In the New Yorker...

[serious crayons]

Oh, no, it's definitely China. Isn't it the Kung Fu Flu?

I've heard all kinds of different hoax beliefs among members of the conspiracy theorist community. It's no worse than the flu, doctors are required to list deaths as COVID even if they aren't, you can't get it if you're young and healthy, Vitamin D can prevent it ... and on and on.

[Jeff Wrangler]

I'm now up to the July 27 issue. I remember the Toni Morrison article, but I wish they had included the original publication date of the stories they reprinted.

Edit to Add: Well, duh. If I'd paid attention I would have noticed that they included the original publication date above the article title. 

[serious crayons]

I just went through a stack of old New Yorkers that I "hadn't finished" but still "planned to read."  I try to do that once or twice a year.

My usual practice is to throw out any that date back to the preceding presidential administration. (Then I rip out and staple individual articles that look good, stack them up, and then never read those either.) I don't think I have any from before 2017, let's hope, but this time I picked an even easier sorting method.

I threw out any that came out before March. I figured the world has changed so much since then a lot of the pieces will either no longer be relevant or will seem trivial in comparison to our current multiple crises. I realize I'm probably throwing out some great timeless articles (and probably quite a few "duty" ones  ) but I already have way more to read than I could get to even if I quit my job and read full time. So if I didn't pounce on them when the magazine first arrived, they probably weren't a priority in the first place.

Another silver lining to the pandemic -- it lets you weed out New Yorkers faster.

[Front-Ranger]

I'm now up to the July 27 issue. I remember the Toni Morrison article, but I wish they had included the original publication date of the stories they reprinted.

Edit to Add: Well, duh. If I'd paid attention I would have noticed that they included the original publication date above the article title. 

Don't feel too special. When I sat down with that issue, I leafed through it and had a feeling that most of it was not timely and relevant, like other recent issues have been. I even looked at the fiction, "The Lottery" by Shirley Jackson, and thought "well I read that in high school; it must be some kind of anniversary republishing". But I didn't put 2 and 2 together and notice that ALL of the articles were old! I thought Calvin Trillin's piece on MLK was a memoir. 

And Katherine, I think I will adopt your system! I'll throw out all the pre-pandemic issues after leafing through them to see all the crowds mingling freely and reminesce.

[Front-Ranger]

I wish they had chosen "Brokeback Mountain" to republish rather than "The Lottery."

[serious crayons]

Good point. “The Lottery” is a classic, but Lee is right, people read it in high school. Maybe they wanted to say “Nah, nah! We first published this story everybody reads in high school!” That sounds like something David Remnick would do.

If they wanted to show off, they could have published “Hiroshima” — or maybe excerpts, since I believe the original took up the whole magazine.

[Jeff Wrangler]

It occurred to me to wonder if they were going for a theme. (What do Martin Luther King, Toni Morrison, Larry Kramer, Shirley Jackson, and Cesar Chavez have in common? They're all dead. [Of course, Margaret Fuller is, too, but she's been dead since 1850.]) But Alicia Garza and James Hansen don't fit that pattern, so that can't be it.

[serious crayons]

Plus, the first five are household words in my household, whereas the last two are not.

[Jeff Wrangler]

Plus, the first five are household words in my household, whereas the last two are not.

Same here. (I looked them up to make sure they aren't dead, too.)

[Jeff Wrangler]

The very end of the article about the Army Corps of Engineers (Aug. 3 & 10) made me cry.