Everyday Superpowers

One of the biggest movie releases for the holiday season will be "Wonder Woman 1984." Big because it's a sequel to a major league hit from 2017. Big because it features the stars from the first flick, Gal Gadot and Chris Pine. Big because it's being released online and in theaters, which means it has the possibility of reaching a huge audience that won't venture beyond their driveways on the busiest movie week of the year. 

As with these kinds of films, the plot is secondary. It's all about watching our hero strut her stuff and vanquish the bad guys, in this case Max Lord and The Cheetah. She does that by using her superpowers, which include superhuman strength and durability, the power of flight, superhuman speed, reflexes, and agility, and enhanced senses, including smell, vision, and hearing. No one trick pony she, Princess Diana of Themyscira has all that as well as the Lasso of Truth, a pair of indestructible bracelets and a tiara which serves as a projectile.

To put it mildly, the lady is packing. Heck, even Oddjob only had a just a steel rimmed bowler. And while it's true that these days we all wear a mask, it's unlikely we have a latex suit or thigh high boots. Still, while most of us don't come equipped with that range of abilities or special tools, it's not that we don't have superpowers. It's just that they are of a, well, more pedestrian variety.

Ask around and you will find all manner of supernatural abilities that folks keep under their hats, and try hard to use only for good vs evil. And we're not talking things that make you super just because you're good at it. You might be a really excellent vacuum-er, or great at exercising, or are a safe driver. Or as one person put it, "I can time travel. But only forwards. And in one second increments." Nah, that don't count.

We're talking about those sixth sense kind of things, those tasks that stump mere mortals, but for which you are, for some reason unnaturally, even scarily good. In my wife's case, it's knowing exactly which Tupperware container is right to hold the leftovers. If I try and pour the leftover spaghetti sauce into a plastic holder, invariably I pick one too big and have lots of extra space. Or I choose one too small and have to get out a second one for the overflow. She sizes up what is in the pot, roots though the drawer and picks one that she fills just to the brim and no more, so much so that it looks likes she measured it or it came off a store shelf. Freaky, huh?

Our oldest son says his power is being able to split a wine bottle perfectly. When I do it everyone gets more or less the same, but it rarely is a equitable split. Not him. No matter how many glasses, how much is in the bottle, he can pour EXACTLY equal amounts so all feel like they are on level ground with the rest of drinkers. I know, it's uncanny.

Check around and odds are you will find others gifted with unique talents. One person says he has the ability to always insert a USB drive in any computer right side up the first time. Another says that even if barely paying attention she can sense when the microwave buzzer is going to go off, and opens the door with exactly 1 second left. Still another notes that he is basically invisible, in that he can meet someone 5 times and they still won't remember who he is. Handy at the store when you go back for another free sample.

It's also worth noting that superpowers are not always a good thing. One person noted that "I have the superhuman ability to pick the line at the store that takes the longest amount of time to get through." Since I seem to be able to do the same with toll booths, perhaps we should form an alliance.

Then there's the person who said they had an uncanny ability to change his wife's mood with a single sentence. The problem is that sometimes it was for good, sometimes for evil, and he still hadn't figured out which way it would go. Superpowers you can't control; that's the worst.

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Marc Wollin of Bedford is still trying to figure out at what he is super. His column appears regularly in The Record-Review, The Scarsdale Inquirer and online at http://www.glancingaskance.blogspot.com/, as well as via Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.

The Week Before Xmas

It's the week before Xmas and we're rounding the bend 
On a year most are happy to see come to an end
For if nice things were happening at the start of the term
Now the tequila's all gone, and we're left with the worm

We always knew that this year could be a stinker of sorts
We even thought the election might end up in court
And none thought the players would stay high and nice
More likely it would feel like your head's in a vice

Still, had you looked to the horizon at this time last year
Some storms a' brewing, but not likely fear
So much has happened, yet how soon we forget
For now all you see every breath as a threat

The years started with fires, in the land way down under
The Aussies were coping with a world that was plundered
Meanwhile, Harry and Meghan lit a fire of their own
Said goodbye to the Queen, made the US their home

Though the end was foretold, the charges couldn't be blocked
And so for just the third time we dragged a Pres to the dock
There was much sturm und drang, but in just a few weeks
It was over and done, just history impeached

At that point it seemed like the rest of the time
Would be all about voting, and ads filled with slime
Then March came in like a lion, forgot to leave like a lamb
And each of us breathing were deep in a jam

The country shut down, except for those brave at the front
And not just the doctors, but the rest taking the brunt
Drivers and grocers and folks cleaning the carts
Cooks and repairmen, nurses checking the charts

The Olympics were postponed, the conventions pushed into air
Dining together was not to be dared
Nothing was physical, it was delivery or Zoom
And hope that your WiFi didn't go "boom"

The summer brought riots, and justice demanded
A contentious election, though results finally landed
Fires in the west, murder hornets in the air
It was definitely a year to pull out your hair

But some light to be seen, though it will take some time
Vaxes starting to work, but it won't turn on a dime
It will be well into next year when things start to settle
Until then we'll just have to keep up our mettle

So let's just leave it at that, and let me say to you here
Many thanks for reading this space through the year
Be safe, hold your loved ones, and until this is done
Let's all cross our fingers for a better ‘21

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Marc Wollin of Bedford wishes all a safe holiday. His column appears regularly in The Record-Review, The Scarsdale Inquirer and online at http://www.glancingaskance.blogspot.com/, as well as via Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.

Holiday Shopping

You could be forgiven if you're having problems getting into the holiday gift giving spirit. After all, you're not driving anywhere so you don't see any lights and displays. You're not wandering through stores, so you don't see any Christmas sales. You've been barred from going to tree lightings, office parties and Mistletoe Marts. About the only way you know you should be thinking about it is by the banner ads that pop up every time you punch into Amazon, which, truth be told, is basically every day.

Then again, what does one give this year? With apologies to John Steinbeck, this winter will be one of our most discontented, as we wait for our number to be called versus being up. The good news is that we know how to make it to that point. While the guidelines seem to be ever evolving, none so far are so onerous as to be impossible or even difficult. Not to minimize the negative effects on society, but if your goal is to not get sick, then the inconveniences of wearing a mask, avoiding crowds and traveling only when necessary are manageable. It's not as if you have to only breathe pure oxygen, or coat yourself in Vaseline, or only eat Snickers bars. That said, I would happily do the last to stay alive.

But I digress. In this environment, what gifts will mean the most? The usual standbys don't seem to be appropriate. Sure, a new skirt or pair of pants is nice, but all one really needs are Zoom tops. Pocketbook? Briefcase? For a commute from the kitchen table to the basement? And theatre tickets, movie passes and coupons for concerts are only good if they have shelf life of at least 12 months, and even then have to be exchangeable for a later date as needed.

So what could a person use that would be new or more or different? Kitchen stuff is a winner. If the usual week night rotation of burgers, spaghetti, chicken, stir fry and sandwiches is getting old, challenge your house chef with Foodie Dice. Roll the five primary dice to come up with options on protein, cooking methods, herbs and more. Add in 4 seasonal veggie squares, and you'll have over 186,000 combinations. On the other hand, if your spouse loves that you are into cooking healthy with lots of fish but hates the constant smell of salmon, perhaps a Cranberry Marmalade scented candle would delight. And if you are like me and have to take out all the measuring cups to figure out which is which, Welcome Industries' visual measuring cups look just like what they are: a whole, half, third or quarter. Now your chef's banana bread will have just the right amount of nuts.

Whimsy is in short supply, so perhaps it would be best to amuse. Since you are spending a lot of time on the couch, perhaps a Danny DeVito pillow cover would tickle someone's fancy. To lighten the mood maybe a rubber chicken finger slingshot would be a fun diversion. Or for the gift that just says "What?!" how about sending your long-distance bestie a potato with their face on it? Not to worry: the pros at Anonymous Potato know how to center any image on a spud.

Of course we are all living on screens, so anything to make that experience better and more streamlined will likely be appreciated. A wireless mouse, a better microphone, a laptop stand; each was a nice-to-have, but now has become as indispensable as a good pair of shoes (don't need those anymore!). Then there are those items you would never have ever known about, let alone buy for your formally tech nerd other. A green screen for their video calls. A ring light to even out their harsh edges. A mesh router system for better coverage throughout your home. Because nothing says "I love you" better than having 4 bars.

Regardless what you choose, try and keep in mind the spirit of the season, and the qualities of thankfulness, gratitude and humility. Great literature can remind you of that, and can carry particular significance in these trying times. In that light, might I humbly suggest you can find no better sentiments than those contained in O Henry's masterpiece, slightly updated for today: "The Gift of the Wifi." Happy shopping.

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Marc Wollin of Bedford is having a hard time finding appropriate gifts this year. His column appears regularly in The Record-Review, The Scarsdale Inquirer and online at http://www.glancingaskance.blogspot.com/, as well as via Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.

Progress of a Sort

Doesn't matter the venue, most steps that push progress forward are the stuff of babies. They are evolutionary rather than revolutionary, building or tweaking an existing method or feature to extend the envelope a little further. Your new car might come with LED lights vs standard bulbs. Nice to look to at, but the net result is nothing significantly different to light your way. Or your new vacuum might employ a higher speed motor to pull more dirt out of your carpet. It may be great at sucking up pet hair, but it still requires rolling forward and back to clean up the family room. And that Multi-Peel Y-shaped Julienne Peeler might indeed be easier on your hands. But you still need to rake it across your zucchini to make zoodles.

