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Reconnecting with an old friend

There’s a sign hanging over the bar in my basement. It reads: A good friend will come and bail you out of jail … but a true friend will be sitting next to you saying, “Damn, that was fun!” Joe McCulloch was that true friend in college. Joe and I met as freshmen in 1975. Neither of us were particularly enamored with our dormitory roommates the first semester, so we roomed together the second semester. The influence we had on each other’s behavior was, well, questionable, although Joe was instrumental in introducing me to my future wife and served as…

Returning to the arena – sort of

Friends and family have encouraged me to find a way to continue writing since I retired in January 2018 after nearly 39 years with The Quincy Herald-Whig. Writing, after all, was the major reason why I got into the newspaper business. I did, to some extent, during the first year of “retirement” when The Herald-Whig asked me to stay on part-time as a special correspondent, working primarily from home. When that commitment was nearing an end, my wife bought a new laptop and encouraged me do some freelance work or write a book. I resisted, pointing out many newspapers and…