Empty Spaces

It has been a time of change here at the Times. After a couple of years of relative stability, I suppose it is to be suspected.

You might have noticed our staff reporter of the past eight years, John Rech, is no longer with the paper. Just is case you’re wondering, he’s fine, but he got a better paying job and he has relocated and I’ll never fault anyone for taking an opportunity for themselved. I wish him well in his future endeavors, and I think once the new guy Don Wilburn gets fully acclimated, he will be a great addition to our humble staff.

I’ve written extensively about the passing of our longtime outdoors columnist John Criner and his passing earlier this month.

That space will be decidedly harder to fill. “Papa Duck” was super dedicated to preaching the love of all things hunting and fishing, was always reliable, and in these trying times for all newspapers, the fact that he was willing to do it all for free was a godsend these past few years.

He was happy to do it for a plug for his taxidermy service at the end of each column.

Finding someone like Mr. Criner will be tough. Till then, I’ll try to fill that empty space with some alternative content that I hope our readers will appreciate.

And I found out last week that there’s another empty space to fill as of this week. If you look to your right on this page, you’ll see we are missing another longtime columnist. Mr. Robert Hall, let be know that he’s putting

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down his pen and will no longer be doing his weeky “Wordaholic” column going forward. Again, in case you were wondering, Mr. Hall didn’t give any indication that he was in poor health. It’s just that he found that being retired somehow made him more busy, and I ca absolutely believe that.

He said he plans on finishing his latest e-book he’s writing for Amazon and a couple of other projects. I wished him well and invited him to submit any oneoff columns he might feel compelled to write.

I have rarely agreed with much of his viewpoint but I always enjoy hearing the other side. His hardline conservative slant alternatively struck a chord or struck a nerve with our readers and I think if you’re not making people think, you’re largely wasting your time, so he was if nothing else provoking thought.

There’s plenty of available editorial content out there that I can fill that space with but I always liked having someone local who was putting out content, so again, if you think you could provide some insight and commentary on the world and its many issues, send me something (you can email a submission to news@theeveningtimes.com and I’d be happy to hear (or read) what you’ve got to say.

In the meantime, thanks to all these guys for their years of contributions and thank all of you for continuing