Vickie-the-Maid was getting her week together, and called to tell me to clean up the condo in preparation for her monthly ministry on Tuesday.

You know the drill: when the maids are coming, it is time to actually pick up and organize the books plopped on the wing of the armchair, open face down, the earbuds dropped in protest of Mayor Bloomberg on the dining table, the wad of clothing almost (but not quite) ready for the laundry, the stuff piled up for the next trip to the farm, the diminishing but still irritating pile of weekly magazines I cannot bring myself to read by the brown chair in the corner by the window with the streaks left from last months tepid cleaning.

I was done with Time Magazine a long time ago, and now, apparently Time is done with all of us. Henry Luce’s magnificent political magazine is no more. There is a wonderful column on by Maureen Dowd on what it was like to be inside the beast, back in the day, highly recommended for her usual acerbic treatment of life when the news was crafted on a weekly basis, not spun with each revolution of the news cycle.

That is Newsweek and Time gone in the space of a few months. How the world turns. Between the two, that accounted for most of the “in-depth” information we did not get from Uncle Walter Cronkeit.

Preparing for Vicky’s arrival is not dissimilar to the famous Room, Locker and Personnel (ELP) inspection from Aviation Officer Candidate School, only much less intimidating. Staff Sergeant Ronald C. Mace, USMC, was a real presence, much larger than life, rocking forward on his highly-polished low-quarter black shoes, getting ready to rip your face off.

Still, looking back on the process, I have to say that Vicky and SSGT Mace play a vital and parallel role in my life, along with Mr. Luce.

There is a bunch of other stuff to talk about this morning, but there being no really huge immediate and impending crisis this morning, I am just going to clean up the space that I occupy, so Vicky can get at the hard surfaces and really put a shine on things so that I can start the cycle of piling things up on them again.

I am sure there will be another crisis in the news cycle tomorrow. I have to say that I am starting to get crisis fatigue. I do yearn a bit for the days when the they only came once a week, and Henry Luce used to pick them out for us.

Copyright 2013 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com

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