In the New Yorker...

[Front-Ranger]

It made me think of you!

[Front-Ranger]

To get me in the mood for the season premiere of Downton Abbey, I'm reading "The King's Meal" by Lauren Collins, in the food issue (from November 21). It's a lovely piece about the curator of Historic Royal Palaces, Lucy Worsley. Cool name, cool job, cool lady!! Is this the year of 15 minutes of fame for the curators of the world? I hope so. Reading about her BBC programmes, I realize I'd be watching a lot more TV if I lived in Britain!!

[Jeff Wrangler]

Even though the New Hampshire primary has come and gone, I think Nicholas Lemann's commentary, "Enemy of the State," in the January 9 issue, is a good read. He sets out the implications of Republican anti-government in a lucid and succinct way.

I also like the following: "On the small isues, ... the triumph of anti-government rhetoric has been a real impediment for President Obama. It gives the Republicans justification to oppose, by rote, every appointment and every expenditure, which helps make their belief in public-sector inefficiency self-fulfilling but otherwise doesn't do anybody much good."

[ifyoucantfixit]

   I agree with your statement Jeff.  I just cannot understand, how none of the people that vote Republican, can not see it.  That it is the Tea Party folk, and the rest of the people, that follow their lead.  That are causing the congress, and the Country to be in this stalemate.  It is not the President.  He inherited the problems that we are facing.  It was the fault of GWB.  He got out before he got all the derision that he deserved.  I guess
that a lot of people are just plain stupid.  Even in the face of facts to the contrary.  They refuse to place the blame where it belongs.  I suppose it is the fault of the so called "LIBERAL MEDIA?"  I don't know even where that kind of media resides.  Even here in Portland..  Liberal as it is.  The local newspaper.  The Oregonian is very conservative.  It endorses every conservative candidate that runs for office.

[serious crayons]

As I'm working through my past issues, I started a piece from July by Alec Wilkinson, about people who live in tiny (REALLY tiny) houses. In the opening, he says, "I used to dream sometimes that I had found rooms in my apartment that I didn't know were there, and, as I explored them, I felt a serenity that I did not feel in my waking life."

I suspect Wilkinson is revealing more in that sentence than he knows. Houses, in dreams, typically don't stand for actual living spaces, but represent one's own mind. Dreaming of finding previously unknown rooms in his home most likely means he has been discovering unknown aspects of himself -- coming upon a bear, so to speak.

It might sound a little crazy, but dreams tend to be really symbolic, and often in an oddly literal way.

[Jeff Wrangler]

As I'm working through my past issues, I started a piece from July by Alec Wilkinson, about people who live in tiny (REALLY tiny) houses.

I remember that article, though, by now, not a lot of the details. I remember when I read it being concerned about bathroom space. 

I wouldn't mind living in a small space, though not too small. I have fond memories of the studio that was my first apartment in Philadelphia.

The only trouble is lack of space for my model trains. ... 

[serious crayons]

The only trouble is lack of space for my model trains. ... 

Couldn't you run a track on the wall near the ceiling, at plate-rail level?

[Jeff Wrangler]

Couldn't you run a track on the wall near the ceiling, at plate-rail level?

From what I remember from reading the article, I'm not sure the "tiny houses" would even have room for that.

And my collection has grown way too large. ... 

[Jeff Wrangler]

I just finished Peter Hessler's article in the Jan. 9 issue about the guy he grew up with in Missouri who has Marfan syndrome and is a crime reporter in Japan. I found it fascinating. In contrast to the way the yakuza are often portrayed on American TV, Hessler makes them sound almost ... quaint.

[serious crayons]

I can't remember where I saw it, but somewhere I read that many New Yorker pieces start out, usually in the first sentence, by mentioning a specific date, or a month and year, or at least establishing a time frame of some sort. Since then, I've noticed how true that is. For example, here are the opening words from some of the articles in the Jan. 16 issue:

"Last week,"

"On a dark winter evening"

"In 2011,"

"On a rainy night in late November,"

"In the eighteen-sixties,"

"A few weeks after the fall of President Hosni Mubarak,"


And here are some from the Oct. 11 issue (I just grabbed these two issues at random from the pile on my nightstand):

"Since September 11, 2001,"

"The other day,"

"Over the course of the past four years,"

"When Oliver Stone's 'Wall Street' came out, in 1987,"

"On a warm night during a trip to Beijing last month,"

"Two months before I was to leave Bombay for Toronto,"

"In 1980,"

"On April 20, 2010,"

"In the early nineties,"

"When Marvin Miller took over as the head of the Major League Baseball Players Association, in 1966,"

"In Biafra in 1968,"

"Some years ago,"


Once you become aware of this pattern, it's both amazing and slightly tiresome. It's not just occasional -- literally almost all of the articles excluding the reviews and fiction start out with a time reference. I don't have, say, a Harper's or Atlantic handy for comparison, but I bet they don't do it as often.

Maybe it's a Remnick influence? I don't remember if this was the pattern back in the Brown or Shawn eras.