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Editor’s Note: Winter Should Be A Time to Write

We set our clocks back this week. It was a reminder that our deadline for this issue was fast approaching. I told myself that I would write this column well in advance of our press date. That I would surprise the staff, and for the first time in the 17-year history of the publication, I would have the Publisher’s Note completed at least a day before the deadline. As of today I am officially late, and the entire magazine has been completed with the exception of this one column. Everything else is done. Everyone else on staff has put together a wonderful collection of stories about the people and places of our community. Everyone else did their job. 

In an effort to be on time, I considered filling this space with a full-page photograph. Our director of photography, Len Villano, takes incredible photos, and he has this beautiful photograph of a crane that could have easily filled this entire page. It would have simplified things. It would have limited my words to “Sandhill crane. Photo by Len Villano.” A picture, after all, is worth a thousand words. It would, however, have set the wrong precedent, and I would never have heard the end of it.

Winter has always been a time when one should have time to write. Things slow down just enough to allow time for fingers to hit a keyboard uninterrupted. But there are still so many distractions. Winter is also a time to catch up with friends, hike, snowshoe or ski in the quiet woods; visit your favorite café, tavern, bookstore or shop and have a conversation with an old friend behind the counter; drive through a park, read the book that has collected dust all summer, take all day to prepare dinner for friends, make art, light a bonfire, reminisce, reconnect and reenergize.

I have had the opportunity to live, work and play in Door County for 24 winters. I am looking forward to my 25th. I hope you enjoy your winter, discover something new and become inspired by the stories you’ll find inside these pages.

Thanks for reading. 

David Eliot
Publisher