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.