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Birthday No. 9

Brief by Central Staff

Colorado Central – March 2003 – Colorado Central Magazine

Compared to most other publications hereabouts, which date back to the 19th century, Colorado Central is just a baby — our first edition was dated March, 1994, so this is only our ninth birthday.

We confess to mild astonishment that it’s lasted this long, and in pretty much the same format as when we started. That might be because we started on a kitchen table, and much of the editing work still happens on the same table, next to the same wood-burning stove that is such a blessing in the winter.

There has been some progress in other areas, though. When we started, we had a 300-dpi laser printer and two computers — an old XT and a hot-rod AT with a 25-mhz 80386 and a huge 330-mb hard drive. Now we’ve got a network with four computers, three laser printers and two scanners.

Even that isn’t enough sometimes — for this edition, we had some old 3″x4″ photo negatives from the Hutchinson family collection, and neither scanner could handle those. Our transparency scanner handles only 35-mm format negatives and slides, and our flatbed scanner doesn’t handle transparencies. Fortunately, local photographer Tim Brown had a scanner that could accommodate the large transparencies.

The first free-lance story we bought was written by Lynda La Rocca, and she’s still a regular contributor. We also had a piece by Hal Walter, who soon became our regular back-of-the-book columnist. And over the years, we’ve been blessed with the work of many other good writers, too numerous to list.

A birthday is a good time to say thanks to all of them, as well as the subscribers and advertisers who’ve made it all possible. We have no idea what the next nine years might bring, but the first nine have been quite a ride.