Day Two

Today is another easy one: a small piece of lined adhesive paper with issues of magazines listed on the front: Advocate 9/03, Interview May 2004, GQ January 2002, Biography Magazine (no date)...and on the back, the mailing address for purchasing back issues of New York magazine for $8: 444 Madison Ave, NY, NY 10022.

Day One

Every day I'm going to try to throw out one piece of paper in hopes that this simple task will help me clear some of the clutter from my messy apartment. I'm starting with an easy one today: tossing a $1 off coupon for a Sabra dip that expired on 1/15/2013. Nothing that could possibly be useful there.

Old Newspaper Memories

Newspaper are going. That's not a general statement, it's what's happening in my apartment. Pieces of newspaper that have been hanging around this apartment, and apartments past, for more than a decade are going.

It's hard, however, just to toss them out without relishing the memories they contain. The Sunday Times arts section for March 26, 2000, contains ads for James Joyce's The Dead, a musical I quite liked; Fuddy Meers with the wonderful Mark McKinney; and Taller than a Dwarf with Matthew Broderick and Parker Posey, a play that I never saw and forgot was ever on Broadway.

There's a beautiful full-page ad for the Moon for the Misbegotten revival with Cherry Jones, Gabriel Byrne and Roy Dotrice.

Since my mother is moving this year, I am on a deadline to help her clean out the two-floor apartment (it just isn't fancy enough for the "duplex" label) that my family has lived in since 1966. The accumulated newspapers alone could keep a fire burning for almost that amount of time.

Right now I'm looking thorough the sports section of the May 5, 1983, Morning Call. Lots of scholastic baseball! And softball. I swear the wrap-ups only mention names players who did good things. The winning pitcher. The players who got hits. The ones who scored runs. Interesting style.

And this being 1983, there's phone numbers all over the place in the news briefs instead of e-mail addresses for contact info about things like Nittany Lions golf events (Joe Paterno attending!) and Mr. Lehigh Valley bodybuilding contests.

And what's more, there is room in the newspaper for news briefs about summer basketball and wrestling coaching clinics, with dates and times and daytime and evening phone numbers, beneath a well-written column about canoeing by Outdoors editor Tom Fegely.

There's a Kentucky Derby preview (Sunny's Halo), an article in which Ivan Lendl bitches about John McEnroe's behavior, and a piece about the formation of a local golf association. But I realize that the reason this section was put aside in the first place was the classified section. This was around the time that I was discovering Broadway shows, and the Coming Events section often listed group theater outings. Not much on this Thursday, just Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, Richard Harris in Camelot at Valley Forge and Porgy and Bess at Radio City.

I found a special Morning Call wedding section from June 1988. It's amazing how many articles one can come up with on a topic when there's advertising to be sold. There were so many pages because of all the ads that editors were clearly having trouble filling the space. I found two separate articles that were each printed twice, under different headlines. The one about second weddings ended up on page 52 as "Wedding trends broaden to facilitate life in the 80's" and on page 56 with Barbara Mayer's AP byline as "Survey sites [I know!] varied bridal trends." Here it is in another newspaper with a much better headline.

Cleaning the bathroom today. That's also a place where I store papers, and stashed on the back of the toilet was my renter's insurance renewal form from Liberty Mutual for the fall of 2009--all eight pages of it, including notices about flood coverage and insurance scoring--for which I paid $120. (Hey, at least I've lived in this place since 2009; it's much worse when I find clutter that predates 2007 and I realize that I actually went through the trouble of moving it from my old place to my new place.) Half of them are either in the recycling bin and half are being reused (the ones without print on the back).

The paperwork that one accumulates just trying to get through life is staggering. And the institutions and organizations that I have to deal with for monetary purposes are the most prolific on the paper front.

I was only briefly a customer at Washington Mutual in 2004, but I'm still finding paperwork from those days: an identity theft service enrollment agreement, some accidental death membership agreement and an employer automatic payroll deduction authorization form. I didn't sign any of these things, but I kept them around just in case.