It's rare that something is truly "new." That's because it takes a leap of imagination that few of us have to come up with a different way of looking at things. Henry Ford gets the credit, and though he didn't actually say it it rings true nonetheless: "If I'd ask customers what they wanted, they would've told me a faster horse." Steve Jobs built on that by pointing out that "People don't know what they want until you show it to them. That's why I never rely on market research. Our task is to read things that are not yet on the page."

That unwritten book is the stuff of inflection points. There is before the Sony Walkman and after, before the Apple iPhone and after, before Amazon Alexa and after. Once each was introduced others rushed to make "me too" variations, some better some worse, as well as multiple spin offs and accessories which themselves grew into cottage industries. But once you got used to using a mouse, it's hard to imagine not having one. 

Then again, not all things imagined till now are necessarily a good idea. Take the latest from Amazon, the Ring Always Home Cam. The Ring brand started as a smarter doorbell, one which transmitted video to your phone when the button was pressed. Not a bad idea, marrying a door knocker to a security camera. Line extensions have followed, including stand-alone security systems with cameras and detectors, and smart lighting that turns on when triggered by motion.

But what if you get an alert and can't tell where the breach is? The Ring Always Home Cam doesn't just pan and zoom in on the trouble spot, it literally goes there. It's basically an autonomous miniature drone with a camera that flies to the point in question, transmitting a live feed to your phone. That way you can see the burglar as he comes in and, well, what? Follow him around? Watch him knock it out of the air? Until they sell the death laser accessory pack to go with it, probably the best use is to patrol the house when you go out for the night to make sure your kid doesn't raid the liquor cabinet.

Or you can go the other way. Justine Haupt is a Science Associate at the Brookhaven National Lab, specializing in research on cosmology, radio astronomy and quantum instrumentation. Like many, in her spare time she like to putter. But where my version of puttering involves running an extension cord under the couch, hers involves things like a metrological test stand for CCD flatness characterization. 

That level of technical acumen led her to develop a sort-of-retro rotary 4G cell phone. Justine eschews smartphones, but wanted something to replace her old flip phone that tapped into some of the more useful features of that today's devices. While still in development (a DIY kit is due out in the spring), her design marries the innards of a LTE phone with a rotary dial and a mechanical ringer, along with an e-ink screen to show numbers called and incoming. It's kind of Frankenstein-esque, but much cuter.

Justine's phone may be a step back and the Ring drone a step forward. But which defines progress? Is it the thing that pushes the envelope that you would never use, or the one that does so selectively and you can't wait to try? I know what I would pick. Justine, please put me down for one in Atomic Hotline Red.

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Marc Wollin of Bedford likes to be on the trailing edge of hi tech. His column appears regularly in The Record-Review, The Scarsdale Inquirer and online at http://www.glancingaskance.blogspot.com/, as well as via Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.

Distractions and Pleasures

 It's a world you can't control, where the big things on big stages demand your attention. Competing with that is a fool's errand. Rather, the only way to survive is to carve out some space of your own. Routines help: having the same breakfast every day or a morning workout helps to get you started with your feet firmly under you. Keeping in touch with family and friends, even if only by Zoom or Facetime, also helps to keep us sane and centered. Organizing the basement, making bread, binge-watching "The Crown": each offers its own sense of control and peace. But it's also the little things, the unexpected distractions and pleasures that make a difference. To wit, some of mine.

As the air turns cold and the trees drop their leaves, the view out our back window gets less dense and the sky more open. And the while the brown is less preferable to the green, the clear blue starts to become deeper. Even better, as I look up from washing out my coffee mug at the sink, I see three hawks lazily riding the thermal updrafts. They glide effortlessly in circles, seemingly just tilting this way and that. Were they jets, their contrails would trace a Pollock in the sky.

I am a lover of all things sweet. Cookies, candy, honey roasted nuts, and on and on. Doesn't need to be fancy, and indeed some of my favorites are mass market edibles that would make a 5 year-old happy. And so along with Nutter Butters and Peanut M&M's I will occasionally score some Swedish Fish. These red gummy candies look like their namesake, and taste vaguely, well, red. Nothing out of the ordinary there. But my wife, knowing my penchant for new treats, stumbled across an offshoot. She was at Trader Joe's, a grocery chain that carries no familiar names but instead markets its own matching brands. And so when I reached into my treat bin I pulled out an unfamiliar bag marked as "Scandinavian Swimmers." Inside were Swedish Fish-esque creatures with the same consistency but different aquatic shapes, such as dolphins and seahorses. I can attest that the lobsters taste particularly red.

As written here previously, much of our socializing has been moved to outside venues in recognition of the risk that interior spaces present. As part of that we added a small firepit to a patio along with four chairs as a place to gather with friends. While it's wonderful to sit and sip and visit with others while bundled up outside, the fire is the capper. There is something hypnotic and calming about the flames rolling and the logs crackling that transcends the same experience were it indoors. Maybe it's the smoke that drifts this way and that, or maybe it's the warmth you can draw close to. Either way, it draws me in, and I could watch for hours.

One of the benefits of my change in schedule is that the lack of travel means I am home far more, and have time to volunteer. And so I spend several hours a week working at a food pantry. It means lugging 50-pound bags of potatoes or flats of canned tomato sauce, but I am happy to be able to do something tangible for others as opposed to just writing a check. One task is restocking the shelves so other volunteer "shoppers" can more efficiently make bags for the those in need. And while I gladly restock the canned peaches or bags of rice, I am always happy when the canned meat section needs help. That's because stacking tuna fish cans is like working with Legos. They fit together with a distinct click, and you can make a tower a dozen cans high. Alas, my modern skyscraper arrangements don't last long as the cans are picked and packed for grocery bags, but that just means I get to rebuild the next time.

In a year filled with mind numbing challenges, we have all had to find comfort where we can. There are more for me, and I'm sure you have your own. But we have to keep looking and finding those outlets, however small and inconsequential they may be. It's the difference between simply trying to ride out the storm vs. finding a reason to smile. And we all need to keep smiling. 

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Marc Wollin of Bedford tries keep his eyes and ears open. His column appears regularly in The Record-Review, The Scarsdale Inquirer and online at http://www.glancingaskance.blogspot.com/, as well as via Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.

On This Date

Certain dates carry outsized significance, and are remembered as major waystations in the course of history. Often it is because of a particular outrage that occurred at that time: the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941 and the destruction of the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001 come most readily to mind. Yet others are memorable not because of tragedy but because of triumph: man walked on the moon for the first time on July 20, 1969, and the Wrights' first flight at Kitty Hawk was on December 17, 1903.

Beyond those monumental moments are millions of much smaller milestones that reflect events that occur on a more individual basis. It might be the date you got married or started your business, the date your father died or your kid graduated from high school. No less significant to you than those previously mentioned happenings, their resonance affects a much smaller universe. And yet you can argue that their import is just as meaningful in the sphere you inhabit, and perhaps even more so.

November 20, 1930 is one of those dates for me. Punch it into a search engine and you won't get a whole lot of hits. On that date in Birmingham, Alabama, the Bank of Berry was robbed of $115,000. Tornadoes swept the plains, killing 18 people in Oklahoma. And in Marion, Ohio, the mercury hit 77, the warmest it had been on that date in 27 years. But while those events surely made a mark on some, none lit up my world as did one that took place on this coast. For on this date in Newark, New Jersey, my mom was born, and so this year celebrates her 90th birthday.

Born in the early part of the Great Depression, Nan led a very traditional life for a woman of the time. She and her brother were raised by a mom and dad with a local extended family of aunts and uncles. She went to college where she met my father, and got a degree in education. After graduating they married and she started work as a teacher, eventually having myself and my sister. After a period as a full-time mom, she went back to the classroom, first as a substitute and eventually returning to the work-a-day workforce. As my sister and I departed they moved a bit for my dad's job, eventually returning to settle back in New Jersey. If not the stuff of legend it was certainly the stuff of life.

Through it all she cultivated friends and kept in touch with family, traveled a little and hosted a lot of Thanksgivings. Pets and grandchildren were added to the mix, and she kept teaching, feeling most at home communing with little kids in the second grade, retiring from the classroom only after many decades of nurturing young minds. In fact, her love of little children, whether hers or anyone else's, is immediately apparent and continues unabated whenever she encounters one: she can't pass a toddler or baby without stopping to chat and smile.

Relentlessly sunny, she surely has her moments of gray, though you would be hard pressed to catch her in one. To be sure, there were some health scares and setbacks, and the death of my father a dozen years ago that have tested her resolve. But these days she's game for whatever comes her way, whether it's dancing at her granddaughter's wedding in the center of the circle, having her nails done with glitter, or wearing a blowup crown as we gather to celebrate her 90th a few weeks early in a local park. And she ends most calls with the admonition to "give my love to everyone and keep some for yourself" and signs her cards and notes "peace, love and chocolate."

Our current predicament has tested us all, and seniors like her who live alone more than most. The simple social interactions she has with others where she lives has been sorely curtailed, and with good reason: they are a most vulnerable population. And so our celebration of her completing nine decades has to be at arms' length, and hugs and kisses will have to wait. But in no way does that diminish the milestone. Mom, I can wish you no better thoughts than you do for me: may you continue to live a life filled much peace, all my love, and even more chocolate. 

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Nan Wollin turned 90 years young on November 20. Her son's column appears regularly in The Record-Review, The Scarsdale Inquirer and online at http://www.glancingaskance.blogspot.com/, as well as via Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.

