A Welcome Gift

 

My friend Trudy shares her New Yorker magazines with me.  I am so grateful.  It's a perfect set up.  I don't have to consider whether I'm not getting my money's worth if I don't read everything.  So, I can browse the Table of Contents and look for the "timeless" stories, and the ones by my favorite writers.

Two recently read articles satisfied everything I look for: a perceptive account of the phenomenon of billionaires and their yachts written by Evan Osnos,  and a look at medical literature by Jerome Groopman.  

While not exactly coming from the "everyman" perspective (it has to get fancy to get anywhere near the floating palaces), Onos captures the compulsive need to compete that invades the billionaires' leisure.

I cried reading the stories of the doctors who dare to improve or "correct" what nature has given us,  If we come even a safe distance from these stories, let alone come close to one, you know what I mean.  As one surgeon struggled to save a three year old with a gun shot to the head, the horror of what we are living with (or dying with) now made me scream silently at today's madness.

Telling stories is our best gift.