JNF Breakfast

A worthwhile morning.  Each year the Jewish National Fund sponsors a communal breakfast to support its many projects.  I have been a minor contributor since childhood.  At the time, the JNF provided blue metal collection boxes for coins.  Kids like me would plant trees in Israel for birthdays and Mother's Days, for which the JNF would issue a certificate.  When I visited Israel in 1999, I asked the tour guide why all the buildings were made of brick or masonry.  Despite these many trees of goodwill, our Jewish homeland never generated much lumber.  Even Solomon had to get the Temple's cedar from elsewhere, but he conscripted his citizens to harvest it.  Their tzedakah boxes now have a more aesthetically pleasing artistic surface, with rounded corners, but they still have a slot and do not have a lock.

The needs of Israel today differ dramatically from that pre-1967 era.  Hostility among regional neighbors remains, though not with every neighbor.  Land purchased from funds collected to create a nascent Jewish state has enabled ownership, much like our ancestor Avraham insisted on paying Efron the Hittite to establish his ownership of at least a small plot of the land that God had promised him.  Their citizens deal with episodic lethal terror, but they also have an effective military force, educational system, modern medical care, and successful commerce.  This breakfast, and last year's, addressed an obligation of Americans to make the reality of wartime Israel less of an ordeal for the people who must engage in combat while enduring global antipathy as they try to make their lives more secure.  

Last year, the JNF became my largest single charitable donation.  While the organizers of this annual breakfast plan the program around dollars, they will have to wait until later in the year for mine.  My age requires me to withdraw from my IRA each year.  Transferring charitable funds from that account directly to non-profits eases my tax bite, so no pledges from me at this gathering.  Instead, this event has an important social function, one a little different this year than last.

Who attends?  The JNF sponsors this breakfast at no charge to those in attendance, other than we pay our own parking at a nearby garage.  They rent a room in the town's most iconic hotel, some might also say most pretentious hotel.  All JNF events are Kosher.  Since they would likely get permission to Kasher the Vatican kitchen before the hotel will allow this, the organization prepares its food in a mobile facility off-site and transports it to the suite where their meetings occur.  Last year the hotel rented the JNF a larger room, one with ample room to allow people to pour themselves some coffee.  Last year being an election year, candidates also came in support of our Jewish community.  This year the alloted room had less space in a more obscure location in the middle of a lengthy corridor.  A registration table greeted us, taking only minutes.  Literature about JNF projects seemed sparse at an adjacent table outside the meeting room.  To compensate, each place setting not only had high end disposable dishes, but three informational handouts describing the organization's work.  A small table with coffee service had been placed in the back.  But the room being smaller and the larger attendance pretty much eliminated people circulating around the room and greeting each other.  The tighter space compelled people to choose their tables quickly.  Each table had food:  a bowl of bagels, trays of rounded scoops of cream cheese, lox, fruit, pastry, veggies.  A bowl of whitefish.  The centerpiece in the middle had JNF branding.  It was too tall to allow either exchange with people across the table and too wide to easily access trays of food of all types.  My chair kept bagels, lox, and the cream cheese scoops within sight and reach.  Other items were not readily accessible to add to my plate.  The bagel, slice of lox, and vegetable cream cheese made a satisfying breakfast, supplemented with the coffee I had poured when I entered.

People self-segregate into tables.  One had only members of my congregation, others people who go to other shuls.  In my working years, I could count on meeting more than five people for the first time every work day.  I miss that in retirement.  At these events, I make an effort to select a table with people I do not know.  The person next to me turned out to be an interesting chap.  We attended the same university, graduating seven years apart.  He went into finance.  He now matches private funding with Jewish organizations, mostly legacy agencies like the JNF.  He seemed reassured when I told him this non-profit stands at the top of my list.  He pressed me about other agencies, but I would not offer him a list of my also-rans.  He had an interest in our regional Jewish community.  I conveyed to him a census and analysis done by the state's Jewish Federation a year ago which outlined more entropy among our Jews over a few decades.  Population centers, once determined by the best school districts, have given way to retirement communities in places that previously had few Jews, and a shift of people whose ships had come in to some of the toniest addresses.  We agreed on some things, disagreed about the face of local and university anti-Semitism.  I think I gave him a different perspective as a small donor who practices traditional observant Judaism that differed from the machers that he usually encounters.

