Saturday, May 12, 2007

A fine edition if I do say so myself

This issue of the paper was a bear to get through, but I'm pleased with how it came out: some great photos, a wide range of subjects (poetry to history to satire to opinion to muckraking) and locales (local to national) in the stories, not too many typos, lots of different contributors, some very nice writing. I don't seem to have forgotten any of the advertisers, either.

Hannah Hill and Kate Billington have been writing a column on the Bill of Rights, "Live Free or Die", which is going through the different amendments from 10 through 1. The third installment in the series was published in the May issue, and I'm struck by how informative the articles are, even though they're only a page and a half each, and by how very little I seem to know about these important amendments to the Constitution.

The paper is getting closer and closer to what I want it to become; I don't have that clearly in my mind, exactly. It's sort of an intuitive process, dependent both on what I get and what I ask for. People make suggestions: some I jump on with enthusiasm, others don't leap out at me. The paper evolves, working its way toward something good.

And the next one? Well, so far I have all the poetry that I couldn't fit into this one, a pencil illustration of the view of Denali, a prose fiction/commentary piece exploring the paranoid mind and the myriad conspiracy theories out there, a topical piece from the Cooperative Extension Service Advisory Council (very interesting, that one), a piece on the elements of fascism by Laurence Britt (also thought-provoking), a review of Geek Love, some wonderful photos taken in the Bush, and several articles by Brian Yanity (renewable energy policy, energy efficiency, coal and nuclear fuels, oil, gas, etc.).

1 comment:

Robert Ellman said...

Glad your paper is shaping up. Here in New York, Ruppert Murdoch is contemplating buying the Wall Street Journal which already has a reactionary editorial board. We could use the Ester Republic here!