Note: These are excerpts from messages provoked by the unfinished compilation of Tardy Times/Thirty/Geezer Gazoot  pages on the Internet and printed copies of the Tardy Times mailed to family and friends in July 2008.

TO THE TARDY TIMES:

In a recent e-mail I told you how much I was enjoying the bound 
copy of The Tardy Times and that I was printing out the Geezer Gazoot 
and Thirty. Well, I just ran out of printer ink and I still have  to 
print from Kim Komenich's Dad to end of Thirty - plus all of Gazoot.  
So, I'm billing you for $30 for more ink . . . I'm taking all 3 
sections of TTT with me to the Baltics and Wadi Rum desert.                  
My god, mon (as Lightning Bolt would say) a very impressive body 
of work by the Ludlow-Freistadt Publishing House. You surely made 
good use of your time out at your Hunters Point cublicle.

I was so happy to get the latest edition of the Tardy Times in my mail last week. I love that it's in print. I love the writing and the stories and photos --and that it's on paper, still my favorite medium for actual reading. I am especially thankful for the way you keep old friends in touch with one another, create a web of continuity for the Ex diaspora, now so widely dispersed. (can a diaspora be dispersed or is that redundant??). Great to read all the news. Thank you!

I can't tell you how amazed I am by this newsletter. I've spent a lot of time with it, and I've still not read everything I want to read. (My cat is chewing at it as I type, so I guess we've both enjoyed it.) So much in there that I'm interested in. Even Courier news!
   And reading about the wonderful accomplishments of various old colleagues almost makes me feel guilty about my hearty embrace of a rather R&R approach to retirement. Almost, I said.
   I hadn't heard a thing about the deaths of Larry Beaumont and Bruce Hilton, two of the people sitting on the rim my first morning in the slot at the Ex. Very sorry to hear about them, but I'm so grateful for your little publication's having filled me in.

Great stuff. You've just wiped out my entire day. Read every damn 
word. Thanks.

Very sad about the decline of  newspapering. We didn't see that back then, did we? What will TV,  radio and bloggers do when they can no longer rip and read?


Note: Most of these letters, inspired by The Tardy Times of two years ago, have aged nicely.


TO THE TARDY TIMES:

I loved your latest edition.  I read it from cover to cover.   . . . We just saw a movie the other night titled “Ludlow.”  You ought to see it.  It was a weird independent movie.

Thanks for the copy of The Tardy Times, so good to catch up with the doings of the group and sad about the obits, but nice to feel included in the broader circle of friends.  Do you need travel writers????

This is an overdue “thank you” for your Tardy Times. First of all, it was good to learn how you all were doing. (Congratulations to Margo for getting the chance to start a new life!)  But also, it answered a nagging question for me.
    Since I left the Bay Area more than 10 years ago, Tommy Thompson called me every Dec. 15 to wish me a happy birthday. The truth is, my birthday is Dec. 18, but I would never have told him that, flattered as I was, that he remembered what he thought was my birthday. When I didn't hear from him, I was worried, but didn't want to call King (I didn't know he had died either). Frankly, I didn't want to call anybody because I didn't know quite how to ask the question.
   So again, thanks for that information, along with happy news about ex-Exers. I've passed the newsletter along to Mark Pargas, once of the Ex's overnight copy desk and now my colleague on the Times' Style desk. Later this week, I'm going to Seattle for ASNE and plan to share it with Cathy McLain. I had dinner last week with Tina Leong and told her I'd send her a copy. I'm going to Gina Lewis's high school graduation in Fort Lauderdale, and if I think of it I'll take it to Greg.

You sure can put together a good read!  Although I don't know most of the people you were talking about in The Tardy Times, both the columns about yourselves were really fun to read. And hey, your daughter Kenny is a really wonderful writer; I wish I could write as well!
  Margo is marching to quite a different drummer. It's kind of exciting, isn't it?  Although, equipped with your many talents, you may have too many choices to pick from!
   And, thanks for keeping in touch all these years. It's nice to connect with our past from time to time.
   (The writer was a photographer at the Telegram-Tribune in San Luis Obispo.)

I read it instantly, finally learning about what happened to so many folks that I'd remembered from the Examiner before I retired way back in '93.

I read thru the thing now, larfing hysterically. Ferkrissakes, why don't you guys have your own blog? among other things, they tend to lead to all sorts of extra-tax writing opportunities.

You know, this is the best one yet, and that has to be due to the fact you're our only means for Ex people to  keep together, getting news on one another.  I really appreciate it, such a good blend of news about family and friends and co-workers I care about. (About whom I care?  But then I was always the librarian of the group, not the writer or editor.)

Great to hear from you, and just the image of you at the computer pounding out the TT is heartening. We have appreciated the updates from Margo, who has been so concerned and astute, and sensitive. We all feel like we've been along on this wild ride with you and it does feel like you are healing and enjoying life.
   We continue to live in trendy, historic Park Slope, Brooklyn, an architecturally beautiful, author-filled neighborhood where the only crime is writer's block.

I'm glad you're picking up the quill again, even though it is electronic.
   I enjoy your lore of the San Francisco news scene even though I don't know most of the people. And it's like a Pacific breeze to get news of you and your family and fellow musicians. . . .
    I thought perhaps Gazoot would be related somehow to the zoot suit. Many Gazoots would be of that era. I never had a zoot suit, but in junior high school I had gray flannel pants with broad white stripes and a key chain that drooped to my knee. Does that qualify?

Dear Lynn: I looked you up on Google and saw one ex-student memoir that referred to you as “grizzled.” If you promise not to call me “perky,” I won't call you “grizzled.” I still haven't recovered from the time I felt very inhibited to speak to one of your beginning newswriting classes and you promised to be low key. And then you introduced me as “America's Irish Sweetheart”! What I can say of you is, You didn't just kiss the Blarney Stone. You swallowed it whole!