Another Day in the Country
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© Another Day in the Country
For almost 25 years, I’ve been writing this column. Surely I’ve mentioned that magazines are something I’ve long enjoyed.
My enjoyment began in childhood, reading through Grandpa Schubert’s Saturday Evening Post (where I first read fiction and loved the cartoons), my Dad’s Newsweek (where he read the world news and used it for inspiration for his bombastic sermons every week in church), and Seventeen (where I learned about the amazing convenience of Tampax).
Some of the magazines I’ve loved are gone like — Life, Look, and Geo. Sixty-five magazines have been going, though, for more than 100 years. The New Yorker, Time, and Reader’s Digest are hanging in there, and new magazines like The Week have joined the parade.
Magazines once were the major source of information for a lot of people. Now, it’s television or Google.
Magazines inspired, informed, intrigued, and kept you in the flow of things. People trusted the content of a well-known publication.
One surprising statistic I discovered when I checked magazine facts is that 95% of people younger than 25 read magazines.
When my friends stopped writing letters, I started ordering more magazines to read because a perfectly lovely mailbox could not be wasted on just junk mail.
Publishing companies picked up on the fact that retirees had more time to read and began offering “senior” prices — some as low as $5 for a whole year’s subscription. Who can resist?
I’ve just subscribed to a new magazine — at least it’s new to me — called The New Scientist.
Discovering this unusual magazine in my mailbox unexpectedly, I thought it looked like the kind of periodical I’d order for my grandson.
“Read this issue and see what you think of the content,” I said to myself.
So, I did, and I found something interesting on every single page — which goes to show you that sending off a free issue pays dividends. This freebie led me to order a subscription.
For a couple of years now, I’ve subscribed to a Buddhist magazine. I think I told you that my grandson saw the periodical and said, “So now you’re a Buddhist?”
The irony is that I’ve never been very good at meditating, but I explained to him that even reading about meditation was calming to my soul, and that the content of the articles always was uplifting — which is something you can’t say about every magazine.
Now that I’ve subscribed to a scientific magazine, I wonder, does that make me a scientist?
When my sister and I bought this tumble-down house in our parent’s hometown of Ramona, circa 1990, we thought — being writers — this would be a good story to submit to a magazine.
Jess wrote a blurb, and I took some pictures, and we sent the idea off to Victoria, which features tea parties, cozy Victorian cottages, women in long and frilly white dresses, and recipes for scones and glorious desserts.
Was it a crazy idea that we thought this little house on Ramona’s main street that we were reclaiming had a Victorian flair to it once it was painted?
For sure, the wallpaper we covered the interior with was a romantic notion — as was the idea of ever actually living in the house for more than a couple of weeks each summer.
It took a long time before we heard back from the editors. In fact, we’d almost given up hope when an envelope from Victoria appeared in the mailbox.
“Your photograph and information about The Ramona House will appear in an upcoming issue,” the letter said.
We were so excited, almost holding our breath. Would they use the photographs I’d sent? Did they need more information? When exactly was this going to happen? We were full of questions.
When our submission finally appeared in print, we had to laugh. They used a picture I’d sent. They used the information we’d submitted, and it was printed in color, but the space it occupied was a third of a column while we’d envisioned a full page spread at least.
“Oh well,” we shrugged our shoulders and chuckled, “Ramona was mentioned in a lovely glossy magazine with worldwide circulation. That’s a first!”
Kansas magazine just appeared in my mailbox today, but I have no time for reading at the moment. The sun is shining, the grass is growing, and tomorrow’s forecast is calling for rain.
In California, it doesn’t rain all summer, but I soon learned that in Kansas it can rain anytime of the year, so you have to pay attention to the weather and adjust your plans to cooperate with Mother Nature.
If several days of rainy weather are forecast, I need to get the grass mowed on a couple of acres of yard. Reading magazines will have to wait for another day in the country.