In March 2004 I started another blog Antiques Roadshow pt.6

I mentioned on March 16 that I'd found two "antiques" in a cabinet. The first was my 65 page printed blog about our Holy Land tour in 2009. The other, about 20 years old (March 2004) is a printout from one of my other, other blogs, "In the beginning," which is about my hobby. The hobby is about 50 years old, but I didn't start writing about it until 2004. It's probably only something that would appeal to a librarian--at least I've never found anyone else collecting these. The last one I printed out was 2006.

 
I just checked the on-line version and the last one I entered in the blog was in 2012. My ambition exceeded my wallet, will power, and wisdom. The year I decided to record my collection the average cover price was $5.80, and I don't have a figure for today because I rarely look--but I'd guess $10-$15. When I bought the premier issue of "People" with the lovely Mia Farrow on the cover in 1974 (it turned 50 this year) it was $.35. 2003 was a bumper crop for new issues--949! I'd crush our house with just the weight of the paper if I'd tried to collect new issues the last 50 years!

I started this blog on March 21, 2004 with these comments:

"I collect first and premiere issues of magazines and journals. If you want to know if there is confidence in the economy, just take a look at what is appearing on the news stands in 2004. I've purchased about seven new magazines since December, and that's without trying. That means venture capital. That means investors. That means advertisers. That means jobs. That means consumers willing to buy. That means a crazy exuberance and hope in the future. And that's what I love about a new journal."

My oldest is "Atlantic," my most exciting find is "Edible Columbus," (it just went up for sale), and my personal favorite is "Garage Slab." I did have a list of rules for collecting, but they evolved, and I frequently ignored them. I eventually even included some newsletters and government journals because often magazines began as a newsletter and every new government bureaucracy wants to publish a magazine. In the 1980s and I worked in a bookstore, I decided to drop the computer category because new ones were coming in every week. 

 
To read older entries in this magazine blog you have to look at the archive list on the right-hand side because it seems to have no code for going forward or backward. https://premiereissue.blogspot.com/

Oliver Wendell Holmes and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

I collect vol.1 no.1 issues of magazines and serials (I have a blog about this), so when vol. 1 no.1 of The Atlantic Monthly was mentioned in this article about Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. my Library of America newsletter on-line I pulled my copy off the shelf and read "Every man his own Boswell." Interesting that in those days it didn't seem to be necessary to list the author's name.

" Everything changed in 1857 when James Russell Lowell, a fellow professor at Harvard, was hired as the editor of a new magazine, and he in turn insisted that his friend Holmes become one of its founding contributors. Initially hesitant, Holmes agreed and even suggested the magazine’s name, The Atlantic Monthly. Holmes then lit on the idea that would make him famous: reviving the Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table as a monthly column. Far more mature in style and content than the essays from a quarter-century earlier, each piece is written as a table conversation monopolized by the unnamed Autocrat, with interruptions (including poetry, stories, and jokes) from other residents—including the Professor, the Landlady’s Daughter, the Schoolmistress, the Poet, the Old Gentleman, the Divinity-Student, “the young fellow called John,” and others. The new and improved “Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table” appeared in the debut issue of The Atlantic (November 1857) and immediately became the most popular feature in a magazine that boasted works by such celebrities as Emerson, Whittier, and Longfellow."

So I kept browsing through the volume (bound) and looked through the next issue (no. 2) finding the poem "Catawba Wine" by Longfellow, also written in 1857. Had to research that one. Catawba Island up on Lake Erie is not named for Catawba Indians (as I always believed) but for the Catawba grape which is praised in this poem. Northern Ohio was big wine country (still is). Catawba wine was made in Cincinnati from Catawba grapes from the Catawba River in NC. 
"For richest and best/Is the wine of the West/ That grows by the Beautiful River/ whose sweet perfume fills all the room/ with a benison on the giver." . . .
 "And this Song of the Vine/ This greeting of mine/ The winds and the birds shall deliver/ To the Queen of the West,/In her garlands dressed,/ On the banks of the Beautiful River." 

Many names of wines in the poem, and rivers of several countries, but the Queen of the West and that river is Cincinnati on the Ohio River.

Why start a magazine?

My hobby bloggy is called In the beginning. It's about the premiere, first issue, and Volume One issues of magazines, journals and serials that I own. One of the things I do when I decide to write about one of them is look at the "From the publisher," or "From the Editor" letter, usually at the beginning. It's a lot of work and money to start a magazine; so why do it? Today I was packing them into a box and looked at AEI Foreign Policy and Defense Review. After looking it up (v.1, n.1 was 1979 when Jimmy Carter was president), I see it actually had an earlier existence as AEI Defense Review (1977-1978). This journal ended in 1986. Here's what William Baroody, Jr., the publisher said 42 years ago:

This inaugural issue of the AEI Foreign Policy and Defense Review appears at a time when the future of American foreign policy has become highly uncertain and when the role of the United States, as the preeminent power in the world, has become especially difficult to define. To operate effectively in an international environment in which political, economic, and security issues increasingly overlap demands a careful ordering of priorities and of long-term goals. In recent years, government actions on foreign policy and public debate about them have moved from issue to issue without the consensus or the continuity evident in the decades following World War II. Concern has been expressed abroad and at home over the inconsistencies that result from the lack of a clear, overall rationale rooted in the American diplomatic tradition. Questions about our long-term national interests remain not only unanswered, but often unasked.

So let's see, 42 years ago things were uncertain; it was difficult to define the role of the United States in the world. The government was moving from issue to issue without consensus, and there was concern abroad and at home over the inconsistencies resulting from lack of a plan. Well, welcome to the second decade of the new century.

