October 24, 2011 issue, completed October 8, 2012

The highlight of this one for me was definitely David Sedaris. Not only am a I huge fan of his contributions at any time, but this one was especially amusing because I went to hear him read selections from his books sometime since this was published and I remembered him reading the story in his deadpan, hilarious way. I actually laughed out loud as I read it here. Also enjoyed the article about Jill Abramson at the New York Times - I love stories showcasing women who have achieved something notable, and I hope she has great things in store for that paper during these challenging times for the industry. And although it was heartbreaking, the article about premature babies was also fascinating. I always enjoy Jerome Groopman' contributions.



October 17, 2011, completed September 30, 2012

Ah yes, the week that Steve Jobs died. I remember I was working on a trial basis as a marketing director for Canadian-based tea retail company David's Tea. It was and still is an exciting concept and a brand that I really felt I could get behind. Unfortunately, its owners were crazy and let their inexperienced daughter run amok in the company, demoralizing everyone and putting the small startup's growth in jeopardy. I didn't join them permanently, and while things have improved there since, I'm glad. I don't think the year of personal growth and development that I've had since then would have been possible without it. At the time, Jobs' advice to "stay hungry" led me to pursue something else. Good advice, Steve.

 

Throughout the reading of this issue I found myself comparing my own abilities to other people's efforts and for once, perhaps conceitedly, thinking that I ain't so bad. I liked reading about "The Phantom Tollbooth," which I loved as a child and had completely forgotten about. I'll try to find it for my kids for Christmas. The article about life after Fukushima in Japan was fascinating - I loved visiting and working in Japan many years ago and would love to have the chance to go there again. The approach to life is just so different than ours.

 

The story about the making of the movie "John Carter," so full of hope about the film's potential, I read with a cruel feeling of Schadenfreude knowing what a dud it turned out to be. So even Hollywood's golden boys make mistakes, and costly ones. And the Eugene O'Neill play managed to be entertaining while convincing me that I myself might have been able to write something similar if given (or if I wanted to take) the opportunity. All in all, I felt quite upbeat after finishing the issue, despite the fact that I'm not gaining any ground whatsoever in this attempt to catch up on New Yorkers.



October 10, 2011 issue, completed September 14, 2012

A long absence between the end of this issue and the last one – vacation ended, back-to-school happened, and only now am I starting to feel like my time is my own to do with as I please. To draw out the interval between issues even further, this was the Money Issue, which is tough to get through in the best of times – I want to learn about money and success and read as much as possible, but sometimes it can get awfully dry. Reading about Keynes, for example, while interesting, reminded me of required reading in Econ 110 at Queen’s University and/or Grade 10 economics. Of course I enjoyed Calvin Trillin’s coverage of the gold-buyer wars in Toronto, having lived there for much of my life. His writing style is engaging and funny. I could imagine my 96-year old grandmother, who had a bad fall this spring and a long, difficult summer of recovery, enjoying this story along with me. Her love of the New Yorker furnished us all – my father, his brothers, me – with the kind of sense of humour that appreciates the New Yorker (except for the more mystifying cartoons), and this article is cast from the classic New Yorker mold.

 

The article about the ascent of Taylor Swift was an entertaining exposé into the making of a country star. While it is appealing to think of a teenager being able to become a superstar just by singing about things that all teenage girls are preoccupied with, there was clearly much more to her success that just that. It was refreshing to think that a superstar could come from what seems like a normal upper-middle class family without any trauma or drama. Good for her and for her parents.

 

The short bits about stealing, meanwhile served as deliciously naughty asides to the more earnest articles, refreshingly surprising in their candidness about what the authors had done. Interesting how many thieves ended up being authors. Wonder if Taylor Swift ever wrote a song about shoplifting – surely that is still a fairly common teenage pastime these days.

October 3, 2011 issue, completed August 19, 2012

This issue’s best articles seemed to revolve around a career in marketing, which is what I selected for myself many years ago when I decided on my university major. The article about how products are named, using the now-ailing Blackberry product as its example, was fascinating. I would love to have a company that names things. It reminded me of a process I went through at a company I used to work at, where we hired an ad agency to help us name a new show. It was a horrible process – all the thoughtful, creative ideas that the braintrust at the agency came up with were shunned by the artistic director (who also happened to be the company’s founder, president, and resident micromanager of all things). I left that company before the decision had been made, but long after the critical date for having a name had passed. Many months later I saw they had decided on the name that the agency (and I) had preferred all along.

The unappealing side of the culture of a company founded by one man who thinks the world of himself was also explored in the article about IKEA. Everyone loves IKEA, but the idea of having to learn IKEAspeak and the Founder’s dicta to work there smacked of the experience of working at a theme park like DisneyWorld. Still, someone is still allowed to think for him/herself at IKEA, otherwise they would not have such innovative designs. The article afforded a very interesting insight into the history and making of an international success story.

Most of all, I liked the article by Atul Gawande (as I always do) about applying the concept of professional coaching to his profession, surgery. His goal is to become the best surgeon he can be, even after he himself felt that he had stopped improving. It’s an appealing thought, especially as I am making efforts to be the best that I can be, and to improve my life and attitude in general. Although I don’t have a coach, putting myself in the coaching role of my own life from time to time has given me another perspective from which to evaluate things I’ve done and things done to me, and to learn from those experiences.

