I own such a collection of old magazines that I rarely need to buy a new one. There are boxes of seventies-era Rolling Stones I have not yet gotten to. Eighties Utne Readers which are worth a second look. The first hundred issues of Mother Earth News, collected long after their publication in the seventies and eighties, bought piecemeal from flea markets and yard sales back when I aspired to own a working homestead. An Ode edition or two, a stray New Yorker on my bedside table, a vintage Whole Earth Review with yellowing newsprint pages on my bookshelf.

Thanks to my love/hate relationship to the internet, I only occasionally experience a book or a magazine cover to cover anymore. This disturbs me. Instead of the expansive cultural treasure chest that I imagined my DSL connection would open for me, I find the world getting smaller and smaller than back when I depended on my page-turning ability to see other realities. As a wise writer said recently in salon.com, we have neglected "choosing heartfelt, courageous paths" and instead spent years monitoring Nicole Richie's eating disorders and Britney's breakdowns. Tmz.com and even huffingtonpost.com have become my morning crack which keeps the adrenaline pumping between answering e-mails and researching more serious concerns for my newspaper column.

I gave up television long ago, but now I realize that I have replaced it with another screen. I don't believe that computers are inherently evil. However, I am feeling an almost moral imperative to further limit my time online. This is not to say that I would disable my blog, or quit selling books on amazon.com, or stop e-mailing my friends, or composing my newspaper essays. It's just that all of the other crap - the pseudonews, the gossip, the endless wikipedia inquiries - need to be restricted to a true "need to know" basis.

Meanwhile, I plan to don my reading glasses regularly and start reading those books and magazines on my shelves. I love the surprise of opening a book or magazine, the unexpected subjects and viewpoints which challenge my own view of the world a little more than staring at message boards full of bile and stupidity and misinformation. I don't want to be a snob, but I also don't want the opinions of bitter lonely people to fill my thoughts. There's enough of that in retail, which after all is my business.

Who knows, perhaps I'll catch up and start buying new magazines and books again.

NTD