Dear readers: we may not tell you this often enough, but we do appreciate you. We are grateful to each of you who are kind enough to welcome us into your home every week and spend time with us.

Last week, for many of you, the paper arrived late to your mailbox. For that we are truly sorry.

We learned late last Monday of a fire that had struck the printing plant of the North Jersey Media Group in Rockaway, NJ. They’ve been our printing home since May of 2020, when the Times-Herald Record sold its Ballard Road printing facility in the Town of Wallkill.

The fire knocked out several presses of the Gannett-owned facility that prints 28 daily newspapers, including the NY Daily News, Poughkeepsie Journal and the Times-Herald Record, as well as approximately four dozen community newspapers. We’ve been told that it might be another month before things are back to normal in Rockaway.

Much of Tuesday was spend trying to locate a printer who could accommodate our press run. Calls and emails went out to printers in Trumbull, CT., Long Island, Newark, Albany and Springfield, MA. Each had been besieged with calls from frenzied publishers facing the same crisis.

Finally, the Southern Dutchess News of Wappingers Falls came to our rescue. They had a last-minute cancellation, and we were on the press Wednesday at 2 p.m, roughly 12 hours past our normal press time. Special thanks to Al, Roger, Kelly and the crew at the Southern Dutchess News for helping out.

There were other adjustments to be made. We had to postpone our spring home and garden section and reduce the number of pages. Labels had to be affixed by hand, something we had not done since moving out of Walden in 2006. Thanks to our crew: Diana, Diane, Nancy and Steve who spent a good part of Thursday labeling and sorting bundles of newspapers, in preparation for a trip to the post office. We somehow got the papers out as we always do. Thanks also to a pair of special “volunteers:” Rosanna Rossi and her mom Giovanna for helping with the labeling.

This week, we have press time scheduled at the Times Union in Albany. Our little van will be heading north on the Thruway, instead of south, to retrieve the papers. It’s a bit of a longer ride than to Rockaway, but at least it’s a straight shot up I-87.

We are, in many ways, fortunate. There are other stories of newspapers persevering and publishing. Our predecessor, the Walden Citizen Herald, sustained a fire in the early 1960s that destroyed an entire building. The site of the Ulster Avenue office is now an employee parking lot for the Walden Savings Bank. Linda Dulye, whose parents Ray and Ann ran the paper and the printing operation, vividly remembers being called out of class at Walden Elementary School to walk the four blocks to the scene.

“The fire was life changing for my family and their business,” she recalled.

There’s also the story of The Montclair Local, impacted by the same fire that inconvenienced us.

It was to be the final print edition of the six-year-old weekly paper, and they planned to go out with a bang: 64 pages, much bigger than normal.

As the New York Times reported this past week: “Copy was filed and edited, headlines were written, pages were laid out. The issue would be sent to the printer at midnight on Tuesday.”

But by Tuesday, the final pages had nowhere to go.

Their story, like ours, does have a happy ending. The Newark Star-Ledger would come to their rescue on Wednesday, finding time on their presses for that final, commemorative issue. Editor Carla Baranaukas called the ordeal a testament to the persistence of a gritty local newspaper.

“It’s a weekly miracle,” she said. “Come hell or high water, we get the paper out.”