In the early 1970s I was the second person sent by Voluntary Service Overseas to teach at the Universidad Technologica de Pereira in Colombia. Fortunately the first, the estimable Malcolm, had already set up the essentials, a house, a maid and a Guardian Weekly subscription.
Eventually there were four of us in the house, reading it in strict order of seniority. When I moved on to the US, my parents got me a subscription of my own as a Christmas present but eventually, as they retired and I prospered, I had to start paying for it myself as the only way of getting non-alternative facts about what is going on in the world.
So the Weekly has been my constant companion at the breakfast table through nearly 50 years of work as an engineer in academia and the national labs in states from New York to Idaho, Oregon and (in retirement) Washington. I always read it from the outside in, starting with the more perishable sports and world roundup and proceeding to the arts, sciences and opinions. The only changes down the decades have been pauses to do the Sudoku and to highlight articles likely to interest my wife when I pass it on.
The mystery is why delivery through the present US postal system is less reliable than the old Colombian system. I suspect interference from the CIA, who are getting their own back for Edward Snowden.
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