News & Events
Mid-America
News
Show
Calendar
State Event Calendars
Regular Features
The
Antique Detective
Antique
Detective Q&A
Common Sense Antiques
Refurnished
Thoughts
Traveling with Ken
Good Eye
Books
for Collectors
Directories
& Classifieds
The
Finder: Unique Shops
Lodgings Directory
Museum Directory
Aviation Museums
Wineries in the Heartland
Classifieds
Web
Links
Archived Features
Antiquing
in Colorado
Dealer Profile Archive
Editor's
Notebook
Heirloom
Recipes
Helpful Hints
for Collectors
Is This An Antique?
Past
Cover Features
Reflecting
History
Discover Mid-America — October 2006
 |
Moving is a pain
by Bruce Rodgers, Editor/Publisher
Having a prehensile thumb gave humans the ability to pick up things, examine them and then buy them. Walking upright on two legs gave humans the ability to carry those things they buy home or to their business. Done over and over means a lot of things get collected, taking up a lot of space where we live or work.
Every once and a while circumstances dictate that the home or business be moved. And moving all the things one has accumulated has to be some sort of cosmic punishment for having prehensile thumbs and an upright stance.
In short, Discovery Publications has moved its office and it was a pain.
Keep in mind we have been in business for over 30 years. My brother and I have only been the owners a little over six years. I discovered things this company had in its basement storage area that I never knew the business had.
Know what a paper waxer is? We had two, used when Discover Mid-America was laid out with ads and editorial cut and pasted on flats for the printer to make metal plates from. The paper was stuck to the flats with wax heated by the waxer.
Need a light table to view those photo negatives? That is if you still use a film camera. We still have ours — 25 bucks.
Know was a Macintosh Classic looks like? It’s a small, beige box of a computer with a 5-inch screen and 1MB hard drive. The first one was made in 1984. We had a couple of them, in fact, it seemed like we had a complete line of early Macs from the 1980s through the mid-1990s. We recycled nearly 25 old computers, scanners and monitors through Surplus Exchange. It cost the company but it was better than dumping the toxic waste inside the computer into a landfill.
With our budget, I decided against hiring movers. So I emailed dozens of friends, promised beer and pizza, and no time-length requirement for their help. Ron Johnson, our art director, expected people would be bumping into each other come moving day. He feared too many helpers.
Not so. The response was — to be polite — not that good. (Do I need to remind you moving is a pain whether it’s your stuff or a friend’s?)
Two writer friends put in a day, my son helped (after threats of grounding) and a friend of my nephew came by for a couple of hours. In desperation, we even recruited a young man walking by the new office who, for some reason, was carrying a big plastic bag of walnuts. He helped for a ride home and $10.
But mostly it was Ron and I, with Al Hedrick helping after he came back from a family emergency. Somehow, over a span of three weekends, we got it all here via mashed fingers and strained backs.
But we still got a lot of old letterhead, envelopes and invoices to use with the old address.
So Please make note, our new address is: Discovery Publications
Inc.,
1501 Burlington, Suite 207, North Kansas City, MO 64116.
Bruce Rodgers can be contacted at publisher@discoverypub.com.
> Editor’s Notebook Archive — past columns
©2000-08 Discovery Publications, Inc.