By David Alexander Swanson
Thanksgiving has passed. Out march the elves and the reindeer, the snowmen and candy canes in their cohorts. Green and red their banners fly, determined they look on, while in one voice they cry out into the snowy night their choruses of consumerist carols. Christmas is now upon us.
Yet, for all the jingles, all the wrapping, the hype, we few, we miserable few, remain aloof in our library hovels, surrounded by half-eaten Blue Java, a desk pollocked with caffeinated products, and a maelstrom of neglected deadlines, finals, and papers. Holiday season does not yet apply to us. Yet, it’s at this bleak time that one burning question brands itself in my mind, one that eats away at me while I ponder the depth of its implications: Bublé or Sinatra?
Though I’ve oft prided myself on being the progressive Bublé-ite, this year is different. Something about the final scene in my college career haunts me: what of legacy, what of the future? One eye looking back and one looking forward leaves one’s gaze askance. And so I search for resolution in Sinatra, in the arrogant bravado of “My Way.” Swap bass and baritone, lyric and lament for an outdated loyalty to the Oxford Comma and a need to insert the prefix “bw” onto any applicable bwadjective and our journeys are pretty much symmetrical. As I head onto the next chapter, I look behind with pride at the magazine I leave and at the hands it shall be left in. I conclude my reign as Editor-in-Chief with one last advisory quote, one I first encountered three-and-a-half short years ago and one that I hope will guide you as it has guided me: Hold fast to the spirit of youth; let the years to come do what they may.