Awful Quiet Around Here

I don't like to print excuses. It don't think they're interesting, and yet, as the intervals between our front-page features have been stretching out, I think you're due an explanation. We've been running short-staffed for a while now. Our regular standbys haven't been around to fill the gaps, and now, after several new developments, I find myself in a situation yet unknown in my three years as a newspaperman. As of today, I'm the only one in the building.

I should hasten to say this isn't a bad thing. I feel like a mother bird whose chicks are all off soaring in their chosen canyons, descending on the carrion of their destinies.

Also it's not quite true. Evelyn West, our office assistant and poet, still comes in part-time on Wednesdays, though she's preoccupied with her new job as a screamer at the Haunting of Hill House theme park. As for the other reporters, here's what they're up to:

• Arnie and Vera, as I think you all saw coming, are now Mrs. and Mr. Maraschino. They wed in August, in a fashionable ceremony by a mountain stream, and moved to Milan in September, for the sake of Arnold's (it still bugs me to call him Arnold) modeling career. Vera says she's found an occupation, too, but won't say what it is. I notice, if you get her talking on the subject of explosives, she's become uncommonly knowledgeable. I wonder if I did wrong, in making her learn to cook.
• Our advice columnist has been indisposed. He sent a note, back in June, requesting a leave of absence, as, for the near future, his time is not his own. I have no idea what he's doing, with whom, to what purpose, or with what degree of freedom, but I've learned there's never much cause to worry for the genie. I doubt we've heard the last of him.
• Joey Bad-Mittens, the closest thing to a sportswriter the Ostrich ever had, is now in second grade, lives with his grandmother, and has, ironically, taken up a sport. He's practicing spins at the ice rink, though they make him dizzy. For now he's working on solo routines, but his grandy says if he keeps it up another year they'll pair him with a partner.
• Racine LaCrosse, our arts-and-crafts contributor since my Casual-Observer Days, is now an investment broker, and remains optimistic that my crypto losses can be recovered.
• Stockyard Paul, the business writer who did our Hotlists, died in his hot tub a year ago. We wrote a big obituary, but his widow, for reasons now moot, asked us not to run it. Mourn him by all means, but do recall that his high school class voted him Most Likely to Die in a Hot Tub, and his will begins with the phrase, "If, as I hope, I went out in the Jacuzzi..."

And now I come to the most perplexing news. Our weatherman, the only writer in our stable still working on a regular basis, came in this morning to do his weekly scrying session, closing his office door as is his custom. A short while later I heard a yelp and a crash, neither of which is unusual, but which seemed in some way ominous. After that I heard no sound at all.

As he does not like to be disturbed, I waited an hour before I knocked. Hearing no answer, I fetched the spare key and let myself in. Thereupon I found a shattered crystal ball, an open window, a massive puddle of water, and no weatherman whatsoever. For context, his office is on the eleventh floor and it was not raining. Knowing him, it's not impossible that he'll come in tomorrow, on schedule, with a forecast and an unlikely story. My gut says otherwise.

And that leaves me, a tycoon unto myself.

I gave some thought to shutting down the press, but there's no call for that. I own the building and our ink subscription's paid through 2033. My plans for the Ostrich are still in the "wet concrete" stage, but I think a few changes are certain. The occasional in Occasional Ostrich is likely to be the buzzword. I'll try to print articles often enough that you aren't alarmed when you get one, like receiving a big, thick letter from that mystery-shrouded uncle you haven't seen since you were nine.

Also, and more to the point, when you hear from the Ostrich, you'll be hearing from me. With nobody else to write the stories, I'll have to tell my own, a prospect rife with vulnerability. My thoughts aren't so interesting, but they're all I have at hand, unless or until I find somebody else.

There will be technical changes, too. Ghost, our newsletter host, has a terrible sign-up process, leaving many a would-be reader in a limbo of semi-subscription, wandering the parched Middle Territory, unaware that the fountain of our email is flowing just in front of them, though they cannot see it. It's time to try a different host, but I haven't sorted that out yet.

And, finally, like many others in a digital world where "slop" is the word of the year, I find myself drawn to paper. I've taken up bookbinding in my spare time, enjoying the bulky certitude of words in print. Though I'm not at all sure what form it might take, I have a sparkle of an inkling of a notion that it might be nice to make some arrangement with whomever felt inclined, wherein I print some words on paper. Then the paper would be carried to you, such that the piece of paper you receive is the same one I sent. An object, if that's not too arcane a concept. If a printed—something—in your mailbox is an interesting thought, enough that you'd chip in for expenses, let me know, so as to inform my whisker-scratching.

My unending thanks to our prodigal writers, wherever they are, and to you, winsome reader, for your generous attention.