March 23

I am now a couple of days late reading my March 23 issues of The New Yorker. Chief on the list of roadblocks is my venture into the world of concentric contact lenses. I’ve never worn contact lenses. I tried standard lenses several years ago but the narrow range of focus annoyed me. Or I didn’t have enough patience to get used to them. So what do I try next? I try lenses with concentric rings of 2 different focal lengths, which my brain must now magically decipher and learn how to use. And I know, viscerally as well as intellectually, that it can. I had a personal demonstration, about 10 years ago, of the brain’s penchant for adjusting your vision to what it thinks you should be seeing. And this didn’t involved controlled substances.

I was swimming in a pool with my daughter. Her swim goggles were blue, mine gray. I tried hers for a couple of minutes, I can’t remember why. When I came out of the pool and took them off the world was orange for a flashing slice of a second. It was a revelation. Boom, everything’s in shades of orange and then it quickly fades to the right colors. It hit me almost as quickly that my brain color-corrected the signal it was receiving from my eyes. What a piece of work is man!

So each night when I go home, I switch to the contacts and wear them for several hours. Can’t do it at work, because a) I’m not used to them yet and 2) they’re made for medium and long distance, not reading. (Last night I had a phone call that require me to view an email. I blew the words up to practically an inch high and leaned way back) My Dr. says when he finishes all his adjustments; I should have a focal range from computer distance, a little past arms length, to “far” distance. I think he views this as a challenge as he knows I am picky about focus and focal length. I’m a television producer. Anyway, I’m only on day 4, I still have a long way to go.

In the meanwhile, I’ve received and have begun reading the March 30 issue. I began, at lunch one day, with the first full length article in the issue, a mildly entertaining David Sedaris piece. And noticed that it’s followed by a Woody Allen. That’s when I knew I had to stop and take care March 23.

I guess the highlight of the March 23 issue is the Paul Goldberg “introduction” to the new ball stadiums in NY. The Sky Line gives an engaging overview each stadiums place in history, as well their respective physical placement in their neighborhoods. Had I only seen the pictures, I’d have chosen the new Yankee Stadium as the more pleasing of the two. Now, having read the article, that impression is cemented. One of the Yankee Stadium advantages is it’s incorporation into the surrounding neighbor hood. The article refers to several big cylinder stadiums, of which the Met Stadium was on, that were constructed in the 60s and 70s. I was very familiar with Pittsburgh’s Three Rivers stadium and know the difference between wading across a seemingly boundless concrete field to reach the stadium and walking through a neighborhood to get there. I prefer the latter. And besides, the Mets Stadium’s (Citi-Stadium) main entrance is plain ugly.

It is interesting to me that the following issue, March 30, bears cover art featuring both stadiums.

The other satisfying read of this issue was the Letter From Moscow: The Accused, by Keith Gessen. Keith tells a detail story of the trial of the men charged with murdering Russian Journalist Anna Politkovskaya. Gessen begins his story of covering this Moscow trial in the Starbucks across the street from the courthouse, having been refused entrance to day one of the proceedings. He then weaves a tale of Chechens and mobsters and human-rights lawyers that points us first in one direction then brings around to another, much like the jury was led during the trial. Along the way we get to know just enough about the major characters, the accused brothers, their mob related associates, the victim’s relatives, the attorneys, and the prosectution to have a meaningful glimpse into their world. Yes, I named the baseball stadium story as the highlight of this issue, because it made me smile, but this was by far the deepest journey.

I want to say more about Tessa Hadley’s fiction, “She’s The One”, but either I didn’t quite get it or it simply ended flat for me. Which is bothersome, because I enjoyed the reading of it. I liked the characters. I felt them as well developed, at least the 2 primarys. There was a minor character who may have been a catalyst, but she was brought in so ephemerally that I didn’t experience her as a presence. At least not as a presence of enough note to be central to the story’s conclusion. As I write this, mind you w/o any formal writing criticism experience or training, I feel that the ending was a cheap deux-ex-machina pulled out of a hat to conclude the story.

As for other parts of this issue…I agree with Henrik Hertzberg about those pesky republicans decrying the needed spending we’re facing and he’s made me think more about the tax holiday concept. I never even considered reading the Madoff article and quit Burris less than a third of the way, having decided I didn’t care enough to continue reading about him.

It just dawned on me that any semblance of a same-day-each-week posting is screwed for the spring season as work had me traveling regularly. Yeah, yeah, I could read it online, but I like the act of holding the magazine and changing the pages. I read enough other stuff online.