I had forgotten how delicious a NY Sunday Times could be. I bought one yesterday and I'm still delighting in it. I don't really understand why reading on line does not give me the same luscious feeling of riffling a paper newspaper, but it does not. It may be that reading on line is harder. Skimming seems very different when there must be scrolling.
While the delicious aspect of the paper is satisfying in the moment, I know that my memory will not collect, retain, and have ready all the things I read.
Lately I have been clipping and keeping a scrapbook, but I find in this paper many articles that I want to remember in general, but don't need to paste into permanence. So, perhaps as overview would be helpful.
What I miss most and all the time lately is any community that reads with me. Elizabeth will do some of the readings. However, few read the way Peter Balint used to. He could remember an article and place it intelligently into a context of complications and questions and a conversation with him about the NY Times was just delightful.
Okay, What am I reading.
I read a good bit about finding housing in New York and for city dwellers. Here were articles on buying a loft, perhaps less expensive than an apartment, and of the delight in that. There was a great article on communal places in the Catskills to buy a summer home as cheaply at 10,000, but one that was bare bones and likely to stay that way. Here dish washers, washing machines, air conditioners could not be supported by the grid. But the inhabitants were just delighted. It seemed a good bit like what the campers at Bull's Arrowhead know, with community and a simple lifestyle at really cheap prices. There folks were escaping Buffalo and other city lives, but it is the same idea. Kids could go out and play and be entertained just with what was in the community.
The editorials were just grand. Everything is so well written. Not like this blog. There was plenty of commentary on the new sex scandals and one article talked about the difficulty of Jews wanting a better image and identifying with some of the recent political scandals.
There was an article on prayer that took a very odd perspective where prayer even to imaginary gods was somehow beneficial.
One editorial used a woman who ate cutlery to explain both the failure of our health system to meet the needs of the mentally ill and the hope that Obamacare will turn that around. Another spoke of how inexpensive it was to get a joint replacement in Belgium as compared to US prices. Another stressed that the neediest of people can be covered by medical insurance only if all people buy into having insurance, and how not demanding that everyone buy insurance would cause health care industry to collapse.
There was a great article on the construction of ever more plush and wonderful airplane seats for the rich business travelers who could pay $5,000 for one trip if it meant being perfectly comfortable in seats fully designed to accommodate them and even stretch out into beds. Lufthanza spent 1 billion designing such a seat.
And here is the dilemma that we face. Will comfort be affordable by only the rich who can have luxury with their dollars while the poor suffer unspeakable suffering and discomfort, or can we get the idea that as a country we are all one people, together, helping with the basics? Emergency room treatment is not the answer to preventing and curing disease.
Nature was here as well. The box turtle article mentioned one turtle who was born during the Civil War and still alive in 2006.
There was an article about a fellow who nurtured and fed park pigeons.
While the delicious aspect of the paper is satisfying in the moment, I know that my memory will not collect, retain, and have ready all the things I read.
Lately I have been clipping and keeping a scrapbook, but I find in this paper many articles that I want to remember in general, but don't need to paste into permanence. So, perhaps as overview would be helpful.
What I miss most and all the time lately is any community that reads with me. Elizabeth will do some of the readings. However, few read the way Peter Balint used to. He could remember an article and place it intelligently into a context of complications and questions and a conversation with him about the NY Times was just delightful.
Okay, What am I reading.
I read a good bit about finding housing in New York and for city dwellers. Here were articles on buying a loft, perhaps less expensive than an apartment, and of the delight in that. There was a great article on communal places in the Catskills to buy a summer home as cheaply at 10,000, but one that was bare bones and likely to stay that way. Here dish washers, washing machines, air conditioners could not be supported by the grid. But the inhabitants were just delighted. It seemed a good bit like what the campers at Bull's Arrowhead know, with community and a simple lifestyle at really cheap prices. There folks were escaping Buffalo and other city lives, but it is the same idea. Kids could go out and play and be entertained just with what was in the community.
The editorials were just grand. Everything is so well written. Not like this blog. There was plenty of commentary on the new sex scandals and one article talked about the difficulty of Jews wanting a better image and identifying with some of the recent political scandals.
There was an article on prayer that took a very odd perspective where prayer even to imaginary gods was somehow beneficial.
One editorial used a woman who ate cutlery to explain both the failure of our health system to meet the needs of the mentally ill and the hope that Obamacare will turn that around. Another spoke of how inexpensive it was to get a joint replacement in Belgium as compared to US prices. Another stressed that the neediest of people can be covered by medical insurance only if all people buy into having insurance, and how not demanding that everyone buy insurance would cause health care industry to collapse.
There was a great article on the construction of ever more plush and wonderful airplane seats for the rich business travelers who could pay $5,000 for one trip if it meant being perfectly comfortable in seats fully designed to accommodate them and even stretch out into beds. Lufthanza spent 1 billion designing such a seat.
And here is the dilemma that we face. Will comfort be affordable by only the rich who can have luxury with their dollars while the poor suffer unspeakable suffering and discomfort, or can we get the idea that as a country we are all one people, together, helping with the basics? Emergency room treatment is not the answer to preventing and curing disease.
Nature was here as well. The box turtle article mentioned one turtle who was born during the Civil War and still alive in 2006.
There was an article about a fellow who nurtured and fed park pigeons.