September 26, 2011 issue, completed August 14, 2012

Style Issue. I really enjoyed the read about Jean-Paul Gaultier, especially since I had the pleasure of seeing the amazing exhibition of his work that premiered at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts last summer. I think I spent a good five to seven minutes in front of the mannequins that they made “come alive” with projections, wondering whether they were real or not (or thinking some were fake, but perhaps one was real). It had been a long time since a museum exhibition had truly wowed me, but this one did. The immense crowd of people on the street to get in also heightened the sense of excitement, of the feeling that this was a happening. I remember wishing I had something striped but a little off that would pay homage to the artist without completely ripping off his clothes (which of course are beyond my means) – maybe a striped sailor shirt that was elongated into a dress, for example, or a top where the stripes were a little skewed, or something similar. In the end I didn’t have time to find anything like that, but by the end of that summer, I owned at least four striped items that would have been perfect. Anyway, the craftsmanship that was on display in the exhibition was phenomenal. It made me want to be able to buy couture just to be able to appreciate the hand-placed and sewn buttons that made up the hem of a pleated skirt, or the incredible detail that went into an evening gown. Wearing a gown like one of his, how could you help but feel that the ball is revolving around you?

September 19, 2011 issue, completed August 8, 2012

This issue included an article about the murder of a journalist in Pakistan, which was fascinating and built on some of the material I had mentioned previously about the duplicitousness of the Pakistani government and army in their dealings with the United States. It seems almost impossible that the raid that killed Osama bin Laden could have been successful if the US has collaborated with Pakistan. Relationships there between those in power and those who would bomb all non-believers to kingdom come seem to be very twisted there. Although keeping track of the unfamiliar-sounding names and places was a challenge at times, the article was a fascinating read.

Also, every time I read Alice Munro I think, if I were trying to become a writer of fiction and I were to read her, I would just give up right away, knowing I could never be that good. Here she is writing about life in the sleepy small Ontario town of her youth and somehow it still ends up entertaining and gripping. Not so the fiction story in this issue, that I thought was rather silly: an imagined diary of Pat Nixon, former First Lady. Maybe I am just too unfamiliar with the life of Richard Nixon to “get” it. I had hoped it would be something accessible and entertaining, but it just seemed odd. Much preferred the article about Tony Bennett and Lady Gaga recording together, although my opinion of Mr. Bennett is forever tinged with an ick factor since learning that he married his wife when she was eighteen and he was fifty-nine, and that actually they were first in the same room together when he met his wife’s mother when she was two months pregnant with her. Clearly they paid no heed to the rule of thumb for knowing if a person is too young (or too old) for you – divide your age by two and add seven, and that is the minimum age you should be considering. (Perform the reverse operation to obtain the maximum age.) With those guidelines, Mr. Bennett shouldn’t have even looked at someone under the age of 36, and she should not have gone with anyone older than 29. Though I suppose now, with her being 45 and he being 86, it’s all worked out just fine for them.

September 12, 2011 issue, completed August 6, 2012

Inevitably, this issue commemorated the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, with personal stories about where people were when they hit and how they were affected, as well as rather depressing essays on the state of America now, 10 years later. Maybe it's because I don't live in America, but I couldn't be bothered to read them - to someone looking in at the country from the outside, many of America's problems seem kind of obvious. Also, I found the whole commemoration of 9/11 lacking in its ability to re-create the feeling we all felt when it happened. I guess it was one of the first world disasters that I lived through and that impacted me the way world wars might have affected those in older generations. Though I was far from New York and watched it all unfold on TV, I will never forget that day. It was the day I learned what it meant to be so awed by something so great and terrible that you fall to your knees. You read about people falling on their knees in religious material, including the Bible, but in this jaded age, it takes a lot to actually make it happen. But it happened to me as I fell in front of the TV when I saw the South Tower fall. That night, a bunch of friends and I gathered in a bar (we could do that then, in our lives before children) and tried to make sense of what we had witnessed. The next morning, I cried. The feeling was a kind of mourning, a mourning for an innocence and openness and trust that our society had forever lost that day. Although time has diluted the feeling, it is still there, most notably when we fly, but really in any public situation. We wondered that night whether it was not selfish and cruel to bring children into a world like this. However, many times since I have said to myself, perhaps it is selfish and cruel not to, because if we do not create good future citizens to make the world a better place, the bad ones (and the mediocre ones) will make it a worse one.

There was a book review of "The Art of Fielding" by Chad Harbach which, in and of itself, would not have been notable or have piqued my interest about the book (it involves baseball, and I have not cared about baseball since the Blue Jays last won the World Series in 1993), were it not for a fascinating read I enjoyed in the October 2011 Vanity Fair. That article told the story of how that book came to be, from a broke young author who wrote it over 10 years to his getting an agent and eventually a publisher. The book review seemed to confirm the mania surrounding the release and the enthusiasm the VF story writer (a friend of Harbach's) has for the book. I'll be picking it up to read this fall. Part of my other, tangentially related, project to read more books. 

