Travel Blog

I'm reading a wonderful book: Magpies, by Lynne Barrett. It is a collection of short stories and my favorite, so far, is titled "Links." In it, a woman loses her job at a literary magazine when the magazine folds and takes a job at an events-listing online publication (my career at the Sun-Sentinel in a nutshell). At dinner one night with her new boss she points out a typo "on the little wine promotion tent on the table" and he accuses her of having "Attention Surplus Disorder." (The ability, as he tells her critically, to "sit still for hours on end, working on something...")

People drawn to writing and editing have always been different from the rest of the population. For centuries they not only found soul mates in publishing, academia, journalism, they helped set the standard. What this story makes clear (though it is far from its main message) is that we have reached a crucial turning point: For the first time in history, we are getting our information from people with ADD.