Dear friends

We want advice

If all goes well, subscribers should soon receive the annual High Country News survey. The paper's surveys don't ask what kind of car you drive, or your annual income, or where you vacation. But we do ask questions to guide us in putting out the newspaper.

And if you haven't responded to the first two Research Fund appeals, you should also receive a contribution card with the survey. If you have already given to the 1993-1994 appeal, you shouldn't get a card. If you do, toss it. We ask subscribers to give only once a year.

Goodbye for awhile

Associate Publisher Linda Bacigalupi came to High Country News in 1988 as the development person. Today, as she leaves on a six-month sabbatical, we estimate that she spends 15 percent of her time on development. She fills in the rest of her time running the paper.

Over the years she has oozed into doing all the things that need to be done but that don't fall into anyone else's job description. When HCN needed to have a building built, she worked first with the architect and then with the contractor. After the job was done, the contractor said, "Linda could easily make a living doing big construction projects."

Once the building was completed, she saw to its landscaping, partly with a shovel and partly by hiring a landscaper. When HCN's new telephone system needed programming, she programmed it. When we needed to compile articles into a reader for college students, she oversaw that job.

Most important, as we grew to a fulltime staff of 11 strong personalities, and the inevitable personnel challenges arose, it was Linda who kept the place from flying apart. She has become so important to the paper, that when the publisher and editor went on sabbatical a few years ago, the board of directors was relatively relaxed. Linda, they felt, would run the place. But as Linda's sabbatical approached, the board went into near panic. Who, they wondered, will run HCN?

Fortunately, Linda has seen to that. She has divided her job into manageable portions, and over the past several months trained each of us to do our share.

The one thing she hasn't had a chance to do is plan her six months off. She's using these first few weeks to do that, starting with a sea kayaking course in Belize.

Staff and board wish her an enjoyable, energizing sabbatical.

And if any of our readers think Linda would make a wonderful addition to their staff, we should add that a condition of her sabbatical is that she return to HCN.

Visitors

Mike Duchow-Pressley and Sandy Duchow-Pressley, subscribers from Portland, came through with their host, Paonia subscriber Jack Perrin. Mike is a chemistry teacher and Sandy is a nurse. Jack teaches at the Colorado Creative Education school in Paonia.

Jean and T.J. Tremmel came by from Texas to finally see a copy of High Country News. The visitors from afar said they'd heard of the paper, but hadn't been able to find one back home.

Expansions

Judith Sellers of Colorado Springs, a director of the Student Conservation Association, wrote to chide us for not mentioning in the March 21 issue that SCA had also received an award from the National Wildlife Federation for its work with young people.

She said, "If there is any hope for our beleagured planet, it is in these young people who learn to care about the environment at an early age, and who will be making the decisions for us in the future."

* Ed Marston for the staff

• Dear Friends