Catalog Season

I’ve mentioned before that we do our best to keep the printing presses rolling by subscribing to a raft of magazines from Time to Smithsonian to Bark. This time of year we double and triple our contribution to the printing industry when all of the holiday catalogs start showing up in our mailbox.

We returned from vacation Sunday and waiting for us after our short four-day jaunt were the following catalogues: Signals, PBS, The Great Courses, Nature’s Jewelry, Catalog Favorites, What on Earth, Smithsonian, Potpourri, Southwest Indian Foundation, Heifer, Wind & Weather, Wine Country Gift Baskets, Wireless, Old Durham Road, Personal Creations, and GaelSong.

These all went into the magazine box to join a couple of dozen of their brethren that had arrived earlier. No doubt this week will bring even more examples of quality 4/4 magazines and catalogs.

This catalog collection proves a few things. First, once you buy anything from a catalog you will be on their mailing list forever. Second, companies buy each other’s mailing lists, so one purchase can lead to many more catalogs. Finally, although you have the option to order by mail, by phone, by fax, or online, it is far easier to purchase online.

We do at least thumb through each of these catalogs and we often run across an item that strikes our fancy, but which we never would have gone looking for online. After all, when was the last time you went online to look for: a circle of cats, a personalized casserole dish, a hound dog pencil holder, a kinetic pinwheel garden sculpture, a wood weather station, a Zuni rattlesnake, a hippo collectable box, an Albert Einstein bobble-head doll, yoga frogs, a solar mosaic dachshund, handcrafted penguin earrings, or a flying witches tea light holder?

If you’re interested in any of the above, I can give you the details and the website you can access to place your order. They’re each in one of the catalogs that were waiting for us when we got home.