Paging Through

By Jack Melton · Originally published April 2016 · p. 2

Since the first of this year, publishing Civil War News and serving its community has been an honor and a privilege for us. We have spent countless hours putting together the news briefs, upcoming calendar of events, laying out current news articles, planning trips to cover future shows and activities and brainstorming new ideas based upon suggestions from our reader survey. We would like to give special thanks to Kay Jorgensen for sticking with us and helping out with editing the book reviews, consulting and so much more. Reaching out to new and existing advertisers and, of course, getting to know many of our subscribers personally, even if by telephone is very enjoyable to us. We have made new friends and enjoy speaking to old acquaintances. We are very surprised at how often the phone rings here at Historical Publications. In the past two months that we have answered over 1,500 emails and several hundred phone calls from so many supporters and followers. Many gave excellent suggestions and ideas for upcoming issues; others called just to say “thank you for a job well done and keep up the good work”. We appreciate your input and are open to all comments and criticisms, constructive, of course. We are acting on suggestions sent by the more than 700 people who replied to the survey. Many asked for more coverage of artifacts and museums and we hope they enjoy the new “Treasures From The Museum” feature. There are no generals here at the Civil War News; we are publishers, editors, contributors, graphic designers, and hard workers. Peggy and I just want to thank all of you who make our day, every day! Quote of the month: Why, sir, in the beginning, we appointed all our worst generals to command the armies, and all our best generals to edit the newspapers. As you know, I have planned some campaigns and quite a number of battles. I have given the work all the care and thought I could, and sometimes, when my plans were completed, as far as I could see, they seemed to be perfect. But when I have fought them through, I have discovered defects and occasionally wondered I did not see some of the defects in advance. When it was all over, I found by reading a newspaper that these best editor generals saw all the defects plainly from the start. Unfortunately, they did not communicate their knowledge to me until it was too late. I am willing to yield my place to these best generals, and I will do my best for the cause in editing a newspaper. Gen. Robert E. Lee