If ever there was a year that cried out for balance, that year was 2020. In the beginning, it fooled us–or at least it fooled me–with its symmetry and its reference to visual clarity. Hindsight is 2020? Indeed. Now it is past, and while vestiges of our struggle remain, 2021 feels different. We are poised on the brink of a new beginning.
This is our fifth edition of Go Anywhere, and it deserves to be celebrated with fanfare and flowers and maybe even baby quiches. Unfortunately, like most celebrations, it will be quiet, small and even a little private. We are balancing our joy with the sorrow that has embodied the past year.
Everything feels smaller this year, and that includes our staff. There are five of us for this fifth issue, but we have a few silent partners who support us through the process every year. We might not have been able to produce the magazine this year without our wonderful department chair, Richard Turner, and our fantastic dean. They are our quiet heroes.
Five years is long enough for us to have developed a community as well as heroes. Carol and Joseph Oerding have been on staff every year since the beginning, and several of the writers and artists whose work you will find in this edition have favored us with their work for several years. It has been wonderfully satisfying to watch their work grow and develop over time. Others of them are new to us and some of them are new writers and artists. There is a balance of the new and the familiar, nostalgia for the past and dreams of the future. Beginnings and endings are the nature of the college experience. The word commencement says it all. At the end, we start.