There comes a time when the time has come. To step down. To step aside. This is my time.

At the beginning of its seventeenth year of life,I am stepping aside as editor of The West Kentucky Journal. The new editors and administrators will introduce themselves in their own post. Suffice to say, I am content they will make me and Ivan proud.

Ivan started the West Kentucky Journal A Futurist in West Kentucky while I was working for the General Assembly in Frankfort. Home alone, he got bored and went looking for a project. Always a student, a voracious consumer of news, he had things to say. He did all the groundwork for setting up a website. Securing the name, finding a host for an online newspaper. Bondware (bless them!) have shown over the years the patience of a mother with triplet toddlers over the years.

He went about designing the first issue with great abandon. I remember being horrified by my first look at the homepage. It was as if a child had dumped every one of his 64-color crayon box onto the page. It was blinding. With help, the Journal began to look as it does now. He was adamant about the logo which he created after viewing a few thousand fonts. His J will remain on the masthead of the homepage.

We traveled extensively for the Journal. We met candidates from local to national. I did most of the interviewing. Ivan didn't interview as much as have a conversation. I once caught a lieutenant governor in a bookstore and did an impromptu. Ivan snapped pictures. I interviewed Senator Paul in a tiny kitchen at one of his campaign stops. Ivan couldn't squeeze in to get a picture, a fact he didn't let me forget!

When we saw President Clinton at an event, Ivan complained he got squished against the saw horse barrier by Clinton's admirers. He knew Clinton back to this days as governor or Arkansas, so he wasn't surprised. Just squished.

The most memorable person was Bishop Desmond Tutu. Meeting him at a press conference felt like meeting St. Francis of Assisi. Yeah, he was a saint. But he wasn't full of himself. He had such gentle smile.

Ivan was so impressed by a senate candidate who showed up at a church fish fry in Cayce Kentucky, he predicted he would be a storm coming. There's a storm coming Like him or dislike him, Senator Rand Paul became a force in national politics.

We watched father and son Steve and Andy Beshear move through the chairs of public office. Somewhere in Ivan's study is candidate Steve Beshear's excellent plan for moving Kentucky forward. Now that son Governor Andy Beshear has followed in his father's footsteps, he shows no sign of disappearing from the public scene when his term ends.

Ivan wrote long research pieces. He drew flow charts and maps. Big thoughts. Climate change. Man vs Nature Economic development zones. Population density. Small things. Stories about our mail carriers, turtles crossing the road, cooking, sitting on the porch. Everything was interesting, everything fair game. Turtle Zen and the Art of Crossing a Blacktop Road

We read our stories to each other. Corrected the grammar, shortened the sentences. Bridged the gaps in our narrative. He was a joy to work with, never ever defensive, always interested in my opinion. He was much better at taking criticism than I was.

He illustrated the second children's book I wrote, No Count Dog to the Rescue. The first kitten he drew looked like a rat. The first fireman like a storm trooper. He took my critiques with good humor and went back to the drawing board.

I miss those times with an ache in my gut.

Congestive heart failure began making him ill in 2014. Every year he got a little worse. He became so very ill in 2017, he was hospitalized fourteen times. Our writing slowed to a crawl. In 2019 the pacemaker he needed was finally installed at Vanderbilt Medical Center. Then came Covid. One of my last meeting stories was about a school board meeting with a gym full of people protesting Covid restrictions.

After he died in March, I found his Rules for Living (insert here). I didn't know about them until after he passed. I wish I had known about them. What fun we would have had discussing them! The essays I wrote around each rule brought me closer to him. Ivan Potter's Rules for Embracing Life in the 21st Century

There comes a time when it's not about us. There is no alarm bell, no set date, no set age. One feels. I feel it is now.

I am excited to see where West Kentucky Journal goes under new management. I pray those of you reading this will give the new folks the kindness and the grace you gave us.

I cannot thank enough those who read, commented, supported, contributed over the past sixteen years. We saw you. We heard you. We respected you.

In peace -

Mary