#113 Letting Go. Well, Maybe...
And a jazzy meandering tune to calm you down if you're having a typical Monday...
I’m not a hoarder.
I’m not.
Except.
I have this magazine problem.
I’m not likely to be featured on reality TV any time soon. It’s not as though we are winding our way through piles of periodicals stacked to the ceiling or anything.
But I do have too many old magazines.
In particular, too many copies of the New Yorker.
I have a long standing love/hate relationship with this institution of art, culture, news and cartoons that reaches all the way back to the 1940’s.
Yes, you read that right, the 1940’s.
Because, when, in 1987, my paternal grandparents died, their basement was full of old issues of the New Yorker published between 1944 and 1978.
That I happily snapped up and carried off.
Why, you ask, would I do this?
I blame Charles Addams.
Let me back up.
Some children grew up reading Dick and Jane books.
Other kids cut their literary teeth on fairy tales.
I was inhaling my father’s book collections of Charles Addams cartoons.
I’m pretty sure I started with the captionless ones and worked my way up, learning to read more and more complicated words as things went along.
Then my grandparents (who had been the ones gifting these books to my dad in the first place) introduced me to the cradle of Addams major output – The New Yorker.
Expanding my world with the work of George Price and Helen Hokinson and George Booth and a host of others. It didn’t matter that most of the jokes went over my head. I couldn’t get enough of them.
Like most children, I didn’t know much about the non-grandparenting facets of my grandparents’ lives. I later learned that they were both raised in strictly religious households and ran away from all of that to set up a new life in the Indian Village area of Detroit. A life filled with the sort of dry humor and erudition found in the New Yorker. (Also filled with a fair dose of alcohol and tobacco – every memory of my grandfather includes a cigarette and a highball glass.)
By the time I came on the scene they had moved to a wonderful giant old house on Grosse Ile. The place wasn’t set up too well for grandchildren when it came to playthings. (Perhaps in later years they improved their offerings but I was the first grandchild – and a solo act for almost six years – so I guess they didn’t have much incentive to stock up on toys.)
For entertainment I could take my pick of a game of “Cootie”, a round of “Old Maid”, (with uncles who found the need to cheat, even when playing with a five year old) or I could stack and unstack, sort and unsort, various poker chips. (To this day I get a little dopamine hit from the sound two vintage poker chips make as the ridges of one slip into place on top of the other.)
When I became bored by those scintillating activities, the only other really interesting things in the house were those magazines lying around. The ones with the cartoons in them.
Perhaps my grandparents subscribed to other publications but the only one I remember seeing – and the one they seemed to feel the need to hold onto, stashed in later years in the basement like potatoes stored for the winter – was the New Yorker.
As I grew to adulthood, I could see that my dad’s side of the family had a very specific sense of humor. Dry, witty, urbane - their family gatherings were full of banter. (Quite probably any one of those relatives could have gone into comedy writing and made a go of it.)
I have no proof that the source of their world view was a relationship with this one magazine.
After all, It’s kind of a chicken and egg situation. Did they all love New Yorker cartoons because they had a sense of humor that appreciated them? Or did they appreciate the cartoons because they were raised on them?
Whatever the case, that same sense of humor was certainly also at the core of my being.
So much so that, after I began dating, it was not unusual for me to trot out copies of those Charles Addams books for shared viewing with boyfriends.
It was a kind of a litmus test.
Any guy that could not appreciate an Addams cartoon was on track to get chewed up and spit out by my father’s family. (Should he be so lucky as to be a serious contender for my lifetime affections.)
So, after my grandparents died, it felt like a sacrilege to just throw away magazines filled with that humor. Especially since they were not just piled higgeldy piggeldy but neatly shelved.
It was not a complete collection. There were maybe two hundred copies with publication dates ranging from the 1940’s to the 1970’s.
When I got them home, at first, I started cutting out the cartoons, putting them in scrapbooks, and pitching the rest of the magazine. But then I noticed how cool the covers were, and the ads, and even the articles, and took to keeping copies intact.
There is this thing about an old magazine.
It’s like a time capsule.
