One of the real joys of sitting in the chair that I occupy most days is meeting some incredible people.

I suppose it doesn’t matter where you sit or where you work, everyone has the opportunity to meet folks, right? But I suspect at a newspaper — where the name of the game is communication — we tend to meet and engage with more people than at the average job. Especially with a base of readers who are so passionate about their community paper.

I’ve not only met so many terrific people, but many have become friends over the years. And the funny thing is that, often enough, their first contact with the paper — or with me — comes when they’re upset about something. Why are you all so left-leaning? That’s a common one. But we also get, why are you all so right-leaning, too. Believe it or not. Or why did you have that one story in the paper and not this one? Or what do you have against our high school basketball team? Or how dare you run that political cartoon criticizing the Democrats and not one criticizing Republicans?

Woody Stenz was one of those folks, so upset about one thing or another years ago that he got on the phone — one with a cord, not a charger — and called the paper to ream someone, anyone, out. He got me. And what it was that had gotten his dander up I don’t have the slightest recollection because 1) it was so long ago, 2) we became good friends, and 3) we moved on from newspaper business to talking more often about families, common hobbies, and backgrounds.

The Wood Man, as I liked to call him, was one of the funniest people I’ve ever had the pleasure of knowing. As southern as southern can get — he grew up in “the hills of........

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