Birthday  Greetings  to  Rosebud....

"Fifteen Years! It amazes me that ROSEBUD continues to showcase great contemporary writing without the financial support enjoyed by University funded literary journals."

"Citizen Kane said 'Rosebud' when he was dying. I say 'Rosebud' while I am alive and 'Rosebud' is fully alive and will hopefully continue for many years to come. Happy 15th birthday!"

ROSEBUD is an amazement.   When I first met J. Roderick Clark, we were volunteers at a  listener-sponsored radio station.  He wrote and read commentaries on-air  that were a marvel.  Now he’s transferred those commentaries to his  magazine, which contains his voice and his great vision.  That ROSEBUD  has survived for fifteen years is a tribute to him, his excellent work, and  his amazing abilities. Continue to subscribe and support the magazine. We need publications like ROSEBUD.

"The  first  letter  I  ever  got  from  Roderick  Clark  announcing  that  he  would  welcome  my  short-story,  "Would  You  Remember,  Cousin  Aaron?"into  the  pages  of  Rosebud  instantly  brought to  mind  Melville's  "shock  of  recognition."   The  warmth,  candor,  insight,  sensitivity  and  exhilaration in  his  words  presaged  what  I  would  find  in  coming  issues  of  the magazine.

There  are many  and  myriad  magazines  and  journals out  there  for  the  reading,  but  Rosebud  keeps  a  unique  place  in  the  spectrum.  At  its  core,  are  the  honesty  and  an  unpretentiousness  that  mark  it  as  a  publication  of  keen  and  high  distinction.  The  power  and  perceptivity  of  the  fiction it  offers;  the  haunting  glow  its  verse;  the  range  and  scope  of  its  essays;  the  vibrancy  and  punch  of  its  artwork:  all  contribute  to  its  formidable--but  never  intimidating--literary  stature.  

Rosebud  is  a  blessed  enterprise  because  Rod  at  the  helm—and his crew  alongside  him—believe in  the  blessings  that  real  writing  can  bestow  on  us.  They  know  writing is a way of investigating and exploring internal and external life,  of reckoning and accounting and summing up, of balancing things and staying  one’s own balance, of trying to bridge the gap that separates one human being  from another: of surviving. "Everywhere you look," the Talmud tells us,"there’s something to see." Surely,  that's the writer’s code and credo!  And his  solemn duty is to report what he finds as honestly, directly, accurately and simply as he can. Every writer owes the truth he finds, first and foremost, to himself. And then to readers, if he chooses, to share it. "May my words," writes the Yiddish poet, Abraham Sutskever, "feed others." That's the Rosebud triumph!

So, on your 15th birthday, from this land which Moses glimpsed from the heights but never set sandal on, where Samson felled the lion and fell to Delilah, where David waltzed Goliath into oblivion and Bathsheba into bed, where the savvy of Solomon saved the bawling baby, I raise a cup and—over oceans and forests and mountains and prairies and plains even unto snow-swathed and wild-wooded Wisconsin-- toast Roderick Clark, John Lehman, John Smelcer, R. Virgil Ellis and all the faithful comrades-in-arms who till the soil of the spirit beside them in what is truly a consecerated blending of the heart and mind.

As we say in Hebrew, "Ad mayah  v'esrim--to  120!"  Or,  in  the  modern  Israeli  variation  of  that Biblical  number:  "Ad  mayah--k'esrim: to  100--like  20!"

 L'chayyim--to  life!  And  to  Rosebud!  

"Happy Birthday, Rosebud! I First heard about Rosebud way back when, and with that name, I thought, Uh-oh, another poet-taster journal. Surprise! Stories, poems, and articles that were not of the wet cocktail napkin school of sensitivity—nor that reeked of the MFA workshop. Instead—stuff written by and for people—so often wonderful stuff! ROSEBUD would be the public broadcasting station of the print medium—if public broadcasting truly belonged to the public and not the pols."

"Happy birthday, Rosebud! If magazines had to get drivers licenses, you wouldn't be quite old enough, but fifteen is a pretty impressive age for a fiction magazine these days. After all those years, we can still always count on you to deliver stuff we want to read. I have a special soft spot for the magazine, too, because this is where the title story of my collection "Meet Me in the Moon Room" first appeared.  The fit just seems so entirely right that I can't imagine it first appearing anywhere else. I hope I can wish you many more happy birthdays, maybe buy you a beer when you're legal."