Social Outsiders

We all have routines and habits that we are comfortable with, whether it's what we have for breakfast or the route we take to work or the order in which we read the Sunday New York Times. But should something disrupt that pattern, while we may grouse about it ("How can we be out of orange juice??!!") we somehow manage to survive. We have Raisin Bran instead of Cheerios, go left on Cherry instead of right on Maple, read the Week in Review until the Arts and Leisure section gets delivered later in the day. 

For all of us this past year has tested that concept in the extreme. There are few aspects of life that haven't been turned upside down and inside out. School, work, travel, communications, food, sports, entertainment, family: the list of things that have been disrupted is far longer than those that have stayed the same. That said, in each area there have been those instances where the pivot have been successful: all the major sports leagues figured out a way to finish their seasons and crown champions. Other areas have not been able to make the turn: the travel industry is in a deep funk and wounded to quick. In many more cases it's a mixed bag, where a combination of ingenuity, nimbleness, and a certain amount of luck have kept the lights on even if they aren't shining as bright as they might have been.

And then there're our social lives.

The watchword of the day says it all: "social distancing." Right up there with deafening silence, old news and jumbo shrimp, it's an oxymoron born of the times, first making an appearance in 2003. That said, it's not a new concept. The Bible contains a reference in the Book of Leviticus: "And the leper in whom the plague is - he shall dwell alone; without the camp shall his habitation be." In fact, the continuation of that very passage goes on to describe a seven-day quarantine for disease, not unlike the CDC guidelines. But before we fawn too much over the prescience of the Good Book, it should be noted that to be released from our isolation you just need a negative PCR test vs. the biblical prescription of the sacrifice of a lamb and a turtledove.

But social distancing is not isolation. Rather, it's just keeping others at a few arms' lengths. By now we have all seen the various simulations showing how the virus droplets are most likely to fall to the ground within a six-foot radius. This is especially true when you are not in an interior space where limited air circulation keeps it airborne. And so without being too pedantic about it, it would seem that it's OK to be social as long as you keep your distance, hence the mantra. 

That means that experts say it's best to stay outdoors at an appropriate remove when you visit with others. And so in yet another feat of adaptation you see parks with what look like scores of crop circles or giant games of connect-the-dots that offer guidance as to how close we may safely get to one another. Closer to home, if you are like us, you gather in yards and on decks and patios at opposite ends of the picnic table to visit and chat, with each group having their own nibbles and drinks. It has turned us all into friendly if slightly hard of hearing seniors as we listen keenly and keep asking of those over there "WHAT DID YOU SAY?"

Now that cold weather is upon us it's necessary to shift direction yet again. Loath to give up the modified human interaction to which we have grown accustomed, we adapt once more. Sales of space heaters are going through the roof as people cast about for ways to maintain that distance when the temperature is edging closer to freezing. In our case we repurposed an old unused patio space, added a small fire pit and some battery powered lights to create an outdoor living room where we can gather with friends. Once again it requires some changes, and though we have no Eskimo blood in us, we are learning the ropes. We provide the chili and blankets: you bring the wine and the mukluks.

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Marc Wollin of Bedford is learning to entertain in layers. His column appears regularly in The Record-Review, The Scarsdale Inquirer and online at http://www.glancingaskance.blogspot.com/, as well as via Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.

When Seconds Count

If I asked you to tell me the day of the week, you might hesitate for a moment. That's because our sense of time has been warped by the upending of our normal rhythms. Your usual markers for the passage of minutes and hours and days have been disrupted by of lock-outs and shut-ins. With school, work and social activities all jumbled up in unfamiliar patterns, it's hard to distinguish if it's three days till the weekend or if it's been a month since you saw your sister. Sure, you can look at a calendar or your phone or your watch and get a definitive answer. But time seems to pass differently than it did before March. Maybe like dog years, we need to recalibrate and use a new system of measurement called pandemic time.  

In some sense that's what researchers at Goethe University did, though they went the other direction. As reported recently in a study published in the journal Science, they were trying to track time in an experiment involving what's known as the photoelectric effect. Without getting too into the Einsteinian weeds, that phenomena is what happens when you hit a material with some kind of radiation, including light. The result is that a part of the original is ejected in the form of electrons. Measuring how fast those electrons get kicked out is the kind of useful info that makes things like night vision goggles and CAT scans possible. And the more precise that measurement, the more accurate those devices can be.

The scientists in Germany were working on clocking on long it takes a particle of light to cross a single molecule of hydrogen. Needless to say, they weren't using a regular stopwatch, but the quantum physics equivalent. And that's because the duration we're talking about is seriously fast. Just how quick? In the past they would have used a scale based on a period of time called a femotosecond, a unit of time used by Ahmed Hassan Zewail in his Noel prize winning work using lasers in 1999. For the record that is one millionth of one billionth of a second. Put another way, a femtosecond is to one second as one second is to 31.71 million years. So yeah, we're talking short.

But it turns out that it wasn't short enough: that darn electron popped out before they could double click the button. So they had to move to a different unit of time. And what's smaller than a femtosecond? To capture that tiny an increment they had to go down two orders of magnitude, bringing them into the realm of zeptoseconds. That unit of speediness is equal to a trillionth of a billionth of a second, a number written as a decimal point followed by 20 zeros and then a 1.

As it turns out it took 247 zeptoseconds for the electron to make its dash across the atom. And even then scientists note that there is still some wiggle room. Said physicist Reinhard Dörner, "We observed for the first time that the electron shell in a molecule does not react to light everywhere at the same time." That means they may have to drop down another level to capture that subtle difference, into the realm of yactoseconds. Unfortunately, that's just a theoretical guess, as they have no way of measuring anything that fast, other than to say it might be faster than Amazon Prime.

Theoretical or not, it makes sense that you can always go up or down one more. I was tracking an important delivery sent via FedEx and was surprised to get a notice that it got there on the same day I sent it. I called in to make sure there was no problem, and that my package hadn't been lost. When the agent punched it up, she said that no, it was still in transit, that the notice related to another delivery sent by someone else. When I queried her about the alert, she said that it happens sometimes, as they had to reuse some numbers as they were running out. I paused before responding: "I'm pretty sure that's impossible. You can't run out of numbers. Just add one more." I'm no mathematician, but as confirmed by the work of Dörner and his colleagues, I think I was standing on pretty firm ground.

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Marc Wollin of Bedford is fascinated by time and numbers. His column appears regularly in The Record-Review, The Scarsdale Inquirer and online at http://www.glancingaskance.blogspot.com/, as well as via Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.

Milepost 1300

 If you're talking birthdays, 10 and 20 are celebrated as markers of attainment while 60 and 70 are more often looked at with a feeling of dread. That dichotomy aside, milestones that end in an ought usually offer a reason to at least take notice if not have an outright celebration. When your car hits 100,000 miles you may cock your head and smile, while a baseball player hitting 500 homeruns in his career is feted with champagne. Conceding this marker is somewhere between those two extremes, I shall pause this week to recognize if not luxuriate over the simple fact that the column you are now reading marks the 1300th outing in this space.

One three zero zero may be a round number even if it carries no real significance per se. Yes, the most popular Alfa Romero model was the GT1300, and the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center in Washington is located at 1300 Pennsylvania Avenue. But by itself 1300 lacks the sexiness of 1000 and the inherent achievement of 1500. It even pales next to the evenness of 1200, though it's probably equal in gravitas to 1400, or at least no worse.

Still, as the father of each of those incremental building blocks en route to this point, I pause to note that the hill has at the very least been climbed. At a rate of one a week, the math works out to a continuous slog totaling exactly 25 years. While by itself that's a solid run if not a record setting one, longevity like that is not as common as it once was. In fact, any number of other things that debuted in 1995 with high hopes are long since gone, like zip drives, Dolly the first cloned sheep, and the marriage of Lyle Lovett and Julia Roberts. 

In that quarter century, knowing how much competes for my attention and interest, I have tried hard not to take the few minutes you give to this space on a weekly basis for granted. The goal, if that's not too lofty a word for what is happening here, has been to amuse and inform. My aim is not to report on the above-the-fold headlines: there are countless observers focused on those important topics, be they climate change or gun control or racial justice. Nor do I aim to offer opinions or arguments designed to sway your thinking from one way to another. Rather, there is no end to things that catch my eye, stuff that I think others might also find worthy of their attention. The trick is to find it, shape it into a cohesive narrative, then share it and hope it tickles you as much as it does me. 

To do that I keep looking in the corners for the stuff that almost gets left behind, but I believe warrants a brief moment in the center of the floor. Rarely are they earth shattering revelations, but for some reason they attract my attention. It might be corporate bands (#408 "Rockin' the Boardroom") or celebrity perfumes (#541 "Sweet Smell of Success"). I've cast an eye on people (#806 "In Praise of Lyndon"), technology (#1096 "Plug It In") and language (#1048 "A Linguistic Hat-Trick"). And food, always food (#1139 "Onion Ash and Burnt Corn" and #1207 "The Chocolate War" to name just two). 

As to what the future holds, the world just keeps handing us lemons, and well, you know what that means. While a number of recent columns have indeed focused on the current situation (#1268 "Pandemic Pantry" and #1289 "Maskccesories"), there are so many more things just begging to be talked about. And so I see notes to myself to explore our addiction to Amazon Prime, advances in pizza boxes, and how Girl Scout cookies and beer have become a "thing." No, I don't know why, but I promise to try and find out.

They say a good house guest entertains themselves during the day and you at night. In the vein I try on a weekly basis to invite myself into your space, do my homework when its light and keep you amused once it gets dark. And with that, break's over. I'll meet you here next week, and while I can't promise the vintage, you won't be able to say that I didn't at least bring a bottle of wine. 

