For a group of co-workers who rely each day on the words we know and use, we have somewhat remarkably run out of them this week. It is harder to leave our posts here at

than you can imagine, but it also seems even more necessary.

We thank you for your always generous support, as has been amply demonstrated over the past few days, with cards and letters and batches of cookies and flowers, and quick tearful visits in the front office, in the coffee shop, at the post office, and on the phone. They have meant so much to us.

This has not been an easy week or month. But knowing how much our work here has mattered to you, informed and occasionally inflamed you, sometimes touched you, maybe made you think, and even sometimes smile, has made it easier to feel we can walk away, knowing we have made a difference in the life of this community, and of our readers, wherever they may be.

We have so many to thank personally for their friendship and their many contributions, and hope now we will have time to do so properly.

It’s not all roses. We have a lawsuit to fight, and will do so with ferocity, knowing we have done the job of reporting the truth, with neither fear nor favor.

We have decided to suspend publication with this issue, a week earlier than we had announced, having felt we have done what could be done, and that there seems little more to say. As we promised, we will continue to search for someone worthy of carrying on this 75-year Ezzell family legacy, and hope you will help us.

Tonight, I will wonder what my parents would think of the job we’ve done, the changes we’ve made, and this final, difficult decision that really made itself. Deep in my heart, though, I believe we have done the job given us to do, and have honored them in word and deed.

We leave with these words, written by Annie Proulx in her Pulitzer Prize-winning novel,

The Shipping News:

“A paper has a life of its own, an existence beyond earthly owners.”

May it be so. And for my newspaper friends... -30--