The correspondents listed here no longer write for Thinking Outside the Boxe. We do not treat a departure as a repudiation, and we do not scrub the record when a byline goes still. Their commentaries remain where they were published, under the dates on which they were written, which is the only honest place for them. We do not retire the record when we retire the byline. What they wrote was worth reading when it appeared and is worth reading still. A correspondent’s work is not improved by their continued presence and is not diminished by their absence. We are grateful for what they filed, and we keep it available for the same reason we published it.
Gastonia, NC Correspondent Emeritus–I’m 48 years old and employed as a news copy editor. I live just outside Charlotte, North Carolina and am the father of two school-aged sons. Politically, I’m all over the map, as I think most of us are. I’ve been a chef, a dispatcher, a bodyguard, a farm worker and a host of other odd jobs. In my free time, I play poker, smoke large chunks of meat and hike the beautiful trails of my region.
Twenty-odd years of fixing other people’s sentences for a living, and I still came home and wrote my own for free. I have no complaints about that. It was a good arrangement.
The truth is my sons are fourteen and eleven, and the window where they want me around on a Saturday is closing faster than I expected. Everything else can wait its turn. I’ll miss the argument, particularly with the correspondents I disagreed with, who were reliably more useful to me than the ones I agreed with. I said in my first piece here that I was politically all over the map, and I meant it, and years of doing this has not narrowed the territory any. I take that as a good sign. My thanks to the readers who never once demanded that I pick a lane.
Owatonna, MN Correspondent Emeritus–I’m male, age 61, living in Owatonna Minnesota. Married. Lived in the Midwest all my life and was born and raised in Minnesota. I’m currently a freelance writer and author (my first novel was published in 2016). In addition to various writing for websites and blogs, I’ve had two articles published about solo canoeing. I’ve had careers as a music teacher, financial planner, wine consultant, and private investor. Writing is what I intend to do for the foreseeable future. My areas of interest/expertise include politics, economics, finance and investing, wine, golf, music, and wilderness camping and canoeing.
I have been writing in one form or another for a long time now, and I have learned to recognize the point where a commitment stops feeding the work and starts competing with it. I have reached that point here, and the honest thing is to say so plainly rather than to fade out over a season and let someone else notice first.
There is a manuscript that has waited long enough, and there is water up north that does not wait at all. I intend to spend time with both. My gratitude to the Boxe for the standing invitation to be wrong in public, which is a rarer courtesy than it sounds, and to the readers who held me to my numbers. A financial planner learns early that the pleasant forecast and the accurate one are seldom the same document. I hope I never confused the two here.
Myrtle Beach Correspondent Emeritus–I am 32, female, and married. My husband and I have no children, but we do have a dog and two snakes. I have lived in Myrtle Beach my entire adult life, I moved here in 1999 as a junior in high school. I have an associates degree in the paralegal field, but I work in marketing. I have had jobs in the restaurant industry, hotel industry, retail, paralegal, and currently, I do marketing, specifically online/social media. In my spare time, I enjoy spending time on the beach, traveling, and eating; I am also specifically interested in science and technology. My favorite TV channels are the Science Channel, Investigation Discovery, and TruTV.
I came to this a good deal younger than most of the people I have shared these pages with, and I have never once been made to feel it. That is not a small thing. What I took from the work was the habit of asking who benefits before deciding what I think, which turns out to be useful well outside politics.
My work has moved almost entirely to the client side over the past year, and the hours it takes are the same hours I used to spend reading well enough to have something worth saying. I would rather step away than keep filing what I could have written without doing the reading. My thanks to the Boxe and to everyone who argued with me in good faith. I will still be here on the beach, and I will still be reading.
Prescott Valley, AZ Correspondent Emeritus–Knowledge is powerful and writing is one of the best means to convey it. As a freelance writer, and former English/language arts, journalism and special education instructor, writing for me is an outlet for all kinds of possibilities. My credentials include a BA in English from Arizona State University and a MS in special and diagnostic education from the University of Houston along with teaching experience and administrative work in the private sector.
I spent most of my working life teaching people that writing is not decoration but the means by which one finds out what one actually thinks. This forum was the best evidence of that proposition I have encountered outside a classroom.
I am returning to full-time instructional work in the fall, and the commitment does not leave room for regular commentary done properly. Occasional commentary done improperly serves no one. I am grateful to the editors for their patience with a writer who always wanted one more revision, and to the readers who took the arguments seriously enough to send corrections. Those letters were the best part.
Sheffield, Jamaica Correspondent Emeritus–I’m 54, male, and have lived in Sheffield most of my adult life after returning from university in Kingston. I work as an independent researcher and occasional lecturer in political economy. Earlier I spent years in public administration and regional development work. Married, two grown children. My interests run to Caribbean and hemispheric affairs, trade, institutional capacity, and the long-term effects of external economic pressure on small states. I read widely in history and keep a close eye on both Washington and Brussels.
I was invited into this forum to supply a vantage that is not often solicited: the view from a small state that must live with decisions made elsewhere and announced afterward. I have tried to supply it without pleading, since the plea is generally what disqualifies the argument.
I am stepping away to complete a body of research that has been deferred too many times, and to resume teaching obligations that I have handled poorly while writing weekly. Both deserve better than the remainder of my attention. I will say, in leaving, that the discipline of writing for readers in Wheeling and Bismarck and Tyler improved my work considerably. It is an easy thing to write about hemispheric trade for people who already accept its terms. It is a more demanding thing to write about it for people whose own towns were on the wrong side of the same arithmetic. I am obliged to them, and to the editors who never once asked me to soften a conclusion.
Sydney, Australia Correspondent Emeritus–I’m 47, female, based in Sydney’s inner west. I work as a policy analyst and freelance commentator with a background in public administration and international relations. Previously I spent time in the federal bureaucracy and with a major industry association. Married, one teenager. My focus tends toward comparative governance, resource economics, alliance politics, and the practical consequences of regulatory choices. I value clarity over fashion and prefer evidence to narrative.
I have accepted a position that involves advising on matters I have written about in this forum, and continuing to publish commentary while holding it would compromise both. The conflict is real rather than technical, and I would rather name it and leave than manage it quietly.
I have valued the room. It contained people who reached conclusions I found unpersuasive and who arrived at them by defensible routes, which is the only version of disagreement worth the time. My thanks to the editors, who asked for evidence more often than they asked for balance. Those are not the same request, and a great many outlets no longer know the difference.
Cheyenne, Wyoming Correspondent Emeritus–I’m 50, female, married, one son in the National Guard. I have lived in Cheyenne since the mid-1990s. I am a staff accountant for a regional freight and energy-services firm. I have also kept books for a clinic, a ranch-supply dealer, and a church that could not find a treasurer. Spare time is garden, kitchen, and a library card I actually use. I say what I mean and I sit down when I am finished.
I am stepping down after six years. My employer has grown, my mother has not gotten younger, and something has to come off the list. This does.
I have enjoyed the work more than I expected to and said less than most of the people here, which I consider a fair trade. My thanks to the editors, who never asked me to pad anything. I said what I meant. Now I am finished, so I will sit down.
