EDITOR'S PAGE

EDITOR'S

Because Arizona Highways is a monthly publication, we have another opportunity-while the afterglow of our annual December special issue still lingers - to send you greetings of the season. This time we are pleased to say "Happy New Year" and wish you good health and success throughout 1987. As the special logotype on this page indicates, 1987 brings our state to a significant milestone. Seventy-five years ago next month-on February 14, 1912-Arizona's long wait for admission to the Union came to an end when President Taft signed the Act of Congress granting state hood to this burgeoning territory. This month Arizona Highways' Related Products Section will publish a remarkable book of historical photographs and perceptive text titled Arizona Highways Album: The Road to Statehood. In our February magazine, we will reproduce selected por tions of the book. Meanwhile, in this January issue, we bring you two special features: Water and the Desert Dweller, a report on efforts to conserve the desert country's most precious resource; and, for the first time, an extended Calendar of Events that provides a summary of programs and activities around our state for a full six months. We trust Arizona visitors and residents alike will find it informative and useful. The Civil War touched Arizona only lightly, as far as Union-Confederate combat was concerned. But if you thought the only skirmish was at Picacho Pass, you're in for a bit of a surprise when you read about The Westernmost Skirmish.Our January salutes to winter include a report on crosscountry skiing in the Arizona highlands and a portfolio depicting the desert transformed by snow. Finally, the reactions of some Japanese visitors to our state's open spaces provide some food for thought for us all. To return to the subject of our recent December issue: the staff is now enjoying a gratifying response to the 1986 version of our annual "greeting card to the world." Predictably, however, a few correspondents have taken us to task because they do not find, in sufficient or specific enough examples, the Christian allusions that they consider appropriate to a "Christmas edition" of the magazine. Perhaps I ought to share with all our readers the answer I offer to such critics. Our December issue is not, in fact, intended as a "Christmas edition" except to the extent that Christmas plays a major role in the stirring intercultural pageant of our most pervasive holiday season. We are fortunate that the ideals underlying observance of Christmas, Hanukkah, and certain other religious and ethnic holidays are widely shared in our society. But it is important to remember that ours is a multicultural, not an exclusively Christian, society. We have tried, therefore, to retain and even deepen the inspirational quality of our annual holiday issues while avoiding a concentration on elements significant to a single religious faith. In so doing we hope to widen, not diminish, the circle of goodwill and mood of reverence appropriate to the season. I am happy to say that most of our readers seem to -Merrill Windsor approve.