From the Boat
Dear all,
The weather at this latitude continues to behave as weather ought to behave, which is to say: with considerable indifference to the preferences of men. There has been a swell since Tuesday that I would characterize as of substance, and the Margaret IV has absorbed it with the stoic patience I have always attributed to her, an attribute she shares with her namesake, who once sat through a six-hour editorial meeting in the spring of 1973 without once looking at the door. I am told that it is nearly summer in Manhattan. I would not know. I have not been to Manhattan since the winter, or possibly the autumn before that. The distinction collapses at sea.
A newspaper reached me three weeks ago, the issue dated, I believe, the eleventh of May, or thereabouts, and within it I found an article concerning the prices of certain commercial real estate in the midtown district that I can only describe as morally incoherent. Sixty-two dollars a month, fully serviced, was what I paid for the offices on West Forty-Fourth in 1974. Fully serviced. There was a woman named Dolores who brought coffee on a cart. The cart had wheels that squeaked in a frequency I found bracing. The article mentioned figures I will not repeat here, as I believe repetition confers legitimacy, and I am not prepared to legitimate what I cannot comprehend.
I was reminded, reading it, of the 1986 staff retreat, which we held, and I am confident of this, at a lodge outside of Woodstock, or possibly Rhinebeck, in late September. Margaret had organized the itinerary. The staff wore name badges, which she had typed herself on the Margaret typeface, our house font since '79, each badge a small formal document of belonging. On the second afternoon, we sat on a porch and someone read aloud from a Kellogg's advertisement I had clipped from a 1971 number of Life magazine: *"Kellogg's. The name that means more at breakfast."* I remember thinking: yes. That is the sentence. That is what we are trying to do. Mean more.
I have received word, via Bart, via post, that the recent issue departed somewhat from the established column structure, favouring what he terms a "looser architecture." I have opinions about looser architecture. Bart knows this, and I believe he weighed those opinions and proceeded regardless, which is precisely the quality I hired him for, in what I believe was 1988, or possibly the spring of '89. I do not retract my opinions. I also do not retract Bart.
The enterprise has survived swell and salary and the discontinuation of the Margaret typeface, which was a decision made in 1994 that I consider still open for reversal. It will carry on.
Bertram Whitmore
Publisher, At Sea