In the March issue of The Syncopated Times I devoted a portion of this space to discussing the immediate delight I experienced on installing a larger computer monitor to ease the monthly task of publication. As I then stated, it was a pleasure not unmixed with dismay at targeted web drivel being thrown at my retinas, albeit at more legible font sizes.
On the non-digital front, though I managed to plow through a novel after completing my April paper, I was having such difficulty reading that I bought a set of dedicated prescription reading glasses with the view of making headway on the books I’ve accumulated and neglected for the past eight years.
After the April issue came out, I received a couple of messages from contributors to remark on the egregious typos in their work. One involved problems with case (upper and lower) and the other was in regard to the column heading: I ran an old one with the writer’s expired email address. I find such mistakes (that are entirely my fault) mortifying. After many years of having my letters to the editor mangled by the local daily, I decided (in my wounded arrogance) that no one else was qualified to edit my copy. What, now, if I am no longer competent to edit it?
A visit to my eye doctor revealed all. My eyes are what is technically known as “lousy.” I could say that all day and on my say-so it becomes a matter of mirth, with all the old jokes being dragooned back into circulation, especially the more rude and suggestive ones. I suppose a joke isn’t old if you haven’t heard it before, but I have heard all of them and resent hearing them again. I used to read joke books obsessively, the way I used to read the dictionary—when I could still read for pleasure.
But I’m not gaslighting myself here, nor is it hypochondria. My latest eye exam showed that my vision is significantly worse than it was just a few months ago. The good news is that the deterioration of my eyesight is correctable with simple surgery, leaving me with possibly better vision than I have ever known. Ever the skeptic, I can’t bring myself to hope that the claims of medical science are to be relied upon. Medical malpractice and broken promises provide a leitmotif to my slog. After all I’ve been through with my doctors, I am amazed to be alive but not particularly thrilled about it.
May I be candid? I just spent a month on that trendy movie-star weight loss/diabetes medication and it had the net effect of making me feel worse than usual. The only thing I lost was any glimmer of joy in eating or living. There wasn’t much there to begin with, but what there was, was gone. My metabolic numbers were better, even though the drug is supposedly wrong for my form of diabetes. But its main effect was as if a giant container ship had run aground and was blocking my Suez Canal. I considered adding gunpowder to my tea.
As for my lifelong disease itself, now of fifty years’ standing, the refrain I have heard so often that I could put it to music is, “There’s a breakthrough just around the corner.” No, there isn’t. There wasn’t in 1974 and there isn’t in 2024. I don’t even care anymore. Type 1 diabetes, an incurable autoimmune syndrome, has ruled my life from adolescence onward. It has dictated my education (or lack thereof), my work history (what there is of it), and my relationships (where I totally lucked out). I’ve had a good life, as far as lives go. That tolerable level of quality is predicated on dismissing all the false hope from my heart. I don’t care if you pray for a cure, or run for a cure, or ride a bike for a cure. Knock yourself out. Just don’t tell me about it.
(Also, please don’t tell me some quack treatment or remedy is the answer to my problem. Just don’t.)
I’m resigned to my condition (yet another source of amusement for the witless), but I will not go blind without a fight. I’ve put together one hundred issues of The Syncopated Times as of this issue, and I will have had my eye surgery before I begin to edit and lay out the hundred-and-first. I can’t continue like this, even with the words big and bright on this screen. My pride has been in the fine details of this periodical—that all the pictures line up with the columns, that the borders on each image and advertisement are placed precisely, that the columns of text are not staggered. I noticed that achieving that bare competency was more of a challenge with this issue than with previous numbers. I’d take off my glasses to zoom my astigmatic eyes into the huge monitor in order to lay out images and text correctly.
Though this paper is not so much a business as a bad hobby that doesn’t leave me time to do anything else, I take it seriously. Working against all my medical conditions (my fading eyesight is just the sprinkles on that sundae), I’m doing the best job I can. As inflation goes wild and there is less justification for people to spend forty dollars on a monthly jazz paper, I feel bound to honor each subscriber with what they paid for.
This month, I’m proud to introduce Sara Lièvre as our Birthday artist, while Joe Busam contributes what is planned to be a monthly enhancement to our Festival Roundup. Both have contributed magnificent images—which go into making this celebratory issue as delightful for me as I hope it is for you.
For next month I can’t promise fewer typos, but I will see them with sparkling clarity once that issue is in my hands.
