There’s still plenty to write about

One of these days, when I sit down to write this weekly column, it will be the last one.

But not today.

Not this week, though it would be fitting if it happened to be published on the last day of the year.

The question is, what year?

This column, such as it is, began by happenstance.

We were between editors at The News and Sun, our Dunkirk weekly, and I had to step in.

Turnover in that position wasn’t unusual. A job as editor of a dinky little weekly is often a journalist’s first job.

That was the case for Jim Beier back in the 1950s, for Linda Hengstler in the late 1960s and early 1970s, for Mark Mann in the mid ’70s, for great friends like Delora Scott and Larry Smith and Perry Washburn over the years, and for Bob Banser until his retirement.

But with that sort of turnover, sometimes you have to fill in the gap.

That’s how this column started, roughly about 1985 or so. It was after my father’s death in 1983, and for several years I thought of the column as a weekly letter to my mother.

I know I was writing it in the mid to late 1980s when I was also teaching a class in journalism at Earlham College as a member of the adjunct faculty, because I’d often drop off a copy of The News and Sun when I stopped by for a visit with my mother before heading to the campus.

One of the cool things in that era was that the column was unknown beyond the small universe of readers of The News and Sun. I could write things there that I couldn’t voice on the editorial page of the daily newspaper.

My biggest fan in that period was probably my mother-in-law. Whenever she passed through Jay County, she would expect to receive a stack of photocopied columns for her review and amusement.

My suspicion is that those columns are still in a dresser drawer somewhere in my wife’s family home in Illinois, along with yellowing clippings of every editorial I ever wrote during my mother-in-law’s lifetime.

You can’t buy reader loyalty like that. It is simply a gift.

Things changed in 1998 when Connie and Sally and I embarked on our big Moldova adventure for the better part of six months.

Then, for the first time, the column started running in both the weekly and the daily papers.

And that’s the way it’s been for more than 20 years.

But when you hit a milestone like today, when you feel the calendar page flip one more time, you wonder if you’re ready to go through another January through December cycle.

You wonder: Is it time to call it quits?

About a year ago, when it seemed that sale of the newspaper properties was imminent, I actually wrote a farewell column.

Ray Cooney had the good sense to spike it.

I’m glad he did.

While there are a dozen daily questions about surviving in today’s newspaper environment in a small market like ours, sale of the papers continues to be — for now — off the table. We’re still hopeful we can find another path.

So, for now, this is not a swansong column. It is not a farewell.

And Dec. 31, 2019, is just another date on the calendar.

After all, there’s a whole new year ahead of us.

I ought to be able to find something to write about in the weeks and months ahead, shouldn’t I?

I think so.

Thanks for reading for all these years. Enjoy the year ahead.