[Newspoetry] Holiday Greetings from Newspoetry.com

[William Gillespie]

December 8, 1999

Dear Colleagues:

The holidays, and the end of the twentieth century are almost here. For
me, this is a meaningful time to reflect on the extraordinary impact of
Newspoetry on society for more than half a year, and on our vision and
aspirations for the year ahead.

First, however, Joe and I take this opportunity to wish you the happiest
of holidays. This is by tradition a season of joy, goodwill, irritating
muzak, and doomed resolutions for the new year. In our Website, it is
also a season for poems about uncomfortable family reunions and insane
parties with good friends. Our heartfelt wish for you: May the year 2000
be filled with joy, goodwill, good health, family, friends, formal
innovation, vicious satire, teargas, and personal and collegial
accomplishments.

This season of chilly nights and warm computers--plus the especially
intriguing inevitable millenial apocalypse--promotes contemplation, too.
I think about the transformative roles that men and women of Newspoetry
have played throughout the last 11 months. While this is not the place
for a list of achievements, who could let the 1900s end without a
general salute of thanks to the long roster of writers programmers and
activists, past and present, whose work helped change the scope of
irresponsible journalism in the past year?

You find these agents of change in political and computer sciences, the
arts and humanities, and elsewhere. They developed the Heimlich. They
imparted slant rhymes to hundreds of thousands of readers. They helped
create the Internet and then opened it to all. They even made virtual
reality a reality.

Against the scale of a millennium, the year of my presidency is like the
blink of an eye. Yet within that period, working together, we have
progressed. Whether writing a poem about the MIR space station in Adobe
Illustrator or writing haiku and calling it a limerick, whether advising
government units on public policies or finding new ways to help children
learn, we have--according to colleagues at webzines worldwide--fostered
excellence and service.

Joe and I remain grateful to be part of an institution so diverse in its
contributions, so increasingly communalistic in its people, and so able
and eager to advance all aspects of electronic political poetry. Working
with you, we soon will begin to write the next chapter in the Internet's
story. I hope you look forward to that with as much genuine enthusiasm
as we do. I believe our future is very bright.

May you enjoy your holidays with families and friends, embracing all the
traditions and practices and television reruns meaningful to you.
Finally, may the dawning century be one in which your silliest dreams
are fulfilled.

Happy Holidays,

William K. Gillespie
President
Newspoetry.com

*sniff*