That event, which stranded my flight-attendant daughter in Europe, has resulted in “an 88-page souvenir of a moment in time when a non-life-threatening crisis hit the world, one for which nobody was to blame, and nobody knew how long it would last. People scrambled to find alternative routes home, any way, any how, or tried to make the best of wherever fate had placed them. It was a moment of unplanned disruption, never to be repeated in quite the same way.”

Magazine creators Andrew Losowsky and Matt McArthur (who’ve never met or talked on the phone but managed to collaborate on this publication) issued this call to strandees:

This is an open call to designers, writers, photographers, illustrators, art directors and anyone else who is stranded by the ash cloud, and would like something to do.

If there’s one thing my ol’ ma taught me, it’s that when life gives you volcanoes, make magazines. And so we shall.

Fifty-plus people contributed to the magazine, called Stranded: Stories from beneath the Icelandic ash cloud.

I can’t tell you much about the contents since the magazine carries a cost, $18.95 + shipping. A digital version is in the works; no word on what cost will be attached to that.

But I’m impressed with the idea of a crowd-sourced magazine of stories sparked by this odd natural occurrence.