As I believe I’ve written previously, all of us on Global Traveler‘s editorial staff (editor in chief Lisa Matte, senior editor Janice Hecht, art director Tracey Cullen and I) work from home offices. What’s more, we live in four different states — Massachusetts, Connecticut, Pennsylvania and Oregon — and two different time zones. Through the wonders of modern technology, though, we’ve developed a very efficient process for producing a beautiful and informative magazine every month (as well as a number of supplements each year). We’ve only all come together once, on the occasion of GT‘s fifth anniversary celebration, so you might think that ours are strictly business-like relationships. However, over the years we’ve interspersed work-talk with more personal matters, and shared aspects of our lives and interests apart from the magazine. Working alone at home can be a somewhat isolating experience, so it’s nice to be able to develop a warm and friendly partnership with those linked to you by computer and phone. We swap stories involving families, trips and gardens and commiserate with each other over weather (too cold, hot, wet or deep!) and car and home repairs.   I especially enjoy the sharing of just-this-moment bits of interest. Earlier this summer Jan reported she was under a tornado warning (in Connecticut?!), and we waited to hear that she was in the all-clear afterward. This week, Tracey sent a great photo she’d just taken in her backyard. She reported having heard a lot of commotion out there in the preceding days, with the birds being literally all a-twitter over something. That morning she discovered the cause of all the ruckus: a hawk had been hunting, and she snapped him in a tree feasting upon an unlucky mole. (Tracey actually had little sympathy for the mole, as her husband had been trying to eradicate them from the yard for weeks.) Jan then replied with a possible identification of the bird (complete with a description of its cry) and stories of her own encounters with the raptors. I shared my own humbler version of backyard battles: I’d been distracted that day by aerial dogfights, that would have made the Red Baron proud, between two hummingbirds battling over the choicest flowers. These little tidbits from our daily lives are hardly earth-shattering, but they comprise the building blocks of a positive working relationship between far-flung individuals. I have no doubt that this same kind of sharing occurs between business people on every continent all over the world – the exchange of children’s pictures at dinner, the swapping of battle stories across the aisle on a jetliner, a tip for a great place to visit as a meeting adjourns – bringing each of us a little closer to another. — Patty Vanikiotis, associate editor/copy editor