I loved the selection and prices at Armitage the first four times I shopped there and was very satisfied. Indeed the mangoes I got off the priced for quick sale were heavenly. Other than the very narrow shopping aisles, everything else about the shopping experience was lovely. It was different today to my chagrin. Walking my push cart from Armitage Pharmacy, I passed Rico's Supermercado just up an inconvenient block for me to get to Armitage Produce because in the four times I'd previously shopped there I'd developed a fondness for it and an ineffable attraction. Today however, the grocery bagger was, to borrow a lyric from the rock band Yes, acting "the course of evil standing straight." Maybe he needed a break to get out from behind the cash register, go in the alley behind the store and blow a joint to relieve the drudgery and stress. I bought several very heavy items, viz. a watermelon, a cantaloupe, and other moderately heavy items: two large cucumbers, a package of priced for quick sale peppers. Also, I bought some delicate items: fresh tomatoes, mangoes, and kiwis. I also had two cans of unsweetened applesauce I'd brought into the store with me in my book back that I wanted to pack into the cart with the newly bought groceries to relieve the pressure they exerted on the strap holding my book bag around my neck, now I could put them in the push cart without fear the bags and the cans would spill out of the mesh containment of the push cart, cause friction on the wheels or even fall out of the cart altogether. The groceries were packed that way to take home on CTA. I complained before I left the store because the groceries were packed for me in the store's shopping cart. I got outside and loaded them into my push cart to carry on the bus. When I got home however, I discovered the damage to the fruit was worse that I first thought. Even though I was very careful in avoiding blemishes in choosing the cantaloupe it was impossible to avoid them completely. However therse were relatively pretty cantaloupe prices at $2.25 if I recall. There was a worrisome bruise astride the part of the cantaloupe where it attaches to the stem. The blemish seemed evolved whtn I got home as if a malicious finger poked the melon through the minor blemish I was initially worried about. I bought $2.50 worth of kiwis in two priced for quick sale packages, which I have had no troubles with in the past. On the contrary. You know how Aldous Huxley says grace at a meal should be in the eating and the tasting of the food. The kiwis I'd previously acquired made that a felicitous process. Three or four of the seven I bought today are completely smooshed, their juice bleeding all over the polystyrene packaging. I hadn't had a good tomato in years until I bought 5 of them or so in the last two times I was at Armitage. Even they were wanting the full flavor, texture, juiciness of the Illinois tomatoes of my youth. One of the two large tomatoes I bought today, which were even prettier on the outside than those I'd acquired a week or two ago has a rude cut in it as if the package the peppers were packed in slit the skin of the tomato as if yielding to said packaging. The other has a couple of ostensible bruises as if it went a round or two with Brando On the Waterfront, and won't fully reveal their quality until consumed. As I said, I complained and the bagger offered to refund me out and replace the damaged fruit. I didn't want that for several reasons. I didn't want to waste the food when so many in the world are starving, witness Gaza or Sudan. I wasn't sure the damage to the produce was as great as it was until I got it unpacked at home. I didn't want to waste the time. I didn't want to make a likely card-carrying member of the precariat feel more exploited than he already is, paying for Biden's genocide in Gaza and all. And Obama's $2 trillion upgrade of the US America's nuclear arsenal, and the some $800 billion in interest the US national debt costs US taxpayers. How do you refute the irrefutable insanity of building a new generation of nuclear weapons? And it isn't only the US doing it. A naked violation of the Non-Proliferation Treaty by the way. We're all aware there's nine nuclear "powers" now, right? It's not just USA! USA! USA! And the Soviet Union. But what's a few steps closer to the abyss of collective suicide, and the complete extinction of the only lifeforms we know in this vast, empty universe when there's real money to be made in war- and weapon- profiteering? read more