Each month when I begin work on the following month’s issue of The Syncopated Times I often think of Sisyphus, king of Ephyra, condemned for his self-aggrandizing craftiness to push the same boulder up the same hill each day throughout eternity. As I reflect on his plight (and mine), I’m not certain who should empathize with whom.
When Sisyphus undertook his daily task, it was always the same boulder. He knew it intimately—every bump, dent, and irregularity. He knew where to get the best purchase on the rock to move it upward, where it was likely to be slippery, where lichens and moss (that might aid in traction) had grown on it, and where the terrain would be easier or more arduous to navigate with his burden. In short, he got used to the job. After a hundred years or so, he had it down to a routine.
There is nothing routine about preparing an issue of The Syncopated Times. Every issue is its own challenge, with different events and people to inhabit its pages. Other than the graphic similarities of each number—the template, the masthead, the small ads, the column headings—it’s a new boulder every month. In fact, I don’t know what the shape of the rock is going to be until the paper is almost done. At the end of my task
