A milestone of sorts

Yours truly gathers his strength to write another screed on Gardiner’s Bay

As close as I can tell, I’ve been writing this newsletter for 103 days, beginning the day before that grim landmark in our  nation’s history, January 6, straight through to today.  I’m pretty sure I’ve written something every single day, even if it was only to tell you on March 20 that I was taking a night off and to post a photograph of the desk where I work, with Tracy Harris’ painting showing on the wall behind my computer monitor. 

Looking back, I see there were particularly busy news days when I posted two newsletters rather than one, evidence I guess that I’ve been having a very good time, way more fun than anyone should probably be allowed to have, especially someone my age.  I can’t even remember all the stuff I’ve written about, there’s been so much of it – some pieces driven by the headlines, others that came from the peculiarities of my personal interests, even some like the “motels I have known” series and the “love among the Ginkgoes” stories from my memories of the life I lived back in the 70’s, when I was young and the world seemed a more innocent place, or at least my life did anyway.

Over the last 103 days, just over 1600 of you have signed up to receive the newsletter, with 518 of you signing on with a paid subscription.  For those of you who have signed up more recently, you can find a complete archive of my posts on my Substack page.  The most recent are listed below this latest newsletter, with the rest available if you hit the “archive” button at the bottom of the page.  So when you sign on, you’re not just getting every newsletter I will write in the future, you’re getting access to all the ones I’ve written since I began.  It’s quite a trove.  You new readers should at least take a quick look through the archive.  You’ll find gems like “Schadenfreude is the best Freud,” a take-out on the travails of our man in Florida, Matt Gaetz; “Tucker Carlson should shut the hell up,” about the Chief Fox Know-Nothing’s ignorance about women in the military; “White people can do no wrong,” about Republicans’ defense of the attack on the Capitol; “Effortless,” about Joe Biden’s surprisingly strong beginnings in the White House; “Ruby my dear,” about how dogs save us every day; “How the truth gets through,” some stories about my life as a writer; “Free love wasn’t free, sometimes it wasn’t even love,” about the lives of young men and women in the 70’s,” and “Mitch McConnell’s masterclass in soulless double-dealing,” on how to be unkind to rat-vultures.

And now comes the get-real part, where I appeal to the thousand or so of you who haven’t yet become a paid subscriber to this wonderous work of art of a newsletter I’ve been producing.  I mean, where else can you get such a broad variety of genius, rage, humor, and crazed screeching at the Unfairness of It All than right here in the pages you are reading at this very instant?  A fairly good measure of why I do this – and why I’ve been writing for more than 50 years – is what I call my So Far Fruitless Quest to Make Things Better.  Which sounds like a little chunk of self-deprecating humor, and it is, but it’s also the absolute truth. 

I write because I enjoy it, I write because I have a great big giant ego and I think I am Right About Most Things, I write because I like entertaining people, and I write because for some reason it’s been in my bloodstream as long as I can remember.  But I also write to earn a living.  I haven’t had a regular paycheck from a corporation since I resigned my position as a staff writer at the Village Voice in 1975.  Over the years, I’ve supported myself writing for magazines and newspapers, writing novels and motion pictures and television shows.  

These days I guess you could say I’m part of the new economy of independent online journalism that has arisen around platforms like Substack, where I have set up shop with this newsletter.  That means I get paid as a writer by individual readers who are willing to pay a subscription fee of $5.00 a month, or $60.00 a year, for the Lucian Truscott Newsletter.  I don’t think that’s much to pay to support my personal stories as well as my brilliant screeds and shrieks at the assholes who are trying to impose racism and fascism upon our democratic union.  Won’t you help me keep it going?  You can use a credit or debit card to subscribe right here: