A while back the New York Times ran a piece about a venerable cigar store that was dropping its time-honored practice of storing its customers’ purchases for them. Customers had been instructed to come and pick up their property for the last time. The reporter noticed a middle-aged man standing in the middle of the room, looking around disconsolately. Finally the man said to no one in particular, “I hate change, don’t you?”
Those of NR’s staff who are temperamentally as well as politically conservative know how he felt. Our last lustrum (to borrow a word from Cicero and Hugh Kenner) began with Priscilla Buckley’s announcement of her semi-retirement—an event less noticed by the outside world, but with as big an impact on the editorial staff as the later departure of Bill Rusher as publisher, his replacement by Wick Allison, and the arrival of John O’Sullivan as editor. (Bill Buckley’s announcement of his own semi-retirement hasn’t sunk in yet. Ask us in five years.)
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