Ten years ago this month I had lunch with John Temple and Vincent Carroll, publisher and editorial page editor, respectively, of the Rocky Mountain News. We talked about the possibility of my writing a weekly column for the paper. I had written a half dozen Op-Ed pieces for various publications, but the prospect of a regular column was something else altogether.

Now, approximately 320,000 words later, I find myself somewhat at a loss, as I search for the last 200. I will always be grateful to the Rocky for giving me a journalistic home, where I could connect with a far more diverse audience than in my day job as a legal academic.

I'm also grateful to the Rocky editorial page staff, and in particular Carroll and copy editor Steve Oelrich, who always handled what I handed them with the greatest tact and tolerance. Left-wing academic acquaintances sometimes wondered if the Rocky's generally conservative editorial page ever censored my sometimes abrasively liberal viewpoint. I was always happy to tell them I never encountered anything even remotely like that.

It was a privilege to be able to say what I've always wanted to say, including the hardest thing, which is goodbye.