As close as we can figure it, this is the 578th weekly column written for this space, a span that began with a handshake in November of 1998 and has continued uninterrupted for more than 11 years on GoErie until this week.

This week is goodbye.

Call it what you will; a “couldn’t come to terms” or an “inability to reach consensus” or an “agreement to move in different directions.”

It doesn’t matter.

What’s important is that sometimes the greatest journeys don’t begin with the first step but rather with a swift kick in the pants, and that’s what gets the first step going.

There are currently 18 other bloggers on the GoErie site, most of them current Times News staff members, but in 1998 few were willing to write original material in a little known corner of the Internet.

That’s what led to the almost unheard of relationship of a TV guy writing directly to a newspaper website, especially one where the author had the freedom to write op-ed pieces virtually unfettered.

I wrote when my oldest took her first step on a school bus.

I wrote when my youngest was born, when she got her first stitch; when she broke her arm during the first day of kindergarten.

I tried to bring you what I was feeling while traveling in Poland and later in China.

Harder still was trying to express the emotions as we all grieved through 9-11.

Together, we remembered the moments of our times, whether they be the chads hanging in Florida or the first man of African-American heritage hanging out in the White House.

We smiled at the sublime and laughed at the ridiculous, but more often than not we simply shook our collective heads at the absurdities of life around us.

Some of my greatest satisfaction has been the attempts to capture lives that were not well known but rather well lived; people who were, as I wrote years ago, “known not for any single act of greatness but rather by the sheer volume of lives touched.”

We talked when I was angry.

We talked when I was sad.

We talked when I was amused or bemused or confused.

Through it all, we talked, hopefully not “at” readers but “to” them, which in my mind has to be one of the loftiest of goals for a space such as this.

And so, so long for now.

After a brief rest to explore options, I’m sure we’ll be popping up somewhere on the vast ocean that is the Internet.

My hope is that you will find us when we do.

The conversation just wouldn’t be the same without you.

What do any survivors do after they’ve lived through a fire or hurricane or flood?

They put on their boots and start to put their lives back together.

Call it whatever event suits, but make no mistake.

Just about all of 2009 was a disaster.

As such I’m not expecting much in the way of grand economic heroics in 2010; the fact is, what we need is quiet and steady leadership to start the slow climb back.

We also need to settle some affairs locally so that we have a base line from which to stop the bleeding and start the healing.

In no particular order:

1. React to Health Care Changes-The 60th vote has been cast in Washington, making some kind health care reform a near certainty for the first quarter of 2010. We need to correctly assess how those changes affect care at the delivery point in our community and then adapt the local systems accordingly to provide the best health care possible at the best cost in the new environment. It’s hard to frame any economic recovery argument without this vital step for all of us.

2. Settle the Table Games/Community College Issue-The debate will rage on for the need for a community college and the subsequent use of table game revenues to make that happen, but I actually prefer a set course as opposed to continued debate. If we take the road championed by State Senator Jane Earll to use those funds, then so be it. Hopefully a well designed CC can be the economic impetus that supporters hope. Either way we can move on with a set plan in place.

3. Learn to Live within New Budget Realities-Like a strong onion where we can’t hold back the tears, we are week-by-week peeling back the layers of cuts in the state budget. Managers of state programs and non profits alike are just beginning to realize the depth of the dollars lost. We need creative people finding ways to stretch resources and prioritizing to meet the greatest needs. This isn’t going to easy, but what choice is there? Bake sales only go so far.

4. Land the Plane on the Runway Debate-This argument has sucked the life from affected governing bodies for decades, pitted municipalities and agencies against each other and overwhelmed public time better split between a number of equally pressing issues. Many (including me) wonder about the need for the extra 1000 feet of runway without a booming cargo business, but like the Community College, I feel the pressing need to get off the proverbial pot. The time to move on is now, which hopefully can happen with groundbreaking set at long last for spring of the New Year.

5. Re-Evaluate Job Retention/Job Creation Machinery-The new County budget eliminates the county position for Economic Development. What does that mean? Do we need to reconfigure existing city/county resources to identify emerging opportunity and seize it in an overly competitive early thaw environment?

I suggest to you that there is no miracle sitting on the horizon.

Recovery is often a slow grind that could take most of incoming County Executive Barry Grossman’s first term.

Success in 2010 should be measured in inches, not miles.

Clearing the deck of some long standing issues might help leadership stay focused in that direction.

It is with the same fervor with which we leave our acne phase in high school or our mother-in-law at the holidays that we say “Later!” to 2009.

Good riddance.

It was the year where we learned to cringe from phrases like “global recession,” “bailout” and “downturn.”

How long did the 401K update letter sit unopened because “Hey, don’t we have enough to worry about without losing half of our life savings?”

