At lunch yesterday, S commented on how boring the shopping, dining, and entertaining options are where we all live in southwestern Michigan. S and her husband, along with M, are snowbirds who live in the same condo complex up north as Earl and I when it gets too unbearably hot in Naples.

I hadn’t thought about it until that conversation, but S is right. Naples is filled with tons of restaurants, shopping venues, supermarkets, and entertainment from bingo to live music to you name it. The St. Joseph/Benton Harbor, MI area is home to Elks, FOP, and dive bar hangouts. Craft breweries too.

I checked the resident populations of each community to see if Naples qualified as a major city. It’s fulltime population hovers at around 19 thousand, while the St. Joe/BH population is around 17 thousand. Not that far off.

But there are extenuating circumstances. Naples, a tourist destination of long standing, is second home to some of the rich and famous. Seven billionaires live here. St. Joe/BH is working on being a tourist destination and second home to Chicago millionaires. There’s probably not a billionaire within miles.

Naples offers amazing supermarkets: Publix, Fresh Market, Seed to Table, Walmart. St. Joe/BH has Martin’s, Meijer, and Roger’s. I will say Roger’s has Boar’s Head deli meats, but that’s about as fancy as it gets.

The fast food chains – Arby’s, Burger King, KFC, McDonald’s, Wendy’s – are considered acceptable food options up north; not here. Instead, there are seafood, Italian and German restaurants to consider. St. Joe/BH has a good Italian restaurant, but enjoying the others requires a trip to Chicago.

Still, From Mother’s Day to Halloween, St. Joe/BH has advantages. The weather is replete with rain, sun, warmth, clouds. Nothing too extreme for an extended period of time. Bugs are not that unbearable. Sunsets are magnificent. Fruit and vegetable stands offer produce that was picked this morning for you to eat tonight. It might not be Naples, but it’s not that bad.

“To blog or not to blog, that is the question.”

Actually Hamlet didn’t express it exactly that way. Rather, he was questioning whether it’s better to live or die. But it’s a fair rendition of his soliloquy in many situations. Do I or do I not?

In my case, it’s whether to return to blogging after a fourteen-year run followed by a four year absence. At the beginning of the pandemic, I felt I’d pretty much said what I had to say about presidential elections, contemporary culture, and personal pet peeves.

But I’ve written a novel and would like to get it published without using my own funds. I’ve self-published twice already. While it was emotionally satisfying, it wasn’t rewarding in terms of a wide audience (although both books are available on Amazon) or a flush bank account.

I plan to query literary agents and anticipate a lot of rejection over the next few months. It’s part of the process because only about one percent of manuscripts submitted to the myriad of representatives gets picked up. That means 99 percent don’t. Quite possibly winning the lottery is easier.

My unpublished novel and my return to blogging are related. I have time to write regularly, and blogging helps keep my skills sharp. It’s also a way to build a readership for the novel, even though at this point I’m not willing to share much about it. If you like my work, please share it. If you don’t, share it anyway in the hope that someone you know will like it.

And that’s my 30 second commercial.

I always take a good book with me on vacation. This time it was Rebecca, the suspenseful tale by Daphne du Maurier published in 1938, that I finished this afternoon instead of visiting the pool.

Lonna, my son’s partner, and I had grown tired of contemporary literature and decided to read a classic together. The kind where the action is chronological, there is one point of view, and the villain is revealed in the end. Most likely punished too.

I admit the book was wordy by today’s standards, but the way the author built on the sense of foreboding the heroine felt until the reveal at the end is as contemporary as it gets. Much of the story is told through dialogue. I clung to every word. And while there is no lack of descriptive passages. I tended to skip them.

I belong to a book club where we rate the books from one to five, five being the tops. I rarely give a five, but I would say Rebecca comes close.

P.S. For the record, since this book club has been in existence, I’ve given a five to only two books:  A Gentleman in Moscow and Anne of Green Gables. Two ends of the literary bell curve.

I thought I’d seen everything in terms of a supermarket. Small Ma and Pa grocery stores that – to be honest — are disappearing. Well known chains depending on where you live: Jewel-Osco, Kroger, Publix, Winn-Dixie. Walmart, the largest grocery store in America. And those competing discount behemoths, Costco and Sam’s Club, where bulk purchases are the norm.

But I’d never seen anything like Seed to Table, a couple miles from where we’re staying. The current trend is called “farm to table,” but this operation goes even further. It isn’t just a supermarket; it’s an art museum.

The entrance puts you in the fresh produce section, which is enormous. All kinds of fruits and vegetable are artistically arranged, not just tossed in a bin. The apples form a pyramid. The corn lines up in rows with all cobs facing the same way. Bags of carrots are stacked in rows vertically and act as dividers in the vegetable section.

The bakery, next to the produce, has something for everyone. Seriously. If you want a carrot cake, for instance, there are three different sizes, just like Goldilocks’ three bears. The big one is company sized; the middle one for a family; and the little one for someone who lives alone. Edible art for everyone.

Then there is the block long cheese aisle, the block long meat aisle, and the block long fish/seafood aisle. And a wonderful array of prepared foods for those averse to cooking. It’s also a block long.

Next came the coffee bar, the wine bar, the pasta bar, and the guacamole bar, each ready to prepare the respective specialty at a moment’s notice. And did I mention the live entertainment seven nights a week?

There was also a place where parents dropped off their children to play instead of riding in the grocery cart and begging. Finally, near the checkouts I found — believe it or not — pumpkin pie. Who has pumpkin pie in March?

Because we’d gone to the House of Omelets for breakfast first, we bought only half a pumpkin pie and a small package of brie cheese. Had we come hungry our bill would have been much, much more.

Which suggests we need a return visit when we’re hungry, because there were also plenty of free food samples to enjoy.