The speeches.  Two on what the JNF does.  As a legacy agency, its tentacles in Israel reach many places.  Our local role in the grander enterprise seems to be a focus on population shift that needs to happen within Israel for it to retain its prosperity.  The people live in metro areas there, much like Jews do in America.  Unlike America, where Jewish institutions become unavailable in the heartland, Israel's Jewish population can spread out and retain the synagogues, schools, and medical facilities that everyone needs as the Jewish presence would continue most anywhere within the country's borders, and some would take objection when a Jewish presence emerges beyond those borders.  Speeches from senior level financial and legal machers.  Worthy cause for sure.  Impression that I am being manipulated in some way?  Hard to escape the reputation these people acquire.

Guest speaker.  An Israeli-American journalist, many experiences.  Israeli Government spokesperson.  News anchor for Christian Zionist broadcasting.  Person with immediate ties to the tragedy of the October 7 attacks and its response.  Not reticent about calling the underpinnings of Hamas evil for what it is.  Credible.  Articulate. Time better allotted to her usurped by our fundraising machers with canned, rehearsed remarks.  Would have liked more question opportunities for the audience.

By the time I needed to return to the parking garage to avoid a surcharge, I had experienced a satisfying morning.  It was a little early, but I suspect the organizers in expensive suits had to return to their law firms for a work day.  Like me, people in that room had an identity to protect.  Judaism and Israel are linked, something exploited by anti-Semites who have pried the manhole covers off a subject once taboo but always present in dark spaces.  We have a successful Jewish sovereign state, strong, independent, productive.  Americans with JNF boxes helped bring that about.  I would have like to see the morning's format a little different, the hotel surroundings more conducive to mingling, perhaps even considering assigned tables so that congregations have their members sitting among different people.  Later in the calendar year, people of my age will take a day or two to allocate portions of our IRA's for noble causes, including gifts to the JNF.

Packing Judiciously

By now I should have more experience, or at least more wisdom.  My long-awaited trip has reached its packing stage.  A round-trip plane ride of several hours.  To take advantage of schedules and preferred airlines and avoid plane transfers, we selected 8AM flights both ways, which will require us to rise much before my daily smartwatch signals.  It also seemed prudent to turn our car rental in one day early, while transferring from more luxurious lodging to a hotel with airport transportation for our final night.  Those inconveniences bookend four full days and most of the first day.  Our purpose of travel this time is a family event, an informal gathering of people dear to us, including two in utero, most of whom we only met once or twice previously.  Other than that afternoon, I have no compelling reason to make a personal appearance that leaves a favorable, enduring impression.  I bought a new shirt for the occasion, one that looks better without a tie, which I will not pack.  The remainder of our visit will include a day trip, visiting a synagogue where I had wanted to worship on a Shabbos morning for fifty years but never had the right circumstance.  The hotel has amenities, so every incentive to try out their treadmill which has more features than mine.  There are aquatics at the hotel.  My usual summer wetness at home in recent years has been limited to two beach outings and a water park linked to an amusement park, which I opted to forgo this summer.

Packing does not seem difficult.  My daily and seasonal clothing is fully organized by each type of garment.  Polo shirts stacked neatly in the closet.  Pants on hangers, with dress pants, chinos, and jeans sorted.  Three t-shirt bins.  A drawer devoted to colored socks and a section with white socks.  Just go through each section.  When I did that, it filled a laundry basket.  Having lived in that city, I remember the seasons well.  Organizing clothing properly, which I have, allows for appearance choices with little advance planning.  If I want to put on blue shorts, moccasins, and a team t-shirt, I take them out and put them on.  Suitcases do not handle contingencies as easily.  I can take only a few t-shirts, so priorities matter.  Regionals, like Philly, alma mater, and Delaware logos.  Maybe my Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle selection should have representation.  And as a platelet donor, the many appreciative t-shirts I've received make a statement about what I value.  And our trip spans Memorial Day.  Must have something that says USA.  Summer weather invites shorts.  Plaid or solid, plain pocket or cargo.  White socks some days, colored others.  A team baseball hat, but I can only take one of dozens.  And shoes, multipurpose shoes that go from treadmill to street.  The good carry-on remains in the closet in My Space. It would get rather heavy if everything I put into the laundry basket gets transferred to it, but it has wheels.  Finally, grooming, including the TSA liquid restrictions.  I've accumulated multiple Dopp sets over the decades.

