Yesterday and today are the days of Homemade Days, an annual festival that takes place in Brandon Park, close to where we live.  On the face of it, it's just a neighborhood festival for our town, but has also the features of an arts festival.  We have other things sort of like it: a First Friday monthly event, and a Saturday morning Farmers' Market.

This year, Homemade Days were poorly attended, but consider that last year, we didn't have Homemade Days at all, due to COVID.  I don't quite know what the psychology of the vendors and the customers is, but I have noticed that there was quite a good attendance at the morning's Farmers' Market, which is a place where folks who grow produce in their small farms or their homes bring them into town, to this space set up in a parking lot, and sell their produce direct to the customers.  Some of us have suspected that some of these vendors don't actually grow this stuff, but get it wholesale from other vendors, and bring them in, so they're effectively shopkeepers, with mobile shops.

These are not the products we would have looked for in the Homemade Days (often spelled Homade Days), but rather the fun things to be found in a fair, e.g. funnel cakes, lemonade, music in the band-shell, ice cream, deep-fried cookies, hot dogs, and . . . handicrafts.  You can buy anything from necklaces, sea-shells, items made of wood, paintings, potted plants, jewellery, and so on.

However, over the years, the quality seems to have declined.  I think the problem is that the vendors are now focused more on trying to identify what sort of things will sell, what sorts of things are easy to make, and not at all on what sort of things they can make really well.  Making things really well takes a lot of work, and understandably, nobody want to spend a lot of time making something well, when people just won't shell out the money for it.  The customers know the value of money, and would rather keep it to spend later on a quarterpounder, rather than some delectable work of sheer handworked beauty.

Handicrafts are not the only things that have become slaves to market research.  The survey kings have taken over everything from TV to movies to politics, to conspiracy theories.  The New York Times, too, wants to know "How are we doing?"  Fair enough; they would like to know whether I think they suck.  "What sorts of articles would you like to read?"  YouTube wants to know "Is the video above a good suggestion for you?"

There's no going back!  Polling, or market research determines what people are going to do.  Even health systems decide on which departments they would invest their money in, based on customer surveys.  (Shall we create a department of Asthma, or a department of Athlete's Foot?  These are the decisions that will make or break them.)  Meanwhile, Geisinger Health Systems play a vicious game.  They look for any location where the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center takes over an existing health facility, and immediately acquire land close to it, and put in a facility of their own, to compete with it.  (I have heard, on the grapevine, that this is sort of an economic war between Aetna on the one hand, and Geisinger Insurance Corp on the other.  I hope it is false.)

The only people who have the luxury of completely ignoring marketing are those, like me, who are retired.  But even we sometimes worry whether the Home Insurance we have is the best according to recent surveys.  And of course, you probably know well---those of you who are also retired---the volume of junk mail that comes to your house.  In addition, because my wife sends money to charities, all sorts of charities hound her continually to send more.  I don't blame the charities themselves; they hire fresh graduates for their direct mail departments, who have earned pestering by mail degrees which are precisely focused on this particular job for accredited non-profits.

Anyway, this is the greatest country in the world, and our junk mail is the best.  Let that thought give you consolation.

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