And there are those pesky little receipts that I save for taxes. One from Duane Reade from January 10, 2004, for something Fuji. Maybe film...I think I still used film in those days; another from Barnes & Noble for a card and a journal (business expenses or birthday presents?); a Europa Cafe receipt for a salad and a Snapple from 5/28/08; a get-six-months-of-issues-for-just-$2 offer from Borders that expired on 1/31/10. When did Borders go out of business?

There's a Dunkin' Donuts receipt from the store on Fourth Avenue in Brooklyn from 9/22/09 @4:24; a bubble envelope from Duane Reade from 1/18/04; a couple of receipts from the Columbus Circle Whole Foods from 2/20/04 and 3/15/04, probably post-librettists workshop get-togethers; and a post-office receipt from 2/21 for six items (must have been a lot of RT books to send out that day).

I'm not sure what I did on 2/20/04, but I'm guessing it was something with Jim. I have a receipt from the Playwright Tavern on Eighth Avenue for a Brooklyn Lager (that would be me) and a Tetleys (I can't imagine anyone else I know besides Jim ordering that).

And in August of 2004, I actually invested in a copy of Theatrical Index for $14. That was right around the time I started writing for David at Time Out.

Do good gift givers remember what they give someone on any given occasion? I found a barely legible receipt from Barnes & Noble, paid for with my Barnes & Noble Mastercard (can't make out the year), for a book called Pennsylvania Off the Beaten Path. I must have given that to Connie and/or Ed as a gift, right? Either before or after they bought the house in Shohola. I don't remember doing it, but I can't imagine any other reason I'd have a receipt for it.

What I'm throwing away today:

a postcard advertising a 2006 fringe festival show, Every Nigger Is a Star, written and performed by Mario Burrell of Rent

a smaller pink RSVP postcard for a November 1991 IRTS event about Talk Shows ($45 per person)

an equally small RSVP postcard for a September 1992 IRTS event with FCC chairman Alfred C. Sikes ($50 per person)

a clipping from Assemblywoman Adele Cohen's newsletter. She's photographed with Hillary Clinton and some other official types who were joining forces to keep New York City's only active military base, the Fort Hamilton Army Base, open.

a 9/8/98 receipt from the Trader Joe's in Scarsdale for 14 items (I was able to buy more at a time when I lived in the suburbs and had a car)

an April 1992 mailing from IRTS Under-30's for a program called "Selling in the Cable Arena"; free and only $10 for nonmembers.

a green RSVP card for an IRTS luncheon, "Public Television: Dawn of a New Era or Twilight?," June 18, 1992, for $45, at 12:30, and a flier advertising the panel: Dr. William F. Baker, Les Brown and Dick Hubert.

a green one-page IRTS Under-30s invitation to the Museum of the Moving Image on Saturday Nov. 23rd (it only cost $5 at the time!) with plans to meet for dinner afterward. Wish I had gone!

a blue one-page notice from the IRTS Sports Division (yes, I was a member of that too) for "The Sports Radio Listener! Who Are They? Where Are They? How Do We Know?" on Thurs., Dec. 5, 1991. Tickets only $10 to $20.

a white one-page flyer advertising and IRTS Newsmaker Luncheon on Tues., Nov., 26, 1991, at the Waldorf-Astoria, featuring such notables of the day as Deborah Norville, Maury Povich, Montel Williams and Jenny Jones. Those were the days...

four stapled note pages of notes that I took while I watched "Side Effects"

a doubled-sided missive from Diana M. Gurieva, president of Planned Parenthood of New York City, from Oct. 18, 1989, about President Bush and federal Medicaid Funds for Abortion a receipt from Marseille dated 10/30/2010 at one in the afternoon. The bill, with tip, came to $65.05. I do hope Brian joined my mom and me for that brunch.

Twenty years after I graduated from college, I think it's time to re-purpose the cylinder mailer that my diploma came in, with an Oct. 5, 1993 postmark and sent me in Allentown, PA. I'm using it to send out a small Mad Men promotional poster that I picked up at Comic Con a couple of years ago.