Gentle Spiders,
My IOLI Bulletin came today (I suppose I'll have to re-think my
contention that no interesting mail ever comes on Saturdays <g>)! My
husband, alerted to my frustration (and the reasons for it) about the
late arrival, got to it first and read the article -- something he
never does anymore (used to, when my appearance in print was less
regular). Complimented me on my writing (which I take seriously, since
he'd spent *years* teaching literature at our U, correcting thousands
of papers in the process, as well as reading the best writers and lit
criticism all the time). And, finally, I got a chance to check the
article out. Phew... didn't catch anything too glaringly wrong.
But the Bulletin came with a fly in the ointment all the same. Debra
Jenny, Editor-in-Chief of the Bulletin, has announced her desire to
pass the job to someone else, come '08 IOLI Convention... I knew about
it -- she'd called to let me know, since a change in editorship will
also mean a change in the team -- but seeing it in print made the news
just that much more stark and irrevocable. True, for me, it also means
I won't have to worry anymore about delivering a pattern or an article
every 3 months, to a deadline; I'll be able to provide something -- or
not -- as the spirit moves me. If I want to take a quarter off to
"recharge batteries", I won't have to make sure first that she has
enough material to fill the Bulletin without my contribution. But...
Except for my own article, I haven't yet read the current Bulletin; I
just flipped through it. But it was enough to see that it was
jam-packed with interesting "lace-stuff"; I'm looking forward to
several days of reading and "digesting" the contents. But, I believe it
wouldn't be half as interesting if it weren't for Debra.
I think that the quality of the material reflects Debra's superb
stewardship/editorship of the Bulletin. She began to "turn it around"
with the very first issue she was in charge of -- vol 23, #2 (Winter
of the '02-'03 cycle) -- by adding colour to the outside and inside
covers, which meant that I (and others) no longer had to send patterns
off to Lace in UK, if we wanted to work up something other than
all-white. And then she started assembling her "team" and expanding the
number of editors. For instance, Devon Thein's "position" (Lace Study
Editor) didn't even exist before Debra became the EiC, but now it's
hard to imagine the Bulletin without Devon's -- well informed and
witty -- contributions. I let myself be talked into BL editorship,
because I recognized, early on, that we had a treasure in Debra and
didn't want her to burn out or get frustrated at lack of support in the
form of Bulletin material.
And the better the Bulletin got, the more interesting contributions it
attracted.
Sigh... I'll miss Debra something dreadful. But we still have a year to
go; 4 more issues... I guess the current team will have to make sure we
go out with a bang, not a whimper :)
--
Tamara P Duvall http://t-n-lace.net/
Lexington, Virginia, USA (Formerly of Warsaw, Poland)
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