It was distinctly embarrassing (but not altogether surprising) for me to discover the editorial glitches in the June 2024 issue of The Syncopated Times. I’d been congratulating myself all month on having produced my June issue in the midst of numerous medical appointments, two surgeries, and the unsettling challenge of getting used to looking at things with new eyes. I thought I had done a fine job, but while setting up the new layout this month I noticed that half the pages of the June paper had “May 2024” at the top of them.
If you can’t spell “chagrin” without “grin,” neither can you “win” without “wincing.” I confess I did both. Such slovenliness is unacceptable—in anyone but the boss. If I had been working for me I’d have fired myself, and accepted the dismissal as just and inevitable. Nonetheless, I rescinded my “Employee of the Month” award. In its stead, I gave myself a Mulligan, which you now hold in your hands.
I’m getting used to my new lenses and frequently reach for my glasses only to find that I’m not wearing any. I’m beginning to enjoy the everyday miracle of adequacy. Somehow, I’m able to write and edit without them, despite needing readers for small print, close-up work, and my crossword puzzles. Things look a great deal clearer than ever for me—though “clearer” doesn’t always mean “better.” Fortunately, the clarity enables one to navigate in times of peril—and these are those times.
Things are looking good—and bad. No, I’m not trying to paraphrase Dickens. It’s just that my most recent bank statement should be read with violin accompaniment. The Syncopated Times, a one-of-a-kind publication, should be enjoying robust financial health. It should even pay the person who designs, edits, and lays it out each month at least as much as he would get working at McDonald’s. Likewise for the person who designs our website, syncopatedtimes.com, and posts each month’s stories there. Sad to say, it does neither.
I also want to pause here and say that just because I express things with a modicum of wit doesn’t mean I’m kidding. Wit is what keeps me from crying openly or shouting profanities. It was a faculty that people used to cultivate before those two others became socially acceptable. In other words, despite how it may come out of my fingers through the keyboard, what I am about to say is quite serious.
I am looking at some dire possibilities. Several things have occurred to bring us to this sad pass. My printer’s bill went up by over a hundred dollars last month. Periodical postal rates are set to leap up in July for the highest increase in several years. Subscribers, somewhat battered by inflation and all the other expenses incurred after we came out of The Long Intermission, are less apt to renew when there are more pressing matters to take care of. We’re certainly not more important than your groceries, your rent, or your utilities.
For those who have renewed and purchased two-year subscriptions—or who have straight up given us money because you understand what we’re going through, I am profoundly grateful. This acknowledgment demands its own paragraph.
Once our nonprofit is fully established, we can begin to write grants and ask wealthy people to support us as all the smart publications do. We can hold out our begging bowl alongside NPR and all other cultural institutions of some repute. Despite the poor condition of my knees, I will tap dance for their tax-deductible pennies.
But nonprofit authorization is taking longer than I expected, and it is for me to find other ways to keep going until then. What is perhaps most imperative, other than readers renewing their current subscriptions, is bringing new subscribers on board. On the cover of this issue I offer a free CD to new subscribers to our print edition (including current digital subscribers and those whose subscriptions have lapsed) as well as to those who buy a gift subscription.
Dean Norman, who has been a writer and cartoonist for The New Yorker and MAD Magazine, produced two excellent CDs, The Bums at Fagan’s and The Pearly Gates Marching Band. (Their contents are discussed on our front cover,) He has graciously donated his whole stock of them to our subscription drive, and we offer our sincere thanks to him for his kind generosity.
In February 2016, we sent out 1648 copies of our first issue to subscribers. Last month’s issue went out to just over 900 recipients via Periodical Mail—and it was a much improved paper, glitches notwithstanding. There are those who say I should just ditch print entirely, that it’s a dinosaur, and that everything is online now, anyway.
I confess to an ineradicable streak of Luddism. Yes, we have a full-service website, but it’s not the same as this paper. I remain skeptical of the reliability of online content. The internet is a funhouse mirror in which articles now get scraped by AI bots and spewed out in distorted fashion. I know the human being who does our site, but our content is liable to be scarfed and regurgitated not only by AI, but by hackers and those who just want to monkey with the facts according to their own whim or agenda. I need these words to be tacked down in print on a page so that I can refer back to them and know that they will be the same as I left them.
The Syncopated Times needs a financial boost to stay in print. We need renewals and new subscribers. That’s saying it as plainly as I can. It’s now crystal clear to me, and I hope it’s obvious to everyone who enjoys this paper and wants to see it continue.
