On the tenth anniversary of a day the world will never forget, I wondered what to write.
9/11
As Brits, of course, it’s 11/9 but that simple phrase has entered our culture and our history just as surely as it did for the rest of the world.
The news this week is full of memories of that day, along with fears of what might be planned for the future. One wonders how religious beliefs can motivate something so terrible when religion itself is meant to foster peace and harmony.
But, as a never-ending list of historic events can prove, in the hands of zealots and fundamentalists, the teachings of whatever God you choose to follow can be twisted to uphold their own determination to achieve fame and immortality. Whether it was the Crusades or Ferdinand and Isabella’s Spanish Inquisition or Hitler’s persecution of the Jews, there is nothing good to be come from such fervour.
So I remember all the innocents who have died as a result of the acts of fanatics throughout the ages and try to think of something a litle more heartening.
The grand old dame of British waiting rooms began life in the UK 72 years ago – the original American version started in 1922. Full of interesting articles and part-stories about a life that did not include Facebook or Twitter or the current faddy fascination with the latest reality-tv celebrity, it was a staple of my childhood.
Especially the little comedic snippets that interspersed its glossy pages – were they called ‘Laughter: The Best Medicine’…?
My parents still receive their shrink-wrapped parcel in the post every month.
In recent times, of course, the RD has been in the news a couple of times here in the UK. There was a problem with the Advertising Standards Agency over mass mailing elderly folk who were persuaded to pay for things that they did not really need and they had to promise not to do it again.
And then, last year, they got into a spot of financial difficulty due to the pensions regulator rejecting their plans to make good their pensions deficit and the company was put up for sale.
But, despite many people thinking that it was on its way out, there was a lot of interest from a wide variety of interested parties. This is because, although the magazine’s circulation figures were down for the year, those in charge explained that this was due to a change in marketing strategy away from those awful prize-draw mailings. The focus now is on content and, even with their reduced circulation figures, the Reader’s Digest is ranks 11th on the list of paid for titles in the UK.
Whilst researching this article, I even found them online… and suddenly I was rather sad.
With the passing of the current generation, I foresee the demise of something so curiously simple and completely evocative of a bygone age. It just wouldn’t be the same on a computer screen.
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