Farewell, Friend: 5 Things I Learned About Life from the NY Times Home Section - Gardenista
As the last copy of the final edition of The New York Times Home Section rolls off the presses today, I will lose an old friend. If there were weeks when the report was less than electric (an exhibit of quilts seemed always to be on the verge of opening at some crafts museum or another in the tri-state region), it did not matter. Photograph by Samchills via Flickr. It’s OK to Be Late to a Trend One thing you could not count on the Home Section for was actual coverage of new home design trends–like, say, shag carpeting or avocado-colored appliances (neither of which was mentioned in the 1970s). In 1991 when gardening writer Anne Raver introduced herself to readers with a story about double digging she wrote Double digging is not for the fainthearted the wimps who use rototillers to churn up a mere six inches or so of... Garden Writing Doesn’t Have to Be Boring ...soil Then she described in fewer than 200 words how deep to go feels like you re digging to China or perhaps your own grave the nickname the English gave double digging bastard trenching and garden history from 3000 B C If you prefer not to tell how old you are, fib. This is preferable to being described in the newspaper as “a Camay soap user who declined to give her age,” which sounds like you have something to hide. In the 1970s with the nation still reeling from Vietnam China conducting nuclear tests and the Sex Pistols swearing on TV Jean Kerr went... Never Look at Yourself in a Full-Length Mirror ...to Bloomingdale s to buy an omelet pan 1 of which was never to go to Bloomingdale s without first getting her hair done Look at Yourself in a Full-Length Mirror When Mary Cantwell died in 2000, the obituary noted that she “wrote essays, books, and editorials for The New York Times, many about the changing public and private lives of women in America.” She also wrote, in her “Close to Home” column, about her annual ritual of going to a New England antiques show where the imagined past lives of objects made her love them.