One day last week, I walked into the dining room of a World War II veteran in Laconia. He had invited me to interview him for the Monitor’s “My War” series. Laid out on his dinner table were five thick leather-bound volumes.

In the volumes were hundreds of pages of single-spaced, typed letters that the man, Robert Graves, had written home during his service as a World War II flier. The originals were handwritten, but Graves’s father had carefully transcribed each one, using both sides of vanilla-colored construction paper. He had added photos, church bulletins, postcards, London theater programs, V-Mail facsimiles – anything that enhanced the telling of his son’s war story. In all, the five volumes contained more than 800 pages.

At least I’m not the first journalist to write a premature obituary, and at least mine is a political obituary rather than an actual obituary.

One of my colleagues (thanks a lot, Dorgan) unearthed a column I wrote in November 2002 right after Jeanne Shaheen lost the U.S. Senate race to John Sununu. As you’ll see – I’m reprinting it below – I was pretty sure this defeat was the end of Shaheen’s political career. I doubt she thought any differently at the time.

Every writer needs an editor, even – and maybe especially – someone who worked as an editor as long as I did. My most recent brush with this elementary lesson came the other day when I was writing a column about New Hampshire poets.

Of all the things I’ve written in 2½ months as a writer-reporter at the Monitor, the pieces that draw the most – and the most interesting – response – are the “At my age” columns on the Sunday Home & Family page.

Pam Nater was a bright girl with a bright future. She was a neighbor when I was growing up in Clearwater, Fla. We graduated from high school together, and both of us went off to the University of Florida. Her dorm was across the street from mine. We ran into each other often and chatted about how things were going.

My ears perked up several weeks ago when I heard that Sen. Chris Dodd’s late father, Thomas, had been a top prosecutor at the Nuremberg trials in 1945-46 and had written more than 300 letters home about it. His son described the letters as long, detailed and often written right after Thomas Dodd interrogated or cross-examined a Nazi big-shot.

    Here’s a moment I’ll never forget:

    It is the morning of April 9, 2003. I am in New Orleans, the intoxicating pre-Katrina New Orleans. I have had a long walk and a breakfast of beignets at Cafe du Monde. I am in the third row waiting for the day’s opening session of an editors’ convention. A large screen has been set up on each side of the podium. CNN is on.

Last night, while covering the preview of Ken Burns’s new World War II film in Concord, I was reminded of both a disadvantage and an advantage of being a reporter at this stage in my career.

A foreign correspondent I know tells the story of interviewing people in a Muslim country in 2000 about the U.S. presidential campaign. Did they favor George W. Bush or Al Gore? Bush. Why? Because Gore’s a Jew.

    Our summer camp in Goshen is paradise. But sometimes there’s trouble in paradise. Sometimes nature thumbs its nose at our presence.