Yikes - here I am looking at the stack of New Yorker magazines that I'm slowing sending to the recycle bin and here's an article from the December 15, 2014 issue: Let It Go - Too Much Stuff
It's a story about hoarders - from the small scale of the author's mother's collection of polystyrene food containers, to Edith Ewing Bouvier Beale and her daughter Edith (Big Edie and Little Edie) in their twenty-eight room mansion Grey Gardens.
There have been two movies on the pair of Edies. I've seen the 2009 HBO movie with Drew Barrymore and Jessica Lange, but not the 1975 documentary. The Beales' were looked upon as eccentric and the HBO movie portrayal was quite sympathetic. They were crazy, but not despicable. Then the Hoarder reality series showed us more hoarders than we knew existed. TV viewers were not as excepting of hoarders in every neighborhood. Is everyone just a few food storage containers or magazines away from turning into a hoarder? The article states that there is a well-established link between hoarding and aging. I suppose you could look at as an attempt to hold onto the past and youth. Draw your own conclusions.
My lesson here is to throw out those old magazines! It's time to stop saving issues dated prior to my Dad's death and wondering how I might have shared and discussed articles with him. He died on December 14, 2015. The "Let It Go" article was from December 15, 2014. Now the week is coming around again. Time to let those old New Yorkers go.