The SDS Weatherman, or the reasonably predictive weather.com, altered my preferences considerably.  Downpours at home on both my travel days.  Rain at my destination most of my visit days.  Unseasonably cool temperatures.  That means long sleeves, which I did not intend to bring, fewer shorts and T's, an undershirt most days, long leg pajamas, maybe a sweatshirt with a home logo, and a baseball cap that would not cause distress if lost or ruined by the storms.  Some layers.  Less using clothing to showcase myself as a sojourner among natives, including our hosts at the family event.

What I intended, assuming better weather than the forecast indicates, was not very smart.  Too many outfits, decisions on appearance deferred to the times of dressing with too many options, much like at home.  Some of my logo items can stay home. Or better, buy a new t-shirt or two while I am traveling, one that announces where I've been when I return home.  Layer things.  Bring a poncho.  Replace the coarse canvas tote with a mini-backpack.

And do not get sidetracked from the trip's purpose.  Family event.  Overdue visit to a once pioneering synagogue.  A day trip to a place I've not visited before.  Being with my kids.  Celebrating their pregnancies. Enjoy some hotel amenities.  The suitcase and its contents enable that.  I really do not need to display all my teams, the Blood Bank, or the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

School Board Election

The Northwest Ordinance of 1787, a precursor to our US Constitution, allocated Block #19 of 3.6 square mile divisions for public education as the elite easterners decided how to settle the territories that we now drive through or fly over.  Each planned community needed assets to provide education.  They usually had a school on that property, but compulsory education did not become the norm in America for a few more generations.  My parents went to public school in NYC.  I attended public school as did my wife and two children.  Literate people benefit America and probably the world.  As my wife and I attend or decline to attend our 55th HS reunions, our districts did not fare as well as the one our children attended, and my household supported.  Our local district, indeed our statewide districts, held their elections today.  

As a youngster, my next door neighbors and a guy with the house on the corner engaged in petty level politics.  My next door neighbor held a seat on the school board during my last few years of high school.  Out of curiosity, and because of turmoil within the school, I would periodically attend school board meetings.  A reel-to-reel tape recorder captured the audio.  They did not discuss academic performance at all.  We had a bimodal distribution.  Suburban kids of prosperous families dominated the classrooms.  Many of us would graduate to selective colleges, many more to branches of the state university system.  When Facebook reconnected us forty years later, it confirmed that the public investment in our schooling served us well.  There was another tier, less visible.  A cohort of punks along with kids living in a minority enclave within the district who would now be called disruptive. For all the problems of No Child Left Behind, our educators of that era and the Board representing the taxpayers had no qualms about letting meritocracy play out, with consequences good and bad. Some kids at the edge probably could have benefited from more concern that the Board and school system offered them. Board discussions were not about educational attainment.  They were about property taxes, with my neighbor the most vocal at promoting financial restraint, though still slightly beyond the minimum austerity expenditures mandated by state law.  By the time I could vote, school budgets never passed.  As my parents' generation of neighbors cashed out their houses to buyers who did not use the public school system, educational attainment of the children dropped from the board's agenda.  Despite economizing on educational expenses, on my last visit to the area, a shopkeeper lamented on the high property taxes, quoting a figure a significant multiple of what my household pays each year.

In my current district, the excellence of our schools remains a source of public commitment and pride.  Access to premier childhood education attracts homebuyers willing to mortgage at the limit of their means to send their children to those schools.  My children graduated to selective colleges and professional careers, as did their parents, classmates, and neighbors.  Two candidates came to our door this campaign season.  I greeted one, my wife the other.  We each committed ourselves to voting for the gentleman we had each met personally.  My contact did not talk to me about taxes.  He spoke of making the schools a place that top teacher talent might seek out.  He looked at educational attainment as a byproduct of the people directing each classroom.  I think that's mostly true, though the interests of teachers as a consolidated group and students as a consolidated group do not always coincide.  Strikes, which my district has not experienced, are more of a disruption of education than an indirect investment in better education, with pain now generating future gain.  Still, the gentleman at my door appeared groomed, poised, and aware of the tasks.  He had children in the schools, unlike the board members who now dominate my childhood district.  I could vote for him, and did.

