The last few weeks have been a blur of airports and open suitcases. Between going to conferences, giving talks, and presenting our new business plan -- a blueprint for sustainability -- I've hardly been home. It was downright blissful making dinner with my family last night.

But I'm not complaining about all the travel, because I get to meet so many of you. No matter how many times I'm told that our work touches people's lives, I am moved and grateful. In our business plan, we say that it's you -- our readers -- who make us unique. You are incredibly engaged in your lives and your communities, and you act on your passions.

Increasingly, the line between our subjects and our readers is blurring. Last week I met Tod Murphy, whose Farmer's Diner was featured in a story about 'slow money' in the Sept./Oct. issue. He told me this story: 'I was reading Utne at my father-in-law's house in Olympia, Washington. I was sitting upstairs in the loft, looking out over the forest. I had been reading the biographies of some of the people Utne had selected as most influential. There was Wendell Berry. I read and reread that piece and immediately went out to the bookstore to purchase a copy of The Unsettling of America. It was that purchase that led me to realize I was a born farmer, that I possess what is now called an agrarian sense of values. It was reading Wendell Berry, discovered through Utne, that developed the philosophy that lead me to create the Farmers Diner.'

And then there is Thomas Naylor, whose Vermont Manifesto we cover in this issue (pg. 66). Back in 1989, Naylor was a professor and corporate consultant living in Virginia. He read an article in the magazine that we reprinted from The Vermont Papers, a visionary book extolling the virtues of small-scale government from Vermont-based publisher Chelsea Green. Fast forward to the present when Naylor, now a Vermont resident, is leading a Vermont independence movement.

This year we will mark our 20th anniversary, and there are several ways we are planning to celebrate. One is by sharing stories of this cycle -- how we have inspired you and how you are living an inspired life that inspires us and others. Send submissions to Utne's 20th Anniversary, 1624 Harmon Place, Minneapolis, MN 55403.