In the New Yorker...

[Front-Ranger]

Speaking of Bjorn Ulvaeus, he is interviewed in the article "The Next Scene" by John Seabrook in this week's issue. If you want to get a sweeping idea of what the music industry has been through in the last 30 years or so, it's worth spending your time on this longish article about Lucian Grange, head of Universal Music Group. What a plum assignment! Seabrook gets to interview everyone from Bono to Edgar Bronfman.

[Front-Ranger]

I'm still not finished with the February 5 issue, it was so meaty. Today I read about the shenanigans in upper Vermont where a misguided developer was used by a con-man to funnel hundreds of millions from foreign investors into factories, ski areas, boutique hotels, and residential developments. Today it's a hot destination, but the developer and con-man have served time.

Now, I'm starting the wildfire article by Elizabeth Kolbert. Mind-boggling how much territory has been lost to fire in Canada. 

[Jeff Wrangler]

I've fallen way behind again. I'm still working through the woman in the cave. I may not finish it. It's really not engaging me.

[Jeff Wrangler]

I didn't finish the article about the cave woman.

I had two issues with me when I was just at my dad's for a week, and I just wasn't motivated to read either of them. 

I've read Elizabeth Colbert.

Friends, I believe we are living in the End Times.

[serious crayons]

I didn't finish the article about the cave woman.

Good call. It's tough to abandon an article you've spent time on, but if it's not engaging you there are all kinds of other things you could read that would.

Friends, I believe we are living in the End Times.

If this extends beyond the religious sense, I fear you might be right. According to my phone, high temperature in the next 10 days will only once dip below 30 and only three times dip below freezing. In Minneapolis. In February. There's no snow on the ground, and only 7" have fallen all winter. I've heard of Christmases here that weren't white, but never whole winters that weren't.

Last winter it was 90", but that's weird, too. Recent years have broken all kinds of weather records.

[Jeff Wrangler]

If this extends beyond the religious sense, I fear you might be right. According to my phone, high temperature in the next 10 days will only once dip below 30 and only three times dip below freezing. In Minneapolis. In February. There's no snow on the ground, and only 7" have fallen all winter. I've heard of Christmases here that weren't white, but never whole winters that weren't.

Yes, I did mean it beyond the religious sense. What would you call my use of the terminology? Allusion? I was using the religious terminology to mean something else? Does it qualify as a metaphor? 

In any case, it came to me after I finished Elizabeth Kolbert on wildfires (Feb. 5).

[Front-Ranger]

In any case, it came to me after I finished Elizabeth Kolbert on wildfires (Feb. 5).

In that article, I liked the part about how the Native Americans controlled the ecosystem through fires. They proved it's possible to manage large-scale agriculture and animal husbandry without major technology and large groups of people.

"The Oligarch's Son" in the Feb. 12/19th issue is another in the magazine's long-running series about people masquerading as someone they're not. I kept reading the 15-page article even though there was a lot of repetition. The poor parents whose son leapt to his death in the Thames doggedly tried to move the investigation forward and hold people accountable. The description of London as the world's (money) laundromat was very interesting. I wonder why the magazine finds these stories so compelling and emblematic of our times.

[serious crayons]

Yes, I did mean it beyond the religious sense. What would you call my use of the terminology? Allusion? I was using the religious terminology to mean something else? Does it qualify as a metaphor? 

I haven't read the Bible's description of End Times, so maybe Jeff can share knowledgeable insight, but I've always assumed that even there was even meant to be a rough sketch that could happen under various circumstances. So the book and TV show "The Leftovers," a huge percentage of people (maybe 10%? 30% can't remember but not half) suddenly simultaneously have disappeared for no apparent reason. That of course sparks all kinds of weird responses, grieving, religious and otherwise. It's never explained as the Rapture, but clearly it sort of is, or at least a secular version thereof. But in every other way it's 21st-century America. (Do the Rapture and End Times refer to the same events?)

[Jeff Wrangler]

(Do the Rapture and End Times refer to the same events?)

I think the Rapture is supposed to happen in the End Times, when the True Faithful Believers (or some such) get taken bodily and alive up into the clouds and to Heaven (or something like that).

I guess you could say I was really just applying the Christian religious terminology to the sense I got from Kolbert that the world as we know it is coming to an end, and there's nothing we can now do to stop it. It's too late. We're past the tipping point (to steal a phrase from Malcolm McDowell).

[Jeff Wrangler]

I am even more behind than usual. I had two issues with me up at the house, and I just didn't feel like reading either of them.