Writing a column is a strange, many-sided enterprise. It is, first and foremost, a privilege: to be able to reach readers—most of whom you’ve never met and never will but also family members, lifelong friends and recent acquaintances, writers you’ve worked with, your faithful editor, and more—on “a regular basis,” as I myself have read so many columnists coming in so many flavors over a lifetime, going all the way back to the sportswriter for the
Pomona Progress-Bulletin
whose column in the second half of the 1950s was the first I devoured regularly.