I was picking up groceries at Kroger’s the other day.
I like the food, especially the prepared meals that I’m eschewing eating while I’m doing Noom, and I used to like the fact they devoted nearly half an aisle to books and magazines. Sadly, they cut the space devoted to reading material by about 75 percent, and most of what remains is periodicals.
I did find myself amused at something I saw just the other day.
You may have noticed that more and more magazines try to boost their sales by doing special issues devoted to one person or one subject. Lady Diana, Star Trek, Donald Trump … you get the picture.
If you look at the photo that begins this piece, you’ll see two such issues right beside each other — Anne Frank and Amy Winehouse.
As best as I can tell, they didn’t have a whole lot in common. Frank was murdered in the Holocaust, dying in Bergen-Belsen concentration camp at around the age of 16, while Winehouse died of a drug overdose at age 27.
It’s difficult to make a comparison between the two without making Winehouse look bad. Frank was one of the great inspirational stories of the 20th century, and millions of people have read her “Diary of a Young Girl” and been touched by how hard she and her family fought to live.
Winehouse was a great talent who was becoming an important singer when she was laid low by drug and alcohol addition 10 years ago last month. The work she left behind was outstanding, and it is a shame there wasn’t more. In the end, all Winehouse and Frank had in common was they were both women who died too young.
Still, I wonder who would buy those magazines off the rack in a small-city grocery store in central Georgia.
Someone must have, because when I was back at Kroger’s this morning, other magazines had taken their place front and center on the magazine rack.
Of course, that’s a story for another day.