Readers,
The end is nigh. We are sorry to inform you, but we went into a basement bomb shelter this week, and the faculty there told me we had reached the end. They did not explain what had happened, but we had a sinking feeling. They were talking about us. About the semester, about the year, about the Herald.
We only have three issues remaining, this one included. Life’s so busy we could barrel forward, head down, and hardly notice anything’s changing until everything’s been changed. Until Thursday, that’s how we were rolling. Skittering quickly along the branch of time’s progress, shaking and blind.
But skittering is lonely. A leaf bug running along a bow by itself is very clearly afraid; any passersby could see a leaf moving so fast and know it’s a fraud. To feel afraid, and to know others know you’re afraid, makes the fear grow.
Sounds like an awful cycle, right? Magazines like this one often share the fear of the leaf bug. We continue on even with a possibility of the money drying up one day, the written word losing significance in our AI hellscape, or worse, readers no longer caring about what we share. Thankfully, our philosophy is simple. We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again and again and again, so here it goes. We do this for you. YOU. Even if just one person read the Herald, we’d still devote as much time and energy to our weekly publications as we currently do, not because we like hearing ourselves talk, but because the chance of reaching a singular soul is more than enough to inspire our attempts at getting closer to some truths through writing.
This week, we’re inspired by the leaf bugs who find their way to a tall oak and call it home. We’re even more inspired by the later generations of leaf bugs who continue to call that tree theirs well after their predecessors fly off somewhere else. That’s how you know what you have is real, so keep it going, you. Read on.
Most daringly,
Will and Oscar