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Marc Wollin of Bedford will keep writing if you'll keep reading. His column appears regularly in The Record-Review, The Scarsdale Inquirer and online at http://www.glancingaskance.blogspot.com/, as well as via Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.

Product Intro

Welcome to the 2057 introduction of latest iPhone! It's hard to believe it was 50 years ago when Steve introduced the first model. It was a smartphone, yes. But it was also a camera, a calendar, a music player, a browser: the list goes on and on. And while it was revolutionary for the time, by today's standards it was positively prehistoric. Still, it was a baby step, and today we are taking a giant leap.

Introducing the iPhone 35. Thinner, lighter than any model we've made before, the 35 is almost invisible. In fact, the biggest problem with this phone is that I can't really show it to you. It's not that it's not in production or that you can't buy one. It's that it's, well, implanted. See this small line on my forearm? It's under there. Don't believe me? Let me walk over to this ultrasound machine and put my arm in and, there it is!  We call it the iPlant.

It takes just a 10-minute operation at any Genius Bar to get fitted out. There's no pain, no mess, no discomfort involved. The iSurgery kit is foolproof and simple, and our Geniuses fully trained at Apple General. Just make an appointment, have your credit card and health chip scanned, and you'll be throwing away your old Airpods in no time.

Aside from its physical traits, what makes the iPlant so revolutionary? Well, paired with our groundbreaking iMeld technology, all you need to do is think what you want and it will happen. Whether it's to make a call, listen to a song, or add to your calendar, as soon the thought crosses you mind, Siri does it. Let's say I want to call my wife. I just think "call my wife" and Oh! Hi honey! Didn't mean to bother you, just showing off for the folks. Yes, salmon would be great for dinner tonight, see you around seven!

While the brain of the iPlant is in your arm, the power, memory and antennas are in this wrap-around belt. Super thin and comfortable, you put it on under your clothes when you get dressed. You'll forget you have it on! You'll notice that when I put my arm by my side it lines up exactly with the belt, recharging, updating news feeds, checking your date book, retrieving the latest music. The belt has a small nuclear power unit in it, so it needs fresh fuel every 6 years or so. I think you'll make it through the day!

But the iPhone 35 is more than just another implanted connectivity device. It has been designed to have access to the most advanced network ever invented. It seamlessly connects to the our new 47G mesh hyper-connected dual capillary quantified SYSOPS network. That means that it actually transmits data in anticipation of when you need it. Not just in time, not instantly, but before: we call it Peremptory Information, or PreFo.

What does this mean in practice? Let's say you're thinking of ordering Chinese food for dinner. Just that thought triggers PreFo to place an order. With the speed of 47G, as you work through each aspect of your order it is put into action immediately. By the time you decide white or brown rice, it will be at your – oh, excuse me! Siri just informed me that they just delivered my tofu lo mein with extra soy sauce just off stage. Man, am I hungry!

I know what you're thinking – and not just because I have iPlant! How do I take pictures? How do I look at a website? Well, the iPlant comes paired with the new iLens. These contact-like lenses function as both camera and display. Wink left to take a picture, wink right to scroll a page. And they come in multiple colors: today you can have BabyBlues, tomorrow SmokyHazel. 

There's so much more to the new iPhone 35. Build in GPS locator so you are truly never lost. Pairable with your car and house so you have instant access as soon as you are within range. You can even use it to record your dreams, then play them back on your TV for the family… just make sure the little ones are in bed!.

The new iPhone 35, the iPlant. It's more than a part of your life: it's a part of you! Get yours today!

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Marc Wollin of Bedford just wants a phone to make a call. His column appears regularly in The Record-Review, The Scarsdale Inquirer and online at http://www.glancingaskance.blogspot.com/, as well as via Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.

Nap, Sir!

Washington had his troops. Patton had his tanks. Nimitz had his carriers, Grant his cannons, and LeMay his bombers. Todays' fighting forces have all those things and more. Modern soldiers rely on high tech tools to fight that are just as indispensable as guns and bullets, such as drones, GPS and robotics. Yet when push comes to shove, fighting the good fight always comes down to an individual solider putting forward his or her best effort. 

History is replete with examples where a single solider made a difference. Most notable are those instances where individual heroism under impossible circumstances saved lives or changed the course of battles. But for every Medal of Honor winner there are thousands of other less significant moments where a single solider had to make a decision on how to proceed that made a difference. And so just as weapons systems have been improved, so too should the means to maximize the mental and physical abilities of individual troops be brought up to date.

Recognizing this the Army has retooled its overall guidance on fitness. When last published as the FM 7-22 "Army Physical Readiness Training" manual in 2012, it was long on pushups. Chapter 6 is 116 pages long with headings like "Modified Triceps Extension" and "Leg Tuck and Twist." An explanatory note in chapter 1 says it all: "Military leaders have always recognized that the effectiveness of Soldiers depends largely on their physical condition. Full spectrum operations place a premium on the Soldier's strength, stamina, agility, resiliency, and coordination. Victory—and even the Soldier's life—so often depend upon these factors." Put simply, being able to hump a 60-pound pack in the rain in the dark up a hill can indeed mean the difference between life and death.

But there was a recognition that while physical strength is important, it is just one component of the job. And that's why the new FM 7-22 manual released this month is titled "Holistic Health and Fitness." It's not that the ability to scale a wall or ford a stream isn't important anymore. It's just that everything we've learned over the past several years about how to function at peak efficiency involves more than just strength and stamina, whether the hostile takeover you're dealing with is at the office or on the battlefield.

To be sure, soldiering requires a high level of bodily engagement, more so than doing battle in a court of law. And so physical readiness is still front and center. But rather than focusing on reps of single leg dead-lifts and flexed arm hangs, this new approach looks at fitness in terms of movement. It's the precision, progression and integration of that movement in running, marching or swimming that leads to the highest levels of performance. And the manual lays out that approach in detail.

What's also new is the weight given to the other components of being a healthy, well-rounded individual. There are chapters on nutrition, stressing vegetables and whole grains. There are sections on mental readiness, focusing on the need for cognitive, emotional and interpersonal balance. There are discussions of proactive and preventive health, as well as best practices during rehabilitation, pregnancy and even postpartum physical training.  

Sleep readiness is also a major topic, since, as stated in the introduction, "Sleep is necessary to sustain not only alertness, but also higher order cognitive abilities such as judgment, decision making, and situational awareness." As with any Army policy, good sleep habits are broken down every possible way. This include best practices during travel, off time and leadership's roll in setting an example. They also recommend naps as integral part of the plan, saying that "When routinely available sleep time is difficult to predict, Soldiers might take the longest nap possible as frequently as time is available." By that metric, I should be in in the Rangers.

In the past, many advances first pioneered in the military were pushed to civilian life, such as digital cameras, superglue and duct tape. In this case, the Army is doing the reverse, talking best practices that have been culled from everything from spas to Soul Cycle and making them part of their regimen. They used to say an Army marches on its stomach. Perhaps that needs to be amended to an Army travels on its leafy green vegetables while finding its well-rested sense of self. That, and drones.

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Marc Wollin of Bedford naps like a Green Beret. His column appears regularly in The Record-Review, The Scarsdale Inquirer and online at http://www.glancingaskance.blogspot.com/, as well as via Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.

Danger!

We can't go to gyms, so we've taking up walking with a vengeance. Dinners with friends inside is not advisable, so we've taken to gathering in parks, on decks and in makeshift dining rooms on the street. Seeing a show or movie in a theater is out, so al fresco stages and drive ins have gone from a curiosity to the only game in town. And while I don't like it I can come to terms with all of that. But now an insidious new danger has presented itself. And it strikes at the very core of one of the few things that I can do to get through this period, and that's eat. 

With more time at home and in easy reach of the kitchen, my grazing has intensified. I try and be a good boy, I really do. I'll grab an apple as I wander out to check the mail, or maybe some baby carrots en route to get a sweater. But if there is a monkey on my back it's my love of salt and sugar. So for every apple there's a pretzel (or two). For every carrot there's 's a Twizzler (or three). Thankfully, on that last point, my jones is for the red varietal. That's because a report in The New England Journal of Medicine this week highlights a case of death by licorice.

Seems that black licorice contains glycyrrhizic acid, a plant extract often used as a sweetener. Like many chemicals we all ingest, it's not a major issue in limited amounts. However, if consumed in high enough doses it can lead to a drop in potassium levels. And this gentleman reportedly ate one to two large bags of black licorice a day for three weeks, which qualifies as "high enough" and which subsequently precipitated a heart attack. He was rushed to Mass General, but never regained consciousness and died 24 hours later.

To be fair, too much of almost anything isn't good for you. And while you rarely hear of someone overdosing on kale, it's surprising how many foods have the potential to not merely upset your stomach but to do serious damage. As with the poor gentlemen in the report, you would have to eat amounts well beyond the norm to get to a toxic level. Still, while most are more likely to binge on Ben and Jerry's Urban Bourbon than on cherry pits (which contain traces of cyanide), anything is possible.

For instance, nutmeg is used in everything from pumpkin pie to topping your latte. But eat it by the spoonful, and it can cause major issues. As little as 2 teaspoons can be toxic, as that adds up to a high level of myristicin, an oil in the spice that can cause hallucinations, drowsiness, dizziness, confusion, and seizures. Too much coffee, tuna and cinnamon are also not advisable, as they respectively contain caffeine, mercury and coumarin, all chemicals that are dangerous at higher levels. 

