Static From My Attic

I realize that most readers turn to this column with the expectation of somewhat light-hearted commentary, so I am reluctant to unpack this month’s stock

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

If anything is musically analogous to this historical fermata, it must be the chorus-length note held by Carmen Lombardo on the Royal Canadians’ classic (and

Each month, it seems, represents a newer normal. Normal wants to update itself relentlessly, much like my Windows operating system—usually at no small inconvenience and

For the first 52 issues of this paper, page three has contained a column of my mental regurgitations which many readers, unaccountably, look forward to

In the second month of our siege against an implacable and impersonal enemy, I am a bundle of conflicting and untidy emotions. It really is

There is no point in attempting my usual meandering approach to the topic that preoccupies all of us at the moment. Just as unnecessary travel

I wasn’t going to write the column I’m about to write. It’s going to cause me more of the trouble I’ve lately been experiencing, but

Last December, after wrapping up the layout of my January issue and launching it into the world, I was privileged to revisit what had been

I was deeply moved—and somewhat embarrassed—to read Larry Melton’s encomium for The Syncopated Times (and its hapless publisher). I do acknowledge that the survival of

Sometimes I forget to breathe. That’s not literally so, but it might as well be. In editing and publishing The Syncopated Times for four years

I am never quite sure, when I sit down to write this column each month, whether it’s going to be a jeremiad or an exercise

I find myself at the end of a long and harrowing layout process (which may be characterized as the maraschino cherry perched atop my annual

It is my (probably naive) assumption that the vast majority of us muddle through our days not intending to hurt anyone’s feelings. The more sensitive

When I was in high school, I began a book report sixty-four times. I finished none of those sixty-four drafts, and I took an F

Aside from the mere act of dragging myself out of bed and facing a computer screen every day, the most challenging aspect of editing The

I look back with no special fondness on a publication that used to be ubiquitous in waiting rooms, Highlights for Children. I somehow acquired a

I admit an aversion—if not an antipathy—to change. Change is at times necessary, at a certain point it is inevitable, but I wince when I

If, upon leafing through this month’s edition of The Syncopated Times, you notice a few differences from how the paper has appeared in previous issues,

Sometimes we need to be gently but firmly reminded that life is not of infinite length. I’ve been chugging along in my syncopated rut for

Three years ago this month, I set forth on a journey of perpetual astonishment with the first issue of The Syncopated Times. “How did I

As part and parcel of taking on the publication of The Syncopated Times, I find that I’ve acquired a community. I wouldn’t describe us as