While I'm whining...

Then there’s the Great River Journal dilemma: this is a (very) slender quarterly I dreamed up a year and a half ago. [LINK] I imagined a forum for writers and poets and naturalists and artists and essayists (ahem), one that would reach to and from the length of the Rio Grande (Great River, get it?) valley, would serve the pockets of arts and culture that are so significantly ignored by self-important Santa Fe and perpetually self-deprecating Albuquerque. It had not escaped me that this strip of territory is positively loaded with creative people, STARTING with the Pueblo artisans, and continuing with Hispanics and Anglos who have been irresistibly drawn to the area by the extraordinarily intense creative energy to be found here. Many, even most, don’t get as far as a fancy gallery, or published (twenty bucks says that less than ten percent of really good writing ever gets to print); indigenous artisans scramble for the Indian Market and can scarcely be found anywhere else or at any other time of the year.

Well, anyway -- up jumps the silly Nobility part of me, and I get this little magazine going. I whip myself and loyal, apparently tireless Mary up into a frenzy of begging for written material, and then editing and scanning and formatting photos and drawings, and then laying out and printing and folding and collating and stapling, and whining for subscriptions and advertising, and mailing and pressing copies into the reluctant hands of passers-by, and applying for copyright, and putting it up on its website, and then wheezing with exhaustion of mind, body and checking account, over and over and over again.

The Journal was just about to be euthanized from lack of funds before its fourth issue, when a Cochiti Lake community organization gave us money to keep going. I was grateful, and relieved of COURSE, and kept going. The cycle was repeated another time, and we bought a computer layout program because Microsoft Word was making us both nuts (and you know what we’re talking about -- I won’t elaborate on the random and whimsical defaults to superscript or font changes or the arbitrary and hilarious reduction of margins to half and inch, resulting in absolute chaos and panic and rage).

That program and the next issue used up most of the gift, and just when we were (this time slightly less reluctantly) going to give it up, a most generous donor gave us even MORE money. SO, having slain our aged and stuttering large format printer with the fall 2005 issue, we bought a new slick, quiet printer, with which to produce more pages of color (what good is a periodical about the arts if it can’t be reproduced in color?). I took a deep breath and decided that if the Journal was going to continue to improve, we needed to shape up the website -- it’s the way of the world now, after all. Mary has a friend and former student who is a web-designer and we contracted him for a very good price; his spiffed-up version of the Great River Journal website is beautiful, no question, and accurately reflects the feel of the magazine itself. (The new site will be up shortly -- watch this space.) Having bought the printer, having bought the paper and the ink cartridges for the two latest issues, we have just enough money to pay the designer. We might have the wherewithal to print one more issue (if we don’t go nuts on color, and just photocopy most of it), and then we’re back to begging.

I’m tired just thinking about it. Not that we haven’t had help, not at all. There have been local friends who have been very helpful -- with drawings and photos, with subscriptions, and the grunt work of folding, collating, etc., and coming up with articles, some more cheerfully than others -- and God knows I’m thankful to and for them. None of them, however, wants to cough up the commitment of time and energy that I need to keep me slogging along. I’m, frankly, burnt out on the whole thing. I don’t WANT any more donations, I want it to DIE!

And then there’s the guilt. I have equal amounts of guilt for wanting to give up the Journal (a) after such good monetary support and admittedly a lot of flattery about the finished product each time; and (b) guilt for my not insisting on enough time and creative energy to do my own writing. Looks like I can’t win this one, doesn’t it?

GGGHHHH. August fifteenth is the deadline I set for submissions: that will be the crunchola (though I’m -- obviously -- feeling it already). Maybe there won’t be enough material for a fall issue. I can only hope not; then it won’t be my fault if it slips gently into that good night.