These are the first Comments (or letters from the editors), printed in the first two issues.
From Volume 1, Issue 1:
“If you don’t treat your baby right, she’ll come see me some lonely night.”
-Steve Earle, “Graveyard Shift”
For those of you who have tired of what the Ithaca area has to offer in terms of news outlets, we welcome you on this lonely night. Have a drink, sit in the rocking chair and leaf through the music collection.
From the rain puddles of Ithaca, stained with mud and cigarette butts, Buzzsaw Haircut has risen.
These pages smell of mid-winter sickness and the dead chill of February’s bitter wind. But this is the first issue. It is a work in progress.
These 24 pages are the result of a collaboration between a tight-knit group of friends, relatives, acquaintances and soothsayers. Surrounded by drinks and wearing lace undergarments, we offer you our first response to the inadequacy currently provided by Ithaca’s existing publications.
Like a long and lonesome train barreling through the Appalachian night, we are on track, but we have no idea exactly where that track will lead. Hopefully we will grow and the morning light will give us a sense of direction.
The first issue is a collection of our opinions, our voices and our views. The next issue should be a collection of your opinions, your voices and your views. We created this publication with the intention of providing a legitimate forum for discussion on the Ithaca College campus and within the entire Ithaca area.
We decided that the current system which allowed folks with a very limited editorial vision to control the flow of discourse did not satisfy us and most likely did not satisfy the general reading populace. Our goal was to shift the balance of power from the editors to the readers. We’ll be looking for submissions, reporters, opinions, pictures, blood samples and family histories.
Think of us as a “community” publication minus the gossip column. We are what you make us to be and our potential matches yours. In short, we are an old woman standing in the parking lot with a tire chain wrapped around her shoulders and a fist full of razor blades, waiting for the privileged few to step into the fog and answer the hard, ugly questions. And she’s not leaving until she gets some answers.