In the case of other foods, it's less the amounts you eat than the part you are eating. Rhubarb goes well with strawberries, but only the stalks. The leaves contain oxalic acid which can stop your bones from absorbing calcium. Mangoes work in salsa or salads, as long as you don't eat the skin. There you'll find urushiol, the toxin in poison ivy, which can cause a severe reaction with swelling, rash, and even problems breathing. And potatoes can be baked, fried or mashed, as long as you avoid the green leaves, sprouts and stems. Those parts contain glycoalkaloid, which can cause nausea, diarrhea, confusion, headaches, and even death. 

Then there are those where preparation is the difference maker. Kidney beans have to be boiled before you use them as just 4 or 5 raw ones can give you a bad stomachache, make you vomit, or give you diarrhea. Consumption of improperly prepared cassava has been linked to goiters and pancreatitis. And Fugu or pufferfish has to be carefully carved, as parts contain a neurotoxin more poisonous that cyanide, and there is no antidote.

Odds are I'm safe, as I don't tend to ingest too much of any one thing. I eat most things in moderation, whether they be good for me or not. Protein like chicken, starches like pasta, treats like cookies, staples like Reeses's – whoops. On second thought, I may be at higher risk than I thought. 

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Marc Wollin of Bedford has been trying snack safely. His column appears regularly in The Record-Review, The Scarsdale Inquirer and online at http://www.glancingaskance.blogspot.com/, as well as via Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.

Words of the Day

You've learned how to wear a mask. You've learned how to estimate six feet. You learned how to Zoom and how to wash your hands and how to disinfect a door handle. You might even have, perish the thought, learned how to cook. You didn't do any of these things because you wanted to, but because that's just the way things are these days, and it's what you have to do to, if not survive, than at least to keep going. It's either that, or just sit in a chair and stare at your screen all day. Oh yeah: you learned how to do that too.

They say that any day you learn something new it's a good day. By that metric there have been a lot of good days in the midst of the bad, even if what we're learning is stuff we'd rather not be dealing with. But in addition to these practical skills, there's another area where you've also gained some IQ points even if you haven't been trying. That's because just by virtue of dealing with the current situation your vocabulary has expanded. Even if you aren't a word nerd, you've had to add to your lexicon just to be able understand what all the chatter is about. It may not be the same as studying Shakespeare, but verily, 'tis more useful.

For example, before this all started, when had you heard the phrase "social distancing?" Likely never. And if someone had said it, you would have stated the obvious: it's an oxymoron. After all, how can you be social, yet distant? Yet here we are. Doesn't matter who you are talking to or what you are talking about, you can't swing a cat (a six-foot feline to be safe) without hitting that construct.

Then there are words that you likely used sporadically, but which now pepper your sentences like salt. Before you might have gone a day or more without saying the words "virtual" or "essential" or "curve." And if you did say one of them it was in reference to reality, ingredients or a ball, not a meeting, a worker or an infection rate. Likewise, you used to think of a bubble as something that was caused by soap, and a pod as something contained a pea. But now I defy you to hear the word "mask" and not think surgical before you think Halloween.

From a medical perspective, most of us get tongue tied saying anything other than "it hurts." But now I can say "asymptomatic" as easily as I can say "baseball". I also know that an N95 is not the part of my gas grill that connects the tank to the burners but a very specific type of PPE, yet another term I had never heard of before March. And drugs? Personally, I have problem saying aceta – acetamen – you know, Tylenol. Now Hydroxychloroquine and remdesivir roll off my tongue as easily as aspirin and band-aid. 

Even slang has been added and adapted. Those breakouts you get on your skin under your mask is maskne, while the drink you mix to take the edge off of the day is a quarantini. You don't' want to get zoombombed and have an outsider interrupt your video call, and if you took time off but couldn't go anywhere you hopefully enjoyed your coronacation. And on the pejorative side of the ledger those who won't wear a mask are maskholes, while those who basically treat this whole thing as a hoax are covidiots.

While estimates are that native speakers have a vocabulary of 20,000 to 35,000 words, most folks get through their day with just a thousand. As needed, you can reach into your memory banks and retrieve others, be it the specialized vocabulary needed for a tennis game, baking a cake or installing a new faucet. Well, now you have a whole new subset of a subset, that of "words useful in a health emergency, specifically a worldwide pandemic." Like many things, odds are that just when you get a firm grasp on the full suite, like ventilators and super-spreader and contact tracing, it'll all be over and you can let all of it slip to the background, at least for a while. 

On that last point, we can only hope.

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Marc Wollin of Bedford likes language and its intricacies. His column appears regularly in The Record-Review, The Scarsdale Inquirer and online at http://www.glancingaskance.blogspot.com/, as well as via Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.

Trust, but Verify

I wiped out my cookies. Not the peanut butter ones (though I did that too), but the ones on my computer. For various reasons I had to reset my browser, and the cookies got clobbered. By now we all have seen that foodstuff in this context, but most have no idea what it really means. At its most basic, cookies are a form of ID your computer passes on to a website to tell them it is you who is returning, That's how Amazon knows you were last looking at a new pair of sneakers, or Home Depot knows you are still shopping for a grill, or Netflix knows you are a Star Wars fan. That info enables them to show you other items inspired by your past activities. You decide if it's the ultimate in personalized shopping or a breach of your privacy.  

It's no different when money or personal information is involved. But in that case the aim is to make sure it's actually you who is trying to access your account. The cookie is like walking in the front door with your license on display: now that we know it's you, we can show you your balance or your holdings or your files. No cookie means they have no idea who is knocking, so they treat you like a stranger. 

And that's a good thing. Considering it's your dollars, you want that kind of security. That said, if you do like I did and make your computer anonymous once again, not having that cookie means you need to reconfirm who you are, usually by retyping your password. Like they said in Romper Room, hopefully you are a good Do Be, and used different, hard-to-break, unique passwords for each account. More likely you are like the vast majority, are a bad Don't Be, and used 12345678. No one will ever guess that.

But even if you have a password that is secure, it might not be enough for them to let you in. More and more sites are requiring what is called two factor verification. Basically, it's a method of confirming your identity by using a combination of two different items: 1) something you know and 2) something you have. You KNOW your password, so that's step one. To complete the second step, they turn to something you HAVE, your phone. The site texts or calls the number you have on file, and gives you a code to enter. Assuming your phone hasn't been stolen, the idea is that those two things taken together prove that you are you.

And so as I did my normal weekly tour online, reviewing accounts, paying bills, looking at portfolios, I did so as a stranger. Every single place I went stopped me at the front door, and asked me to type in my password. But by itself that wasn't good enough. It was a case of, as the old Russian saying goes, "Doveryai, no proveryai." That literally means that a responsible person always verifies everything before committing himself to an agreement, even if the other person in the transaction seems totally trustworthy. Lenin spouted a variation, as did Stalin, but it was President Ronald Reagan's repeated parroting of "Trust yet verify" during nuclear disarmament negotiations that both popularized the phrase while simultaneously pissing off Mikhail Gorbachev.

If you check my phone for Saturday morning you will see a list of text messages with strings of 6 or 8 digits, each from a uniquely cryptic origin, each with a legend stating they are only good for 10 minutes. Should I get picked up by the CIA, and they examine my communication history, they might wonder if I am an Iranian spy or Chinese agent. After all, my entire text history for that time period looks like it can only be understood with a secret decoder ring. But no, it's merely me trying to get back into my checking account to pay the electric bill.

Still, I'd rather the inconvenience of typing a few extra keystrokes to someone getting access to my accounts. And I wonder if there is applicability of this to other things. After all, you say you are my kid and want to borrow my HBOMax password. But how do I really know it's you?

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Marc Wollin of Bedford tries to be secure. His column appears regularly in The Record-Review, The Scarsdale Inquirer and online at http://www.glancingaskance.blogspot.com/, as well as via Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.

Hot Topics

 There seem to be just two topics of conversation: the election and the pandemic. One will drive you to scream, the other will drive you to hide: you decide which is which. And talking about them together, which inevitably happens, leads you to want to both scream and hide. So if we're going to make it through these two challenges with our brains nimble but not fried, we have to find other things to discuss. We need topics which are engaging, which engender lively debate, but which don't leave you thinking that those who disagree with you are stupid or crazy. It's a low bar, but that's the state of play.  

So let's talk food.

We'll start with an easy one: are Pop Tarts a type of ravioli? The last several years have seen numerous online discussions about this. After all, the reasoning goes, it's an outer layer of dough encompassing a filling. But there are many examples of encased foods around the world which would qualify under that definition, and there is no confusion with them: empanadas and dumplings come to mind. So most would say that while it might be analogous to a hand pie, a tart made of dough with a sweet or savory inside, toaster pastries are not a threat to the Italian specialty.

OK, next: what do you call the end of a loaf of bread? That would be the first or last piece, the one that has one side of inside, the other of crust. It seems to depend from whence you came. Some, taking their cue from the animal world, call it the Butt or Rump. Scots have been known to call it the Knobby, while some Czechs call it "Patka" which roughly translates as Flap or Strap. However, most call it the Heel, while the next most popular is the eponymous End.

Should chili have beans? Now we're getting into some more contentious territory. The easiest dividing line is geographic: if you're from Texas, the answer is definitely "no," while anywhere else it's "maybe." According to the International Chili Society, "traditional red chili is any kind of meat, or combination of meats, cooked with red chili peppers, various spices and other ingredients. Beans and non-vegetable fillers such as rice and pasta are not allowed." It's worth pointing out that the ICS is based in the Lone Star State, and, in a bow to the wide world, does have other categories such as "homestyle" which includes "any kind of meat, or combination of meats, and/or vegetables cooked with beans, chili peppers, various spices and other ingredients."

