"Golden girls and boys all most, like chimney sweeps, return to
November 14, 2011 | 06:14 PM

In a larger view, Jerry, try not to be so elegeic, nor, for that matter, so angry; the third-rate people always come in, as an institution matures. You and your excellent peers -- Dot Jackson, Kays Gary, et. al. -- at least had the good luck to enjoy the final years if the Goden Age of journalism, until it became a Brass Age (or something worse than brass.) It always happens in EVERY field of work, as I tried to console you in the 1980s, by pointing out the growing degradation of univerity and college teaching, but I was too young of unimportant for you to listen to, until your on Eric had to deal with -- and be refused jobs by -- that politically correct crowd in academia. Exactly the same degeneracy also occurred in national publishing, as we both know, even in librarianship, which I was able to work in during its last Godlen Age, until we became "information and entertainment specialists." I'm sure Bill Gary would state that the insurance business is now filled with amoral and stupid frauds as sales reps, and notthe ethical men and women of his youth, and so would old-school stock brokers; and do you really think the Army in which you involuntarily served was not superior to our present military? Institutions like the people who create them grow old and are taken over by the third-rate, as an law of this fallen world. Just be grateful you knew and loved them in your youth, and that you have found a small, pleasant place outside of the empire where you can still honestly cultivate your own garden. That's victory, Jerry -- not as great as you might desire, but vitory, nevertheless.

David Robertson