The Spring Issue Has Bloomed

Although my Field Notes column, and thus my first book, got its start in a newspaper, there's something about a magazine. Even in these e-reader, online publishing times, there's something about a magazine. And I'm delighted to be back as a magazine columnist, particularly in At Home On the North Shore, which features writers, photographers, homeowners and artisans of the north shore of Nova Scotia.

One of the newspaper columns I never got around to writing was called "The Lost Art of Browsing" and perhaps I will devote a future AH Field Notes column to that idea. I just don't understand how online shopping can be more fulfilling than shopping in person; more convenient and cheaper, maybe, but what is lost when everything that comes to us comes via a screen and a click?

I thought of this last night while watching a news story about Toys R Us stores closing in the United States. The story ran with video of children in the store picking out toys.
Hello? Did anyone else catch what that means? I LOVED going to the local toy store or the toy department at our local (yet relatively small) department store when I was a kid and looking at all the toys before choosing the one toy I could take home with me. 
Sadly, a Dollarama toy run isn't the same as spending an hour in The Toy Shoppe.

Which is not a digression, as much as it appears to be! I can hold the spring issue of the magazine in my hands. I can send a copy to my best friend in Ontario. I can leave it lying on the coffee table. It will last forever. We can go to the farmers' market and meet the growers and bakers and creators. We can talk with the woman who owns the clothing store or the bookstore or the shoe store; we can be remembered when we show up the next time. Humans are a tactile, face-to-face species; we are denying ourselves so much essential interaction by limiting ourselves to computers.
People says, "Everything lasts forever on the internet," but that's not true. Things get lost on the internet, things get forgotten. A book, a magazine, a toy lasts forever -- but more importantly, so does the memory of the experience.
Like the memory of my father coming home with two stuffed animals for his two daughters -- an unexpected treat when money was tight -- that he chose himself while standing in a toy store and walked home with one under each arm.


To subscribe, call Lorraine at 902-485-1990, Ext. 1435 (Advocate Media)