Since NR’s last anniversary issue five years ago, the magazine and National Review Institute have moved across midtown Manhattan to a new, smaller space on 44th Street, between Times Square and Grand Central Terminal. NRHQ, now on the 17th floor of a building with a view of 30 Rock, is a bright and usually cheery collection of rooms. Tall windows throw light on desks and workspaces, a conference room with a big oak table, and on shelves filled with the priceless archive of bound volumes holding issues going back 65 years. On a normal Print Monday — what we call the first business day of a week in which we go to press — Rich Lowry convenes the editorial board around that oak table at 9:30 a.m. sharp. That’s when we formally discuss how the previous issue turned out, hammer out the magazine’s editorial line for the Week, and occasionally delve into esoteric debates, ranging from the efficacy of a tax-cut package before the Congress to the origins of the Juicero juicing machine.

It obviously hasn’t been very normal of late. The virus’s spring rampage through New York drove most everyone who had a place to go out of the city. An office that once hummed with conversations between young staffers and the click-clack of furious typing has gone silent. Like much of America — like you in your work, perhaps — NR has gone to Zoom and email and Slack to put this magazine together.

As 2020 draws to a close, you’ll find us spread across the country: north Florida and Las Vegas; New Hampshire and northern Virginia; Texas and Oklahoma and the Connecticut Gold Coast. Jack Butler, a young associate editor, moved to NYC from Washington to take a job at NR just in time for the city to close down. He quickly found himself in Ohio, holing up in his parents’ basement. Now he’s back in D.C., not far at all from where he started the year. His former desk at NRHQ will no longer be in danger of getting overrun by the stacks of manuscripts, magazines, and trade publications emanating from the neighboring desk of critic at large Kyle Smith.

Five feet from Kyle is the cubicle of Madeleine Kearns, surely the finest singer who has ever penned an essay for NR. Maddy, who is Scotch by birth, has pinned a map of the U.S.A. to her cubicle wall, for reference. It might be my favorite thing about her, even if it leaves me wondering why she hasn’t managed to pay a visit to America’s greatest state (Oklahoma). Alexandra DeSanctis — we call her “Xan” in-house — once occupied the outrageously untidy desk beyond Maddy’s, but now, like Jack, she’s down in D.C. Outrageous untidiness is a venerable NR tradition that I shan’t speak against, but, well, you didn’t have to sit next to her.

A few NRers, most native New Yorkers but not all, stuck it out in the city, through pandemic and riots on Fifth Avenue. News editor Jack Crowe was one of the stickers. He leads a growing team of five young news writers, which now includes Ryan Mills, who recently joined us as a media reporter. Jack, always searching for what his cub reporters should cover next, might be the most up-to-speed news junkie I know. No one is quite sure where editor at large Kathryn Lopez — “K-Lo” — is at any given moment, but you can be sure it’s in the company of nuns.

Then there are KDW, MBD, and RVB (Kevin D. Williamson, Robert VerBruggen, Michael Brendan Dougherty; the triple initials are another venerable NR tradition; see, e.g., “WFB”). You’ll find Kevin, our roving correspondent, somewhere in Texas. Or maybe somewhere else, but always writing. Robert, NR’s policy writer, is the exception among ink-stained-wretch types in that he’s actually numerate. Charlie Cooke affectionately nicknamed Robert “Captain Data” for this quality — and the fact that we’re always asking him to explain statistics to the rest of us. MBD knows more about baseball than anyone I know, with perhaps the exception of Dan McLaughlin, a.k.a. “Baseball Crank.” Unfortunately, they’re both Mets fans.

What about the editors? Molly Powell still proofreads with a red pen. I’ll tell you, that makes her unique in this age of email and Slack. To make up for that old-school vibe, however, Molly is partial to sending her colleagues unicorn emojis. Associate editor Nick Tell is a soccer fan. I promise we don’t shun him for that, though we don’t understand it, either. Sarah Schutte, like Jack Butler, is a member of John Miller’s ever-growing Hillsdale College journalism mafia. She also produces the NR podcast lineup, which five years ago was Charlie and Kevin’s Mad Dogs & Englishmen but has now grown into a proto-empire.

Deputy managing editors Fred Schwarz and Nick Frankovich are different in many ways, but similar in that they’ll identify a fallacious argument or a bad typo faster than you can write one, and they’re both Columbia grads from the days it was still all-male. Fred studied chemistry, just like Maggie Thatcher, but Nick was a classics major. Fred claims that the highlight of his publishing career was the day he once corrected Nick on a point of Latin grammar. I call Katherine Howell, our literary editor, “KC.” (Her maiden name was “Connell.”) This confuses the newcomers; they’re always wondering who this “Casey” is that everyone is talking about. The newest addition to the editorial staff is Judson Berger, who, as managing editor of NRO, manages to keep a dozen plates precariously spinning.

Since the writers and editors are always filing late and producing more copy than we can handle, it’s the unsung heroes of the production and design departments and the publishing division who make the trains run on time. Chris McEvoy, VP of editorial operations, is a verifiable jack-of-all-trades. Luba Kolomytseva, our art director, is the creator of our covers, including the magnificent one gracing the issue you’re holding now. Katie Hosmer does the magazine’s layout from her home in D.C. She’s bailed us out from our last-minute, one-more-change-please craziness more times than I care to mention.

Tom Kilkenny and Galina Veygman make sure the bills are paid and the lights are kept on. Jim Fowler is the ad man. Sarah Mendenhall, Kristin Veltry, and Danielle O’Connell handle printing, distribution, circulation: all the things that get this magazine into your hands and your mailbox, and on the newsstand. Russ Jenkins has been around forever. He knows where all the bodies are buried. Garrett Bewkes came over from the New York Post a few years ago. As publisher, he heads this side of the house, and does it — let’s be honest — more smoothly than what you see in the often eccentric ways of editorial. And have you met Dale Brott? This midwestern gentleman is chairman. I’m not sure just what he expected from this strange second act in life, but quarterbacking NR from a home office in Ohio is probably less relaxing than he had envisioned.

There are so many others on the team, in this NR family. The magazine is a labor of love for all of them. Even if at times it can be exasperated love. I wish I could tell you all about each and every one of them.

Rick Brookhiser, Jay Nordlinger, and Ramesh Ponnuru, senior editors and NR graybeards, are of course still around, though we keep pushing Ramesh’s nomination to the Fed. (I fully trust that he could do both jobs.) If you want to know NR lore, go to these three. But the archives aren’t a bad place to start, either: I recently learned by reading 1995’s 40th-anniversary issue that Ramesh was the star of NR’s now-defunct softball team.

I should tell you that in the last five years, we lost beloved NR friends and family. Mike Potemra, Kate O’Beirne, Linda Bridges, Florence King, Dusty Rhodes, Alex Batey, and others: They’re all missed, and irreplaceable. I wish you could have known them. Through this magazine, in a way, you did.

Linda once described NR as “the eye of the hurricane.” It still is, after all these years, even if 2020 was a weird one. There might not be a Christmas party at NRHQ this December, not this year — at least not like it’s meant to be, with Rich leading the whole crew in a singalong of a rewritten “Twelve Days of Christmas” (Jack Fowler, our former publisher, traditionally takes the “five gooo-OOOLD rings” line solo) and toasts to you, the readers, and the coming new year. Zoom all you want, but you can’t replace that.