Yellow Spines

May 19, 2006 16:38

Hey.

Today, I moved the last of my collection of National Geographic magazines from old Xerox paper boxes to new comics long boxes. The collection fills almost three long boxes. Compared to other people's collections, mine isn't so great. My High School Sociology teacher had a stash dating all the way back to World War Two. Mine only goes back to the middle 1960s; most are from before my High School departure in 1985. I was given a gift subscription to the magazine around 1990 and kept subscribed for a few years, but eventually gave up on it.

I guess people today wouldn't know why this magazine is so appealing, even in back issues. It was one of the first periodicals to go full-color printing, and had perhaps the best production values of its times. The writers and photographers went all over the world and did everything they could to show the readership things they had never seen before. Overall, National Geographic possessed a sense of adventure and wonder that nobody else could approach. For me, they had some of the best coverage of the U.S. space program in the glory days of the Sixties and early Seventies.

I think the rest of the world caught up. There are few mysterious places left on Earth, and most people in America would rather they be left alone rather than have them explored. Is the print magazine, as a concept, now obsolete?

FP

books, research addict, school, space program, magazines, stuff i want

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