I was reminded that Janet Post and I have an anniversary this week with this publication. Our six-month stint in the newspaper world has stretched into seven years. Yup, we began this adventure Feb. 1, 2001. We had agreed to help-out for a short time until Hoch Publishing could find a couple of real newspaper people with “fire” for the job.

Neither of us is quite sure how it happened, but we seem to have been taken for some kind of ride. Now both of us pride ourselves on being a pretty good judge of human nature so I can only assume that we met our match when Bill Meyer said he would hire us as interim personnel and we could leave at any time. I keep waiting to dust off my hands and say, “OK. I’m done!” The time just never seems right.

I expect we have done some things right (although I am not foolish enough to think we’ve done everything right!). I think our “five regular readers” have grown to about 10 or 12 and we are always surprised when someone says he or she wants to be counted as our seventh or ninth “regular reader.” We get a lot of thank you notes every time Peabody Main Street sends out a quarterly alumni edition of the Peabody Gazette-Bulletin. People seem to enjoy getting the news about their hometown.

We also appreciate the letters to the editor and have been pleased to see that they arrive more frequently and cover a wider variety of topics than they used to.

There are parts of the job that make us groan, but generally, it has been a satisfying experience. (Notice I didn’t say “fun,” but that is a topic for another opinion column.)

So happy anniversary to us!

—Susan Marshall