Publisher’s Coda

Putting together the paper you hold in your hand was no doubt the hardest work I've ever done in my life. Added to that, it was necessary for me to teach myself newspaper layout from the ground up as I was assembling my first issue. I will admit to being resourceful, and a quick study—but I am also the Lazy Dog mentioned in “We're Burning Daylight Here!” (On a good morning, I'm up at the crack of ten.) So, in struggling against my own inertia to scale a learning curve that has been more of a right angle, I've managed to amaze myself. I never meant to be a publisher. That office was more or less thrust upon me. A year ago I had no inkling that I would even be writing again for publication. Though I've been assiduously pounding a typewriter since I was twelve years old, I am known to the traditional jazz community (if at all) as the host of a radio program, RADIOLA! My experience has been that if people see you doing one thing, they think that's the only thing you do. But this was totally unexpected, even for me. “Wafted by a favoring gale,” I found myself writing for the Jazz Appreciation Society of Syracuse newsletter, Jazfax, and (without applying for the job) I was on the staff of The American Rag. Russ Tarby and Lew Shaw (whose names feature prominently in this first issue of The Syncopated Times) get the main credit for my sudden change in status, which right now f