I Need The New York Times

When we moved to Kentucky, I felt out of touch with the rest of the world.  The local newspaper features mostly local stories, but not much detail about what is happening elsewhere.  I could go to the bookstore and pick up The New York Times, but sometimes making the trip wasn't convenient, and sometimes they were sold out.  I could order it to be mailed to me, but that was too expensive, plus the news would always at least a day old by the time it got to me.  I decided to compromise by ordering The New York Times by mail just for the Sunday edition.  I usually received it by Monday or Tuesday.  The news was still a day or two old, but it allowed me to catch up with what was happening.

The Sunday Times would last us the whole week, reading a section at a time.  My husband always took the Sports section, the Book Review and the Travel section first.  I took the Week in Review, Sunday Styles and front page sections.  Another big plus is the Magazine.

There is always something interesting in the NYT Magazine.  But the biggest thing for me is the crossword puzzle.  The Sunday Crossword Puzzle is my brain exercise.  It keeps me from getting rusty.  I always grab it and start on it right away, fill in the easy ones, then work on it the rest of the week.  It's a fact that when I put it down and come back to it, I always find some answers that I just couldn't think of before.  I guess my mind gets refreshed after a break.  I can solve the entire thing about 90% of the time.

The Sunday Times by mail isn't inexpensive though, even only once a week.  The price went up several times, eventually reaching $40 per month.  When my husband was laid off his job, we decided it was a luxury that had to be sacrificed.  Since I didn't want to go without it altogether, I looked into several digital versions.  I decided to buy the version for my Kindle Fire, which was the most reasonable.  Instead of receiving it just on Sunday, now I read it every day.  Actually, I find that reading it every day is much preferable to Sunday only.

As I read the paper on my Kindle Fire this morning, I realized I was learning things I otherwise would never have known:  details about the Euro crisis; the heating oil/wood burning crisis in Greece; the ancient manuscripts in the Ahmed Baba in Timbuktu; cyberweapons; Monterey shale; increase in conversions to Islam in France; a plane crash that killed a Presidential candidate in Paraguay.

I like to know about important events going on in the world.  So much escapes our attention if we don't pay attention.  I need the New York Times to help me pay attention.