I’m a third generation magazine and catalog addict.\u00a0 My grandmother loved them.\u00a0 My mother loved them.\u00a0 And a fourth generation is now well represented by my daughter.<\/p>\n
When I\u00a0was a child, even before I could read, Mother saved all her magazines and catalogs for me.\u00a0 I was fascinated by how she\u00a0treated\u00a0them like\u00a0treasures.\u00a0 Not one was thrown away until it had been read and read and re-read.<\/p>\n
I thumbed through her McCall’s, Redbook, Good Housekeeping, Ladies Home Journal, Time, Newsweek, Life and Look.\u00a0 She had a separate shelf\u00a0for the big fat catalogs of the time,\u00a0including\u00a0Sears and Montgomery Ward and J.C. Penney and Alden wishbooks.\u00a0\u00a0Those we kept forever, even after\u00a0new ones arrived.\u00a0 The magazines were eventually passed along to other families.<\/p>\n
In later years she\u00a0added subscriptions to Consumer Reports and\u00a0lots\u00a0of trade publications.\u00a0As I grew away from her home and no longer shared all of her tastes in printed matter, still my reverence for those publications never diminished. Today I buy\u00a0some magazines at the newsstand, subscribe to others, and am the recipient of still more from friends who pass\u00a0theirs along.\u00a0I enjoy them all.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Some people complain about catalogs but I’ve never considered a mailbox full of catalogs\u00a0an annoyance.\u00a0 I welcome the ones that arrive unsolicited and then sign up for others, and pass\u00a0them along too.\u00a0\u00a0Next to my big blue reading chair right now there’s an eclectic stack.\u00a0 One by one they’ll go into a box in the trunk of my car to make the trip to my daughter’s house.\u00a0 She shares them\u00a0with\u00a0people she works with and they go round and round from there and end up who knows where.<\/p>\n
I like the thought of this widening\u00a0circle of readers.\u00a0 When\u00a0these publications\u00a0fray\u00a0and fall apart,\u00a0as they eventually must,\u00a0then all of us\u00a0will have participated in a\u00a0form of social interaction\u00a0that some say is primitive, but I find satisfying.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Sure I can\u00a0order\u00a0online without ever seeing a catalog in print, but the items\u00a0seem different and somehow more appealing when I hold the pictures of the products\u00a0in my hand and turn the pages back and forth.<\/p>\n