My wife met a similar fellow.  A man who stood for what we stood for when we had skin, or really our genes, in the game.  Six candidates did not come to our door.  I looked at their literature.  One is a perennial politico, similar to the man who lived in the corner house of my childhood development but holding a more lofty elected position.  Not where my vote goes.  One fellow of designated minority group.  I read his literature.  Nothing to suggest imposition of identity, an unfortunate feature of our national politics generating  some very harmful results.  I could probably vote for him had he come to my door.  And the other four did not seem very different.  Everybody supports the dignity of teachers which leads to educational success.  All regard teachers as a conduit to students. None had students as the direct mission.

My wife and I drove to the local high school gym to cast our votes.  A small visitor's lot existed, inserted between three spaces for the principal and VIPs to the right and handicapped designated parking to the left.  We parked, then walked into a drizzle, past the final campaign posters we would see, waved at by people on a bench near the entry who I presume wanted us to vote their way without directly signaling to us who that would be for.  I expected to cast one selection, the man who had chatted with me.  The ballot, not seen by me until the curtain was drawn, had been reconstructed differently.  The district sorted the ballot by three seats with two candidates for each seat.  My man ran against the perennial politico.  Easy choice.  My wife's man sought a different seat.  She thought highly of their encounter, so he got an unanticipated vote from me as well.  And the third seat, I hadn't a clue. I'll let other majorities select that one.

Turnout is usually low.  Proceedings over the course of a year mostly run under the public's radar, though some districts in my state have had contentious, well-attended meetings when the Board wants to oust or not renew a Superintendent.  That has not happened in my district.  I just voted my best judgment and trust that the kids of my grandchildren's generation will get their chance to master the Three R's and beyond without undue turmoil.

Two Minute Rule

My smartwatch has a timer, an application not as well thought out by the designers as some of its other features.  It enables one touch application of a countdown from one to six minutes.  It makes the Two Minute Rule easy to implement.

Procrastination has always plagued me.  Eventually I come through, but after endless excuses to postpone.  My daily task list always has something that takes under two minutes.  Swallowing my pills, weighing myself every Monday morning, measuring my blood pressure with an automated cuff, counting the Omer every nightfall between Pesach and Shavuot.  I do them all.  Quick check marks.  Most things take longer.  When I make tomorrow's Daily Task List each nignt, my designation isolates tasks that take less than ten minutes, not two.  Performance on these short items is very uneven, not because I shun them as much as their lower priority.  Big projects, multi-day and multi-week initiatives, take hours, not minutes.  The individual steps may take only minutes, which makes the Two Minute Rule so valuable.

Most psychologists have concluded that once people have passed a certain threshold of activity, typically two minutes, they do not stop that activity.  Knowing that they can end their effort offers some control.  I will do this with some repetitive chores.  How much underwear can I fold in two minutes?  How many coffee cups can I wash?  I certainly could make the endpoint six t-shirts or five coffee cups.  But timing activity to a clock, one that will count down, has the advantage of going to completion.  I can always stop when my smartwatch signals two minutes, knowing I have completed my obligation.  I cannot wash three cups and tell myself I've done five.

In reality, though, people judge us, and we assess ourselves, by how much we accomplish, not how much time we spend working on it.  So real two minute tasks like making a k-cup of coffee have something to show for the brief effort.  Putting on running shoes but not running does not.  Some things you have to intend to perform, not just start.

Exercise on a treadmill and stretching with a YouTube video serve as hybrids.  I've never liked doing either.  It wouldn't occur to me to start for two minutes then decide whether to proceed to completion.  The treadmill has a set distance, typically four or five electronic display laps, and a set speed.  I need to do the program.  Once the laps reach the pre-set conclusion., I look at the machine's timer, then extend to a time-determined landmark.  The stretch takes 8 minutes spread evenly over 16 exercises.  I do not mentally credit myself until the final stretch of the right side of the neck at the video's end.  

My fondness for the kitchen does not adapt well to the Two Minute Rule.  Certainly I can set two place settings or transfer the refrigerated ingredients to the table in that let's start mode, but creating something edible, or even whipping something properly with an electric mixer really takes as much time as required.

Despite the Two Minute Rule's limitations, no worthy efforts can succeed without the first step.  Two Minutes offers that first step, always preferable to not taking that first step.

