Jim Baumann

Jim Baumann My first story for the Daily Herald was not actually for the Daily Herald but for the still-weekly Herald newspaper group Paddock Publications owned in Lake County. It was a story about a terrible movie, “The Lost Honor of Kathryn Beck,” which was shot during the summer of 1983 in Mettawa. I neither drove to Mettawa to see the production nor interviewed any of the actors. Hard to tell whether the movie or my story about the movie was thinner on quality and impact.

Stick a fork in me, dear readers. I’m done. Parting is such sweet sorrow, but after a decade of writing this column and four times as long (not four times longer) employed by the Daily Herald, I have decided to hand in my press pass, hang up my spurs and, well, retire. This is my final column. Retirement is bittersweet for me. I will miss the amazing people I work with, and I’ll also miss all of you who faithfully read these Sunday scribblings.

I remember as if it were yesterday the last email I received from Ted “Dictionary Man” Utchen in the spring of 2021 shortly before he died. It was all about how people’s brains misfire when they think about whether to use “who” or “whom.” “Dear Mr. Grammarian: Today I write to you about the problem with 'who' and 'whom.' (It) is simply that people pay insufficient attention to how they are writing when they write. Or perhaps they flunked fifth-grade English, who knows?” he wrote.