Editor's Note
by Paul L. Hayden
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| Have you noticed that
there are greeting cards for just about everything these days? In fact,
if you're looking for a good barometer of how a culture develops, maybe
greeting cards are where you should look first. Perhaps the most telling
is the variety there are for birthdays. In fact, you can almost find a
card for any specific age you want, from one year to 10 years, 50 years
(you know, really OLD!) and so on. Maybe even age 33 or 56. I guess I knew
society was really getting sophisticated when I started seeing 100-year-old
cards. Now - we've really got our bases covered.
All of this is preamble to say that our own little society here at Lake Superior Magazine is reaching a milestone with the issue you have in your hands. It isn't one of those "stop the presses" kind of things. In fact, most folks would say, "If you keep doing what you do, you're bound to reach this point whether you want to or not." They're right. And we have. Although our 20th anniversary really won't be celebrated until next year, this is our 100th issue of the magazine, thank you very much. I didn't join the staff of the magazine until late in 1985. At that time, we were four times a year, still called Lake Superior Port Cities magazine. (To this day there are folks who wish we'd never changed the name, but our current name says a lot more about what we do than the old one.) We didn't use as much color in our magazine then, because it cost a bundle to produce. It still costs a lot to make the magazine, but we do a better job of managing our costs. Therefore, these days we can give you a lot more color and pictures. Back then I was pretty green behind the ears. I made a lot of editorial mistakes, but I had good guidance from folks like Barb Landfield and Jim Marshall. Since then we've managed to find a lot of mighty good people to contribute and work on the magazine. They come and go, but our editorial focus and flavor remain constant - talking about that lake out there. They say it takes a lot of courage to put anything into print, because it all hangs out there forever, good or bad. Well, we think we've done enough good things to outweigh the bad. And we like to think that each new edition of the magazine is the result of all that has come before. We do know that it is a living, breathing medium - one which is always changing. Reaching the 100th issue only means that we've got a whole lot to live up to. Perhaps the most important thing to prove is that we're
doing the very best for the folks we love - our readers and our advertisers.
Without you, we really wouldn't have a reason to be here. So "thanks" for
helping us get to 100. You've done a good job.
Paul L. Hayden
Address e-mail to plh@lakesuperior.comReturn to Table of Contents |
On
Turning 100