From the Editor: My Gratitude in 25 Years with The Edge

In this, the second to the last edition of The Edge (unless someone comes forward soon to buy the publication), I would be remiss if I didn’t share with you how my 25 years as editor and co-owner translates as gratitude. So I begin.

I am grateful for the late Gary Beckman and Lynn LaFroth for creating The Edge back in 1992, having the insight that a fledgling community of holistic beings needed a home to call their own before social media was even a thing.

I am grateful that the universe inspired me to jump in my car one early evening, in October 1995, and drive up from the Kansas City area to the Twin Cities — not aware that I was headed for a blizzard and that I would be stopped an hour or so north of Des Moines when the interstate was temporarily closed due to poor road conditions — with an engagement ring in my pocket for Rachel and an editor job interview scheduled the next morning with Gary Beckman (which was delayed because I didn’t reach Woodbury until after 2 a.m.).

I am grateful for my loving wife for always being by my side and supporting my work with The Edge without complaint, even when articles came in from our health editor, the forward-thinking Dr. Jan Thatcher Adams, via fax (before the advent of email) — printing loudly in the middle of the night in my home office, which happened to be on the other side of our bedroom.

I am grateful for Melissa May of Stillwater, who joined The Edge in its infancy to compose pages the old-school way, using X-Acto knives and glue to paste articles and camera-ready ads onto white pages for the printer, and who stayed with the publication long enough to see it transform into a digital process and to have Photoshop as her new tool of choice.

I am also grateful for Melissa May for creating Ripples back in the day — a creatively designed section of The Edge that offered inspiring quotations for our readers to ponder over their morning coffee.

I am grateful for the late Insiah Vawda Beckman for more than being a business manager for The Edge: her smile, her support when I endorsed then-candidate Barack Obama in print, causing us to lose an important advertiser, and oh how I miss her delicious Indian cooking.

I am grateful for those practitioners and healers and astrologers and homeopaths and others who shared their expertise by writing monthly columns to inform our readers, notably Dr. Jan Thatcher Adams, Suzie Black, Matthew Wood, Doug Munson, Christopher Exner, Jason LaFroth, D. Alexander, Michele Mayama, Chris LaFontaine, Kathryn Harwig, Susan Just, Kate Sciandra, Jinjer Stanton, Susan Shehata, MariAngela Pino Landau, Deanna Reiter, D.K. Brainard, Hanakia Zedek, Briana Crusan, Stephen Simon, Michelle Ploog, Maggie Christopher, Angie Bailey, Nadine Penny, Echo Bodine, Cathy Zornes, Don Strong, Phil Bolsta, Efrén Francisco Solanas P., Kathy Anderson, Alan Cohen, Leonard Jacobson, Lisa Venable, Julie McMahon, Michael Maciel, William Meader, Keri Mangis, Charlotte “Mama” Rose, Christine Day, Heather Roan Robbins and Janet Michele Red Feather (my apologies if I have failed to include you).

I am grateful for all of the energetic and committed business owners who not only made The Edge possible by buying advertisements, but took the time to write informative articles for an awakened readership and meet with me and The Edge staff whenever we dropped by to learn more about their particular niche in the community.

I am grateful for each and every reader of The Edge who chose to respond to our call for articles on given topics, because when I began as editor in 1996 I didn’t know many people in the Twin Cities and wondered where I would find content each month — but alas, pertinent and poignant articles arrived via fax and mail (and later via email) in time to fill every edition and I ended up pondering whether it was me, or The Edge itself, that was manifesting so well throughout its history.

I am grateful for Patricia Singpiel for the hours she spent typing up articles that came in via fax and post, and I am grateful for Sheila Van Houten and Jean Wallis for all the hours they touched their keyboards while transcribing my recorded interviews into Word files.

I am grateful for those women and men who worked tirelessly as independent contractors to sell ads for The Edge during the past 28 years — yes, I’m talking about my business partner Cathy Jacobsen, Della McGee and Doug Crandall, as well as Dee LaFroth, Steve Hokenson, Doug Bronson, Marla Nelson, the late Rita Gallagher Rosenberg, William-Thomas Wegner, Leah Hetzel, Pamela Olson, JoMarie Anton, Aerielle Louise, Katja Amyx, Joan Malarkey, Matt Saxe, Lori Newman, Kimberle Ganzer-Wiley, Carol Muller, Tanya Kenney, Bryan Bertsch, Edward Snyder, Tyler Smith, Steve Fillmore, Tina Rodriguez and all those including the late Jeannette Carter who contributed to the special editions we published in Kansas City and Wisconsin.

I am grateful for Steve Hokenson for all of the expertise he shared with The Edge in not only producing The Edge’s website, but also for assisting with Mac applications that made running The Edge easier.

I am grateful for author Michael Newton who shared his book Journey of Souls with me and then agreed to an interview on his deep hypnosis sessions that confirmed that we hang out with familiar souls in groups in the Afterlife and that our essential nature never dies.

I am grateful for so many notable wisdom leaders, authors and artists for taking the time out of their busy schedules to talk with me and share their insights with our readers, including the late author and futurist Barbara Marx Hubbard, the late astronaut Dr. Edgar Mitchell, the late Horst Rechelbacher, the late Dr. Wayne Dyer, the late Paula Sunray, the late Wallace Black Elk, Thomas Moore, Kent Nerburn, the late Helen Reddy, Byron Katie, Dr. Norm Shealy, William Bloom, Fred Alan Wolf, Alex Grey, Neale Donald Walsch, James Redfield, Dr. Steven Greer, Drunvalo Melchizedek, Michael Bernard Beckwith, the late Benjamin Creme, the late Dolores Cannon, Dr. Robert Ibrahim Jaffe, Linda Tellington-Jones, Bob Fickes and so many others.

I am grateful that The Edge provided me with opportunities like attending and covering Whole Life Expo during the three years it was presented in the Twin Cities, as well as the Spiritual Cinema Cruise that allowed me to meet innovative filmmakers and hobnob with other editors and publishers of publications like The Edge from across the country.

I am grateful to have met so many supportive readers of this magazine at all of the Edge Life Expos, some of whom still remember when our son Kyle was still a wide-eyed youngster who loved to check out the stones and crystals from such vendors as Sheryl and Dale Fisher of KiStones.

I am grateful for Cathryn Taylor for helping us launch our free podcasts, Edge Talk Radio, and providing another way for Edge followers to learn and be inspired.

I am grateful for my wife Rachel for the endless hours she lovingly spent proofreading every article published in The Edge, in print as well as online, since my first issue in early 1996 — and I still owe her massage and shiatsu sessions, because she continued proofreading for me even after the magazine could no longer afford to pay her.

I am grateful for Cathy Jacobsen, and her husband Jim, for sharing this Edge experience with me for the past dozen years, doing the hard work of bringing in the income and managing the books so I could get the magazine to the printer and place it online each and every month.

I am grateful to have assisted in some way by providing content that helped enhance the lives of our readers by enriching their bodies, minds and souls.

And last but not least, I am grateful for you, dear reader, for your loyalty to our publication, for taking the time to find us at one of the hundreds of places where we used to be distributed, for making the effort to read us online when doing so is not the most desirable way to digest the printed word, for sharing us with friends and family, and for being eternally curious and committed to being the best version of you possible.