You can really get a sense of what was going on in the world during the week of August 23rd 1958. It’s fascinating to see, not only how people were processing events as they were happening, but their predictions for what the future would hold. Keeping the New Yorkers became a sort of anthropological study for me.
For a long time they lived on my bookshelves. Then I became a parent and the prime shelving real estate was ceded to children’s books. I boxed up the magazines and, still unable to part with them, sent them to cool their heels in the attic. (Where I am afraid to say, they still reside.)
From 2008 to 2013 I actually took out my own subscription.
That’s when the real trouble began.
Remember how I said I have this love/hate thing going on with the New Yorker?
It turns out my optimism that I will ever have the time and/or attention span to read anything other than the cartoons is misplaced.
When the issues from my own subscription started hitting my mailbox I got into the habit of flipping through all the cartoons and setting the rest of the thing aside to read later.
Later.
Later.
Until I had my own big fat pile gobbling up new shelf space.
And gathering dust.
I accepted the reality that the piles were only going to grow to larger and larger unread proportions and discontinued my subscription.
But found that I could not bring myself to part with my own copies any more easily than I had those of my grandparents.
Even now, they sit on a shelf taunting me – exhorting me to send them up to the attic to join their vintage brethren.
Knowing how hard it is for me to just pitch them into the recycling.
Because not only does that feel like an admission of defeat and but also a dishonor to all the creative folks behind that content.
Or maybe the real struggle is that I can’t uncouple the New Yorker from the deep connection I feel with my grandparents when I look at a copy.
The universe wants me to get over it.
I’ll try.
***************
Epilogue - Confession
In a giant twist of irony, I have added a digital element to the hoard.
As a result of gifting a digital subscription to a relative two years ago, I now get at least three emails from the New Yorker a day.
In time honored fashion, instead of deleting these, I move them to a special archive folder for later.
Later.
Later.
Copyright© 2025 Anne Morse Hambrock All rights reserved.
I Need Fondue Help!
Long time readers will know that, last year, the hubby tore out and rebuilt the back porch/sunroom from top to bottom. (See issue #74.)
The makeover included a complete rethink of the space that turned into a great retro room from the 1960’s-1970’s.
Which gave my beloved the idea to gift me a very cool atomic looking fondue pot.
In hopes that I would throw fabulous 1960’s themed parties complete with fondue and a variety of martini’s.
Problem is - I am in search of good fondue recipes.
The one I tried - Swiss, Gruyere and white wine - came out SUPER salty and overly alcoholic. I think it was the Gruyere that was the salt culprit. But when I look at the sodium content of other melty cheeses, like Gouda and Fontina, it’s even higher.
I’m feeling boxed in by salt.
So if you have a recipe that is more balanced - not too much sodium and less alcohol - please pass it along. I want to crank this puppy up and have people over!
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From The Garden
A Jazzy Meandering
I’m still working on the tune I’ve been workshopping here over the past few weeks but needed a change of pace.
Today I just sat down and noodled for a bit on a new jazzy progression.
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Bonus Image
My grandmother looking elegant and as far from her non New Yorker reading roots as she could get….
I was a Mad Magazine reader as a child/teen and did not get introduced to the New Yorker until I took a short story class in college. It was required reading every week. I loved the stories, but the cartoons are what really captured me and I became a subscriber from that point forward. Like you, I couldn’t keep up and stacks of them gathered dust, but multiple moves have managed to convince me to recycle them each time. Good luck with the fondue… I always favored dessert (chocolate) fondues.
Cheese fondue is the best, no argument there. I've always had good luck with a gruyere-based blend, but if it's too salty you could try a commercial supermarket type like Swiss Knight.
But don't discount chocolate fondue! I'd expect any recipe you'd find online would do, then dip in cubes of angel food cake, strawberries, etc.
There are also savory fondues, in which you cook meats and/or veggies in hot oil, chicken broth, beef broth, vegetable broth, etc.
The whole fondue world is open to you!
I appreciate the musical clips you post very much. I never have feedback because I don't consider myself knowledgeable enough to have a constructive opinion, but I always enjoy them.