It happened in February

Groundhog Day, Candlemas, Valentine's Day, Super Bowl, and Presidents Day are not the February days I find most important. 

It was on the 7th of February in 1980 that I interviewed with Jim Schottelkotte, the managing editor of The Cincinnati Enquirer, and Denny Dressman, the assistant managing editor, and was offered a three-week paid tryout on the copy desk, beginning on the 8th. 

The tryout went well, because I knew grammar and usage, because I had a basic knowledge of journalism from working for Lowell and Jean Denton at the Flemingsburg Gazette for six summers in high school and college, and because I found I loved the company of smart, funny, ironic copy editors.

The following month I accepted a full-time position at The Enquirer, beginning my four decades as a professional editor and discovering what I was meant to do. 

It was on another day in February, the 15th in 2022, that I had an online interview with Kimi Yoshino, the editor-in-chief of the just-aborning Baltimore Banner. I was eight months retired after thirty-four years as an editor at The Baltimore Sun, but still subject to the itch to edit and intrigued by the possibility of what The Banner might bring to Baltimore. 

Four years later, The Banner is thriving, and I am carrying on. 

And February this year provides a little more of note. In eight days I will turn seventy-five, and in twenty-one days a surgeon is scheduled to remove my cancerous prostate. 

Short month, big days.