September 5, 2011 issue, completed August 4, 2012

I really like the cover illustration of this issue - it has a real end-of-summer, back-to-reality feel. That is not to say that I am ready to go back to reality! I am making great strides on my New Yorker project while on vacation. Amazing what time one can find when all the day-to-day obligations of life are cast aside. This issue was somewhat philosophical and at times, hard to digest; the article on Tim Ferriss was rather straightforward, and I had read a little about his "4-Hour Workweek" online. I think the gist of the book is not that you work 4 hours a week, it's that you are your own boss and the master of your own time. Certainly a very appealing proposition. I tried to wrap my head around the article about Derek Parfit, but only partially succeeded. The main thing I came away with was how far away from my own existence the idea of making a life of ideas and theories about humanity and morality was from the options I thought were before me when I grew up. I hope that when my children are teenagers I can expose them to all kinds of potential careers so that they are best able to make the choice that is right for them. The idea of becoming a philosopher just never occurred to me. Not that I'm saying I would be any good at it, just that I would have liked to consider the option, and decide against it.

August 29, 2011 issue, completed August 3, 2012

This issue included the first story I remember seeing about the conflict in Syria. Given the horrific state of affairs there now, and how little I understand about the reasons why we and the UN are not in there extracting the corrupt regime like a bad tooth, I am glad to have this first, rather cursory article and hope to read more over the coming months so that I can learn more about the parties involved in what is going on over there. The article about Rin-Tin-Tin was informative and heartwarming, and I greatly enjoyed reading about Dickens Camp and learning more about the life of Dickens. When I am caught up on my New Yorkers I think I will read some Dickens. I haven't read enough to form my own opinion of him, but most things I read say that he was a master, perhaps on a level with Shakespeare. Worth a deeper read, for sure.

Just in case I'm creating the impression that I love everything that I read in the New Yorker, I'll state for the record that I found the fiction story really annoying and boring. Twice as long as it needed to be. Also, I skipped over the Clarence Thomas thing - don't really have much interest in him.

August 15 & 22, 2011 issue, completed August 2, 2012

This issue got everyone talking about the prospect of eating insects. General consensus: never gonna happen. Now, keep in mind that most of my current party of companions wouldn't eat shrimp or lobster, much less grubs, but still. I eat all shellfish and still, with what I like to think of as an open mind, I couldn't imagine eating bugs. The article suggests that it's perhaps because we're squeamish about eating legs, eyes, guts -- but I know that that's not necessarily it in my case. In Japan I ate tiny fish that from a distance resembled bean sprouts, but turned out to have tiny black eyes that I mistook for pepper at first. And yet I ate them. Why? Because they were fish, and because they were dead. I think the idea of the squirming, live insect is the first hurdle to acceptance. Certainly the one time in Japan when I saw a live shrimp scooped out of a tank with a net and beheaded in front of me to become squirming, spastic sushi (this is a delicacy called "dancing fish,") my fascination was tempered with a certain disgust. When I hear of grubs, larvae, worms and the like, they are always squirming, living. However, if I am being honest, even if they are dead there are certain things - the texture of the crunch of their shells, their guts - that will be off-putting. With flies, their association with rotting flesh will never be overcome.

Other great articles in here included the exploration of how Neanderthal man was different - and perhaps not so different - from us, and the discussion of atheism. My personal religion comes from "The Sweet Smell of Success." "There is a Brotherhood of Man:" we are all connected by how we behave toward each other, and we are a bit like the Borg, in that our greater well-being as a species on this earth is predicated on how we treat each other. Treat each other badly, and we all suffer. Treat each other with respect, and with regard for morals, and we are all better off. The existence of a higher being is neither implied nor denied. Just no way to know if He or She is really there or not. All we can know is, we are here, and there are seven billion of us, and wow, that is something.



August 8, 2011 issue, completed August 2, 2012

The most gripping article in this issue for me was the account of the SEAL raid that killed Osama bin Laden, which was so well-written in terms of suspense and excitement that I could not put it down. It seemed to me that an elite squad on the ground was the obvious solution to how to get him - that an air raid would be useless and would probably result in loss of innocent lives, and that doing nothing would have been equally useless. The whole mission came off as something that had been supported and mandated by a leader (Obama) who saw the best of the options presented to him and then had the privilege of actually watching in real time as it was carried out. These elite squads are trained over and over for exactly this sort of mission, which begs the question, why don't we use it more? Why wasn't it used in Libya for example, and, assuming that war were to be officially declared with Syria, there too? The soldiers seemed much braver and their methods more justified than in other missions, such as air strikes. The only people who died in this mission were bad guys or their wives (not exactly innocent bystanders). The article also made me think more of the less-than-happy so-called alliance between the US and Pakistan. An article I read recently by the much-missed Christopher Hitchens spelled out the hypocrisy and duplicitousness of Pakistan's relations with the US in great detail as well. With friends like them, who needs enemies?

I also really enjoyed the discussion of biographies of Oscar Wilde, and learning more about him. And I must confess, I attempted to read the review of the two poetry books but came away from the experienced more confused than ever about how to "read" poetry. It just never seems to make any sense to me. And the article about Lucretius was also interesting. How many times was that ancient work almost lost to the whims of history? And what other great works from his era were condemned to oblivion - or, more tantalizing to imagine, lie hidden somewhere, still waiting to be rediscovered in modern times?

August 1, 2011 issue, completed July 30, 2012

Again, not that much that I found compelling in this issue, although the photos of some of the personalities involved in the Egyptian revolution were quite arresting. The article about refugee applicants (in the States I guess they are referred to as asylum applicants) was notable for its honesty - I think if someone like my mother, who thinks most refugee claimants are likely liars trying to play the system, were to read it she would think that it vindicated her opinion quite well. On the other hand, as the writer observes towards the end, their lives are usually frought with perils at home, and the main reason that they lie to embellish their horror stories is because such drama is expected of them. Those of us lucky enough to be born into a free society (and many of us among those even luckier, to be born in a position of privilege) are not really qualified to judge the degree of wretchedness of other people's lives that is required for refugee admission into this country (or the USA), however.

