In a way, I owe my job at the Rocky Mountain News to a poem.

In July 1978, during a demonstration at the Rocky Flats nuclear weapons plant, poet Allen Ginsberg and Pentagon Papers leaker Daniel Ellsberg were arrested while trying to block a train from leaving the place.

During the trial that followed, Ginsberg submitted a poem he wrote called “Ode to Plutonium” as part of his defense. The Rocky not only covered the trial, but ran an excerpt of the poem in a long skinny column down one side of a page.

At the time, I was a student at the fledgling Naropa University, where I was studying at the Jack Kerouac Disembodied School of Poetics. I remember being impressed that a newspaper would run a poem like that.

Six years later, I applied for a job here and got hired as a reporter in the paper’s northern bureau in Fort Collins.

It was a wonderful adventure for a kid from New Jersey to be suddenly covering stories like wild horse roundups, the Queen of England’s visit to Wyoming and installation of the MX missile system.

For several years, I reported on Colorado State University professor Tom Sutherland’s hostage ordeal in Lebanon. It was a thrill to cover his eventual release and return from Fort Collins. It was my delight to meet and get to know him.

Eventually, I transferred to the city desk in Denver, where I covered the crime beat, one of the most interesting and rewarding assignments I ever handled.

During that time, I sat at a desk between two great columnists: the late Gene Amole and Greg Lopez. Coming to work and talking to them each day is a cherished memory.

It would have pained both of them to see what’s happening to the Rocky today. It is pain beyond reckoning for all of us.

I’ve been laid off and lost jobs before. But this is different. As you can tell from reading these amazing posts by my colleagues, this place is more than just a job to us, more than just a paycheck.

I’m enough of a realist to know that our days here might be numbered. But the stubborn optimist in me still hopes that somehow – a miracle or last minute Hail Mary pass – will enable the Rocky to survive to its 150th birthday and beyond.

Let’s hope so.