When I published my first issue of The Syncopated Times, I worked to compensate for the variables and uncertainties involved in getting started. Not the least of those obstacles was my own inexperience in print journalism and layout. I entered this business knowing absolutely nothing about it. The challenge was in teaching myself everything in a hurry. Thanks to my resourcefulness and determination—and my inability to see that what I was attempting was impossible—I mailed out my first issue on February 1, 2016.
Despite my ineptitude, I had help from a number of heroic and magnificent workers in the United States Postal Service. There were incredible complications involved in transferring and rebranding the paper I’d purchased, and USPS officials in California and New York worked tirelessly to smooth out the process. It was a headache we all shared. All I could offer, at the end of the arduous untangling of red tape, was my most sincere thanks.
The USPS has been the Gibraltar on which my rickety lemonade stand rests. Absent the reliability of their service, which predates the Constitution, a subscriber-supported periodical is unthinkable. Those who process and carry mail to its destination battle a daily emergency of backlog and glut and distribution. Not just this frivolous little jazz paper, the essentials of life are delivered to postal customers throughout the nation.
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