{"id":20518,"date":"2017-03-22T19:54:00","date_gmt":"2017-03-22T19:54:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=20518"},"modified":"2017-03-22T19:54:00","modified_gmt":"2017-03-22T19:54:00","slug":"happy-trails-to-us","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=20518","title":{"rendered":"Happy Trails … to us"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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This blog has allowed me to\u00a0cover many things over the years I’ve been writing it.<\/p>\n

Its primary focus is politics and public policy. I also choose to write about “life experience” and assorted other matters that pop into my noggin. I’ve shared with you how my wife and I have become parents to an adorable puppy named Toby; I post Puppy Tales items on occasion.<\/p>\n

I also have been writing what I call an “occasional series of blog posts commenting on upcoming retirement.” I included that message in a sort of “editor’s note” at the start of those entries.<\/p>\n

Today I announce the end of that feature on “upcoming retirement.” There’s no more “upcoming” about it.<\/p>\n

It’s here. It has arrived. Or, shall I say it’s arrival is right around the corner.<\/p>\n

Accordingly, you’re going to get a new series of blog posts. I’m calling it “Happy Trails.”<\/p>\n

It will chronicle the adventures upon which we are embarking. They might involve travel in our fifth wheel RV; they might include a vignette about Toby the Puppy; they might involved preparations we’re making to relocate.<\/p>\n

Or … they might simply offer some perspective on issues of the day from a retired individual who spent nearly 37 years in daily journalism, most of it commenting on issues, public officials or the community where we were living.<\/p>\n

It was my goal at the Amarillo Globe-News to retire from that organization. I arrived there in January 1995 to become editorial page editor of the Daily News and Globe-Times. The papers merged in 2001 to become the Globe-News — which is what most folks in the Panhandle called it anyway; the afternoon paper, the Globe-Times, vanished.<\/p>\n

Circumstances beyond my control didn’t allow me to retire from the paper. The publisher reorganized the place in the summer of 2012. He instructed all employees in the newsroom — and yours truly — to apply for any job they wanted. I looked at the rewritten job description, saw the few new wrinkles in it — and then decided to apply for my own job.<\/em><\/p>\n

It didn’t work out quite the way I anticipated. The publisher decided to hire someone else, a former colleague of mine who worked under my supervision for several years before he had transferred back to another department in the newsroom.<\/p>\n

I was — shall we say — stunned<\/em> to get the news.<\/p>\n

I quit the next day. Cleared out my office, went to visit with the publisher for a brief — and awkward — meeting. Then I was on my way.<\/p>\n

All I wanted was to be able to retire, to leave of my own volition. I was unable to do so in quite the manner I envisioned, unable to\u00a0retire from\u00a0the\u00a0craft I had loved<\/em> for so many years. To this day, even though I resigned<\/em>, I feel almost like a persona non grata<\/em> at the Globe-News.<\/p>\n

But … what the hey!<\/em><\/p>\n

That was then. The here and now has arrived. I am going to retire — on my own terms — from the part-time job I’ve been working for the past three-plus years.<\/p>\n

So, this blog is going to include a feature I hope you’ll enjoy reading as much as I intend to enjoy writing.<\/p>\n\n

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This blog has allowed me to\u00a0cover many things over the years I’ve been writing it. Its primary focus is politics and public policy. I also choose to write about “life experience” and assorted other matters that pop into my noggin. I’ve shared with you how my wife and I have become parents to an adorable … Continue reading Happy Trails … to us<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[179,309,3920],"class_list":["post-20518","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news","tag-agn-media","tag-amarillo-globe-news","tag-retirement"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20518","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=20518"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20518\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20520,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20518\/revisions\/20520"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20518"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20518"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20518"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}