President Ronald Reagan said of AEI in 1988: "The American Enterprise Institute stands at the center of a revolution in ideas of which I, too, have been a part.

AEI's remarkably distinguished body of work is testimony to the triumph of the think tank. For today the most important American scholarship comes out of our think tanks--and none has been more influential than the American Enterprise Institute."

A trifecta blog incident

People say how can you have so many blogs? How do you have the time? Bob C. asked me that yesterday (we went to high school together) and he has the same 24 hour days I do, just different hobbies. Anyway, today I have an item for 3 of my 12 blogs--Coffee Spills, about people I meet in coffee shops, In the beginning, about my first issue hobby, and this one, Collecting my thoughts--and maybe 4 if I can rework it for my retirement blog, Growth Industry, or food and health blog, Hugging and Chalking.

I'm in a book group that meets at Panera's and a very sweet school teacher was in our spot by the fireplace (no school because of MLK day). I watched and as he got up to leave I saw a handsome young woman come through the door, and I thought I saw her glance at the coveted seat. I grabbed my books and slammed them down on that table faster than you can say "crazy old lady."

After I'd settled in with my coat, purse, books, etc., I peeked around and saw she was sitting within 4 inches of me where I had been sitting. And then I saw it. "Edible Columbus." "Is that a new magazine?" I asked. "Yes, but it isn't out yet; I'm the publisher." I thought I'd swoon. I'm a first issue collector and here I was about to see a birthing! [No website yet, try this for Edible Brooklyn.]

So we chatted a bit--she's a former New York chef who discovered a "series" of Edible. . [insert name of city or region] magazines and she bought the rights for Columbus. She explained the concept--it will focus on locally grown, sustainable sources with seasonable eatables, great traditions, recipes, related items like gadgets and ingredients, day trips, and events. Some of these events will be held in her mother's newly opened tea room which has room for classes! Right here in Upper Arlington. Swoon twice--a new place to go for coffee or lunch. This will start as a "free-circ" and I suggested she get it in the local public libraries as part of the serial collection to be sure it gets cataloged.

As my group started to arrive and her friend sat down, she asked me my name. When I told her, she said, "We live in your former house!" Small, small world. I don't like what the previous owner (from whom she bought it) did to the kitchen, but it will be great for a chef.

Evangelical Visitor, vol.1, no.1, 1887

Technically, I can't put this in my collection of premiere issues because it is scanned and on the internet in the collection of Messiah College for The Brethren in Christ Church (River Brethren). One of my great- great- somethings was a founder of this denomination [see correction below], so I thought I'd take a look. Reading through it, nothing seems any different than the German Baptist Brethren/Church of the Brethren of the 1880s. There was an annual conference, "love feast" (communion) with foot washing, modest clothing for both men and women. It was a mix of Mennonite, Brethren and Methodist, with emphasis on piety, just like the other Brethren. I'm not sure why these groups had to split up--it's usually the leadership--nor do I know why they didn't all vote to get back together in 2008 (300th anniversary) since the 6 or 7 groups are tiny by themselves. Together they probably don't reach 100,000 in membership in the U.S. Ah well, they didn't ask me, and I haven't been a member for over 35 years.

Having said that, I found this item by "C.S." from Louisville, Ohio sounding just like the "emergent church" controversy of today:

It has been, and is yet the aim of some professors of religion [i.e. people who profess to be religious] to get religion into such a position, that there is no cross connected with it. Men have been trying to dress up religion so that the offense of the cross should cease. . . they make daily compromise with the world.

Another fun item was reminiscences of the "old days" in various Ohio counties--like the 1850s--that people sent in. One obituary observed that the "brother" was not a believer, although he was married to one. The cost was $1.00 a year for 12 issues, and if you wanted to write something for the paper, you submitted it in ink and used only one side of the paper. The Elkhart, Indiana church had had a June Love Feast at the Brethren Meeting house, 16 mi. south of town with wonderful testimonies, Bible studies, exhortations, and a supper, with people returning home the next day rejoicing.

Based just on the numbering (vol. 121, no.1, Winter 2007), I'm guessing that the (new title) journal for BIC "In Part" is the granddaughter of Evangelical Visitor. She's handsome, fashionable, and topical, but not as spiritually satisfying.

Update: I checked my genealogy database and my notes say that my ancestor, John Wenger, split from the River Brethren in Montgomery Co. Ohio over issues of closed communion and meeting houses. His group (Pentecostal Brethren in Christ) were known as the Wengerites. All this is in Daniel Wenger's book on the Wengers. His son Christian Wenger was the father of my great-grandmother, Nancy. This may be more than you wanted to know about a tiny Ohio sect, but "The name Brethren in Christ became more common and about 1861 three groups in OH called themselves Brethren in Christ; the original River Brethren, the Wengerites and the Swankites. The River Brethren officially adopted the name Brethren in Christ in 1863 at the outbreak of the civil war in order for drafted conscientious objectors to obtain legal recognition as members of an established religious organization opposed to war. By 1924 the last of the Pentecostal Brethren in Christ had joined the Pilgrim Holiness Church (which merged with the Wesleyan Methodist Church to form the Wesleyan Church)."

4326

New magazine for secular homeschoolers

I collect first issues, and I'll probably miss this one since I usually go for news stand magazines and journals, but the first issue looks really good whether you're secular or religious. In fact, The Bitter Homeschooler's Wish List is priceless. And the editor has a blog. A two-fer.

HT Dancing Boys Mom