There are still advice columns, but yeah I suspect most are digital. There are some printed magazines that have them as well.

my general sense from the lightweight surfing i've done recently is that over the internet, free advice is cheaper than ever. i find myself lost in the sheer quantity.

Yes. We get the actual newspaper still. There are two advice columns besides
Miss Manners in our paper. Washington Post.

who are the others?

i feel kinda guilty for no longer buying printed media or even having a current library card. kinda. . . way back when i was digging dick tracy watches out of cereal boxes, i was already dreaming of having all the world's libraries and research centers streaming through those plastic buttons. there is allot to hate about the internet, but i ADORE having research resources streaming across plastic buttons that are actually connected to something more substantial than childish fantasies.

I think I remember one of those in the paper back in the day. People would mail in questions looking for advice & the lady would print the answer to the question (like her advice or whatever)
I think it was called Dear Abbey. because I remember that’s how the article always started with the person mailing in asking for advice & saying ... Dear Abbey, ect ect

Ask Amy, and Carolyn Hax are in the washington post. I like Carolyn most of the time because she is thorough and usually down to earth. And she has cartoons to go with the column.

missy,
i don't care enough to do the research, but i believe only the most literate of folks under 50 remember the newsprint syndicates. i'm impressed that you remember that much.

for what it's worth
the real life writers of, "ann landers" and "dear abby" were sisters and ferociously competitive.

thank you, hopi. both are new to me.

Off topic within an off topic post: I still have a library card but it's pretty out of date. I do have a soft spot in my heart for the card catalog at the library. The Dewey Decimal system is remarkable to me.

ditto on the out of date library cards. plural intended. my wandering ways made it sensible for me to have library cards, all of which are long expired, in multiple locations. libraries used to be the closest i had to a home.

i feel like an ungrateful child for not even having a library card in my current city. can i feel justified in blaming that on covid?

I lived at the neighborhood library when I was a kid. It was kind of a sanctuary, like church, in the best way.

I can see how it was the closest thing to a home for you. I bet there are many people who had different circumstances, but similar feelings about it.

And yeah you can blame COVID for sure!

I have the new library card. I am checking out printed books, rather than the digital ones.

Advice columns are still happening, the majority are digital. For me, I use them for ideas when I'm stumped how to cope with an unusual situation that is affecting my thinking.

i didn't exactly raise my first kids at the public library, but they spent allot of free time there and thanked me profusely for that, starting in their teen years.

my foster kids were 6, 4 and a year old when corona crowned. the eldest barely remembers libraries. the youngest. for sure, has never been in a library. at almost 3, Coronaville is the only normal she has ever known. are we safe yet?

my curiosity on how the syndicated advice columnists have fared in the digital world has led me to new levels of chaos. the sheer quantity is mind boggling. so far i still haven't uncovered whether it is a valid career option or just a plethora of self-appointed gurus with enough tech savvy to set up a website.

My cynical side suspects it’s more the latter.

Oh yeah Ann Landers I forgot about her, that’s funny I didn’t know they were sisters & competitive.

This post is brining me back to a lot actually. I remember my library cards.
I never went to high school due to all the chaos & just trying to survive as a kid.

I remember when I was 15 years old I went to see if I could take my GED. I remember when I got there & said I would like to take a GED test. And the lady looked at me & said “how old are you?” & I said 15 & she said you have to be at least 16 to take it. I talked to her for a couple minutes & she asked me if I never been to high school how did I think I could pass it. So she wrote down the categories of the test & different subjects I should study. So I said okay I’ll see you in 6 months when I turn 16.

After that I went to the library a couple times a week & would get different books of the subjects that that lady wrote down on the paper. I remember I used to take the dollar bus to get there. It was a bus that would take you anywhere in the borough for a dollar. But the days that I didn’t have a dollar or needed to make sure I had money for food for me & my little brother (or at least him if I didn’t have enough for myself) ; I would have to walk back & forth through some really rough areas to get to that library. 6 months later (when I was about to turn 16 that week) I went back to that building to schedule to take my GED test. It was the same lady, she showed me when the next GED test was going to be which would be 2 days after my birthday. She said in order to sign up for that test I still wouldn’t be able to because you had to be 16 to sign up. Then she said “wait a minute, let me put all your paper work to schedule the test & I’ll just forget to write in your birthdate & when you come in to take the test that day we will then put your birthday in that spot & because you will technically be 16 by then I think it’ll be all good.” I said okay thank you. So a week later I went & took the test. When I got my results & passed & went in to get the diploma, I saw that lady again. She pulled me aside & said I got the highest scores for a person that young taking that test. She seemed proud of me, it was kinda cool.


But yea for sure Arfie, many times as a kid to teens a library has been a safe place for me. Especially the times I was homeless & it was cold out & the library was nice & warm.

Sorry I didn’t mean to go on, just this post & thread brought up those memories. & in a weird way was therapeutic. I won’t go into all the reasons why I think this may have been therapeutic for me because I don’t want to high jack this post.

Isn’t it funny how an off topic post can actually help someone

Big hugs <3 <3 <3

lilmissy7, it's people like that lady who are sort of these angels on earth. Thank you for sharing that story. She may never know the impact her small kindness may have had.