How much “cash” did you really get for your “clunker?”

We lost dollars in our savings accounts, friends in our workplaces and companies in our communities.

We lost John Kanzius to cancer, Michael Jackson to drugs and Brittany Murphy to “natural causes.”

We lost national anchor Walter Cronkite to the ravages of time and I lost my WSEE co-anchor Jacqueline Policastro to the bright lights of Indianapolis.

Now that’s a crappy year.

Our President was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize and escalated the war in Afghanistan practically on the same day.

Kanye West proved that he, too, can multi-task by publicly berating a teenage girl all the while teetering on the edge of obliteration.

And our top pop song of the year came from a woman known as Lady Gaga; the subject matter was (what else!) the paparazzi.

2009 began with a man of mixed heritage taking over the White House, raising the hopes of millions that their time of inclusion had come.

2009 ends with another man of mixed heritage being the obsessed focus of a rabid cable news and tabloid world, not for being one of the world’s greatest athletes, but for what seems to be a serial need to cheat on his marriage.

Quite the unseemly year all in all, wouldn’t you say?

So adios 2009!

Sayonara, aloha and ciao.

Ta-ta!

Toodles too.

2010 has to be better.

Anything that doesn’t kill us makes us stronger, right?

We count on cows for a lot of things:

We count on cows for cheese.

We count on cows for milk.

We count on cows for butter.

They play an important role in our steak dinners and help out with our leather sofas, too.

Now it appears that we must also count of cows to help save the planet.

In something of an historic agreement this week the American government has hammered out an arrangement with the dairy industry.

The goal is to reduce greenhouse gasses on farms by 25 percent by the year 2020.

From whence do greenhouse gasses come on a farm?

From tractors and hay bailers and harvesters?

Yes, machines with combustion engines play a role.

But the biggest supplier of emissions harmful to the environment on a farm?

The southern exposure of a north-facing cow.

The foul part of the cow.

Gassy Bessie.

Farms account for 7 percent of greenhouse gasses like methane.

Late night taco stands account for another 10 percent but there are currently no plans for the government to strike up an agreement with the burrito industry.

Anyway, back on the farm one plan calls for the use of special feeds made of grains more calming to the animals’ digestive tracks.

Cow Beano if you like.

The other is wider use of equipment that converts cow manure into electricity but only a small fraction of farms use those systems due to the costs.

The agreement with the government could help make those machines more affordable in the next ten years.

So, who knows?

Along with everything else, we may also one day count on cows to run our lap tops and coffee makers by burning manure.

Funny.

I thought only places like Harrisburg and Washington ran on that stuff.

Those foolhardy enough to remain within earshot of me for any length of time are already well aware of my disdain for our area’s weather “switch,” which like any light circuit can get cranked on or off in a moment.

In our case March and April are often cold and distant with barren skies and bare trees then suddenly “CLICK!” and it’s 80 degrees and summer is here.

What spring?

Where are the days of 65 degrees, blue skies and windbreakers?

They’re in Philly and Richmond and Morgantown, that’s where.

Being next to a Great Lake has it advantages, but the water prolongs seasons past their prime, keeping winter at bay in the fall but chilling lake shore winds until the last possible May moment.

Yea, yea I know, here’s the number for U Haul if you hate it so much.

But if a late, quick switch is bad, what to do with one that’s faulty to the point of nearly broken?

Like a little kid who’s gotten on a chair to furiously switch the lights on and off, our weather this year has developed in snapshots; where it has been cold in October “CLICK!” followed by the best fall days of the year in November “CLICK!”

December started warm then “CLICK!” went to cold and rainy “CLICK!”

Now this week we hear the rumblings of the first true winter storm of the season, not out-of-the-blue for December certainly but still a system striking quickly and with little concern for the wheres and whens.

In just two hours Wednesday afternoon the weather went from high damaging winds “CLICK!” to sunny “CLICK!” to pouring rain “CLICK” to sunny “CLICK” to overcast “CLICK” to snow “CLICK!”

That’s just where I was standing.

In other parts of the region, you could add pea sized hail “CLICK!” severe thunderstorms “CLICK!” and even one tornado warning “CLICK!”

Is there a short in the line somewhere?

I know all about the joke that if you don’t like Erie weather just wait five minutes.

Five minutes?

If you wait that long this year, the weather may change twice!

It was the one word that had the cell phones and lap tops in a tizzy and the cable headlines dizzy.

The word:

Serious.

BREAKING NEWS: Tiger Woods has been in a “serious” car accident outside his home.

It brings to mind all of those other potentials cut short; an athlete in his prime sure to obliterate most every record in his sport suddenly gone in the grinding gears of a cruel and uncaring universe.

