Jim Collins returns after long hiatus

Bing! Bing! Bing! OK. This is not a column about crooners, it’s about a new edition of an older column that may have holes in its shoes. So let’s start Bang! Bang! Bang! There, that’s better. Well, it’s about a judge rapping his gavel.

And that’s kind of sad news, because when Judge Rich Collins of Lake County Common Pleas Court raps his gavel for the last time it will mark the end of a brilliant career that will be ending much too soon, but what are you gonna do?

Judges in Ohio cannot run for re-election after they reach age 70 and though Collins is 68 and could run again, he has opted not to seek another sixyear term.

So this column is a way of saying he had a great career on the bench.

But it is another way of saying that for every judge in the state, the day they take the oath of office is the day they start looking toward retirement — no matter how far off that may be.

Let’s look at another great career on the Lake County bench — that of Judge Joe Gibson. Gibson retired in January 2015 at age 72 because he could no longer seek re-election.

The clock on the wall is relentless. When it says, “two more years,” it also says, “move along.” The courtrooms of Lake County have been replete with outstanding jurists. None of them has been of higher quality than Collins or Gibson.

What can be done about it? Probably nothing. The state Constitution prohibits a nonfederal judge for running for office past age 70. The system does not give up its victims gladly, so the age 70 rule is here to stay.

Column returns

The column you are reading today has been missing in action for nearly a year.

Well, that water is over the dam, so to speak, because the column referred to is long gone.

A great many of you have mentioned to me that you have missed the column and would like to see it return some day.

The volume of those requests has been overwhelming. Well, whelming anyway.

Let’s not try to define whelming. Let’s just say I’m happy that so many of you expressed those thoughts and have expressed them so sincerely that I’d like to get on with the job of deciding how we’re going to approach this column in the future, what it’s going to be about before I get entirely whelmed retiring for good so I can sit and contemplate what I would like to do in my Golden Years.

The judges are doing their jobs. Lets’ make sure we do ours. For several months I have been making mental notes about things I should have been saying in this column.

After a few of those words have been in cold storage for a season they become stale and tossed out with the afternoon trash.

So I hope to be able to occupy your time with up-to-date thoughts not stale ones. I won’t be hashing over thoughts you and I might have had on a subject just to discover that the topics were not worth saving.

Thus I won’t be writing about how sad it was for the Indians to lose the World Series. And I predicted more than a year ago the Browns record would be 0-16. All of which brings us to the Cavaliers.

And, now we can get on with the serious business of alternative ventures on the local horizon that will perhaps keep us busy thinking happy thoughts until next, oh, St. Patrick’s Day.

That will give my good friend Bryan Flanigan something to do until it stops snowing.

On second thought, that day may never arrive. And the only topic of conversation for the next year will be what’s the temperature today? And how much snow are we going to get today?

That is a small sample of the things I have to worry about as I am cranking up a new version of the “The Editor’s Notebook.”

You seem to have approved of that name since February 23, 1973. So let’s just say one of my all-time favorite aphorisms is, “Let’s leave well enough alone,” and go on to bigger and better things.

Besides, if the late, great Harry Horvitz, who hired me as editor of this newspaper back in the dark ages of journalism, came up with that idea for a name for the column, it’s good enough for me.