Finding hope

Bettie Gray Sentinel Staff

ON A SATURDAY AFTERNOON a few years ago, inching my way through the magazine racks at one of my favorite bookstores, I spotted a new title: Hope. Who could resist riffling through that? One quick riffle and I bought it, took it home, and read every word.

A small bi-monthly produced by a tiny staff in Brooklin, Maine, Hope runs deep. On racks rife with sensational news stories, "surface" mags recording every hair-do (and don't), countless car-buff magazines, the latest fads in food and shelter, Hope is an oasis. Its cover usually features a human face looking you right in the eye and inviting you to come into the magazine for a conversation.

Invite is a word Hope editor Kimberly Ridley likes to use to describe the publication's approach to its readers— "No force, no mandate, no prescriptions," but "an offering of what's possible—the example of one person making a difference, changing things for the better." Ridley also speaks of Hope's purpose in terms of "reporting on problems in a context of solutions," "enlarging the reader's sense of the possible," and wanting the readers' lives to "get bigger."