There for the taking

When Orange Caligula ascended to the American throne in January 2017, I broke down and resubscribed to the New Yorker and the daily, hard-copy New York Times. It was more a gesture of support for those publications than the purchase of a benefit. I knew that a lot of those issues wouldn't get read, and go straight to the recycling.

But having them sitting around has definitely been a benefit. As a subscriber, I can see all of the print content, and then some, on the internet. But I'm on the internet all day with other things, and sometimes looking at the world printed out on paper gives me a chance to read items I never would have scrolled all the way down to see.

For example, this evening over a couple of slices of Pizzicato pizza, I saw these stories in the Times, none of which I probably would have gotten to on line:

• Roger Mudd, one of the famed CBS newspeople of my youth and early adulthood, has died.
• Taylor Swift, who was a star songwriter before she got her braces off, has never fully grown up.
• Bitcoin is really bad for the polar bears.
• They said Norman Rockwell wasn't a great painter.
• Bezos's ex married a schoolteacher.

And so my mind is enriched. But the last four years were a heavy, heavy price to pay.