It's almost like I performed liposuction on what was on top of the bookcase I built years ago, and what was falling into the space between bookcase and the printer. Cleaned up, it looks a bit like Willets Point, next to Shea Stadium, now Citi Field, when the city decided enough was enough and ordered the junk yards that are still there that they had to move things back a bit because they had actually encroached on a city street and made it disappear. (I wonder if Google Maps has been back.)
They moved the junkers back and exposed the street, and I tied up five bundles of clippings, headed for a storage box...when I get the box, or boxes.
One of the pleasures of re-reading some of the clippings I've saved was coming across one from October 1992, a Russell Baker piece that speculated what it was going to be like when Ross Perot was elected president. There was not going to be a cabinet, and all the lobbyists in then $1,000 suits and alligator shoes, those loafers with tassels, were going to be rounded up at Union Station and put out of work.
Also, President Perot was going to run the country from Dallas, away from the White House. This was to insure that there then could no longer be "sources close to the White House..." since there was no one in the White House. Thinking about this in the current context, you do have to wonder if Mr. Baker had a better idea of how in 1992, 25 years ago, Trump could be a better president if he just stayed where he came from, in his case, New York City, rather than cadging meals from the White House kitchen.
Only finding one piece from the 1990s was perplexing. I've been cutting clippings out for a long time, so surely there are others from that time frame. My guess is that particular piece became separated from its contemporaries. Where they are is another story.
There were a few Maureen Dowd pieces from 2008 or so, when she worked harder and her pieces appeared in a weekly print edition, rather than just the solo Sunday snarky tirades she turns in these days. The examples I saved were from an era when she was worth reading. Obits and horse racing dominated the rest of the lot.
Perhaps quite fittingly, I also came across a 2003 story from the NYT by the redoubtable Robert McFadden that told the story of a Bronx man who was rescued from an avalanche of newspapers and magazines that fell on top of him in his Bronx apartment. He apparently was also sleeping in the 10' x 10' room, and was smothered by a cascade of newsprint.
McFadden, being a veteran reporter, and even more of one now, of course blended into the story the tale of the Collyer Brothers, the really eccentric brothers that were found dead in their 12-room Fifth Avenue mansion in 1947, buried under what you might expect from hoarders, magazines, books and newspaper, but who in addition added a collection of 14 grand pianos, chandeliers and an automobile chassis. And booby trapped the place to prevent burglars from entering. No mention was made of a kitchen sink, but I'm sure one was there as well.
My mother-in-law, who was from England, would always describe a messy room as "Collyer's Mansion." Until I read stories about the brothers I always thought she was going on about some squire's house in the English countryside, something like Downton Abbey, that had fallen into ruin. And because of the long-ago magazine, I always thought Collyer was spelled Collier.
I don't consider my own my own accumulation of things to be anything approaching a psychological condition. I'm nothing like the Collyer brothers, nothing like the Bronx man Patrice Moore, and certainly nothing like the fellow I wrote about a few years ago who was a friend's neighbor in Middletown, NJ. When he died, the family found 51 lawn mowers scattered around the property, in the cellar and the garage, that were being saved for parts, or someday repair.
As noted in the posting I wrote about Bill, he certainly was one lawn mower short of a full deck.
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