One thing I must mention, since it is so exceedingly rare in the New Yorker: they spelled Steve Carell's surname wrong in the review of "Crazy, Stupid, Love" in the Movie Review section (sorry, The Current Cinema). Not once like a typo, but three times, including the caption under the illustration. Shocking lack of attention to detail, New Yorker!!

July 25, 2011 issue, completed July 29, 2012

There wasn't anything that really stood out in this issue, but nevertheless I ended up reading almost all of it. Considering that I am now yet again more than one year behind, I must have found each article compelling enough not to yield to the pressure to skip it. The article about tiny houses reminded me of my childhood desire to have a home of one's own, whether it be a playhouse or a perfect, proper little real house. There was such a little guest house at a farm we had when I was a kid and I loved playing in it. Recently my 6-year-old daughter and I were in a shopping mall when she saw a display of tents. She ran right into the biggest one and asked if she could buy it. Before I could answer she read the price and started calculating how long it would take to save her allowance to be able to buy it. I realized that the desire to have your own little roof over your head is one she shares as well. I had thought the article would be about living in smaller dwellings in order to be located close to downtown and thereby avoid commuting to suburbs, something that is becoming popular in cities like Vancouver, but it was more about some kind of forced asceticism of living small. While I don't really get the appeal for adults, I do think that if I had heard of the possibility of ordering a tiny house when I was a child, I would have chosen the one I wanted and started calculating ways that I could afford the fifty-four thousand dollars or whatever the cost was to be.

July 11 & 18 issue, completed July 17, 2012

OK, back on track with this double issue! David Sedaris: hilarious as usual. Just writes the things that we all think we experience them (in this instance, reading language guides), but somehow writes them in a way that is so universally funny. I got to see his comedy show live a couple of years ago here and it was the first time in a long time I had laughed till it hurt at a show. I had read many of the pieces that he read aloud from past New Yorkers and yet when he read them, they were fresh and funny all over again. And rather than stifling a quiet giggle while reading his words on the subway or in a coffee shop, we could laugh out loud in the theatre among friends.

I was eager to read the profile on Sheryl Sandberg in this issue, as I have admired her for a long time. However either the profile didn't really scratch the surface or she is not as profound a person as I had believed. I was looking for more depth about the career vs. mom issue, but it was kind of glossed over. Her only advice seemed to be to a) find the perfect husband and b) be in the job you want before having kids. Not really useful day-to-day juggling advice, if you ask me. One time in Gwyneth Paltrow's e-newsletter GOOP I read some advice from a mutual friend of theirs (Gwyneth's and Sheryl's) who worked for a VC in California and who had some great tips for the mom working full time who still did "the school run" (as GP puts it). Now SHE would be a good person to profile. Though I suppose as she is not the COO of Facebook, she would not be as interesting to the average New Yorker reader.

The article about technology guru Jaron Lanier was far more thought-provoking. First of all, anyone who could become as self-actualized and successful as he has with that weird of a childhood deserves a ton of props. Second, his insights about technology were very interesting to read. People can and do get too wrapped up in virtual worlds, such as social networks. Last week a tragic story was in the news about a man who was going through a nasty divorce. He and his soon to be ex traded barbs about each other on Facebook. In the middle were two kids aged 9 and 13. One day the bodies of the father and the two children were found burned to death in a fire in his garage. The mother's postings on Facebook were basically as follows: "Fire on my ex's street - hope everything is OK." "The police are coming to my door..." "My ex has killed my children." I mean, SERIOUSLY? Your whole life has come crashing down around you and you are posting these updates on Facebook? I could never relate to that. And I'm glad to see that some of the people who helped dream up the technology can't either.

The article on the Rwandan cyclists was also entertaining. I have been reading Gourevitch's reports from and about Rwanda for years now it seems and they are always so effective at painting a picture of a country, and a society, whose existence after the genocide of 1994 is nothing short of a miracle. That the country could still even be on the map is amazing in itself; that people have gotten on with their lives, and that feel-good stories such as this one about a cycling Team Rwanda are taking place, is truly inspiring.

July 4 issue, completed July 15, 2012

So here we are again, more than a year behind on the New Yorker and more than three months into the project. No ground gained, and in fact, about a month of ground lost. How to explain this sad state of affairs? Doing so requires some uncomfortable introspection. First, school ended, thereby taking away a big part of what keeps me busy and therefore gives me a sense of value. I have been struggling with my self-worth ever since stopping full-time work last August. Although on the face of it I know that being a stay-at-home mom is a very valuable thing, just  knowing that a stranger isn't paying me for my contribution to something has preyed on my self-esteem, more than I would probably admit to anyone I know. I don't mean to present this as an excuse, but the lack of direction did kind of drag me down and away from the things I enjoy, including working out, reading, and writing. Since reading the New Yorker and treadmill running used to be simultaneous activities, with one gone so went the other. In the past week or so I have snapped out of it and hereby pledge to renew my commitment to the project with more fervour and intensity.

This issue sat at the bottom of my purse for weeks. When I finally did get around to reading it, the article about the Chinese personality Han Han had the greatest impact. The dating services article was interesting, but Han was way more thought-provoking. How had he dared and succeeded to make his name as a creative and political force in a country as repressive as China? And what holds me back from making an effort to put my creative ideas out there, when I live in one of the most open and permissive societies in the world?

