To everything there is a season,
a time for every purpose under the sun.
A time to be born and a time to die;
a time to plant and a time to pluck up that which is planted;

Those words from Ecclesiastes have been going through my head on this day, the eve of the winter solstice, which happens to be my birthday. It also happens to be my time to pluck up what has been planted. After nearly three decades at Wisconsin Public Radio, I am planning to retire in March.

When I arrived here twenty-eight years ago, having grown up on the east coast, I knew nothing about Wisconsin or its people and very little about live radio. My only journalism credential was the Girl Scout Badge I earned when I was ten years old. I was a rookie, as green as green could be. Fortunately, my listeners weren't just patient, they were also great teachers.

It was you, my listeners, who taught me that the only way to be on the radio is to be real. I didn't have to know everything, you said. I just had to ask honest questions. When I laughed, it was you who told me, "Yes, that's it. We like it when you laugh." When I told stories, it was you who taught me that story is what matters most on the radio. And when I told too many stories, it was you who taught me to get out of the way.

People who know me only from my voice expect me to be tall when, in fact, I am "only a stunted Calabrese" as my old friend Vito Paratore, the blind Sicilian bartender, once famously declared. When people meet me at public talks and watch as I all but disappear behind the podium, I often explain, " I am bigger on the radio." And this is true. I am bigger on the radio. We are all bigger on the radio. There is something about this exercise of opening up a microphone, day after day, year after year over the thousands of radio hours we have shared together, that calls us to be bigger, that requires it.

Thank you listeners, not only for listening, but for making me bigger. It is you who have opened up my mind and grown my heart. It is you who, in Whitman's words, have taught me how "to listen to all sides and filter them from myself." It is you who have taught me to trust who we are and what we do together on the radio, to depend on your collective genius. It is you who have brought me into the company of strangers I now have the great good privilege to call my friends.

One of the thousand bits of wisdom I have learned on the radio came from Blanche Altshuler - you remember Blanche, the village wise woman - who used to say, "Whenever God closes a window, He opens a door." I am getting ready to go through that door, and when I do, sometime in March, I will be taking you with me.

Thank you.