Is deep-dish a pizza or casserole? Pizza is a subject which provokes impassioned opinions, and this particular piece of turf is perilous territory indeed: comedian Jon Stewart was pilloried after he called deep-dish "tomato soup in a bread bowl." Is dough with toppings enough of a descriptor, or is being flat also a criteria? Like Texans and their chili, this is a debate that perhaps only Chicagoans are truly dogmatic about.

Should boneless chicken wings be renamed? This got a lot of press recently when a man in in Lincoln, Nebraska asked the local city council to pass an ordinance requiring the relabel: "Nothing about boneless chicken wings actually comes from the wing of a chicken. We've been living a lie for far too long." Ander Christensen's impassioned plea garnered 5 million views on Twitter, showing just how deep sentiment runs on this topic.

Are burgers sandwiches? Meals, yes. But a relative of PB&J or a Club? Well, if you go by the letter of the law, the answer is "yes." Webster's defines sandwiches as "two or more slices of bread or a split roll having a filling in between." That said, when was the last time you offered someone a hamburger sandwich? So perhaps the law has to be obeyed more in spirit than in substance.

How do you pronounce "caramel?" While there's no disagreement on how to make it (melt sugar and stir until it turns brown), how to ask for it is a different story. Again, it generally depends from where you hail. In the west it's two syllables (CAR mul), while Southerners and East Coasters make it three (CARE uh MEL). 

Does pineapple belong on pizza? No, and if you think it should, you are either stupid or crazy.

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Marc Wollin of Bedford likes eating, cooking and talking about food. His column appears regularly in The Record-Review, The Scarsdale Inquirer and online at http://www.glancingaskance.blogspot.com/, as well as via Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.

Winners and Losers

In game and economic theory, they call it a zero-sum situation. It means that when the score is tallied at the very end, each participant's gain or loss is exactly balanced by that of the others involved. If you start with each 4 players each having 25 chips, there will never be more, just a different distribution of that same 100. Poker is but one example, as is tennis and baseball: you play till somebody wins and somebody loses, regardless of how many sets or innings it takes.

That's the opposite of a win-win or lose-lose situation. In those cases everyone can benefit or everyone can get hurt. Global trade is generally considered to be a a win-win: people get goods they wouldn't normally get, and the other side gets paid. War, on the other hand, is a lose-lose scenario: even if you win, you are a loser just for having gone through it. 

For most, our current situation probably enters the ledger in the last category. Even if you've managed to dodge the worst effects of the pandemic in health and economic terms, your world has been profoundly upended, and not in a good way. That said, there most assuredly have also been those that have benefited, or at least pivoted to be able to benefit even as they too have been affected. And that doesn't count those on Wall Street whose business is based on betting on market moves up or down, as they make money no matter which way things go, just as long as they go.

Some companies have benefited handsomely. With people stuck at home, Amazon couldn't ship enough and Netflix couldn't stream enough. Communications companies like Zoom exploded as everyone met online, and gaming companies like Tencent soared as everyone played online. Telemedicine firms, shipping companies and electronic payment platforms all had record volume as they became the vital lifelines that people switched to vs. being able to do anything in person.

On the other side of the ledger, the airlines got clobbered. Delta, American, United: didn't matter who had the best frequent flyer program, no one was flying frequently. Same for the hotel chains, like Marriott and Hilton. The horrific damage to the restaurant business is well documented, whether it was national chains or neighborhood favorites. No one was driving so oil and gas companies were down, no one was going on vacation so theme parks and cruises were crushed, no one was going to the movies so theaters were decimated. And the list goes on and on.

Certain conceptual changes also happened, often with upsides and downsides encapsulated in the same space. The ability to work from home was a goal many had. Now that it's here with a vengeance, we learn it's easier than ever to do, but it's almost impossible to ever take off an hour, let alone a day. Family togetherness has never been so enforced. That familiarity has made us both closer to our kin, reinforcing what we love about them, and also reinforcing what we hate about them. And not eating so much on the go as opposed to making more meals ourselves, as well as having easier access to a kitchen at all times of the day and night, has both increased our intake of more non-processed foods while also adding a quarantine fifteen.

That yin and yang is epitomized in individual companies as well, such as Unilever. The British-Dutch multinational has a portfolio of products that spans the universe of consumer goods. Its brands include Hellmann's mayonnaise and Axe body spray, Dove soap and Lipton tea, Q-tips cotton swabs and Sealtest milk. As you might expect, the personal care side of their business has slumped drastically: with no one going anywhere the demand for deodorant and shampoo is way down. On the other hand, we all need comfort food in this stressful time, and so their Ben & Jerry's and Breyer's ice cream brands have seen large upticks. 

All that means that the definition of a better mousetrap has changed. If you're building the company of tomorrow, you need a small real estate footprint (if any), no need to move people around physically around and really big electronic pipes in and out. And if you can also figure a way to deliver Cookies and Cream through the cloud, the world will indeed beat a path to your door. 

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Marc Wollin of Bedford has no plans to travel for work or pleasure. His column appears regularly in The Record-Review, The Scarsdale Inquirer and online at http://www.glancingaskance.blogspot.com/, as well as via Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.

Time to Switch?

To be fair it's a conundrum I would have faced in any given year, though it might have been on a more rolling basis. But because our control of any truly consequential item is completely impossible, stupid little nothings have taken on outsize significance way beyond their import. Whose turn it is to set the table for dinner. The water glass left on the table. The amount of laundry to be done. Were these normal times, all would be minor annoyances. Rather, being among the very few things we can control, they take on global impact.

In my case it's the shift from iced coffee to hot.

Like many who live in areas where the seasons change, I shift from a cold weather mode to a warm weather footing as the year progresses, then back again. That entails a whole host of changes. In clothing it means a shift from long pants and sleeves to short versions of both. Likewise, it's the ditching of shoes and socks in favor of sandals. And it includes the temperature of my beverage first thing in the morning. It's a pattern that has repeated and repeated for many a year, one unlikely to change unless global warming accelerates to supersonic levels.

Usually it's adapted to conform with the day-to-day activities in which I engage. In normal times, I might have to go to a meeting, necessitating the donning of a pair of slacks and a button-down shirt. We might head out to dinner and a movie with friends, necessitating not just the above but the addition of a sweater. And I might have a project with an early morning start in a climate-controlled building, where a dispenser of hot coffee is set up to give all a kick start for the day.

But these are anything but normal times. Like many, my out-of-office, out-of-home activities are severely limited. There's not much need to ever put on anything other than shorts and a casual shirt every day, tempered only by the proviso that it not look too ratty on Zoom. I was heartened to see a picture of Emmy award winner Glenn Weiss directing the Democratic National Convention from his living room-turned control room, wearing shorts, a tee shirt and no shoes. If it's good enough for him, and all that.

And that also means that my morning routine hasn't varied much. Every day generally starts with me working out, followed by a shower and a cup of iced coffee while I sit outside and read the paper. A situation that used to only happen on some quiet weekends or off days, it has been the state of play nearly every day from May till now. Occasionally it might be a wet morning, so I move inside. And the odd early morning conference call means that I have to work first and read later. But the basic slate of events hasn't changed, so much so that it's become not just a sometime thing, but an ingrained and comforting habit.

Until today. While the end of summer often includes the dog days of high heat, it can also snap cooler with an early taste of fall. And that is the situation as I write this in late August. The temperature when I opened the back door and stepped outside was in the 50's. As refreshing as it was, it also portended a seismic shift back to sweaters, footwear without holes and, perish the thought, hot beverages. 

I know Labor Day is late this year. And for most that is the traditional end of summer, start of school, back to work marker. But if you are like me, it's not just a another page on the calendar, but a different mental state where you have to sharpen up and leave behind the relaxed mindset that comes with the season. 

Was I willing to make the hard turn? I resignedly pulled out a big mug and prepared to go hot. But then I stopped. Dammit, no, I wasn't giving in that easy. I went and got a heavy sweater and a hat, put the mug away and got my favorite large glass and filled it with ice. I'll wear a mask, I'll stay 6 feet away from my friends, but until the leaves really start to turn, you can't pry my iced coffee from my (admittedly) cold hands.

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Marc Wollin of Bedford only drinks coffee in the morning. His column appears regularly in The Record-Review, The Scarsdale Inquirer and online at http://www.glancingaskance.blogspot.com/, as well as via Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.

That'll Leave a Mark

You can quibble about the details. You can say that you have characteristics that don't fit neatly within your own cohort. You can protest that they are  generalizations, and there are as many exceptions to the rules as there are adherents. But research has confirmed them time and again, and the broad strokes are not in dispute.  

The Greatest Generation encompasses those born in the first part of the century who lived through the Great Depression, and includes those who fought in World War II. Their labor and hard work laid the foundation for the country we know today. They begat the Silent Generation, those born between 1925 and the mid-forties. As much as any group, they were the originators and shapers of what we consider 20th pop culture, with pioneering musicians, filmmakers and artists. Next came the Baby Boomers, born 1946-1964, a group that wanted it all and would settle for nothing less. In their minds they are still in high school and college, children of Watergate, Woodstock and Vietnam. Their kids are Generation X, born 1965-1980, who grew up in dual income households and came to accept divorce as a normal state of affairs. Their touchstones were video games and music videos. Millennials, those born 1981-1996, came next, the first group of digital natives. They grew up with security top of mind, with 9/11 and gun violence shaping their views. Lastly, Gen Z, including those born after 1997, is the most racially and ethnically diverse of the groups, and with the oldest in their early twenties, just starting to make an impact.  

