The Sunday Snewz Issue No. 6
February 12, 2023: Dante's Inferno - The Children's Edition
The highpoint of the political scene this week was the State of the Union address. And quite a scene it was. Marjory Taylor Green and Krysten Sinema apparently didn’t get an invitation to walk the red carpet at the Grammey’s, so instead they donned their atrocious attire in the House of Chambers. They were going to get the attention they deserve (and clearly didn’t get as children) and dignity, historical protocol or taste weren’t going to stop them.
As MTG stood up and shouted, “You liar!” at President Biden, it felt more like a scene from Desperate Housewives than the SOTU. A drunken fur-lined blonde pointing and yelling at her slick, corrupt letch of a husband. Biden played the part well too. Who says you need to go to Hollywood to become an actress? Washington D.C. will do just fine-thank you very much. And the best part, you don’t need talent, an agent or fans, U.S. taxpayers are all it takes to make it in the nation’s capital these days.
The white fur was also reminiscent of the guy who tried kicking in my front door last summer. Strung out, no shirt, fluffy white fur wrapped around a skinny white frame in the sweltering heat of August in North Idaho. He was unsuccessful in his attempt to enter my home uninvited and left behind only a warm Modelo, a broken historic front door and his lovely white fur.
To be perfectly honest, I didn’t actually watch the SOTU. Instead I spent the evening doing something much more important - ordering fabric samples for my window dressings. But in my defense, it’s not as if you have to actually know anything about anything to report on it and it wasn’t like I didn’t already know what was going to be discussed.
The government is doing a bang up job. They are going to continue to do a bang up job, despite the opposition and failure to see positive changes in our country.
The rich are evil and don’t pay their fair share of anything. (So says the political rich who live off the backs of those who aren’t rich.)
Inflation doesn’t exist. The astronomical prices you are paying at the grocery stores and gas pumps is all a figment of your imagination.
We are heading in a positive direction despite the accumulation of debt that will eventually collapse our economic system.
Anything that isn’t going well is because of the other side of the aisle.
Don’t you worry your pretty little heads - your politicians will take care of you.
“What? You don’t believe me? CALL MY OFFICE!!!”
The business I care most about and the finances that concern me the most are my own, so let’s start there. We made a major shift over at copow in 2023 - away from providing food direct to consumers and towards catering to corporations, mid-sized business and schools. It wasn’t a painful decision because I am not overly attached to concepts but rather attached to success. It proved to be a wise decision, given the recent announcement by Freshly, the nation’s largest prepared meal home delivery service, that sadly they were closing their doors.
“It is with a heavy heart that we announce the Freshly meal delivery service will be ceasing operations,” the message said. “This is a difficult time as we say goodbye to our incredible community.” Launched in 2015, the fresh-prepared meal delivery company was acquired by Nestle in 2020 for $950 million. A year later it unveiled plans to bolster production and order fulfillment with new facilities in Georgia and New Jersey. During the height of the pandemic-driven surge in at-home eating, Freshly claimed to deliver more than 1 million meals each week to consumers across the country. The meal delivery service suffered in 2021 as consumers began shifting their food spending back outside of the home. High inflation and economic uncertainty in 2022 also drove more shoppers to reduce their reliance on the subscription service.
We felt this same pinch, watching our economic charts peak in August 2022, and then fall fast and furious to the floor. I created copow with the intention of providing meals in venues such as airports, conference centers, hospitals and other places large numbers of people circulate and lack quality food. Before we made our first sale, the pandemic hit and we had to completely revamp our business model. $80,000 invested into a website capable of processing orders according to zip codes and a subscription model, only to find ourselves in an economic environment that moved away from subscriptions. Putting your product into the hands of a 3rd party shipper is also a massive hurdle and one that ultimately proved too great to overcome.
As a true testament to my vision and spirit, and the support of my team, we didn’t panic and instead pivoted yet again. We are actually back to our original plan and we are kicking ass and taking names. Customers are not a problem, finding enough help to keep up with demand is. That’s a problem I’ll take any day over lack of sales. We brought on a new chef who has the skill set to manage a high volume operation and are building relationships with schools and businesses the old fashioned way. And it’s working.
I would be a liar to say this hasn’t been a rough couple of years and the ups and downs might be a bigger contributor to my few new grey hairs than my turning 50. But I have never doubted our success because I believe in our mission. We are changing the way the world thinks about food, one encounter at a time and we are feeding those in need as we do it. We keep our focus on accomplishing our goal of donating 1 million meals and so far, even though we have never turned a profit, we have given over 4000 meals to The Just One Project through our You Eat, They Eat program.
