I am writing this on Thanksgiving Eve as one by one the newsroom empties, our small crew of writers and editors wrapping up and heading home to family, pets, happy hour or Price Chopper. Still plugging away diligently are Paul Tackett and Angela Valden paginating news pages, Kyle Leach and Nicole Russo working on sports, Emily Donohue mapping out which stories will run when over the next few days, and the newest newsroom member, Lucian McCarty, banging away stories for tomorrow. New guy pulled short straw for Thanksgiving Day reporting, too.

I am thankful to be working with so many interesting, enthusiastic, talented and hard-working men and women during this incredibly exciting and challenging revolution of how news is told.
Actually, I’m thankful that I’ll be having Thursday off and sharing the day with 10 members of my family, including my father.

I’m glad that one of my sons, David, will be there, and hoping that we’ll be able to catch my other son, Joe, on Skype from Spain. I have to finish this up because I promised David I’d be home in 35 minutes so he can come over and we can fight over how to brine the turkey and I can complain how the dust in his supposedly former bedroom, where his Uncle Ron and Aunt Darlene will be sleeping tomorrow, was thick as the Sahara.

Among the many things to be thankful for is the good news that my friend Kathy Dollard, a fellow graduate from Voorheesville High School, Class of None of Your Business, has finished her breast cancer treatment and is feeling good — so good that she has a bike-riding trip planned for Italy in the spring. OK, Class of 1972. We each have a husband and two sons of about the same age, and keep in touch not nearly enough. Her attitude from the discovery of her cancer in a routine mammogram through all the treatment was typical, positive Kathy. Perhaps you are lucky enough to know people like her, too.

Also on the mend and in my thoughts are Joe Condon, whose voice many of you more mature readers, like me, know from his many years on area radio, especial B95.5. He thought he’d ducked heart surgery, but his heart had other plans. He’s getting better, though. Ditto with Ed Lewi, the amazing PR man. Those are both guys whose only ticker trouble should be having hearts that are so darned big.

I can think of many more things that I’m thankful for, especially family and friends who have been through some tricky times. So this will be continued.

We have a rare early deadline on the night before Thanksgiving, in part to allow time for inserting of all the advertisements in the Thursday paper, which is as much a tradition as green bean casserole and a big, fat turkey — which, as promised, is about an hour away from being Zip-locked into a bag of water, salt, sugar, lemon and oranges.

Hope your Thanksgiving is a happy one.