Then, just as suddenly the talk of Friday’s Happy Hour takes an abrupt turn:

BREAKING NEWS: Woods has been treated and released from the hospital.

What? How serious could it have been?

Turns out that any accident involving a trip to the hospital is listed as “serious” by Florida Highway Patrol, far different from the PA trauma system where “serious” is a condition just this side of “critical.”

Once again the need to be quick and a lack of information on the ground (Woods lives in an exclusive, hard-to-penetrate neighborhood) teamed up to get the media frothy beyond the scope of the story.

Ah, but we’re not done just yet.

Woods rips out of his driveway in the middle of the night, jumping a fire hydrant and smacking a tree.

It must by alcohol right?

No.

Oh. Hey, how about domestic violence?

Turns out that the National Enquirer is putting out a story just that day about an affair Woods is allegedly having.

Turns out that Woods’ wife Elin used a golf club to smash the window of the vehicle.

Was it to get him out?

Or did it happen before he drove off?

Was he really angry?

Was he ducking a nine iron?

Were Woods’ facial injuries caused by the accident or an irate former swimsuit model with a wicked slice?

Yea, baby, now we’re smelling smoke.

The only problem in our collective drive to unearth the relationship’s deep dark details is that by law, Woods, as either criminal target or case victim, has no compulsion to talk to police and without the help of the victim or clear physical evidence of abuse, the investigation goes no further than a $164 traffic citation.

But..but…inquiring minds want to know!!

I have only one thing to say as all of this dominates the headlines and it is this:

Four police officers were gunned down in Washington State doing no more than sipping coffee and preparing for their shifts.

A fifth police officer stopped at a scene of a stalled car and barely escaped with his life, managing to shoot and kill what turned out to be the wounded cop killer whose lengthy prison sentence had been commuted.

The incidents raise serious questions about the legal system, the prison system and the work done every day by officers on the thin blue line.

Let’s try focusing on that a little.

Seriously.

I’ve been in the news business for almost 30 years now, and for each and every one of those years, I’ve heard the complaints that the news business spends too much time on the sad, dark side of us; that we dwell too long and are too enmeshed in the ills of the world and the incomprehensible things one human being can do to another.

That may be true, those of my ilk counter, but remember that society tasks us with being watch dogs, not cheerleaders.

Keep in mind, the argument goes, that the plane that lands safely does what is expected, not what is newsworthy.

But not today.

Today is Thanksgiving, the one moment each year when we are tasked with remembering what is right in our lives, not what is wrong.

So while most other days I would concentrate on the 10 percent unemployment rate, today we’ll think about the 90 percent of us who wish to be and are employed, and while we lament the plight of the working poor, we should also maintain the perspective that the majority of us are still able to find family sustaining work, albeit often through two incomes.

Instead of focusing on the long line of need stretching down the street this week, today I applaud the local efforts that cobbled together the donations for more than 1,000 full turkey dinners to hand out to that line, asking nothing in return.

Today there is no thought to the percentage of retail sales we’re expected to be off by this holiday season, but rather let’s remember the millions of us still willing and able to go out and get something tangible this year to reflect our feelings to those around us.

No talk today about the dark clouds of recession, but rather the rays of light in new home sales and falling unemployment claims that breeds the hope that with a New Year a new day dawns as well.

And most of all, today we set aside the pre-teen eye rolling, the feet stomping and the door slamming; we put away the name calling, the finger pointing and the bickering, to remember that family is the only real, lasting defense that exists against a cold and lonely universe.

It is for that, most of all, for which I’m grateful today.

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!

Paying more; getting less.

That’s been the warning cry from the earliest looks at the 2010 budget for Erie County.

Cuts in state funding, picking up steam as they rolled downhill, blew deep holes in the local budget, where many programs required by law carry no accompanying dollars.

The result is a tax increase to pay for fewer services, and that’s just for county programs.

Other state shortfalls could remove the Captain from the Niagara, lifeguards from the chairs at Presque Isle State Park and other losses to the arts, public health and more.

Would County Executive-Elect Barry Grossman even run for office if he knew the full extent of the mess he was inheriting?

I would go on, lamenting our literal sorry state, were it not for several rays of light I’ve witnessed over the past few days; proof, perhaps, that sometimes it takes the worst of times to bring out the best in us.

For years WICU-TV has partnered with the Second Harvest Food Bank for a one day Holiday Food Drive.

This was the first year I was able to see the process first hand; car after car, pulling up.

Some handed over just a few cans of beans; some gave entire boxes.

One lady handed over six frozen turkeys, giving six families the cornerstone piece of a real Thanksgiving dinner they might not otherwise have.

There’s no question that the need has grown.

But so has the response, and there is hope in that.