We also won the American Packaging Design Award in 2022, which puts us among the most recognized brands in the world. I’d call this success.
I love our story and showing the world what is possible when you stay the course, stay keenly aware of reality and never stop working hard. Our little company is a metaphor for life and the beauty is in the here and now - not worrying about the future. Our financial success will come, because that’s what happens when you show up everyday and do what is right and do it for the right reasons. Does that mission impress investors? No - which is why we have never allow investors into our company. We are doing things our way - the right way.
It is a fair and honest statement to say the mental health of our society is in a steady decline. Worst of all, this decline is seen most prevalent among our youth. Jonathan Haidt released a new substack publication this month, called After Babel, to which I highly encourage you to subscribe. It is a free publication, with the option of paid support which goes to charity. Haidt has been covering the issues facing our youngest generation since 2015 when he first wrote The Coddling essay with Greg Lukianoff, which then turned into them publishing the book, The Coddling of the American Mind. (Again, highly recommend.) His latest article helps dispel the notion that the current teen mental health crisis is just “kids these days” and nothing different than many generations before. Definitely worth a read, even if you don’t have young children, as the mental health of this generation effects all of us equally.
And as as if teens don’t struggle enough as it is, we now have a medical community who is actively mutilating children. Sound like an over dramatization and simplification of a complex problem? It’s not. This week The Free Press released a bombshell piece on a whistleblower at Washington University Transgender Center in St. Louis that reads like a cryptic tale of a society who has lost all virtue, morality and conscience - which sounds about right. Teens are now required to spend more time behind the wheel of a car with an instructor in order to gain driving privileges than they are in therapy before undergoing life altering medical interventions.
My mind doesn’t quite know how to grasp this one yet. Parents are easy to point the finger at but with a medical community not only abandoning their oath to “do no harm” but actively encouraging children to make unalterable changes to their bodies for profit, it appears we have entered into a human science experiment of which we could have never imagined and the consequences of which will change humanity forever.
Maybe the fact that fertility has seen a steady decline since the end of the pandemic and the mass vaccination program rollout isn’t so bad after all. We have lost all connection with what it really means to be human and the youngest among us are paying the price.
In order to try and keep my head above water and understand how it is that we are so broken, I have been studying the work of Dr. Iain McGilchrist. I started with The Master and His Emissary and have now moved on to his latest work, The Matter With Things. It would be a pointless and a feeble attempt to explain the crux of his theory on the divided brain in a 50 word editorial so I won’t even try. What I can tell you is that after reading his work, I understand how we got here. His work changed my life and more importantly, allowed me to see what I could not see before. If you want a deep understanding of the human brain, society throughout ages and the consequences of a mechanistic over-reach of the left hemisphere, his work is where you need to start.
As he would describe it, “we are a civilization of zombies walking swiftly off a cliff and if we don’t change direction soon, it will be too late.” The harsh reality of these words can be overwhelming but they can also be inspiring. In a discussion between Dr. McGilchrist and Mark Vernon I listed to this week, Vernon extended a generous hand of hope. The challenges of our times is an opportunity for all of humanity to recall how much more there is to life. We have wandered around too long, glutinously basking in materialism, missing what it means to be human. This never could have lasted, and therefore it is no surprise where find ourselves in this current hell. In Dante’s Inferno, the only way out of hell is literally crossing over the back of Lucifer. Thank heavens for Sam Smith - he/him/she/her/they/them - it, showed up just in time.
Well it’s Super Bowl Sunday! As a Cowboys fan, I gave up on any hopes of my team making it to the big game when I let go of clothes from The Gap and backcombed hair and bangs in the late 90’s. I don’t watch football all that often because I find anyone who mixes social justice with their industry a bore. I will be watching the game but mostly because I enjoy the cleaned up football food I get to make in its’ honor and I have missed Rihanna.
I will be cheering on the Chiefs because any organization that is willing to stick to their guns in the face of the woke mob has my vote. I get a real sense of pride as I watch their fans chant the Tomahawk Chop, flying in the face of bigotry, racism and ridicule.
Onward great warrior chiefs! Your bravery is a beacon in the dark world we now inhabit.
I recently discovered the audio feature on the Substack app for all articles. While I read The Sunday Snewz aloud, I don’t audio record my other articles. You can however listen to them read aloud by a stock voice on the app. Pretty Slick!
