In my downtime, I enjoy nothing more than sitting on my back porch listening to the sounds of nature (and the occasional lawnmower) and reading a magazine.

Yes, a magazine.

I love periodicals and always have since I fell in love with Teen Beat, Tiger Beat and Soap Opera Digest in the 1970s.

My first job after college was at TV Host magazine, combining my love of TV with work in the magazine industry.

I penned a soap opera column there and proved to my mother that my brain full of what she considered “useless trivia” was, in fact, useful in the work world.

Later in my career, I was editor of Central Penn Parent magazine (the job I loved most in the world) and I now write for three magazines.

I’m not bragging. I simply have a passion for glossy publications you can stack on your end table, fold in your tote bag or throw on the back seat of your car for those times when you need something to do and you don’t want to look at a screen.

I get mildly disgusted when I go into a doctor’s office and they don’t have magazines to read. I guess they figure everyone is on their phones.

But I take the lack of interest in periodicals personally.

I will never forget the day I went with one of our ad reps at CPP to a meeting and the potential client told her, “Oh, yeah, that’s just something my kid sits his cup of grape juice on, spills it and I throw it away.”

I couldn’t have been more horrified. I was literally left speechless. Clearly, we were done there.

Sadly, over the years my favorite magazines—Parents, InStyle, Cottage Living, to name a few—have ceased print publishing, leaving me with limited reading material.

And I recently had a bad breakup with one of my long-term subscriptions, Better Homes & Gardens, because the format and content no longer appeal to me. A few years back, they enlarged the size of the magazine and it’s just not comfortable. (I know you probably didn’t even notice, but how reading material feels in my hands is a big thing to me.)

Over the years, BH&G has shifted its content—probably to appeal to a younger audience?—and it just doesn’t resonate with me. I don’t care for the home styles or the recipes, both of which were why I subscribed.

These days, my preferred picks are Southern Living, Good Housekeeping and First for Women.

I just sat down to read about how Queen Latifah thrives at 50-plus when I read the news in the editor’s note. (Yes, you really should always read those things—if done well, they give you a behind-the-scenes look into the magazine and generally set the tone for the publication.)

Anyhow, in the June 30 issue, Liz Vaccariello, editor-in-chief, announced that was the last issue of First.

WHAT?! Say it ain’t so!

Instead, Vaccariello, who is also the editor of Woman’s World, will focus solely on that publication.

It’s a sad day for me. I won’t buy Women’s World for a variety of reasons which I will explain in a bit.

But I’ve come to understand its popularity.

Back when I was a parenting magazine editor, I attended a conference on magazines in general. At that time about a decade ago, guess what was the No. 1 best-selling magazine? Woman’s World.

In the seminar, most of us were surprised at that piece of trivia and asked to what they attributed its success.

We were told the format is to always have an article about diet on the cover because they did studies and found that when folks are standing in line at the grocery store (where it is most commonly sold), the thought of losing weight is something that appeals to most women scanning the magazine covers and they will impulse-buy it.

You could hear the collective “well, huh,” in the room.

Not me, though. I won’t buy that magazine. I think I picked it up once—probably due to the diet coverline—and never got it again.

I don’t like the size, don’t like the thin paper and it just feels cheap.

Also, it’s a weekly publication and it just feels like such a tabloid in stereotypical sense of the word meaning sensational journalism (hence the coverlines promoting the latest diet craze or celebrity foible).

So here I am, on my porch, dog-earing several pages of the last copy of a beloved magazine, while staring at the latest issue of Southern Living and hoping it, too, doesn’t meet its demise.

Just another part of our lifestyle growing up that we won’t be able to share with our grandkids. Thank goodness Highlights is still a thing! [*fingers crossed]