LETTER FROM THE EDITOR: Welcome home

Safe to say, I’ve finally found my home.

I’ve grown accustomed to the hustle and bustle of urban Phoenix. Maricopa, to me, is an oasis painted by the desert’s golden brushstrokes.

But when I say I’ve found my home, I don’t just mean in this city that’s both cozy and captivating. I’ve found a home in this newsroom and among the bundles of glossy pages that are like colored shards in the kaleidoscope that is Maricopa’s story.

I’m excited to have arrived here in my new home in time to celebrate an important milestone — Maricopa’s 20th birthday. On my 20th birthday, I was a bushy-tailed sorta-grad student in the Mid-South, writing about baseball and birdwatching in the local newspaper. Saguaros and magazine editorships were the last thing on my mind.

But I’m still the youngest editor in the history of InMaricopa, a magazine about as old as the city itself, and it’s a role I take very seriously. A glance at the cover of our August edition and I’m reminded of this fact. One of our talented writers, Monica D. Spencer, profiles a man at the top of his craft despite his age. A powerlifter over 75 and an editor under 30 — isn’t that one of the things that makes this city so special?

Aside from being a journalist whose résumé makes mine look like a used paper towel, The Rush Limbaugh Show’s Bill Brady has long been the yin to my yang on Arizona radio airwaves. He never goes an episode without saying, “Elias, you’re always getting your fingernails dirty.” He means I’m restless and don’t know how to mind my own business. As it turns out, this characteristic is a perfect match for InMaricopa’s beliefs of an informed citizenry and holding ourselves and others accountable. So, enjoy a pair of investigative pieces I literally could not wait to dive into — one about the costly crimes of stolen valor, the other about hush money and government incompetence.

And with school starting this month, you’ll get lost in our Cameron Jobson’s twin pieces about the highs of success in sport and the lows of relegating our youngest learners to a doublewide lecture hall.

We’re smack dab in the middle of “the dog days of summer,” a phrase with ancient Greek origins tied to exhaustion and bad luck. The snowbirds have left us here in Maricopa to suffer the record-breaking temperatures ourselves. But you know what? They don’t know what they’re missing.

On the contrary, I feel as lucky as ever to be in this scenic little desert town, and you should too. Hopefully, this edition of InMaricopa will remind you mid-summer is as exciting a time as any here in Pinal County. As always, thank you for reading our magazine.

 

The August edition of InMaricopa Magazine is in Maricopa mailboxes and available online.