The End

I received an e-mail from one of my editors (the publisher) the other day.  The next issue of the magazine will be its last one.  Finances, esp in dealing with competition from digital sources, are the culprit.  Although I knew it was struggling, the end of the mag caught me off guard.

And, I was saddened, a great deal.

No, I didn't make a living writing for it.  In fact, people laugh when I tell them how much money I received for writing.  I'm not at all being critical.  The money was a bonus.  I would have written for free, as I now do for a couple of other periodicals, online and hard copies.  No, the money was never a factor or reason for writing.  Still, I'm saddened.

I started writing for it in 1987, 29 years ago.  Next year, I had figured, would have been my 30th year.  It's the longest tenure I've had.  I don't know how many articles, stories, columns I've written for it, but I'm guessing close to 200.  That's just a guess.  Although in the last years, it published six times a year, every two months, for the first 15-16 years, it was a monthly.  Far more often than not I had something it an issue.  And, esp the last 20 years or so, it was often two or three articles, columns, stories.  Not often, but more than once, I had four or five.  I think, just once, way back when, I had six stories in a single issue.

It was nice, in his e-mail, for the editor (publisher) to mention my name among the handful of writers over the years.  I appreciated it.  And, that was one of the reasons I enjoyed writing for this journal--the people.  I had two editors in the course of those years and both were wonderful, often helpful.  They threw articles my way and always responded when I needed help.  And they very rarely changed (edited?) anything I wrote.

This isn't the first journal/magazine that has folded while I wrote for it.  I haven't felt as saddened for any of them, at least not like this, except one--the first one that published any of my stuff.  (I still love that word, stuff.)  I don't know if a digital edition is being considered, but I will miss writing for this magazine and its people.