June 27 issue, completed June 6, 2012

Again, the story by Alice Munro, "Gravel," which tells the story of the death of a child from the point of view of her sibling, affected me the most profoundly in this issue. I find Munro to be an extraordinarily moving writer. It almost makes me want to pack up writing before I even begin, as I can't imagine ever being as good a storyteller as she is. However, I have come to appreciate that writing is not about being better or not as good as someone else, but rather, just having something to say and a will to express it. Not knowing how it will affect a reader, if it has one, is part of the thrill and the scariness of putting it out there. It is so much easier to doubt and to dismiss one's abilities than it is to actually try. So, I'm trying.

Also, I finished this story on my way back from New York where I had the fun experience of trying out for Jeopardy!. Who knows if they will ever call, but just being asked to try out was exciting. It felt amazing to be in a room where you truly sensed that everyone else in the room was at least as smart, as curious about the world, as engaged as you are, if not far more so. Of the 19 of us auditioning during that session, there were perhaps only two who, while not lacking in knowledge or intelligence, might not have had the personalities that would make them a great fit for the show. The rest of them were amazing. I truly have no idea how I stacked up in comparison to them. All I know for sure is: I was the only Canadian.

June 13 & 20 issue, completed May 30, 2012

It was hard to find the time to write about this issue. It was also something that I delayed because I was so profoundly affected by the article entitled "The Aquarium," which was about the death of a child. The author tried to channel his pain at losing his baby girl to cancer by placing a focus on the way his other, older daughter (who was just shy of three years old) experienced the tragedy. Within just 100 days of receiving the diagnosis that their baby had a rare form of cancer, she was dead. It was absolutely devastating to read. Every parent's nightmare.

Shortly after I finished this magazine, friends of friends whom I do not know were woken up in their bed by their 4-year-old and their 2-year-old who told them that their 3-month-old brother, also in the bed, wasn't moving. He had died during the night, presumably of SIDS. The horror of losing a child is something that I think about fairly often and this case, happening to a family that could easily have been mine, was painful to think about. Always the instinct is to rage that this should not be the way it happens - that yes, we are all prepared to accept the sad but inevitable day when we will bury our parents, but no, it should never be that we should have to accept the task of burying a child. We had them, after all, to replace us.  

The two stories forced the unpleasant contemplation of which was worse - watching your child suffer and die over the course of just a few months, always holding out that slim hope that she might survive, or just waking up one day and finding him dead with no warning, out of the blue. I think that the shock of the latter would still be better than watching the horrible, senseless suffering of the former. Although you could never understand why your child was taken from you so suddenly, at least the death was peaceful without much suffering. The absolute worst situation would have to be a sudden death where you know your child suffered and/or was in agony. Such as would be the case with an accident, or abduction and murder of a child.

Not really the kinds of things you want to think about when reading a magazine presumably for entertainment, but there it is. And now that I've written about it, perhaps I can move along with this project. It was stalled for a long time as I hesitated to write about this difficult topic.

June 6, 2011 issue, completed May 20, 2012

This issue had two interesting articles for me: the one about Mitt Romney's universal health insurance success in Massachusetts, and the one about the value of college. Both helped me to gain a greater understanding of current events. In the case of Mitt Romney, I was pleasantly surprised to learn that he was progressive and sensible enough to pass into law the concept of universal health coverage in Massachusetts when he was governor. It's easy to understand why this would serve as a model for Obama's health-care initiative. What is more disappointing, though not as surprising, is the pathetic and twisted efforts of the Republican party to demonize what is clearly Romney's greatest political achievement - and that he has to distance himself from it, even deny it, in order to keep the GOP happy.

I used to wish that some other (unelectable) candidate would be chosen to represent the Republicans in November, but now I'm glad it's Romney. Maybe once he is officially the candidate he can devise a platform that will put a stop to all this ridiculous condemnation of policies that are actually good for society, simply because they convey more authority to a central federal government. At some point, the government has to actually do its job, which, unfortunately for those who would like it to be otherwise, is to govern. To make society and democracy work. At any rate, it will make for a much more exciting contest this fall than if it had been Obama vs. some (right-)wingnut. The pathetic part is watching Romney try to twist himself into something he is not just to please the Party's extremists.

The thoughtful article by Louis Menand on colleges was timely for me as I live in Quebec, and at the moment, students have been protesting almost nightly, and sometimes violently, for more than three months. They also declared themselves "on strike" -- though I guess they don't understand that you actually need to have a job before you can be on strike from it, and avoiding attending classes that you have already paid for is actually referred to as a boycott. At first the protest was about proposed tuition hikes that would increase fees by $325/year over the next 5 years -- with the final result still far below what any other university or college student elsewhere in North America would pay (students currently pay about 10% of the actual cost of their education; the government foots the bill for the rest).

Then, this protest morphed into a campaign to make all post-secondary education universally free to all. When the government offered to negotiate, and proposed spreading the increase out over 7 years instead of 5, the students conceded nothing, stomping their feet like bratty children and refusing to accept anything less than a freeze on tuition. They put the proposal to a perfunctory vote of students even as they recommended that they vote against it, and when they did, they took to the streets again. Did I mention Quebec taxpayers are the most heavily taxed citizens in North America and, oh yeah, the province is close to bankrupt?