Heeding Circadian Rhythms

Count myself among the many who wish their sleep patterns were better.  Short of a formal sleep study, a form of excessive medical care for me, I've engaged in a lot of interventions.  I am aware of sleep hygiene principles, which I commit myself to periodically.  My bottle of melatonin from the shelf at Walmart gets judicious use.  My card of diphenhydramine gel caps, obtained from the Dollar Store, allows me to get drowsy but at an unacceptable cost the next morning.  Unlikely that I will finish the remaining aqua capsules.  I've used Ambien samples, four of them conserved over several months.  That stuff works, and offered to me by my doctor, but not the direction I should be taking in my senior retirement years.  Sleep Hygiene is the way to go.

The principles are very easy.  Lights out at a predictable time.  Avoid zonking out early.  Put away the blue lights from the smartphones and tablets a couple hours in advance. Big Screen TV causes fewer disturbances.  Arise on time.  Avoid snooze button.  I've also had sleep trackers.  I found the free apps on my cell phone intrusive.  The Apps themselves periodically failed.  My smartwatch has a basic program that works consistently, if not all that accurately.  Often I have two half-nights sleep when trying to adhere to fixed sleep and wake times.  The most difficult advice for me has been how to deal with the middle of the night wakening that creates those two half-nights.  Professional sleep organization advice recommends getting up if not back to sleep by a certain interval.  My smartwatch has a timer that allows me to create that interval.  I am rarely back asleep.  However, the sleep app of the watch shows the wake time to be not that much longer than the recommended allowable in-bed wake time.  If I feel groggy I stay in bed.  If I feel wired, I head to My Space where I turn on the big screen TV to Modern Marvels or How the Earth was Made to maybe learn something.  By the end of the show, if not dozed in my recliner, I usually find myself loopy enough to return to bed for a successful second half of the night.

Wake times occasionally challenge me.  My smartwatch has an alarm set to my wake time with a snooze feature for ten minutes.  I am rarely jolted awake by the buzz.  My internal timer has me either awake or dozing lightly when it signals my left wrist.  By then I have already read the red numerals on the should be obsolete clock radio behind my bed.  I rarely arise with the buzz but nearly always am able to head to the bathroom for dental hygiene before the reminder buzzes ten minutes later.  Then to the kitchen to begin the day.  Make k-cup coffee, retrieve the newspaper from the end of the driveway for my wife, then bring that brew back to the laptop in My Space.

Recent weeks have changed my internal pattern.  The middle of night awakening still occurs at a predictable time, but my smartwatch indicates that light sleep resumes within a few minutes.  And if I am awake within a half hour of the alarm set, I just get up early to begin my day.  My internal rhythms seem a reasonable guide.  My energy has improved, as has my ability to stay awake past the designated lights out time most nights.  I rarely doze off before that, something I used to do most nights.  Time to falling asleep does not seem unduly long.

So the sleep hygiene protocols seem on target.  While they can sometimes be disruptive to follow, consistency seems to pay off.  While these recommendations make people subservient to the clock with its timers, biological signals remain recognizable.  It pays to follow them if not predictably destructive.  So now my wake times have become longer, my activities within those daylight times more productive.  That was the intent.  Sleep study not needed yet.

Offering Candor

 

