As she-whose-age-must-not-be-mentioned, it may seem odd that I was anxious this morning to find out how the final episode of the Harry Potter series turned out. There was no way I was going to wait all night with the lines of fans outside of bookstores—waiting for the release of the final episode. I probably won’t ever read the last book. I read the first four, and then as the books got longer and darker, have settled for going to the movies as they have been released. As I looked through news coverage this morning, five hours after the new book was placed in the first eager hands here in New York City, there was lots about the crowds but no synopsis of the ending. But we have a new medium in our connected age that came through for me. While the weary purchasers still had not had time to read the hot-off-the-press Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, wikipedian wizardry had deftly summarized the book and its conclusion. (Actually, I am proud of being 70 and enticed by the summary in Wikipedia. At the least I am going to sneak a read-through at a bookstore of the last chapter and epilogue that takes place in 2017.)

As she-whose-age-must-not-be-mentioned, it may seem odd that I was anxious this morning to find out how the final episode of the Harry Potter series turned out. There was no way I was going to wait all night with the lines of fans outside of bookstores—waiting for the release of the final episode. I probably won’t [...]