A Kinship Connection Retrospective

I was editor of the Connection from 2003 to 2016. I was editor of the Connection from 2003 to 2016. To say “there were joys in the work” is one of the understatements of my life. Thinking of you all recreates a gusher of appreciation.

I am immeasurably glad that, through our newsletter, I got to have contact with Kinship members and allies, church leaders, college libraries, educators, lawyers, counselors, theologians, program developers, etc. on six continents. There must have been a reader on Antarctica, at some point. I apologize that you are not coming to mind. I am glad we got to share spiritual thoughts, church joys and angst, relationship stories, coming out journeys, recipes, travel tales, news items, activity announcements, photographs, wedding tales, baby announcements, aging issues, hiking reports, HIV sadness, poetry, and health suggestions; in short, the varied stories of our community.

I worked with an amazing group of regular writers and reporters; David, Larry, Andy, Andrew, Ben, Rom, Floyd, Carol, Alex, Carrol, Rene, Jerry, Mitch; what appreciation I have for you. I remember mornings when I was up at 5 AM EDT, so I could communicate with San Francisco, Australia, The Netherlands, Kenya, and Russia. That experience alone would have given me a sense of the way we had wrapped our accepting community around the world. Thank you all for putting up with me harassing you to meet deadlines, and then putting up with me editing your hard thought work.

More appreciation goes to the Connection’s rather astonishing production crew. Jacquie and Carrol, thanks for your persnickety patience, research, and good humor as you proofread with ethical and grammatical clarity. To this day, I don’t want to put something before public eyes without you taking a look at it. Ruud and Ted, you made us beautiful. What remarkable layout people you are; truly artists with heart. Doolittle’s Printserve was our printing house for at least a decade. They filled our interactions with quality product, personal interest, and caring. Floyd, thank you for the consistent way you got mailing labels to me so we could get the work of this crew out to our community. I hope I told you, one or thirteen times, how much your reliability lessened the stress of pulling the last pieces together.

There were few lows but they were substantive. I was editor at a time when the focus of the Kinship leadership in regard to the Connection was how they could spend increasingly less money on something I believe was the most consistent contact we all had with each other. I can only imagine how difficult it was for the leadership to deal with someone hovering over our newsletter like the mother hen I am. The anguish I felt when Kinship’s leadership chose to end paper-copy mailing, even to places and people who do not have easy access to electronic mailings and notices, led to my resignation.

Those last memories are hard ones for me but they don’t erase the gift of being part of such an amazing project for a substantive chunk of my life. Writing this makes me realize how appreciated you all, readers and production team, are. I can not help but end this report as I did my editorials ….Take good care of yourselves for you are infinitely valuable.