an earthquake, before being exiled two more times.
One needs only to read his letters and essays, written on a rock off the coast of Italy, to get a sense that even a philosopher can get knocked on their ass and feel sorry for themselves from time to time.
What do we do? Well, first, knowing that life comes at us fast, we should be always prepared. Seneca wrote that the fighter who has “seen his own blood, who has felt his teeth rattle beneath his opponent’s fist… who has been downed in body but not in spirit…” - only they can go into the ring confident of their chances of winning. They know they can take getting bloodied and bruised. They know what the darkness before the proverbial dawn feels like. They have a true and accurate sense for the rhythms of a fight and what winning requires. That sense only comes from getting knocked around. That sense is only possible because of their training.
In his own life, Seneca bloodied and bruised himself through a practice called premeditatio malorum (“the premeditation of evils”). Rehearsing his plans, say to take a trip, he would go over the things that could go wrong or prevent the trip from happening - a storm could spring up, the captain could fall ill, the ship could be attacked by pirates, he could be banished to the island of Corsica the morning of the trip. By doing what he called a premeditatio malorum, Seneca was always prepared for disruption and always working that disruption into his plans. He was fitted for defeat or victory. He stepped into the ring confident he could take any blow. Nothing happened contrary to his expectations.
Second, we should always be careful not to tempt fate. Life comes at us fast… but that doesn’t mean we should be stupid. We also shouldn’t be arrogant.
Third, we have to hang on. Remember, that in the depths of both of Seneca’s darkest moments, he was unexpectedly saved. From exile, he was suddenly recalled to be the emperor’s tutor. In the words of the historian Richard M. Gummere, “Fortune, whom Seneca as a Stoic often ridicules, came to his rescue.” But Churchill, as always, put it better: “Sometimes when Fortune scowls most spitefully, she is preparing her most dazzling gifts.”
Life is like this. It gives us bad breaks - heartbreakingly bad breaks - and it also gives us incredible lucky breaks. Sometimes the ball that should have gone in, bounces out. Sometimes the ball that had no business going in surprises both the athlete and the crowd when it eventually, after several bounces, somehow manages to pass through the net.
When we’re going through a bad break, we should never forget Fortune’s power to redeem us. When we’re walking through the roses, we should never forget how easily the thorns can tear us upon, how quickly we can be humbled. Sometimes life goes your way, sometimes it doesn’t.
This is what Theodore Roosevelt learned, too. Despite what he wrote in his diary that day in 1884, the light did not completely go out of Roosevelt’s life. Sure, it flickered. It looked like the flame might have been cruelly extinguished. But with time and incredible energy and force of will, he came back from those tragedies. He became a great father, a great husband, and a great leader. He came back and the world was better for it. He was better for it.
Life comes at us fast. Today. Tomorrow. When we least expect it. Be ready. Be strong. Don’t let your light be snuffed out.
“You are my brother, but why are you quarreling with me? Why do you invade my country and try to subjugate me for the sake of pleasing those who are seeking glory and authority?
Why do you leave your wife and children and follow Death to the distant land for the sake of those who buy glory with your blood, and high honor with your mother's tears?
Is it an honor for a man to kill his brother man? If you deem it an honor, let it be an act of worship, and erect a temple to Cain who slew his brother Abel.
Is self-preservation the first law of Nature? Why, then, does Greed urge you to self-sacrifice in order only to achieve his aim in hurting your brothers? Beware, my brother, of the leader who says, "Love of existence obliges us to deprive the people of their rights!" I say unto you but this: protecting others' rights is the noblest and most beautiful human act; if my existence requires that I kill others, then death is more honorable to me, and if I cannot find someone to kill me for the protection of my honor, I will not hesitate to take my life by my own hands for the sake of Eternity before Eternity comes.
Selfishness, my brother, is the cause of blind superiority, and superiority creates clanship, and clanship creates authority which leads to discord and subjugation.
The soul believes in the power of knowledge and justice over dark ignorance; it denies the authority that supplies the swords to defend and strengthen ignorance and oppression - that authority which destroyed Babylon and shook the foundation of Jerusalem and left Rome in ruins. It is that which made people call criminals great men; made writers respect their names; made historians relate the stories of their inhumanity in manner of praise.
The only authority I obey is the knowledge of guarding and acquiescing in the Natural Law of Justice.
What justice does authority display when it kills the killer? When it imprisons the robber? When it descends on a neighborhood country and slays its people? What does justice think of the authority under which a killer punishes the one who kills, and a thief sentences the one who steals?
You are my brother, and I love you; and Love is justice with its full intensity and dignity. If justice did not support my love for you, regardless of your tribe and community, I would be a deceiver concealing the ugliness of selfishness behind the outer garment of pure love.”
- Kahlil Gibran
View online the complete "A Poet's Voice Xv" here:
"The world breaks everyone, and afterward many are strong in the broken places. But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these you can be sure it will kill you too, but there will be no special hurry."
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