Change:

Things change over time and we often have to accept change whether we like it or not. One glance around us shows the changes we face every day. 

One of those changes is the Magazine Mother Earth News. I started to read it 52 years ago when it was just a newsprint type paper. It was about people homesteading and going back to nature.  It was written by actual readers who went back to homesteading and could share their experience. 

Even though I was not a writer - I write like I speak - I was asked several years ago to be a contributor. For 10 years I submitted an article about how life is in the mountains and how we have homesteaded. I was told I was a popular contributor and my submissions had many readers, several thousand. 

About the change: a few months ago I was told they were not having reader contributions any longer as the magazine had been bought by another company. I really did not have a problem with that as I had run out of topics anyway and it was harder and harder to come up with a topic every three weeks. I was told that the new owner wanted the magazine to go in a different direction. 

As it turns out they are now more of a gardening magazine and barely anything about homesteading. The new managing editor relieved the old managing editor and the "new" direction is primarily gardening. Not my interest as I like to hear about issues of homesteaders and how they cope with them. It was with a great deal of anguish that I had to cancel my subscription as my interest was homesteading and not gardening, organic or otherwise. 

I suspect as more subscribers realize that the magazine is no longer what it used to be its readership will decline. This is one change that I do not wish to participate in and I wish them good luck with their new direction.