Letter from the Editor
December 2009
by Michael J. Champlin
Awesome.
It brings a smile to my face knowing that so many people have checked out issue one of The Tulsa Project in the last month. I've gotten tips about upcoming events, awesome photos, and plenty of people helping spread the word on twitter, facebook, and word-of-mouth. This all serves to reinforce something I already knew: people are what make Tulsa awesome. I've been wholly impressed over these last few years with the grass-roots community we have here.
I'm proud to announce that this month we've doubled the number of people contributing to the magazine. And it only gets better. More people means new perspectives, lots of great new photography, and more content. But I'm not stopping there: I still want to hear from you. Are you a writer? A photographer? An illustrator, artist, funny person? I want you for this project. That's what makes this whole beautiful machine work.
Additionally, the home page is all new and improved. I won't go into details here, since I already did there, but essentially it means we've now got a way to get information out on a more constant basis -- daily and weekly posts in addition to the monthly magazine. If you'd be interested in contributing to that, I'd really love to hear from you. Hit me up via the email at the bottom of this post. Let's chat.
I'll stop myself before this gets too long, I just wanted to thank everyone again for making issue one a success; here's hoping it just keeps getting better from here. And from all of us here at The Tulsa Project, we hope you have a safe, awesome holiday season.
I'm going to close with a little something I wrote down in my notebook after someone asked me "why Tulsa" -- which you may recognize as a recurring first-question from our ongoing interview series. It's an important question, and I love hearing what people have to say about it. So without further adieu, here's my answer to my own question.
Why should I love Tulsa?
Perhaps I shouldn't. Maybe what the naysayers say is true. Maybe downtown is dead, the arena, the ballpark, those are complete wastes of money. In ten years, who knows? Tumbleweeds?
But I don't love Tulsa because it's a sure thing. If I wanted the sure thing, I'd move to SoHo. I'd get a loft in Kansas City or settle down in Portland. But loving the sure thing is tricky. It's loving someone else's dream. You didn't think it up, you found it. Found it full of trendy socialites, young professionals, and struggling artists. Lots of other people figured out how great it was before you.
Loving Tulsa isn't about that. It's about loving what something once was and having faith in what it could be.
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