Never mind, the protesters continued, and got more and more violent. The many students who did not agree with the protests and who wanted to complete their year obtained court injunctions clearing the way for them to attend classes -- only to be threatened and harassed by fellow students in masks flashing the lights on and off and calling them "scabs," until the "poor teachers were so stressed" they had to call the classes off anyway. The boiling point was a couple of weeks ago when four students set off smokebombs in the subway during morning rush hour, shutting down the system and making thousands of terrified commuters late on their way to work (where they pay some of their salary in taxes to send the ungrateful little boors to university). The calls for the government to act were deafening, and finally act it did, passing a strongly-worded temporary law that requires peaceful protesters to provide their planned protest location and route at least 8 hours beforehand, or face heavy fines.

So now the protest is about our "totalitarian" government's efforts to take away democratic freedoms such as the freedom of assembly and freedom of speech. Of course, the Bill says nothing of the sort. I was horrified to see that Avaaz.org is circulating a petition agains this "dictatorial" government. Makes me question the legitimacy of all the other righteous-seeming causes I have signed my name to with Avaaz. Never again.

Louis Menand argues that the value of a university education is on its way to meaningless when you let everyone in, and that the value of the education they actually receive is lessened. I would think that would be even more true if it costs nothing and everyone can go if they choose to. Perhaps today's students will realize this, but likely not. All I know is, if the government caves to them, I will take to the streets. Maybe a general strike on having to pay taxes so that students can go to university free is in order.  

May 30, 2011 issue, completed May 11, 2012

This issue had a couple of highlights for me: the article on acai berries, whose popularity I had not understood until now. Reading the article made me think about how all great local food discoveries, no matter where in the world they originate, somehow make it into some kind of food fad - whether because they have health benefits (purported or real) or they are economical, or are low-calorie,  or, quite simply, because they are delicious. Such is the case right now with Greek yogurt. I am not complaining, because I am a huge fan, and Greek yogurt's massive popularity makes it easier and cheaper for me to buy it. However, it did cross my mind that when I was in Greece in 1996 savouring the delicious local yaourti me meli (with honey), why did I think to myself, "ah, what a wonderful memory of Greece this will be," rather than "Wow, how can I mainstream the production of this in North America and make millions of dollars?" Clearly as a marketing graduate, I am somewhat lacking in the "big ideas" department.

The other highlight for me was the article about the mentally ill woman who refused to accept her diagnosis but despite her obvious illness was released from hospital without her family's knowledge, and who then proceeded to break into an abandoned farmhouse and attempt to subsist on apples through the winter, eventually dying of starvation in mid-January. It was fascinating to read the author's re-creation of what the woman must have been experiencing in her solitude in the house, based solely on the journal entries she wrote while there. The saddest thing is that she was clearly intelligent, but could not focus that intelligence because of her refusal to deal with her illness. I have been thinking of mental illness a fair bit lately, partly because I read this article and partly because in the news this week a schizophrenic who decapitated and ate the flesh of a fellow passenger on a Greyhound bus in Canada a few years ago has just been released from mental hospital on day passes. He says now that he believed the poor guy was an alien and that the voices in his head told him to kill him. The mother of the victim believes the killer should be kept locked of for the safety of society. Last week two tourists from Toronto were killed by a schizophrenic woman in the States. There is no question that the "voices" that schizophrenics hear can lead them to do dangerous, unpredictable things if untreated; they can pose a great danger to society. The problem is that it is so easy for schizophrenics to stop taking medication.

I lived with a schizophrenic for a couple of years in my 20s. When he moved into the apartment I shared with him and one other person, he was a kind, thoughtful, hilarious, energetic, fun-loving guy and a good friend. He was getting roles as an actor in Toronto and life was going well for him. So well, in fact, that he decided to stop taking his medication. The first day that he didn't take it, he was fine. Same thing the next day. Soon he decided he was "cured" and didn't need it anymore, since he felt just as fine as the day before.

The problem was that the voices came back. They come back so sneakily, so stealthily that the sick person doesn't even notice them at first. They manifest as a weird "feeling" about someone or something, or a generalized or specific paranoia. But by then, the sufferer doesn't have the self-awareness to know that this is what they are experiencing. They don't even think about going back on the medication. Instead, my roommate would wake me up at 3 am when he got home from his job at a bar (steadily being demoted from bartender to runner to busboy to fired) and keep me up half the night telling me how every person he had seen that night had looked at him and whispered that they wanted to kill him, how everyone just seemed to be looking at him waiting with eager anticipation for his death, etc. etc. We knew he was sick, but he didn't. Eventually, after being fired and losing any interest in him that the theatre world had held, he had to move home because he couldn't pay the rent. But once there his parents could not convince him to go back on the medication, and he grew worse. Finally he lost it on Christmas Day and they had to have him committed - but you can only hold someone against their will for 72 hours. After years of moving in and out of places and jobs, causing no end of torment for his family, he finally agreed to take the medication again.

And then he was fine. But he wasn't the same person anymore. He went from being colourful, fun, creative, the life of the party, and one of the best actors I have ever seen perform to being bland, ordinary, boring. He knew it, too. He stayed back on the meds for many years, but the last time I saw him, which was 9 years ago, he was definitely off them again. He dropped by my new apartment unannounced on a warm March day with no shirt on, covered in mud, and explained that he had just been in a fight with someone who didn't like his singing as he walked down the street. Since then I get the occasional random message from him on Facebook, rambling on about something that happened close to 20 years ago now. When I go to reply less than a day later, he has deleted his online profile. This has happened twice now.

