It has been almost a month since the scoundrels rose up from within our own staff to perpetrate their shameless grab for power.
The laughter of the coup leaders still burns in my ears as I sit here in my cramped little office, banished from my luxury suite. No longer the art director of Sojourners, I'm now forced to work in the archives removing the faces of former editorial staff members from old photos, and replacing them with the faces of the new leaders.
Details are still sketchy, but it seems the coup was engineered by the poetry editor and the newly named assistant publisher, whose recent promotion was apparently insufficient to satisfy her hidden lust for power.
The editorial staff was away on our fall retreat, tirelessly planning the 1992 issues during breaks between volleyball and "Scattergories" (a delightful vocabulary game that I would have been much better at, had I chosen to apply myself). Knowing that the business staff and interns get a little insecure when we are gone, we made our daily phone call to reassure them when, suddenly, the phone line went dead. It was the first act, we found out later, of the crazed coup plotters who then went from office to office enlisting supporters.
The interns -- always eager to help out -- were first to join in the sinister plot, foolishly deluding themselves that they would hold high positions in the new personnel structure. The subscription staff was next to turn against us, and they immediately broke into the computer files and issued lifetime subscriptions to themselves and their parents.