As I write this month’s column, it’s challenging to find words to express the depth of my gratitude. I am deeply thankful to all those who replied to my advertising invoices and renewal reminder cards, often with contributions far exceeding the money requested. My bank account is now replenished enough so that I can continue to publish this paper, pay contributors, and soften the effects of inflation and supply shortages that have resulted in dramatically higher printing and postal costs. Your kind generosity has made all the difference.
In addition to a note of thanks (which I offer here), my obligation to you is to publish the best paper I am humanly capable of putting together. The Syncopated Times is a collage of found objects, each coming over the (digital) transom with no guarantees. I have to find the pieces that fit best, make them consistent with the editorial style and quality of the rest of the paper, and hope that I don’t have any blank spaces left at the end of the process. What usually happens is that I have leftover pieces (frequently marvelous ones) that have to be published the following month.
This is my eightieth issue. Venerable magazines that I grew up with, assuming they’d long outlive me and my paltry efforts, have vanished. Playboy, for all its toxic lifestyle advice and impossible airbrushed nudes—and its eternally adolescent publisher, offered the
