A New Look for PILGRIM
By Bronwen McShea - Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA - 1 June 2013
I am pleased to share the news that PILGRIM will be accompanying me into a new chapter of my life, as I will be settling into a new professional position in New York City this summer.
In preparation for this time in "the empire city," "the city that never sleeps," PILGRIM has undergone a digital makeover.
Past visitors to the website will notice that much remains the same, despite the new look. We continue to strive to maintain a particular sort of leisurely atmosphere for both our contributors and visitors. For this reason, we continue to refrain from adding features such as RSS, Facebook, and Twitter buttons; online discussion forums as seen on most blogs and web journals; and advertisements from sponsors.
There are some new features to the site, however. I would like to draw your attention to several of these.
First, all the artwork that we have feature each season at the top of the homepage is now available to be viewed as a virtual gallery, on a single web page. Likewise, all the items we have heretofore featured in the "Made By Our Hands" department of the website can be viewed together on a single gallery page.
Second, we are archiving past material differently. Rather than archiving material seasonally, we are archiving them according to departments or genres of material: Essays, Poems, Words From Our Saints, etc., while still noting each item's original season or date of posting to the website. In this, we are sacrificing something of the feel, as far as a website can mimic it, of browsing through past issues of print journals -- a feeling my fellow editors have liked and still like. But we are hopeful this will enable visitors interested in particular kinds of content to browse through the site more efficiently.
Third, we have added a new "Bulletin Board" page to the site, linked in the drop-menu above, under the heading "Community." There, PILGRIM staffers, contributors, and visitors can share items of possible interest to one another about publications, projects, conferences, other events, etc.
The editors and I would welcome feedback about the new features, the new look in general, and the modified feel of the website. Please send any such comments to our main editorial email address, editors.pilgrim@gmail.com.
When PILGRIM launched on the web in the fall of 2010, I was living in New Haven; since that time, I have lived for long and short periods in Mainz, Germany; Paris, France; my hometown of Cornwall, New York; and most recently Cambridge, Massachusetts. Through all the moves I have recently had to make, PILGRIM has remained steadily with me, and I have many others to thank for this steadiness, and for the ways the journal has developed so far. I think of those who have offered moral support and prayers, as well as financial support, for the project. And I think of course of my fellow editors and, most of all, the many writers, poets, and artists who have shared their work and also the visitors to the website, across the globe, who offer them, however quietly and anonymously, the great gift of human -- and humane -- receptivity.
In the coming months, as I settle into a new home and job in New York, I will be looking forward very much to the ways the journal, and its community of contributors and visitors, may further develop.
Blessings to one and all this season!