Catching Up on Our Reading

I forgot how much I like magazines. Being on the boat, we don't subscribe to any. They're pretty costly to buy at the local news stands, so we do without and I don't miss them till we have them available again. David's Mom subscribes to Smithsonian, National Geographic and Time among others. It's heaven. When I'm not trying to update the website or write a blog or article, I can spend hours just reading the current issues and then all the older ones that she keeps around for anyone who enjoys them … like us. I know I could be subscribing electronically, but then there's the cost and the onus of having to download them. When you're paying a premium price for each byte you download, the cost of getting magazines is not trivial.

Good Old Boat and Ocean Navigator are our two favorite US sailing magazines, mostly because they provide down-to-earth information that we can actually use. These we download whenever we can. Some other journals may be prettier, but the info they provide is fluff. Australia's premier sailing/cruising magazine is Cruising Helmsman and we read it regularly. Of course, part of our favoritism for these particular journals might be that they also publish our articles, but that's a minor detail.

Though we write for several magazines, we're still always on the lookout for new outlets for our articles plus I like to browse. I was taking a look at the magazines in the check-out lane at the supermarket the other day. The usual People, Us and the tabloid rags were all there, but I also spotted a copy of The Bark. This is not a tree magazine … this is a dog magazine … with the somewhat irreverent tagline: “Dog is my co-pilot”. Esquire touts it as the “coolest dog magazine ever”. Hmm … we don't have a dog, but if we did ...

I got on line and did a bit more research into animal-specific magazines … not that we want to write for one. Oh, my … the list is endless. There are all the general wildlife magazines, of course. I wasn't surprised to see several devoted to dogs, cats and horses, but I was kind of amazed to see the ones devoted to just finches, rabbits, ferrets, reptiles and even miniature donkeys. It's interesting to note that Bear Magazine is not about grizzlies, but rather hairy, unshaven, gay men. There seems to be a magazine for everyone and everything although I wonder about the subscribers to Girls and Corpses and Modern Drunkard.

So at the moment, while we're waiting to head back to Oz, we're catching up on world events, reading great articles and figuring out who's alive or dead. When we're at sea, some of our friends (Miks, you're the greatest) keep us informed of major world happenings via email. Otherwise, we're ignorantly and blissfully unaware. We figure if no one advises us, the US probably hasn't pissed off the next country we intend to visit, and we're safe to continue our journey.