Each group is defined not simply by the years in which they born, but by the trends at the time in parenting, technology, and economics. Additionally, their shared experiences help shape their outlook. Those include world and national events, pop culture phenomena, and moments of trauma and accomplishment that united all regardless of social strata. The assassination of Kennedy, the Beatles, the first iPhone, Watergate, man walking on the moon: each produced a "I remember when" moment, bringing a shared experience that helps to link all in the cohort.   

For the Silent Generation that means generally a belief in conformity and a strong desire for traditional family and family values versus speaking out and rebellion.  Contrast that with Generation X, whose members have a strong skepticism for existing institutions and tend to be independent and self-reliant. And Boomers grew up with increasing prosperity, and expect that their standard of living will only continue to go up.   

Each generation also has certain scars that grew out of reactions to some of the major traumas of the day. They manifest themselves in habits which have become ingrained over time. Depression origins and wartime shortages resulted in the Greatest Generation being generally frugal. While many were eventually able to live a prosperous lifestyle, they are always watching costs and minimizing expenses. Meanwhile, Boomers came of age during the energy shortages of the 70's. They remember gas lines, rarely leave a room without turning out the lights to conserve power, and would rather put on a sweater than turn up the heat.  

And what about where we are now? While the effects of the pandemic have varied depending on location, socio-economic group and occupation, any number of side effects have made a lasting impression. And that means that long after the virus is in the rearview mirror, certain behaviors will be ingrained. It is likely that anyone who comes through this experience - and that means every group noted above - will in the future always have a hidden stash of toilet paper. They will be more likely to wash their hands after contacting any surface that could contain germs, and more likely to clean and disinfect high touch areas in their own spaces, be it homes, cars or offices. And rather than try and get close to people, they will be less likely to cozy up when it's possible to keep apart, as social distancing becomes muscle memory.  

So don't be surprised when your grandchildren, should they be here or yet to come, wander into your house, open a closet, and yell out "Gramma, why do you have so many rolls of Charmin?" All you'll be able to do is shake your head, and start yet another sentence with "Well, back in the Pandemic of 2020."

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Marc Wollin of Bedford is learning not to touch his face. His column appears regularly in The Record-Review, The Scarsdale Inquirer and online at http://www.glancingaskance.blogspot.com/, as well as via Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.

Living in The Matrix

The year was 1982, and I was sitting in a movie theatre in New York City with some friends watching a new science fiction movie. "Tron" starred Jeff Bridges as a programmer who gets sucked into a computer. There he finds that the bits and bytes he's been so casually moving around on the screen as motorcycles and people existed for real in a parallel world. Deleting was death, and inserting was life.  

Some thought the story incoherent, others thought that the images, which combined live action and early computer animation, to be rough and unpolished. But I remember being mesmerized. Partly it was the technical wizardry of creating a world on the screen with live actors and a computer-generated universe. But it was also the concept, where inches away from the screen where we typed was an entire ecosystem that was constructed not of wood or metal but of keystrokes.

Not even two decades later the concept was pushed even further with "The Matrix." In this 1999 classic, Keanu Reeves plays a hacker who is recruited by a secret group that shows him that he is living a simulation inside a machine. Far more polished and sophisticated than "Tron," it showed both advances in the technical state-of-the-art as well as a leap of conceptional structure that was breathtaking, though Jeff Bridges' lightcycle still looked like more fun.

These two movies come to mind as it seems as though we are all living in some offshoot of those imagined worlds. To be sure, for the past dozen or so years our lives have been including more and more online elements, from shopping to entertainment to social interaction. We may not have been fully inhabiting those electronic worlds, but they moved from being an idle curiosity to a being a significant factor in our day to day existence.

Then came March. The pandemic forced us all to stay at home, interacting only through our screens. It's as if we inhabit them, and all of our relationships, activities, entertainment and more is just so much air. Yes, it was already under way. But Professor Scott Galloway of NYU postulates that the pandemic was a super accelerant, taking trends that might have taken years to manifest, and compressed them into a time frame no one imagined or even though possible. But here we are, talking not of being burned out by the commute, but stressing out over back to back Zoom calls. And our lament about limited bandwidth pertains both to the pathways in our brains and the electronic pipes coming into our homes.

In the early days of computers, some systems worked by ping ponging information back and forth between a pair of disk drives. One place I worked named all their drives after famous comedy duos. So you could have a project living on Lucy and Ethel, or Dean and Jerry, or Bob and Bing. I recall a conversation that went something like, "The graphic sequence explaining mortgages? If it's not on Bud and Lou, check out Stan and Ollie."

Now we've moved from disk drives in our homes and offices to everything residing in the cloud. Even if you don't understand how that actually works, you probably get that you when you save a picture or document or project, your local keyboard and screen are basically a window or remote control into some far away device. You send it all off into the ether, and somewhere there is a computer that makes it all happen. On a current project, the guy in charge has a number of his pieces of equipment configured exactly that way. Rather being physically in his studio they exist in some Amazon computer center somewhere. And in a nod to those ghosts in the machine, rather assign them numbers or colors, he has dubbed them after characters from "The Matrix" namely Neo, Trinity and Morpheus.

Are they just names? Or are they sentient beings, digital servants that actually exist, not in flesh and blood but in bits and bytes? Does Neo know Siri? Do Trinity and Alexa ever have lunch? Is Zoom merely a video conferencing platform or a yenta extraordinaire? Perhaps it is true, with a nod to Joni Mitchell, that we really don't know clouds at all.

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Marc Wollin of Bedford is amazed what he can do in his slippers. His column appears regularly in The Record-Review, The Scarsdale Inquirer and online at http://www.glancingaskance.blogspot.com/, as well as via Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.

Maskccesories

When you got your first cell phone, what's the first thing you did? Sure, you called your mom, your best friend and your spouse, and said "you won't believe where I'm calling you from!" But after that you started shopping. You needed a case, a charger, a screen protector, things which you not only never needed before, but which you didn't even knew existed before.

Since that time your phone has become as much a part of your everyday carry as your wallet or your keys. But now there is a new "must have" accoutrement, whether you are dressing up or down, going to the store or office, meeting with friends or family. Not the latest piece of high-tech gadgetry, but rather the most low-tech of solutions that cuts across every divide we have, from race to income, gender to religion, region to nationality. Whether you like it or not, at least for the foreseeable future, your every outfit will be accessorized by a mask.  

Much has been written about the best kind to have, whether surgical grade or HEPA filter-capable or full-on respirator. Experts are divided, but the prevailing wisdom is the best one is the one you will wear the longest. After all, if you keep it dangling around your neck, it's more fashion than function. In this case doing something is more important than doing nothing, even if your solution is more Lone Ranger than Darth Vader.

Beyond that, if you're going to make a piece of cloth part of your life, what can you do to make it you? If in the beginning function was all the counted, we've now moved on to making a statement. After all, the face of the mask is, well, your face.  Whether it is demonstrating your support for your favorite team, your love of flowers or your goal of being a Mandalorian, it is the new first impression people have of you when you finally reconnect in person. And woe to the guy sporting a Yankees logo on his kisser when he walks into a Mets meeting.

But beyond the mask itself, a whole cottage industry has sprung up to accessorize the accessory. To be clear, you should be wearing it whenever the situation warrants. Still, a gal has got to take a sip of water now and again. Do you let it dangle from an ear or bunch around your neck? If you're of a mind, perhaps a mask necklace would be of help. Like a similar sling for your glasses, it hangs your mask around your neck where it's easily retrievable. They are available in almost every material imaginable, from silver to leather to silk, and decorated with pearls, stones and other shiny stuff. The biggest issue, especially if you do indeed do the same with your glasses, is not strangling yourself.  

Or maybe you hate the pressure masks put on your ears. If that's your headache, so to speak, you might consider an ear protector. These devices stretch across the back of your head, and the ear loops attach to it, increasing the comfort factor. If you are a glasses wearer, you can get small "mask mates" to put on the earpieces, so you can attach to mask to them vs to you. They come in every conceivable design, from flowers to the Bat Signal to my personal favorite, mini-donuts.  

And when it's not on your face? There are pouches to keep yours clean when it's in your pocket or purse. There are clips to hang them from your sun visor as you drive between wearings. And there are organizers to hang by your door at home, bringing the same order to your collection as you do your car keys.   

Is all this necessary? After all, once we get the virus under control, whether it's in 6 months or a year, all those masks and their accompaniments will be thrown out or relegated to a bottom drawer. On the other hand, experts say that another pandemic is not a possibility but a probability, with the question being not if but when. Or as a writer wrote about his weekly column, you can look at it as if we're standing under a windmill: just when you are happy to have ducked a blade and stand up, you realize that there's another right behind it coming for your head.

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Marc Wollin of Bedford prefers masks that go over his head. His column appears regularly in The Record-Review, The Scarsdale Inquirer and online at http://www.glancingaskance.blogspot.com/, as well as via Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.

Safe DIY

Maybe it's because you don't want people in your home. Maybe it's because you can't get to your normal salon or stylist. Maybe it's because you no longer go past that Greek bakery on your way to work. Or maybe it's simply because you're just bored. Whatever the reason, there are probably innumerable things you used to have others do for you, and now have decided that it's just easier to do it yourself.  

