July 1, 1916

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NQs en route

If you don't consider it officially summer until you can hold your Summer NQ in your hands, you won't have to wait much longer. The mail strike is over and the magazines are on the move. Lots of beautiful imagery (Brenda McClellan, Scott Goudie), pages and pages of great reading (Bob Hallett, Bert Riggs); soon you'll be able to dive right in.


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All labeled up but no place to go

We're printed, stickered, and arranged by postal code, stacked oh-so-neatly in covered plastic bins. Now all we need is the mail. Fingers crossed it will be this week. In the meantime we're already in pursuit of ideas for the next issue, which is about language, and especially about the Dictionary of Newfoundland English (30 years old next year!). So, we'd like to know: what word from the DNE would you like to see in more common use? My vote goes for "whizgigging", but, of course, there are lots more choices: "drash" (as is happening right now outside our windows); "peggin" (and we could need a few before the day's out, according to the forecast); "swab" (might be looking for one or two of those as well).

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NQ publishing & David Blackwood speaking

Looks like it's all happening this Wednesday. First the Summer Issue gets delivered, so we'll be up to our elbows in address labels and mail bins. It's a busy process, aided by our now-traditional playing of Johnny Cash tunes. We usually turn the mailout around fairly efficiently, but we'll have an added impetus this week: David Blackwood is giving a lecture at The Rooms at 7pm. This is sure to be well worth attending; we were lucky enough to spend some time with his Black Ice at the AGO during last week's conference, and there'll be a write-up on that in the Fall Issue. Black Ice itself travels to The Rooms next summer. Blackwood's talk promises to increase the already keenly honed anticipation for that major exhibition.

(Image: today.mun.ca.)

Hobnobbing & fine art ahead

We have a couple of exciting days coming up: our first Magazines Canada Conference. We'll get to meet colleagues from across the country, discuss the focus and future of cultural magazines, compare and debate grammatical errors, all kinds of fun stuff. It will also be a chance for us to visit David Blackwood's superb new exhibition at the Art Gallery of Ontario. We'll be putting some words and thoughts together about Black Ice, which travels to The Rooms next summer.

(Image: Fire Down on the Labrador, akimbo.)