Let’s start with a riddle: What has more pages than the Port Costa telephone book, risks being off-color without swearing, has more lives than a cat, and has taken longer to create than the latest Harry Potter book?

I’ll give you time to think while I reminisce a bit.

In 1998 my wife and I decided to sell our house in Danville. Our younger son had gone off to college, our older son was living in Japan, publishing his own magazine, and had no intention of returning to the States, our house was too big and empty, we wanted to be closer to my wife’s work, and I had decided to devote myself to writing. Talk about a major, mind-bending, post mid-life crisis!

Obviously—without a doubt—Benicia and the greater Carquinez Region were ideal for us.

When Bookshop Benicia announced that writing groups would begin in the Fall of ’98, of course I went. At the first meeting there were five of us. By the second meeting, only Lorraine Babb Terry and I showed up. We exchanged short stories—hers was terrific—and I told her about my idea to create a journal that would celebrate community in writing, art and history. Wouldn’t it be great, I said, if her story were in the first issue? She agreed and the Carquinez Review was launched.

Well, perhaps launched is too grandiose a term. Thought and talked about might be better.

From personal experience, I knew that nothing worked better when starting a new project than certitude and bravado. (Is there another way to become a VP?) In the face of insurmountable odds, take the beach at all cost, we’d say. Work through the night and weekends till the last person drops, we’d avow. Finish the project ahead of schedule, under budget and with outstanding quality, we all would swear, nodding our heads and smiling, no matter that every time, without exception, the project would be late, cost too much and wouldn’t work.

But what the heck, I learned to sell a vision even if I didn’t have the slightest idea what I was talking about. A community journal of arts, literature, people and history? A series that would capture in print what community means to us? A permanent record of the Carquinez environs? Who would contribute? Who would buy it and how would we sell it? And, anyway, as a physicist, what did I know of editing, layout, prepress, printing, publishing and distribution?

The last question was easily answered: Absolutely nothing.

But gradually, things began to happen.

Richard Toronto wrote about CR in the Benicia Herald, and Kristina Young sent me her lively, inventive illustrations, one of which seemed perfect for the cover, and when I received an illustrated story from Louis Dunn, I knew I had to print CR in color, and Ed Swenson contacted me about his personal reminiscence, and Ed put me in touch with Keith Olsen, a Crockett Museum Docent and historian, and I met Kitty Griffin, Benicia activist, and Lorraine talked to her writing group about CR, and we received wonderful poetry submissions, and John Moses, the editor of this paper, submitted a short story, and Michael Hayes wrote about Captain Blyther’s, and my wife met the Winters, founders of BOTTG, and Ruth Blakeney, poet extraordinaire of Crockett, and Gwenn Connolly, creator of lithesome bronze sculptures, extended their enthusiastic support, and more and more people contributed, and slowly — painfully — intermittently — CR began to happen.

The answer to the riddle? The Carquinez Review, of course.

It’ll be 128, fantastic, perfect-bound, 4-color pages, though the translation from RGB to CMYK to printed color pages scares me to death—will the color look right?—and there were many more than 9 times when I thought CR was dead, and J.K. Rowlings took less than a year to write her 734-page fourth book——Sigh.

But we’re in the final stages of layout. The first copy will go to the printer in about a week, and if all goes well (what’s the chance of that?) the Fall (Winter?) issue will be here by the end of October (November?).

In my New Year’s resolution article, I said that I hoped the first issue would go to the printer by Baseball’s opener. (Remember what I said about bravado?) Anyway, the A’s are blowing one game after another, so don’t talk to me about baseball.