Schizophrenia is a horrible, debilitating disease. I'm not sure that everyone who has it can be trusted to self-medicate daily without fail. I am not convinced that this killer who beheaded the guy on the bus is no threat to society. I hope I'm wrong.

May 23, 2011 issue, completed May 4, 2012

I thought the cover of this issue was a nice one, paying tribute to the centennial of the New York Public Library. But I admit, I sped through this one after spending too long with the previous week's issue. I enjoyed the article about growing meat the best - pleasantly surprised to learn that PETA supports the research in this field - and I do hope that scientists find a way to make it work in my lifetime. I also enjoyed the articles on Clarence Darrow and Joseph Brodsky, neither of whom I knew much about before now. I have to confess to being completely puzzled by the ending of the fiction story, "The Trusty." Was the protagonist about to be killed? By whom? Did the girl Lucy double-cross him? Even reading it through a few times, I still don't get it, and I guess since I'm the only one reading this issue close to a full year after its publication, there is no one to ask so I never will. This kind of thing doesn't happen often, but I hate it when it does. I feel like the rest of the world is in on a joke that I don't get. It happens all the time when it comes to New Yorker cartoons, but thanks to Seinfeld I know I'm not alone in that regard, so I'm OK with it.

May 16, 2011 issue, completed April 30, 2012

OK, this is just not fair. How is ANYONE expected to get through an issue like this in just one week? Much less get ahead in back issues when faced with a doozy like this? I know, I know, it covered a major world event -- the demise of Osama bin Laden -- but I would be interested to know how much content this issue would have had anyway. Certainly it was hard to choose articles to skip, although I did decide that an exploration of whether the US should remain in Afghanistan was good for a pass, considering the decisions that have been made since it was published. However I pretty much read everything else. The article about PepsiCo was interesting, if predictable -- although I'm not sure if edible drinks and drinkable snacks are going to catch on, at least not in my house and circle of friends. As usual, Malcolm Gladwell did not disappoint in his article about innovations and people who had the vision to take inventions to practical use; the article was probably even more poignant given that Steve Jobs' legacy has been so thoroughly discussed in the media since his death (five months after this article appeared) .

But my favourite article -- especially since my kids are huge fans -- was Anthony Lane's profile of Pixar. I have been watching a lot of "Cars" and "Cars 2" these days, and hearing about the perfectionist attention to detail that is given to every scene in those movies gave me a whole new appreciation of them. While the article covered the craft of animation quite a bit, I found it paid short shrift to the movies' writers, whom I think deserve commendation for creating movies that are at once entertaining for kids and adults alike -- from little kids to parents to grandparents and everyone in between. I never fully appreciated this until I experienced some of the truly bad children's programs and movies out there. Pixar movies really are in a league of their own, and not just in terms of animation. You inspire me, Pixar movie writers.  

May 9, 2011 issue, completed April 20, 2012

This issue was kind of a fast read...I read with amusement the article about "The Pioneer Woman" blog, because the irony of blogging one's lifestyle for profit is that if you're successful at doing so, that very lifestyle ultimately seems to disappear. I also really enjoyed the profile on Jane Fonda, who is exactly one week older than my dad. Because of this, I always know how old she is - and am therefore amazed by how great she looks and how modern many of her attitudes are. I mean, not only is she 74 and awesome, but she didn't even create the famous Jane Fonda workout until she was 44! Somehow, because I feel that by being born a week away from my dad she has some kind of affinity with him, she thereby has some kind of affinity with me - which makes no sense logically. It makes me think that at 40, maybe my greatest successes lie ahead of me as well. Or that - even though I'm dealing with a totally different set of genes here! - I could look that good and be that healthy and strong at 74, and beyond.

I had hoped that the article on reality TV would help me gain some understanding of how this genre can possibly appeal to so many and why the most asinine reality TV shows continue to be produced and bought by the networks. Unfortunately, it didn't.

Glad I got this issue wrapped up fairly quickly because I took a glance at the next one and it's gonna be a biggie.

May 2, 2011 issue, completed April 18, 2012

It took me 8 days to read the May 2, 2011 issue, which means, again, that I am not keeping up with the schedule I will need to maintain if I am to achieve my goal. I'm counting on catching up during some future vacation or road trip. This issue, with its cover and inside story about last year's Royal Wedding, reminded me of how busy and stressed out I was at that time. On the date of the Royal Wedding I was traveling for work, away yet again from my young family and leaving my husband to deal with no end of stress. I'm so glad we decided to change the way we live since then, and things have improved immeasurably. Note to Will and Kate: marriage is hard - even for people as fortunate as yourselves. It's work. But ideally, you love the work!

Anyway, in terms of the issue, I skipped a few articles but the one that really stuck with me was the one about building a quantum computer. I really appreciate the way that the New Yorker can sometimes convey the most complex concepts and arguments in a cogent, understandable way. Such was the case here. After years of watching "The Big Bang Theory" and listening to them refer to Schrodinger's Cat and other physics-related theories, I now "get" what quantum physicists are trying to do. It was a fascinating article that got me thinking that there is a fine line between really, really brilliant and completely nuts. Also, I wondered what makes some kids (mostly boys, truth be told) go into physics and/or advanced math and obtain Ph.D.s in quantum mechanics and the like, spending their lives in universities trying to prove theories or build conceptual computers, while others think, "what geeks" and go into something else, perhaps something more practical and likely to get them a good job, never realizing that quantum mechanics would have been something that they loved. In a way, I think it must take enormous strength of character and certainty about what you want to do in life to go into such a field of study, given the societal pressures to be well-rounded and useful. I have to envy that kind of certainty and the satisfaction of having found your passion, especially at a young age. Not that I'm sure I would have wanted to be a quantum physicist, but how would I have known if I did?

