What's It All Mean?

What the heck is a "Pith," anyway?

    When we few humble (*cough*) editors and publishers first started trying to create something physical out of our thin-as-air ideas, one of the first things we had to do was figure out where to meet.  As stated elsewhere, the coffeehouse that was the impulsion of this grand endeavour shut down on the very night that this magazine was conceived (there were two guys and a girl — not that that matters).  With said coffeehouse closing its doors for good we three editors had to figure out a place to meet.  One would think that the pancake house across the street might do — and it did, sometimes — but we often needed a place to actually think and talk (sometimes loudly) and make a mess and, more than anything, be our creative selves.  Sometimes syrup and dishes aren't all that helpful in creating a magazine, so we discovered.

    We tried other restaurants, we tried the apartments of friends and supporters from Ghiberti's, we tried each other's homes.  (Mine only once; I am an absolutely abysmal housekeeper.  It was embarrassing for all of us.  Chris was still at his mom's, I believe, and there were siblings to consider, so that wouldn't work.  I think we might have met at Gg's once or twice.)  (I wish we had thought to use a room at one of our local libraries.  That would probably have been perfect.  If I ever start another magazine (definitely within the realm of possibility) I will certainly suggest borrowing library rooms until we're successful enough to rent office space above the Korean BBQ.)

    The only thing harder than figuring out where we should meet was what we should call the damn thing. 

When we first started this game, figuring out the name of the rag was one of the biggest dilemmas we faced.  Not getting material or getting funding or marketing the thing nor any of the rest of the real nitty-gritty work that would really be required to make a magazine work.  No, we knew, almost before anything else, that we had to get the name right.  We spent nearly as much time talking about names as we did trying to figure out were we were going to hold our next meeting.  (Office space wasn't even a thought in those early days.  Tbh, it kind of still isn't.)

    I still wonder if we did.

    Sometimes, I feel like it should be called "The Coffeehouse Poet" or "The Ghiberti Gonfalon" or some such.

    It wasn't, though.  I know we spent something like six meetings on it, three of us together, and all of us thinking of ideas separately, as well.  On that sixth and final meeting, we decided to table all other matters and focus solely on the name of the thing.

    (To be completely honest with you, I don't think I actually contributed very many suggestions; I think it was Gg and Chris who came up with the bulk of the ideas.  I do know that I came up with a few, but I feel like I vetoed a lot of the potential candidates.  In fairness, though, so did they.  All-in-all, it was about as democratic a process as we could manage at the time.)

(We'll figure out how to put a map in here at some point.  At present, to use the Gooble Mlaps, I'd have to pay a fee.  Since I have no need of maps for my magazine, I've never done so.  I could see how we might want a map in the website, though.  If so, that will probably cost us a little bit extra.

Telephone: somebody's phone number should go here