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- <text id=91TT0777>
- <title>
- Apr. 08, 1991: From The Publisher
- </title>
- <history>
- TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1991
- Apr. 08, 1991 The Simple Life
- </history>
- <article>
- <source>Time Magazine</source>
- <hdr>
- FROM THE PUBLISHER, Page 19
- </hdr><body>
- <p> Manhattan's frantic avenues might seem light-years away from
- the simple life, but associate editor Janice Castro, who wrote
- this week's cover story, found early evidence of the back-to-
- basics trend in her own West Side New York City neighborhood.
- "Last year my brother Jim came from California on a business
- trip," she recalls. "On the third day he took me to a cafe he
- had found near my apartment, a cozy little no-frills place. As
- we walked in the door, the woman who runs the restaurant greeted
- him with a big smile, said, `The usual?' and started making his
- breakfast!"
- </p>
- <p> Soon Castro noticed other signs of a sea change in the way
- Americans ate, dressed, worked and treated each other. Her
- impressions resulted in a lead Business story that appeared in
- TIME last summer. By then Janice was convinced she had uncovered
- nothing less than a fundamental shift in the national psyche.
- Once the cover project was under way, Castro and senior
- correspondent William McWhirter, a Kansas City boy, interviewed
- a spectrum of Americans across the country.
- </p>
- <p> Castro's down-to-earth origins helped. Reared on a
- northern California cattle ranch, Janice studied English
- literature and city planning at the University of California,
- Berkeley. She began as a reporter-researcher for TIME in 1973,
- then became a writer. She eventually joined the Business section
- and was promoted last year to associate editor. During the past
- year, Castro has written major stories on the defense industry,
- the economic devastation of U.S. airlines and the Matsushita
- buyout of MCA.
- </p>
- <p> When not writing about the feverish world of business,
- Janice slows down to smell the flowers. She pitches for TIME's
- championship softball team and rides her mountain bike around
- Central Park in the mornings. Castro's healthy proclivities are
- also apparent in her office, which is crammed with thriving
- plants, Ansel Adams photographs recycled from discarded
- calendars, baseball trophies and rolls of earth-friendly
- gift-wrapping paper. Amid the creative clutter on her desk: a
- bottle of spring water and a Slinky toy. "I use it sometimes to
- concentrate when I'm writing," Castro explains. "It seems to
- work. And it's simple."
- </p>
- <p>-- Robert L. Miller
- </p>
-
- </body></article>
- </text>
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