A few weeks ago when I was struggling with writer’s block— actually more like a deep freeze — my sympathetic editor, in an effort to help me break through, asked if I had deep feelings regarding the demise of Gourmet magazine.
At that time I didn’t.
Though a subscriber, I had several issues still in their decidedly ungreen clear plastic wrappers stacked and thus unread on the kitchen counter.
At first it seemed silly to me to have strong feelings one way or another about the loss of the magazine. After all I had suffered much more serious losses.
The death of the still mourned Houston Post cost me my food editor’s job.
My parents’ deaths rocked my soul.
Thrice I have lost my entire community as I followed my husband and his job around the world.
And most recently the children have grown and left the nest, leaving me floundering for purpose.
Upon reflection I realized that though all these life changes, Gourmet has been a constant. When in Australia and feeling a million miles from anywhere, Gourmet brought me tastes of interior Mexico. When the gray of the United Kingdom overwhelmed and the pub food of the Home Counties under whelmed, Gourmet’s sunny pages of vineyard feasts in California brought light.
Then I remembered that when I first stated writing about food, I looked to it as a model. The succinct coverage of chefs and food items a stencil of sort. Reading Gourmet helped me organize my thoughts, focus on the critical issues. The exquisite photographs a springboard from which to jump when food styling for Ultra Magazine. And a nod of confirmation when a restaurant, chef or kitchen gadget I had written about received similar treatment from Gourmet.
Yes I will miss Gourmet. But I will need to get over my anger first. On a recent blissful Sunday I caught up on my reading, plowing through the stack of unopened mail and magazines.
And now I am mad.
To sit with the stellar November issue, with its perfect golden brown turkey on the cover, and to realize this is the last Gourmet to shepherd me through the “cookingest” day of the year is simply infuriating.
Worse, no Christmas cookie December issue to anticipate. Or at least I am assuming this is it. The publisher has not had the courtesy to contact me regarding the status of my account. Have they you?
Indeed, rather then let us know exactly what is going on with our subscriptions, the ultimate insult came when the first thing I noticed upon tearing into the November issue was those always annoying and now insanely infuriating gift subscription cards. My reaction - total indignation.
The presence of these cards screamed at me. Did the great publishing house of Conde Nasty hold the million plus subscribers in such contemptuous regard? First we received no notification from them as to this heinous act and secondly it seemed like some old carney trickery. What was this plea for new and even worse gift subscriptions when there would never be a future issue? Insulting.
And then I read the interview of Gourmet editor Ruth Reichl in the New York Times magazine, revealing that the termination of publication was as big a surprise to her as it was to us.
We as readers may have lost a loved publication, but many workers lost their jobs. The instant unemployment of countless production workers, columnists, photographers and staff writers reawakened my memories of the brutal closing day of The Houston Post. The heartless inhumanity of the act in these particular economic times, with the holiday season looming ahead, staggers the imagination.
Yes, dear editor, thanks for the nudge. I turns out I do have strong feelings. The death, nay, the murder of the magazine is a heartless, disrespectful act, that has me feeling helpless and wanting to climb to a tall peak and scream, “How dare they?”
But this I know. With every loss there is a lesson learned, growth happens.
Change, while painful, is good. I now view my parents’ deaths as the final step in the cycle of life. My years overseas taught me communities exist everywhere if you take the time to build them. The empty nest allows me time for self exploration and thankfully, still requires occasional fluffing when the prodigal off spring home for visits of quality, Job losses have lead to new, far more satisfying opportunities.
I will miss Gourmet with its pulse on the global food scene while simultaneously bringing the best of the American food to my mailbox every month
In this maddening world of disregard and surprise I will survive Christmas by digging out all my old December Gourmets. No doubt when Easter, July 4th and next year’s Thanksgiving rolls around I will revisit the appropriate past issues, now stacked up on shelves like my mother in-law’s revered National Geographic.
I suggest you do the same.
