We spent Sunday night in JetBlue Hell at Kennedy’s Terminal Six. Not JetBlue’s fault, actually—weather. Bodies packed in everywhere, snoring and snarling. There was WiFi, but I didn’t bring my laptop. Couldn’t find a Starbuck’s, and don’t even think of a Wolfgang Puck. Worst, we couldn’t even find a place to buy a New York Times.
But then, a stroke of luck. Over in a quiet corner, we saw two seats, together, obscured behind a largeish refuse pile of newspaper.
--Are these seats taken?
--I don’t think so, some guy sat here reading all these newspapers and then throwing them away, but he left.
Famished for news I thought—hey, maybe this is our Times. But not so. It wasn’t today’s paper, and it wasn’t even yesterday’s. What he had here was a miscellany of sections from the Times and the Wall Street Journal, dating back discontinuously to about September 3.
Who would read (and, ahem, discard) newspapers in this curious way (and does he know yet that the Republicans lost the election?)? In the event, I had a clue: a couple of papers bore an address tag from the library at Buchalter Nemer—that would be the law firm—in San Francisco.
Hey, I think I know this guy! But let that pass. Whoever it is, I have to wonder—
1. Okay, granted, Buchalter is not the nation’s most profitable law firm. But do fancy SFO lawyers really have to eke out their miserable pittance by pinching the library’s old newspapers? Or
2. Is it the library, trying to meet its budget by peddling the remainders in the secondary market?
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