Reflections, January 2008

Time flies.

This is the thirteenth January for which I have written an editor’s column for Country Roads. By extension, this points to the fact that one hundred and forty-four “Reflections” have preceded this one onto the pages of the magazine. This is good, as it suggests that I will ultimately succeed in getting the thing written before our absolute drop-dead deadline to send the magazine to the printer’s arrives about two hours from now. When it comes to jumpstarting the creative impulse, I have always found two things to be vital: a period of procrastination—useful for doing important work like color-coding the paper clips in my desk drawer—and a deadline so close that you can smell its terrible breath. As a result, this editor’s column is the perpetual missing link when our press time rolls around. It’s the bane of our production manager, Mike’s existence. Highly organized, Mike always has everything finished by now and is probably sitting in the next room drumming his fingers while I feverishly try to think of something clever to say. You might think that after thirteen years of doing this every month, my time management skills would have evolved to the point at which I could get the thing written earlier. But alas, that is not the case. It’s supposed to be a reflection, after all.

What’s more, careful observation of the work habits of other Country Roads creative personnel (besides Mike) leads me to the conclusion that things are not likely to change with the passage of time. With mere minutes to go before the inaugural issue of Country Roads’ twenty-fifth anniversary year goes to press, mine isn’t the only thing missing. So I’d like to take a moment to recognize the most luminous last-minuter of them all: our art director, cover designer, Baton Rouge artist elder-stateswoman and wellspring of all things creative and terminally behind schedule, Anna Macedo.

Without Anna there would not be—and never would have been—a Country Roads. Twenty-five years ago it was to Anna that CR founder Dorcas turned to come up with a look and a feel for the magazine she had in her mind’s eye. At the time, Anna was a Baton Rouge advertising titan with an agency of her own. She was also longtime buddies with Susan Lindsey, Michael Hesse, and Kenwood Kennon, all of whom happened to be hanging out on the porch of The Shade Tree in St. Francisville one afternoon in 1982 when Dorcas was expounding on this magazine idea of hers. So Dorcas went to see Anna, and participated in the first in a series of slight misunderstandings that have come to shape Country Roads as much as any other thing.

“Anna, do you think we can do a magazine called Country Roads?” asked Dorcas, meaning to test the project’s economic viability by leveraging Anna’s knowledge of reader and advertiser demand, niche marketing, and regional demographics.

“Oh, surrrre!” replied Anna, with visions of a walking horse logo, meadows of wildflowers, and chapbook butterfly art floating before her eyes.

No matter, each participant left the conversation with their optimism for the magazine intact, and Anna was soon at work on a layout.

Thirteen years ago, when my wife Ashley and I became Country Roads’ second and third employees, we went back to Anna to redesign the magazine to its current size. As I recall, we worked on it (no computers—still hot wax and rollers and cut-and-paste at that point) for about three months. With forty-five minutes to go until press time, we realized we’d forgotten to consider the cover. Anna chopped up a chapbook of old-fashioned clip art with a huge pair of scissors, and glued the bits back together in a sort of mosaic that somehow came to define the magazine’s art cover approach from that day forward.

So, with the dawn of our twenty-fifth year brightening the horizon, with our press deadline ticking inexorably to a conclusion, and with me homing in on the closing sentence of my 145th editor’s reflections, it seems almost serendipitous that there should still be another unfilled page in our January issue—the one slated for Anna’s Countrypolitans article. But I’m not scared. After thirteen … or twenty-five … years of doing this, I’d hardly have it any other way.

Happy New Year, one and all. And happy reading.

James Fox-Smith, editor