The "Celebrating Newspaper Columnists" Story

 It was an ordinary day.  Reading one of my favorite columns in the Lancaster Newspaper titled "The Scribbler."  I've been reading it forever, or at least it seems that long.  The author of "The Scribbler" is Jack Brubaker whose column in today's Sunday News is titled "Celebrating newspaper columnists."  Jack has been writing "The Scribbler" for 42 years and today reminded everyone, including yours truly, that April 18 is National Columnists' Day.  "On this day," Jack says, "columnists look not to the forgettable scribblings of the past, but to the dazzling columns to come."  He also tells his readers today that columns are the quirkiest creations of newspapers, and there have been some really quirky columnists."  I have been writing my stories, some perhaps quirky,  since September 2, 2009, so my columns aren't anywhere near as old as his columns, but being that I write a story, or column, everyday...I'm probably catching up with Jack in amount of words or stories published.  

Jack Brubaker..."The Scribbler"

Jack lives in Lancaster County, but I have never met him.  He has written about me a few times, and even featured a photo of me taken by my good friend and newspaper photographer, Dan Marschka.  I often thought being a newspaper columnist would be a great job, but I guess the word "Job" makes it at times a bit more work than I care to do anymore.  Jack tells us today that his favorite columnist is Dave Barry who has written a syndicated humor column for 25 years and then retired so he could concentrate on writing witty books.  "The Scribbler" column began in 1919, a year before my father was born.  It is one of the oldest columns in the world!!  Pretty neat to write a column once a week that is over 100 years old!  I envy Jack being able to write something that is read by hundreds of people everytime he has it published in the newspaper.  Heck..yeah I have to use that word...I'm lucky if I have 250 people read my column every day.  In Jack's column today he wrote that "Longevity, for a columnist, is a simple proposition.  Once you start, you don't stop. You do it until you die or can no longer put a sentence together."  Wonder if I will last that long.  I must admit that what I write are more like stories than they are a column.  I try to have a beginning, middle and ending to all that I write while a columnist can write about a topic and not have to tell a story in doing so.  I taught school for over 30 years and loved every minute of it, but, often wondered if I would have loved working for the newspaper as a columnist like Jack or been a photographer for the paper like Dan.  I often invited newspaper photographers, including Dan, to speak to my photography classes about photo journalism.  Many students told me, after hearing Dan's, or other newspaper photographers exciting presentation that that's exactly what they wanted to do.  I'm not sure if any did, but I had a few who went on to become very well known professional photographers.  Jack writes at the end of his column today that "The Scribbler does not have to answer despairing readers on a regular basis.  This column receives some cockeyed communications, but rarely of a negative nature."  He does get quite a few column ideas from his readers. Some ideas he uses and as he puts it, "salts it all with humor.  Why not?  The world is a mess.  Why dwell on it?"  He claimed at the end of his column today that "if I might provide the amusements of a nation, I would not care who made its laws."  Amen, Jack.  It was another extraordinary day in the life of an ordinary guy.