Grant made no speeches. He spent the summer at a holiday town on the Atlantic Ocean coast.
VOA: special.2010.02.18
The dollar amount the NRF predicts will be spent on the holiday is about the same as last year, suggesting flat consumer activity due to the struggling economy.
He called The Sea, about a man who confronts his past in a town where he spent a childhood holiday, "a masterly study of grief, memory and love recollected".
According to the National Retail Federation, the average amount spent by a holiday shopper over the weekend was only up 6%, reflecting precisely the reported increase in total spend found in our survey.