Dec 27, 2016 3 min read

If you’re reading this column, I want to thank you. That means you are reading this newspaper whether in print or online. The numbers of those of us who do that are sadly shrinking, and the newspaper business is suffering because of it. Unfortunately, shrinking budgets are the result, and tightening of the belt means that this will be my final column for the Observer-Reporter.

I want to thank the owners, editors and staff of the Observer-Reporter for giving me the opportunity to write this column because it has truly been a great joy this past year and a half. Though I make my living writing (and forecasting the weather), I never imagined myself a columnist. I would always read columns from clever, witty writers like Erma Bombeck and Dave Barry growing up, and I still never miss Joel Stein’s wonderfully amusing and sarcastic essays in Time magazine. I finally got up the nerve to ask my editor at the O-R if they ever needed anyone to write a column. To my amazement, they said they had an opening and gave me a trial run.

That trial just kept going, and I couldn’t believe that every other week when I would write up something that captured my attention or a funny story from my past and send it along that it didn’t come back with a big rejection stamped on it. They actually published it! Little by little, I gained confidence and started looking forward to what I would write about next time. Friends and neighbors would tell me what a kick they got out of reading something I wrote, and it made me so very happy.

That happiness came from the joy of writing and from knowing that avid readers were consuming something they enjoyed. That’s why I like newspapers and magazines. Yes, I read articles online, but I also enjoy opening the paper every morning and perusing it while I have my coffee. There’s something soothing in that ritual that is slowly going away with every new generation.

I hope that you will still read newspapers, and this one in particular. Then again, if you are reading this either in print or online, I am likely preaching to the choir. Either way, look at or even click on some of the ads to support the O-R’s advertisers and keep our local paper in business. Buy a Sunday paper and enjoy it with your morning coffee. You’ll still see many of my articles in the O-R‘s niche publications that arrive inside your paper monthly and stories profiling the upcoming Biggest Winner contest for the O-R.

To those of you who have emailed me thoughts on the column, I thank you and urge you to visit my new “Rarely Serious” blog at www.kristinemery.com.

Kristin Emery can be reached at kristinemery1@yahoo.com.