I am finally joining the fray. I love cooperative blog and read it regularly, but I’ve been lurking like a peeping tom. The posts almost alway provoke thought, but I don’t make the time to write back. Many of you have encouraged me to get off my lazy ass and contribute, so I’ve chosen a manageable first question to respond to. (I must admit, I’m also motivated by having been mentioned in both Jaime’s jukebox post and Brett’s unabashed love note post.) Preambles aside . . .

I choose to only receive two magazines — Yoga Journal and Body & Soul, an alternative health magazine. I use the first for my yoga teaching and the second for articles to post at my office. I don’t read them for months and then I’ll spend a weekend catching up.

A few years ago, I decided to reduce the information I took in, especially the news. I stopped browsing information that came to me, and started searching out information I wanted to know more. This lead me to use reference books and websites more, and to browse less. This explains my ascetic magazine usage.

I grew up in a household overrun with magazines — Newsweek, Time, Discover, Scientific American, Runner’s World, various health newsletters, National Geographic, occasionally The Economist, and more. Great for an interested high schooler with a lot of summer hours on her hands.

My mom, who works 40+ hours a week, runs the Yoga Center, is a great wife and mother, and finds time to exercise almost every day, still subscribes to this litany of magazines. I often encourage to scale down and make her reading stack more manageable, but to little avail.

So my tactic may be partially a pendulum swing away from my childhood and partially a choice to spend fewer of my hours taking in information through the written word and more hours figuring out life from experience, interaction, and contemplation. I think it likely that, in my 50s, I’ll return to my roots and you’ll find me sprawled on a couch with mile-high stacks of magazines surrounding me.

I get The Army Times, a mag that comes in black plastic wrap, National Geographic, The Smithsonian. I also get some academic journals, which are kind of like picture-less magazines.

I used to get Wired, The Economist (which turned to total shit), Foreign Policy, Scientific American.

I would like to get Wired, National Geographic Traveler.

I think about The Atlantic sometimes.

Magazines make me happy. I want to hear more.

But, I also really want to talk about Holly’s consumption (or non-consumption) of information. (Her non-newsness has always kind of freaked me out, as she knows.) I think that’s at the heart of Liz’s post: determining how much we can consume and then judiciously dolling out our attention.
And this issue of consuming information underlies some other discussions we’ve had…immediate life goes on, generally, without knowing anything at all from “the world.” We breathe, we rock out, we swing on porch swings, we reminisce, we throw hissy fits, we breathe some more.
So maybe it’s very _The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism_ of me to think that we have some responsibility to stretch and push and maximize our reach as a member of the human race during this amazing age when we have the resources and infrastructure to learn and do and be in a way that’s bigger than our immediate existence.
Do you feel that global shit affects you? At what level do you feel engaged (locally, globally, regionally, intellectually, emotionally, viscerally, wistfully, fully, scarcely, disinterestedly…). And can those levels be ranked in a hierarchy? The answer to that is officially no, but don’t be politically correct on that one–take a stand on what you think is really freaking important.

But, dude, WHY is it your personal goal? Why is that better?

uh, i don’t think that the army times is the magazine that himay is referring to that comes in a black wrapper. of course, i could be wrong….but i think that’s actually another magazine (hence the serial comma)…

i currently receive communication arts.

absolutely. i love the sexy time.