Not off to a great start - April 25, 2011 issue, completed April 10, 2012

Well, it's been over a week and I've just finished the April 25, 2011 issue. Seeing as how I should be averaging 2 issues per week, I am not off to a great start. However, considering the long holiday weekend with visiting family staying in our home, the busy work schedule I've had this past week, and the mundane obligations of every day, I think it's a wonder I got through it at all.

In fact, the only reason that I did is that I have become adept at reading the New Yorker while on the treadmill at the gym, running at a steady pace (ie., doesn't work with speed intervals). This has the twin benefits of advancing me in my quest to get caught up on the New Yorker while distracting me from the length and monotony of a treadmill training run. I should mention that this example of multitasking is only possible with the New Yorker -- the binding of most other magazines make them susceptible to falling over or off the machine, and the slow rate of page turnover means you're not always flipping through ads to get to the copy you want to read. Plus, it's so easy to get lost in an article or story, you don't notice that twenty minutes at 6 miles an hour have gone by!

While I appreciated that I was reading last year's issue with the Easter cover during this year's Easter week - thereby appearing completely normal and up to date to anyone with nothing more than a passing interest in what I was reading - I realized as soon as I flipped through it that there were no major articles that I wanted to skip. At first I thought I would not care about fracking for oil in North Dakota, but since fracking has been in the news lately, I thought reading the article would be a good way to learn what fracking actually is. And it was. Normally, I would skip an article about professional basketball, but the one in this issue was really about a team's female coach, so I read that too -- fascinating. However, the most interesting article for me was the one about the scientist studying the variability of our perception of time. The fiction story was good too.

I swore it would never happen again...and now it has.

I guess I knew it was coming for some time now. I was falling farther and farther behind...between commitments with kids, work projects, volunteering, and the everyday stuff that makes up life, I'm hopelessly backlogged.

It is now April 2012 and I am still reading a New Yorker from April 2011. I am officially a year behind on the New Yorker.

If we are going to be precise about it, I'm not technically a full year behind. This morning I just finished reading the "Journeys" issue of April 18, 2011 - a special issue which is always daunting because it's packed with more stories and articles that usual, almost all of which are unfortunately fascinating. I say "unfortunately" because I know when I get an issue like "Journeys," it will take me more than a week to get through it, and I will fall even further behind on my New Yorkers. It has taken me nearly a month to get through the issue of April 18, 2011.

I'm sure I'm not the only subscriber who has to live with the guilt and the suffering of this problem on an ongoing basis. Certainly there must be a significant percentage of subscribers who, like me, are chronically behind on their reading of their beloved magazine, not for any want of interest, but just because it is so difficult to find the time to read each issue to the degree we would like to in the short week before the next issue arrives.

Most of us, I'm sure, are a month or two behind in their reading. Nothing that a couple of weeks' vacation at the cottage or on the beach couldn't take care of. But how many of us are a full YEAR behind? And is there any hope of catching up at that point?

I have been a New Yorker subscriber since graduating from university, in 1993. There were times where I was one of those subscribers who was two, maybe three, months behind in reading the issues - a small backlog characterized by a short stack of magazines beside the bedside table. I had a rule to read every issue cover to cover, even if I thought an article might be boring, with the reasoning that I would learn something interesting from each story. Over the years, busy jobs, home improvement projects, events to plan, and later, children, got in the way of my enjoyment of the New Yorkers. I felt like they were another chore to get through, a sentencing away of my free time. I had also fallen more than a year behind.

So I relaxed my rule: I could skip some articles if they were a) about something that was really of no interest to me, or b) if they covered current world events that, by the time I got around to reading them, were of course no longer current. Who needs to read about the Democratic leadership race when Obama is already ensconced in the White House?

This new perspective allowed me to catch up a little on the backlog. More importantly, it restored my love and enjoyment of reading the New Yorker. Within a few months I was down to about nine months of back issues and I swore I would never allow myself to get more than a year behind ever again. If I did, I would throw out the now-towering pile of unread, unloved New Yorkers and start fresh.

But when it happened -- or when I could tell it was going to happen soon -- I knew I couldn't go through with it. Just as I could never throw out perfectly nutritious food, I could not throw out the pages of insightful, and often witty, articles and stories that nourished my intellect and understanding of our world. And so I came up with the idea of dedicating a year to getting through the backlog, to getting caught up on the issues that will continue to come in over the next year. By making it a project, a cause, with a blog holding me to account, perhaps I will once and for all conquer the pile of magazines beside the bed.

This blog is about my one-year effort to try to catch up on the New Yorker. I am giving myself one year to catch up on a year's worth of issues and be fully up-to-date; in other words, I'll be reading two years' worth of New Yorkers in the span of 12 months. By April 1, 2013, I will be happily reading the current issue.

I'll be posting random thoughts and comments on what I'm reading, as well as regular updates on my progress.

Kim Darlington
Montreal, Quebec, April 1, 2012