Believe it or not, I’m on the Sunday NYTimes op-ed page.

(Or at least the "Week in Review" section – somewhere….)

The piece is okay – it’s really, really, really short – 150 words shorter than I originally wrote (per instructions). So, it’s not real deep, but..WHO CARES?!!!!  This is how it happened:

Actually, I’m not sure how it happened. Wednesday, I got a call from someone at the Times asking me to write this. Yeah. I got invited to write this. I’m still flabbergasted. So that’s what I did the rest of the day on Wednesday and on Thursday morning. Took my cel to Columbus, consulted with my "boss" at the Times on the way, he told me he was sending edits, and I really, really needed to do them Thursday night. So, I got back after 11 from Columbus, sat down, exhausted, and tried to think through the edits. Many more phone calls on Friday morning, meat-grinding the thing so it got shrunk from its original 750 to less than 600 words (and if you want to quibble with the depth of analysis in the piece, you try to make serious points on a complex issue in less than 600 words.). I haven’t said anything about it up to this point, because I’m so superstitious, I just knew that if I did, it wouldn’t get published.

Oh, and the fellow at the Times – I’m not sure of his title – couldn’t have been nicer. He is a blog reader, understands the issues, and was very, very helpful, and hopeful about getting the piece in. In other words, even though I wished the piece could have been longer, I felt he was totally on my side, and I appreciated it. So there you have it. We can hope that more are in the future – hopefully on topics that I’m a bit more of an expert on,to tell the truth…

Sincerely yours,

Still Shocked.