Farewell, Joe

Before his mug shot disappears from the Murderers' Row atop our blog, we want to say farewell to our colleague Joe Holley, who has just left the Post to begin plying the journalistic trade as a political writer for the Houston Chronicle.

Joe, as longtime readers know, is a Texan and our resident expert on Texiana of all sorts. His stories are legion, starting with the lede on the very first obit he wrote here:

Tony De La Rosa, 72, a Tejano musician who helped bring conjunto music from the isolated ranchlands of the South Texas brush country to loud and lively urban dance halls throughout the Southwest, died June 2 during heart surgery at Christus Spohn Hospital-Memorial in Corpus Christi, Tex.

He was also fearless in writing about a member of a menage a trois (read deep into the story). But mostly, he was a great colleague and friend who shared the survivor humor of the obits desk, which should be fabulous preparation for Texas political races.