Monday, November 29, 1999. 1:32 am.

Ah, dear reader.

See, it's like this. Between a new job that's got me up at all hours, the experience of putting three books together in a short amount of time and redesigning this site...well, let me just say that, as you read this issue, you'll notice the links. There aren't too many, many pages don't have them at all. Some lead into the Gravity archives, others to pages well outside newtonsbaby.com (use your browser's "back" button!).

This isn't hypertext, per se - I know that. That's coming, when I have the time to link up a whole issue internally and get the archives straightened out. This is more like "value-added product".

Just surf with an open mind. Some of the links are obvious, some smart-assed, some just weird.

You won't read this for another day or two - as of this writing, I'm still marking up pages and waiting for a "Local Notes" piece to arrive. And that too, the new design! Let me know what you think of it. Eclectic columnists, cartoons, artwork - hell, we're Harper's come again! Or something. Whatever we are, or are becoming, dig deeply.

What's not to be missed: There is much happy bookness coming, and it's coming this week! Three books to be exact - Janet Buck's Calamity's Quilt, Ruth Daigon's The Moon Inside and Perry Thompson's Instead We Come to the End of Breath make great Christmas gifts and even better reading. These are all series installments, so you've even got it made for several Christmases to come! Hucksterism aside, though, these are still books of strong, vital poems from poets whose work I've long admired. Newtons' Baby is honored to be able to inaugurate two book series with work like this.

Take a day or two to get through the poems in this issue - I know there are a lot, but that's because there were so many good submissions. Thanks to everyone who sent work in.

When Joy first suggested a theme issue on class, I knew it was the right topic for the holidays. Class is famously the one really taboo topic, at least in American life and public discourse. Yet it exists - in fact, it's at the base of our society. Economic classes are enforced - the current state of capitalism requires a 5-6% unemployment rate to hold off "inflation" (read: rising wages). Political classes are enforced through mass media (which you're reading now) and the refusal to reform the campaign finance trough.

Of course I'm speaking only about the US here - it's what I know. Gravity, as I'm sure you know if you've read the zine for a while, is unabashedly left-progressive in its politics (thus the link within to the Industrial Workers of the World), but let's talk about it. Remember, the bulletin board is open.

Be well, enjoy the holidays but don't forget to take care of one another.

JC, 11/99