Kevin Woster

"The other morning I went over to a neighbor’s house to get my shotgun.One of my shotguns, actually. I have nine. They’ve all been over at the neighbors, along with a rifle I own, since sometime last April, the day after I told Mary I felt like killing myself."

Twenty one months.That’s how long it had been since Steve Miller and I saw each other, in person.

I’ve watched it happen at both the Sioux Falls Argus Leader and the Rapid City Journal, where I worked, between the two papers, for more than 30 years. I was deeply saddened a few years back when part of the Rapid City Journal building down on Main Street became a hair salon. I was further depressed to go upstairs to the old newsroom one day about that time to see that most of it was dark, unused, dusty — melancholy remnants of what once was and then wasn’t. Now isn’t.

Over the course of a news career that covered more than four decades, I’ve had some pretty cantankerous reactions to my journalism.But I’ve never been firebombed. I’ve never had my windows shot out. And I’ve never had an attempt on my life.

I'm inclined to write off Taffy Howard as a 25-percent-of-the-vote candidate in a primary against Dusty Johnson. If it’s just the two of them, of course.