You’re signed up for 2025 Delaware Democratic Platform Public Comment Meeting | Wilmington. Thursday, May 8, 2025 6:30pm - 8pm EDT Location TBA, Wilmington, DE, 19805 They haven't told me where to assemble, only what day.  I'm not sure they want what my analytical, evidence-based mind has to offer.  Like my synagogue and parts of my medical world, my Democratic party often regards challenges to Important People of Title as a threat to agenda, when it should be the creation of agenda.  At least my medical world thrives amid its limitations, though now being challenged externally.  While good and decent Democrats control our state government, a fair number of the party's endorsed banner carriers got voted down by party primary voters.  The capable prevailed over the ideologues.  I am mostly happy with the people who represent me in Washington and in Dover and the County offices. People are good.  Policies are more open to discussion.  If the national scene mirrored my state better, we might have fared better.  My FB feed and email get messages from our elected officials, though not from party officers.  They tell how they will make speeches in opposition to the unfavorable electoral outcome.  Somehow, the wisdom of Pogo, "we have met the enemy and he is us" remains in denial.  I attended my local committee meetings for a few years.  I left when a newcomer introduced a resolution supporting a scripted anti-Semite.  As I questioned these supporters by Zoom, they went to different colleges than me and had limited historical knowledge or analytical skills.  They did fine at crowdspeak.  We can expand that nationally.  My text messaging feed is basically useless, cluttered with pleas for money from the Democratic Party to resist what the voters expressed as their majority will.  I cannot use this smartphone asset for its intended purpose of connecting with friends and doctors, drowned out by multiple pleas daily for the generosity of my credit card.  At least ask what I think about what they intend to promote.  They haven't. So an invitation came for input.  From a senior whose first Presidential vote went to McGovern.  He lost.  The media publicity seems to get directed to his ideological descendants who I can predict will have a similar electoral result.  I have a lot of opinions, most very centrist.  I think people do best when they get university degrees or post high school training.  I missed out on the draft, and other forms of public service, though one job could be called a variant of public service.  Should it be mandatory?  I think America and the people who have to give some of their young adult time would be better off for doing that.  The Israeli's have already conducted that experiment.  DEI?  Been done right by the Endocrine Society. Been done with harmful results in a lot of places.  Middle East?  Protest in a dignified way like I saw the students at NYU do recently.  Vandalizing my car if I kee;p my tallis bag emblem side up on my car seat just needs zero tolerance as official party platform. Even personal stuff like staying married for a long time, being loyal to profession and employers, reserving a few evenings a week for the public good, supporting my preferred religious community, giving my kids music lessons and Hebrew School.  Those are timeless contributions that have atrophied in importance by much of the Democratic public faces. When I lived in St. Louis in the mid 1970s, it was a swing state.  My representatives were Democrats as was one Senator.  The democrats controlled the state house, with the Speaker living in a townhouse across the street from my apartment.  No more.  That majority has been piddled for a lot of reasons, never to return in my lifetime.  When voters flip for cause, they rarely return.  The flipped for cause.  Southerners to restore what never should have been.  Working people and farmers with legitimate resentment of their perception of disdain that college grads have for them, to say nothing of appeasement of groups that have accomplished less than they did.  Jews next, perhaps.  Like the others, for cause. While my party does not tap my mind for its wisdom when it can tap my wallet to continue piddling any chance they might have to acquire political power again, the invitation to express myself to them requires me to take advantage.  They know they need centrists, having chased away their share one electoral drip at a time.  If they tell me where this event takes place, I will do my best to attend.

Where I Choose to Shop

Target has taken a hit for dismantling their DEI program.  Traffic in their stores is reportedly down, including my local store.  But association is not causation.  Whenever I go to Costco it is mobbed, with a DEI program preserved despite governmental pressure.  But they are two very different consumer experiences.  Both stores seem to have people of similar ethnic distribution as employees visible to shoppers.  And the apparent diversity of the people shopping at each place does not seem much different, though Costco shoppers are drawn to items of larger price tag and larger quantities, while Target has more selection.  Costco employees are harder to find but always helpful once located.  Target employees are around but amateur kids from HS trying to meet car insurance premiums.  Mostly not helpful to me.  Has nothing to do with popular or unpopular sociopolitical stances and everything to do with the priorities that the executive who make key decisions place on their shoppers' experiences.

I have two staples where Target offers the best price nearly always.  Each supply lasts about two weeks, essentially forcing me to the store about ten times a year.  I go to the shelves, both in the pharmacy department, and carry the items to the self-scanner.  I rarely leave the pharmacy department.  There have been times when it seemed convenient to get other things.  I needed laundry soap.  My supermarket undercuts the price big time for the premium brand and significantly for the secondary brands and house brand.  I wanted to get some clothing for an upcoming trip.  Minimal shirt selection and shoddy stuff.  I needed a thermal mug.  They had them, not competitive in price with what I eventually bought.  One time I needed ammonia to clean some glass.  They had no ammonia, just chemical concoctions designed by mediocre chemistry majors labelled as glass cleaner.  When they have what I come for, I buy it.  Mostly what I find is less competitive than what I can find other places.  The people who work there do not make the corporation's wholesale purchasing, stocking, or pricing decisions.  DEI, which I agree has not been implemented in the optimal way, has no bearing on any of my experience.

