Farewell

When I was a small child, toddler, perhaps, one of the growing members in my vocabulary was the “word” mags-mags.”  I have been an aficionado of magazines from early on.

Today I heard that NEWSWEEK would be biting the dust and I felt the compunction to send off the publication with a little tribute.

I remember coming home from school and seeing freshly received magazines on the round table in front of the fireplace.  I loved going through LIFE and National Geographic.  For a time, I found TIME and NEWSWEEK out of my realm.  But I grew into them.  TIME and NEWSWEEK, especially, became my friends when I lived for five years in a variety of foreign countries.

I still have a fondness for the 1970’s issue that had Joni Mitchell on the cover.  It kept me company for many hours at Victoria Station in London as I waited for my train to a German Christmas.  Or the time I used my sparse kroner in Stockholm to buy an issue to read on the journey to the Soviet Union (as it was at the time).  Unfortunately,  the cover picture on that issue was of recently exiled author Alexander Solzhenitsyn.  Wanting to get my money’s worth I hid the magazine under my seat on the train as I crossed over the border.  A guard came and inexplicably lifted my cushion and took the magazine.  Big Brother WAS watching.

BUT, having done a quick Google search of these issues I now realize that they weren’t NEWSWEEK at all.  They were TIME.

In any case, farewell to NEWSWEEK.