In today’s Wed. Journal column, I say goodbye.

And now a sweet sorrow. Adieu, my friends, adieu. I am leaving you for something else. Books. Here lies my life as a columnist, tattered and torn, shuffling off this mortal coil that is Wednesday Journal. Books, I say, to read and to write. You will be hearing from me, yes, but not monthly and not in these pages. Let’s leave it at that. For now, in the words of the immortal Porky Pig, th-th-th-that’s all, folks.

Read it online, and it’s how I wrote it.  However, this week’s hard copy suffers indignity with insertion of a fatal comma which, in the panoptically viewed scheme of things is small potatoes.  But let us here recount it as reflecting the power of that one-character facet of English punctuation.

My sentence:

[Letter writer Ray Simpson] gets calls of encouragement “every once in a while” from people who tell him to keep at it. So far, he’s doing that, if nothing else providing a fat target for left-thinking people.

Hard copy version:

. . . gets calls of encouragement “every once in a while” from people who tell him to keep at it. So far, he’s doing that, if nothing else, providing a fat target for left-thinking people.

Hah.  But editor giveth, editor taketh away when writer howls.  Is digital journalism great, or what?

In addition, submitted too late for hard-copy publication, was “primarily” in front of “You will be hearing from me, yes, but not monthly and not in these pages.”  Leaving myself an out, you see.  Just thought I’d add that while I’m at it.

As for books to come, stay tuned . . .