The Mechanics of reading the Hills Highlights, the Official Newsletter of the City of Bloomfield Hills.

The Bad : For reasons unknown The Hills Highlights does not  as a rule utilize page numbers. An exception occurs when  a story is carried over on another page.  

In that case the article you're reading will break with a "continued on page "4" or similar notation. Since there are no numbered  pages you will have  go to the cover page (which counts as page 1)  and manually flip the pages in a counter clockwise manner. Since both sides of the page are printed on, two counter clockwise flips are required to produce the mythical page four.If you prefer you may also count each page separately  until you come to four and presumably page four.Often but not always you are rewarded by repeat of the headline from the page you departed from and the word continued. 

 Therefore it is  rather difficult to reference a particular article on particular page to a party who is in not in your presence and does not have  a copy of the Hills Highlights in hand.



The Good : Staples (the current issue has two) are a recent and welcome addition. In the bad  old days of sans staples, if you dropped your Hills Highlights the loose pages would fly all over leaving you to gather them up and in the absence of page numbers ponder how the issue might be 
re-assembled.  If this happens to you while reading Hills Highlights on a public conveyance such as airplane, escalator or elevator or while dining at a public eating house it is  embarrassing  and an annoyance to others.


Despite such difficulties:  The Hills Highlights has a dedicated readership  who reads each edition as fast as it comes out  with a passion that precludes  
(as we have previously mentioned) 
awareness of one's surroundings
 The attraction is not in what is written but often in what  is not. It is hard to describe but it is a truism of any publication that is the official anything.  Nuance comes close but not exactly.There is an orthodoxy that is inherent in  the word "official" which produces a repetition, which overtime  is rather revealing and therefore interesting.

Last Friday, Hills Highlight #89  Winter 2015 was delivered to   the mail boxes of residents. If you still have yours hang on to it. It will be a collector's item.