Like a lot of folks, Freddy Swan has been cutting back on unnecessary expenditures lately.  One area where many people have cut back is on magazine subscriptions, partly because of the expense but also because many people simply don’t have the time they used to have, to sit and leisurely read a magazine. Freddy is down to reading Time, which comes once a week, and little else.  Except I keep getting magazines I don’t remember ever subscribing to – Sports Illustrated, Travel and Leisure, Money and more.  Maybe I should look into cancelling them?

I did hear or read somewhere that magazines are on the way out.  People of a certain age remember having many more magazines than now – good ones too – like Look, Life, Saturday Evening Post, and many others. But they went away and now it looks like more might go the way of all those great magazines that went before.

So I had decided I don’t need Travel and Leisure anymore when, of course, one arrived in the mail today. I picked it up and started leafing through, page by page. I was amazed at what I saw – as if it was the first time I’d really looked. The color photos – usually full page and often the ads themselves – were spectacular! Glorious hotels, white sandy beaches, beautiful people and gourmet foods spread out in vivid color. In short, really mouth-watering color photography. Now if that magazine goes away, how in the world will we get that kind of beauty and heart-stopping color out of electronic gadgets? The answer is: we won’t. We’ll get internet clutter and images limited by the quality of our computer monitor, and nothing like the pictures in books like Travel and Leisure.

I’m not ready to give that up.  Travel and Leisure, keep it comin’!

How do you feel?  Are you going all-electronic or do you still like the idea of holding wonderful content and photography in your own two hands?