Actually it's not that it's necessarily easier, but given the current circumstances you've been forced to make the switch. After all, how hard can it be to change the washer in the bathroom faucet, or trim the bushes in the front of the garage, or to cut your spouse's hair? Bill the plumber, Andre the landscaper and Sally the stylist do it effortlessly. Well, now there's water all over the floor, the bushes may never grow back, and your husband has taken to wearing a baseball cap to cover the bald spot over his left ear. Hopefully your kid didn't need anything more than a splinter removed from his hand since March, or now you'd be calling him Lefty.   

To paraphrase the mantra of Second Amendment fans, idle hands don't screw up plumbing repairs, know-it-all homeowners with no training screw up plumbing repairs. And so perhaps best to leave the skilled work to the professionals. Still, idle hands need to be kept busy. For sure they can work on a jigsaw puzzle or play a video game or bake some bread. But they can also be constructive, and as long as life, limb and major property damage are not at stake, a little DIY project is not a bad idea.   

These days lots of folks have rediscovered a craft or hobby they started and put aside years ago. Open that bottom drawer or look in the back of your closet, and you're liable to find the beginnings of a scarf or the start of a scale model of the Eiffel Tower or a photo album with 3 pages filled that you started before something came up. Well, now nothing is coming up, so time to drag it back into the light of day and knit one, purl two.  

And if you never had the time, well, now you do. All those hours that used to go into driving to work or school or PTA meetings is now free and fair game. And with an expanding number of offices and activities not opening till next year at the earliest, per Malcom Gladwell's 10,000 hour rule, you'll be well on your way to mastering the accordion by the time it's safe to put together a polka band.  

The big question is what to do. Maybe you've sampled a bunch of time killers, and not found any really captivating. Part of that might be because you don't have the right materials: stuck at home, you have to work with what you've got. In that vein, The New York Times published a guide to making jewelry. But no need of polished stones, glazed ceramics or precious metals here. A little string, some glue, and the pages of the paper itself will suffice, though their guide to making a paper-bead bracelet felt more like a third grade summer camp project than a hobby.   

But you likely have plenty of other materials to work with. All those Amazon boxes are like a giant set of blocks. You can make a coffee table for the kid's room or a chair for the basement. You likely have been loading up on and eating staples like peanut butter. Fill one empty jar with dirt, another with rocks, and you're well on your way to a set of free-weights. And your twice a week order of Chinese takeout has yielded oh-so-many containers to used for an indoor herb garden that will yield basil long before a vaccine is ready.  

There's an old saying that you don't play the hand you wish you had, you play the one you are dealt. Sure, it would be nice to learn how to make custom curtains with handpicked material. But since shopping in person is a questionable activity, go with what you have. It may not be room darkening, but that bubble wrap does diffuse the light quite nicely.

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Marc Wollin of Bedford made new organizers for his desk. His column appears regularly in The Record-Review, The Scarsdale Inquirer and online at http://www.glancingaskance.blogspot.com/, as well as via Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.

Ala Can't

When you were a kid, your mom put a dinner plate in front of you with what she thought was a well-balanced meal. There might be some chicken, maybe a potato or rice, perhaps a bit of broccoli or green beans. It's not necessarily what you would have picked had it been up to you, but, well, mom was the boss and the nutritionist. And if you wanted any shot of getting to the ice cream, you had to eat it all. 

As you got older, you were able to pick and choose what you wanted. You passed on the spinach, had an extra helping of steak, added a stick of butter to that baked potato. It might have led to an extra pound or two, maybe some complexion issues, but you were young and invincible, and no one was going to tell you what you could eat. Besides, what difference did it make in the long run anyways? 

Well, welcome to the long run. And now you recognize that, to paraphrase a popular refrain these days, eating has consequences. And so maybe you cut back that serving to a single portion, switched to low fat yogurt or learned to like salad. But you still didn't like beets, and damn it, no one was gonna make you eat them. 

That's usually not a problem. Whether you are eating healthy or not, watching your weight or not, binging or not, if you are making your own meals at home or ordering in a restaurant, you can select the things you like and ignore the things you don't. Hate cauliflower but like zucchini? Partial to lemony things but not big on spicy? Like berries but not peaches? A fish man/woman vs a pork chop person? Yours to prepare/order/eat as you see fit, no explanation or excuse needed. 

But not always. As we slowly return to some semblance of regular life, or more correctly, learn to navigate the changed landscape that will stand in for normal for the foreseeable future, we are going to have to make adjustments. There are several situations where before we took for granted our God-given right not to have radishes on our plate. Not anymore. In the interest of public health, you don't have to like it, but you may have to look at it. 

All those instances where you got to select what you liked off of a common table are likely gone for a while. No more buffets, no more salad bars, no more dessert tables. Likewise, no more platters of hors d'oeuvres, bowls of chips and guac, or plates of fully loaded nachos. If double dipping was simply unsanitary before, now it is positively life threatening. Whether your group event is capped at 10 or 20 or 50, there will be no wait staff passing trays of mini quiches. Rather everyone is likely to get their own little assortment: a single meatball, a single stuffed mushroom, a single garlic shrimp. It will look less like a party, and more like a still life, though I don't recall Caravaggio painting "Pig-In-Blanket with Carved Carrot Flower." 

And swapping with your buddies is probably also a thing of the past. If you were on a flight or at a meeting or working a project, you might have been able to select the headline act of a boxed meal that also contained an assortment of other courses. If you were like most, the first thing you did was take out all the different little containers, and examine them, a process that recalled lining up your baseball cards or Barbies. 

Depending on the lead the supporting cast would vary: the chicken came with pasta salad, while the roast beef was accompanied by a tomato and pepper medley. But what if you weren't partial to peppers? No worry, you could trade with a friend. But no more. The old saw was "you break it, you bought it." The new one is "you touched it with your unsterile fingers, it's yours, no sharesies." Mom may not be watching if you eat it or not, but that container of eggplant with drizzled tahini sauce will be staring at you as you pass over it to wolf down the strawberry cobbler next to it. The bottom line is that we no longer live in an ala carte world: now it's ala can't.

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Marc Wollin of Bedford eats most things on his plate. His column appears regularly in The Record-Review, The Scarsdale Inquirer and online at http://www.glancingaskance.blogspot.com/, as well as via Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.

Too Much, Too Little

It all depends on where you are when you reading this. If you're in the northeast, you seem to have enough masks and pork. If you're in the south, southwest or west, good on the pork, not so much on the masks. Elsewhere different items are either plentiful or verging on scarcity. New York needed ventilators a few months ago, now has an abundance, while currently Texas is in exactly the opposite predicament. And regardless of where you were, back in April the only thing scarcer than a vaccine was a webcam, and now one of those two items can be at your house by the weekend. Understandably, you'd really prefer the other. 

Because of the move to stay at home, so much of the usual supply chain has gotten completely upended. In some cases it was true scarcity, as demand far outstripped the available resources. It's not really surprising: the pipelines for hand sanitizer, cleaning solutions of all kind and PPE were never meant to handle a katrillion percent increase overnight. As such, on an ounce for ounce basis, Purell became liquid gold, worth more than the real stuff. You try and disinfect your hands with a bar of bullion. 

In other cases the scarcity was created because of the change in how we lived. As we hunkered down at home our cars sat in the garage. That meant less gas and its additives being used, including ethanol. As such, ethanol plants cut production, but that also meant a severely curtailed supply of one their other products, carbon dioxide or CO2. The gas is used in the manufacturer of sodas and beer, as well as the production and preservation of other foodstuffs. That drove the price of fizz up 25%, with the result that while your Mountain Dew hasn't yet gotten scarcer, it's gotten more expensive. 

And in still other situations it was not so much true scarcity as a different form and distribution model. We were really never in danger of running out of toilet paper: by and large the virus wasn't confining us to our bathrooms. Rather, we were all at home versus at the office, school and the mall. And so all the supplies that were manufactured in different forms and packaging to be used in those places had not evaporated, but were simply inaccessible through home-oriented channels. It took a little while for the manufacturers to retool their delivery systems, and redirect the goods to your local Stop and Shop, as well as cut down those tire size rolls to ones that fit in your powder room. 

The list of products affected under any of those scenarios is broad. Yeast has become a hot commodity as everyone is baking bread. Office chairs are tight, as lots of folks are setting up a home working space. With gyms closed, free weights are in demand for home fitness programs. Even leaving aside controversial possible treatments like hydroxychloroquine off the list, the usual drugs hospitals need to treat seriously ill patients are running low with the huge influx of those infected with the virus. And there is a garlic shortage because most of the US supply comes from China, and well, let's just say we're not seeing eye to eye with them right now. 

What this is also leading to is a contraction of the breath of items in a given category. In the beginning of the year you could have walked into your local grocery store and selected from dozens of brands and variations of frozen meals or peanut butter or potato chips. But with plants and stores streamlining operations for safety, it was prudent to limit the number of variations in favor of bulking up on core items. That means Frito-Lay is trimming its portfolio of products by 3%-5%, IGA grocery stores cut back their 40 varieties of toilet paper to 4, and even McDonald's is looking into scaling back their breakfast offerings, as fewer people are out that early since they're not going to work. 

Things might eventually return to the way they were before, or it may be that consumers find they are just fine living without Extra-Dark Low-Salt Whole-Wheat Sourdough Pretzels, and are OK with plain. Or maybe there will be an uprising if Skippy eliminates chunky to concentrate on smooth. Simple economics or a sign of the apocalypse: you decide.

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Marc Wollin of Bedford usually buys what's on sale. His column appears regularly in The Record-Review, The Scarsdale Inquirer and online at http://www.glancingaskance.blogspot.com/, as well as via Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.