Here are some facts about the September 2005 Chronogram, our biggest issue to date:

This magazine is 180 pages.
While certainly not Vogue-esque in stature (see below), this month's book easily eclipses our next-largest issue, September 2004, which came in at 168 pages. (An historical aside: A trip to the basement archives revealed that our first issue at our current trim size—for those who do not know this, Chronogram was a pocket-sized magazine for many years, until October 1999—was a mere 80 pages, and featured on its cover a garish pink birthday cake against an Astroturf background, a photograph shot by our art director at that time, Molly Rubin.)

This magazine's dimensions: 9.5 x 12.75 x .5 inches.
While I am not now, nor have I ever been, a fan of "Seinfeld," the show that epitomized the too-clever by-half, empty-headed '90s, I recall one episode fondly. Jerry's crazy neighbor, Kramer, publishes a coffee-table book whose genius and novelty was that it had legs that folded down, thus turning itself into a coffee table, capable of supporting a mug of coffee and a dish of Bundt cake. This magazine might be employed in a similar way by a handy reader able to affix dowels, sticks, or other contrivances to be used as legs, to the back cover. (If anyone is so inclined to try to fabricate this absurd fantasy of mine, please send a photograph of it to bmahoney@chronogram.com and we'll run it in the next issue.)

This magazine weighs 1 lb., 5 oz.
As a means of comparison, consider this: The 802-page September issue of Vogue, Conde Nast's flagship fashion magazine, weighs over five pounds and is the size of a Manhattan phone book. (I hope no undernourished waifs break their arms trying to lift copies off the newsstand. And think of the long-suffering postal carriers!)

This magazine contains over 60,000 words.
Sixty-thousand words is a rough approximation—I did not have a brigade of interns run word counts on every piece of editorial—and does not include any advertising copy, which, if counted would surely put us closer to the 100,000 mark. Sixty-thousand words is the length of a shortish novel (or a long novella); William Golding's classic book about English schoolboys run amok in nature, Lord of the Flies, is 60,000 words.

This magazine has over 100 contributors.
It amazes me—the most cyncial resident of my region—to think that so many people's efforts went into the making of this object that is more than an object. (This fact calls to mind barn-raisings, plattitudes about community, and clichéd book titles by Hillary Clinton.)

Who are all these people? Well, there's me, who gets to write the column and take all the credit. Then there's the rest of those who work in-house: the production staff, the sales and marketing staff, the administrative staff, the support staff, and the interns. Then there's the dozen part-time editors who give shape to Chronogram from their homes across the Mid-Hudson region. And the proofreaders. And the freelance designers. And the guys who drive the distribution trucks. And, of course, there's the 60 writers, poets, photographers, cartoonists, and illustrators whose work appears in this issue.

Thanks to every one of you. I am grateful for having the opportunity to work with you in this magnificent enterprise.

Summer's over, and just as the heat has left us, so we bid farewell to our summer interns, Amalia Carmargo, Felicia Hodges, Corah Walker, and Kirsten White. They were, to a person, a cheerful and wonderful presence in the office, and extremely helpful and efficient. We would have hired them all, had we the positions available. (Except for Corah, who's only 13—she came to us through the YWCA's Youth Leadership Program—and probably wouldn't have taken the job anyway, as it might have slowed down her inexorable march to the White House in 2032.)

And it is with heavy heart that we say goodbye to Rebecca Zilinski, our assistant production director. While we're all quite pleased that Rebecca landed a full scholarship to the School of Visual Arts in Manhattan, and that she wishes to teach art to some as-yet-undefined age group, we fear that our intra-office instant messenger will never be the same without her incisive wit.

—Brian K. Mahoney