I am slightly wiped out, but doing okay. The April edition of Erie Gay News is basically done and distributed. (I just have to drop off the copies for Edinboro tomorrow.) It was slightly more pages than have done the past few months, more copies because of Drenched Fur, and we also had an insert. As I wrote in my column, this month also marks the 20 year anniversary that I have been doing some sort of monthly newsletter. (Okay, I was off from January of 2000 through November of 2002, but I did contribute calendar stuff to the print edition that existed for part of that period, and I did keep the web site up the entire time.)
Deb had asked James to take some photos to add some visual interested to the newsletter. He ended up with more than we could print in this issue, and we thought that we would just gradually go through them. Then I thought that we could just display them on the web site, and that might add some visual interest there. I have been uploading most photo gallery stuff to Flickr. I did some research, added a few fields to the database, so now the page that displays all the articles will just generate a slide show of a photoset from Flickr if the fields are there. I have this now on both this month's page for Trance and the Zone. Yay! Now it will be low maintenance. This made me happy for a few reasons:
- We now have an easy supply of photos for covers, filler or whatever
- James gets some recognition for taking photos, which lets him do something he enjoys.
- We now get to let more people get a chance to feel recognized, special or whatever. One thing that bugs me about building community is that, all too often, only the big honchos get public recognition. The folks who aren't as forthcoming end up as background. Anything that lets everyone have their moment in the sun is a good thing.
- We added some visual appeal to the newsletter, both for in print and on the web.
So, I am feeling like this was a Good Thing.
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