I've largely deep-sixed other retailers, though with no malice.  Best Buy, Kohl's each too expensive.  Local Walmarts often unkempt.  What I've needed I find locked behind glass with no accessible employee with a key to show it to me.  Costco is fun to browse, but empty nesters really need very little in quantity.  Moreover, there is little need to stand in a long line behind full mega carts when I have one or two items costing less than $30.  

So what are my preferences and why?  Depends what I need.

The easiest for me has been my pharmacy.  I chose it years ago due to walking distance from my office. Now it's a short drive with convenient hours. Top-notch pharmacists.  Medicines always ready.  Fully cooperative with my Medicare Part D.  I almost never buy anything else at that supermarket.

Groceries are in transition.  Shop-Rite established a Kosher section in conjunction with my Rabbi.  It began as a personal friendship between the Rabbi and the Shop-Rite's chief.  Both retired.  The kosher service hangs on with a loyal volunteer, a person not treated especially well by the Dominant Individuals of my congregation.  Selection has deteriorated, especially in the beef section.  I rarely buy beef.  But for general groceries, I find things easy to find and discounted more than the competing stores seem to.  I now buy more at Trader Joe's.  My staples there are eggs, bread, seltzer, bananas, and Roma tomatoes, plus greeting cards as needed.  I always like being in that store.  More recently an Aldi opened nearby.  I like being there too, though it's price-dependent.  Kosher is not on their radar, though certified products are available.  I look at my outings there as a treasure hunt.

Clothing is more problematic.  I do not buy much now that I am retired.  For browsing, Marshall's, TJ Maxx, and Boscov's.  All have more than clothing.  Things for my kitchen other than food tend to come from Boscov's.  Gifts for others from the other two.

My state restricts alcohol purchases to licensed stores.  Total Wine is the way to go, except for beer where a smaller store has a better selection from smaller brewers.  

I depend on the Home Depot, Lowe's, and a local hardware store for various things, but almost always know what I want to get before I head to any of these.  I have found Home Depot online preferable to going to the store.

My shoes have a difficult to find size.  Shoe stores display by style.  I much prefer display by size.  Amazon sorts this very well.  I also buy electronics and smart watches from there.  If I need a replacement part for anything, I can usually order it there.

At one time I purchased more Judaica and books than I do now.  Those are transacted online, and not very often.

Themes to how I seek stuff out?  If I do not know what I want, the places whose displays influence me seem to be Shop-Rite, Boscov's, TJ Maxx, and Marshall's.  The supermarket just has an immense array of items for all purposes, from good values in healthy eating to patio furniture to soil enrichment for my garden.  I read the ad each Sunday, make a list of must-get and might-get.  Despite a list, I still go aisle by aisle.

The three department stores must have a different acquisition system than Macy's or Walmart.  One month TJ Maxx will have Phillies caps and sturdy backpacks, another month grooming products that I had never heard of and a clearance on slacks.  Boscov's clothing has predictability.  The housewares and linens may reflect special deals that their buyers find on overstocks.  The selection changes significantly from month to month, as I found out when I needed to replace a toaster and steam iron.  I could not predict what brands would appear on the shelves.

To some extent, I find the surprise of what I might find appealing.  Target certainly does not have that.  I rarely need a salesperson to help, and most of the places where I shop really no longer have employees knowledgeable about what they sell, other than the Kosher deli guy at Shop-Rite.  Except for expensive items like major electronics, I don't miss the expertise that salespeople once had.

What I don't seem to care about is the political stance that the executives take.  These are mostly large corporations with dozens to hundreds of locations.  They are all going to hire a broad group of people in the stores.  They implement what somebody who I do not see decides.  So availability matters.  Target must have the two items I seek from them, as that is my only reason to go there.  I need to be able to find what I am shopping for.  Displaying by designer like the snooty stores sometimes do makes no sense when I prefer all items of my size sorted on racks by size.  And I've never abandoned my fondness for surprise, the ability to purchase something whose display makes me want it.  Those are fundamental retail strategy decisions which appear as shoppers browse but are made by a few people far removed from those shelves.

Each shopper probably has some blend of uniqueness and commonality.  Judging that probably explains why Costco has a lot of shoppers every time I go there while Target has fewer than the stockholders might like.  I think the DEI explanations are advocates pitching their own social preferences, not professional retailers dedicated to attracting customers.