C’mon, you could argue, aren’t we just proving that the gap between who has and who has not is just growing larger?

Perhaps, were it not for the other program I’ve seen this week.

On the WSEE-TV side, we partner with the Food Bank through a program called Read ‘n Feed.

The idea came about through the complaint that kids who come to school hungry can’t learn.

So schools throughout Erie spend one week raising both food for the Food Bank and books for the school’s library.

Of course the goal is also to raise awareness about those issues with the kids and their families.

Totals are kept so that organizers know which classes raise the most, and then a little reward (like a pizza party) is thrown to say thanks.

Obviously the more affluent areas would do the most, right?

Would you believe that each year, the largest totals come out of some of the hardest hit areas of the city, areas where one in four families live below the poverty line?

Maybe the problems are more real there.

Maybe the Food Bank is more directly connected as a solution there.

But maybe, just maybe, it’s that the harder the circumstance the more fierce the response.

That’s not paying more to get less, but giving more and getting more.

That’s neighbors with a little more helping those with a little less.

And there is hope in that, too.

Every parent can recite Rule Number One for Christmas morning.

Make sure you have the right batteries.

Nothing says disappointment more than a kid with a brand new toy who can’t play with the darn thing.

At our age think: New car, no gas.

I’m afraid that’s how County Executive-Elect Barry Grossman is going to feel in the not-too-distant future.

Imagine going over and over things in your mind until you know exactly what’s wrong with the world and exactly how to fix it.

Imagine planning for the day when you can implement that vision: raising money, meeting power players, knocking on doors and attending debates.

Imagine spending election night surrounded by family wringing your hands as a little known opponent gets right to the edge of your vote lead.

So you roll your eyes as seven previously uncounted districts are found and you reassure yourself that absentee ballots usually split the same way the main vote total does.

At long last, days after the election, the sun shines and your opponent concedes a long and hard fought race.

It must feel like Christmas morning and you’re getting the keys to the chocolate factory.

Only one problem:

County government’s bank account works the same way yours does.

If you have money you can do things.

If you don’t, you can’t.

By any estimate out there, the 2010 Erie County budget will do less but will cost more.

Grossman’s legacy inevitably begins with both layoffs and a tax hike.

The bad news is: You can’t get going like that.

The good news?

When you finally do get going there are few other places left to go but up.

So, shortly after the holidays are over, Barry Grossman will finally get the steering wheel to the ride called Erie County government in his hands.

But, like that kid at Christmas with no batteries, for now at least, he can only spin the wheel furiously, make loud “varooming” sounds to those nearby, and dream of the day when he can actually go some place.

It’s the morning after Election Night 2009; no warm glow, no fuzzy head.

Just a lot of questions, about what lessons can be learned from a small handful of off- off- year races that ranged from the curious to the bizarre.

By far the biggest impression we come away with is how few of us even cared.

Barely one fifth of those even registered to vote bothered to do so, at a time when American lives are at risk to buy those same rights for people in places like Afghanistan and Iraq.

Where was the great Obama Tsunami, the wave of mainly young, eager people who swelled registration ranks determined to change the world from within the existing power structure?

It takes more than one election, one candidate to change a world, people.

Indeed, one of this week’s teachable moments is the power of either a single candidate or a single issue to rouse a small but determined voting bloc.

Consider Mike Kerner, a hard working but little known business guy who ran for County Executive on a platform of holding a tight fiscal line.

He was running against Barry Grossman, a restaurant owner and former political science teacher who came to the dance better battle hardened, better known and better funded.

But Kerner stuck to something of a singular message; we can’t afford a community college or any new spending right now.

As of this writing Grossman holds a slight lead going into the absentee ballot count, further proof that voters have little stomach for running up the bill right now.

The let’s-try-something-else mood also rose up in Millcreek, where a former police detective named Rich Figaski arrested the political career of incumbent Larry Curtis.

Some may have voted for Figaski on the issue of uneven water rates in the township; some may just want to see Figaski join a body that once suspended him from the force, a decision later overturned in court.

Either way it sets up to be interesting theater for those Tuesday morning meetings.

But for sheer show look no further than the baffling 6th District for Erie County Council, which represents the southeast corner of the county.

Incumbent David Mitchell decided he didn’t want to do it any more and didn’t run in the spring primary.

Then he saw who was running and changed his mind.

His write-in campaign was admirable but ultimately doomed.

Enter Ebert Beeman, a self-proclaimed anti-government man now paradoxically sitting on one of the most powerful political bodies in Erie County.

Beeman’s goal is to dismantle the machine from within, slashing programs and virtually eliminating taxation.

Would anyone like to go in with me on a concession business for those meetings?

It would be one hot sell; a little popcorn, a cold drink and what will undoubtedly be a great repeat performance.