In the New Yorker...

[Front-Ranger]

It worked! Having given up on receiving this week's issue, it arrived! I didn't expect to get any mail on this Labor Day weekend. Oh, me of little faith. I jumped into the article on the siege of Minneapolis. It's hard reading, but necessary.

[serious crayons]

Thanks for pointing that out, FRiend! Now that I'm subscribing to TNY digitally, I'm probably missing a lot. (I've told myself I'll go back to the print edition once I weed through my foot-tall stack of old ones.) I started reading it -- not sure I'll finish it, because so far I'm already aware of everything being reported, but I'll see if it reveals anything new.

[Jeff Wrangler]

I just finished David Denby's Aug. 17 article about Hannah Arendt. It's a typical New Yorker piece in that it's not exactly a review of a new biography of Arendt, but it sort of takes off from the biography and has a lot to say about Arendt. She's best known for her book "Eichmann in Jerusalem," about the trial of Adolph Eichmann, an important figure in carrying out the Holocaust. (This book gave us the phrase "the banality of evil.")

But she also wrote "The Origins of Totalitarianism." In the last column on the last page of the article, what Denby says that Arendt said bears reading and is absolutely chilling.

[Jeff Wrangler]

Sadly, I don't think I'm going to receive the September 7th issue. I get an email every year saying my subscription has renewed. With other publications, that means they have deducted the money from my credit card, but with the New Yorker, you have to pay as a separate action.

Sigh. I guess I'm going to have to phone subscription services. I pay my renewal by check. I've paid. The check has been cashed (bank record), and waiting for me when I got back to Philadelphia today is another renewal notice.

[Jeff Wrangler]

Sigh. I guess I'm going to have to phone subscription services. I pay my renewal by check. I've paid. The check has been cashed (bank record), and waiting for me when I got back to Philadelphia today is another renewal notice.

Or not.

I took another look at the renewal form, and I noticed, in very small type, above my name, "Expire Issue:10Feb28."

[Jeff Wrangler]

If you didn't read Kathryn Schulz's Postscript on Dolly Parton in the September 7 issue, I suggest going back and reading it. It's very sweet. She quotes a line from one of Dolly's songs that I should take to heart: "It goes to show you're never old unless you choose to be."

Moving right along, in the same issue I'm currently enjoying the article about the smokejumpers in Alaska because (and you've seen this coming, I know  ) guys who jump out of airplanes to fight wildfires are ... hot.