Bakst, rear right, interviews lawyer Johnnie Cochran, while Leisa Young kisses the hand of Priscilla Jackson at a news conference announcing a lawsuit in 2000 against the City of Providence after the accidental shooting of her son, police officer Cornel Young Jr. The Providence Journal / Bob Breidenbach

And so it ends.

A Brown University student, I came to The Providence Journal as a 19-year-old summer intern in 1963 and returned in 1964 and 1965. With a Columbia journalism degree in hand, I signed on full time in early 1968.

Now, after more than four decades on duty, I am out the door at age 64, accepting an early buyout offer and moving on.

I have had a wonderful career, and I am not mad at the company. I lament the forces of change sweeping the newspaper industry, but I’m not sure anyone can do anything about them.

I do have a real anger about other things in society — about people in power who abuse their power and deny help to people who need and deserve it. And I have a real anger about individual citizens who watch in silence and let the abuses and the suffering continue.

From parents to teachers, I had many advantages even before settling in at The Journal. I am thankful to them and to the mentors I had here, who took a chance on me even when I was so young I could barely contribute. That first summer internship in our state staff bureaus was a virtual waste for The Journal. Finally, in the middle of the second summer, assigned to the Warren office, I landed a front-page byline in the July 26, 1964, Sunday Journal:

“The Portuguese community of Bristol swelled with visible pride yesterday as it held a day-long celebration to welcome the Lisbon-based training ship Sagres…”

When I picked up the paper, I swelled with pride. I thought, “I can do this.” And maybe The Journal editors — Journal-Bulletin in those days — felt they were at last getting some return on their investment.

It was a very long time ago. I used to start my Warren afternoons with a coffee cabinet to-go from Delekta Pharmacy. Price: 42 cents. It’s now $3.58.

The Journal is such a different place now — but not totally different. In my earliest days, when a big news story broke, they’d ask you first to bang out a couple of paragraphs for WEAN, the company’s radio station. Today, the same impulse is there, but now the rush is to get something into projo.com.

Over the years, I have had many experiences I would not have dreamed of as a little kid in Fall River.

One Friday, in 1990, I sat at President George H. W. Bush’s table at a press luncheon in the White House.

I remember that a woman told the president that her son had to portray him in a school play and did he have any advice?

Bush said, “Tell him to watch that guy on TV,” a reference to Dana Carvey on Saturday Night Live. You know: Wouldn’t be prudent.

The red-and-gold Nancy Reagan china gleamed and tuxedoed waiters served cream of asparagus soup, chicken, cheese dumplings, eggplant and cold champagne soufflé. Even the president, 20 years older than I, a fellow alumnus of Phillips Academy, seemed struck by the glamour.

I had to smile at how fancy the cuisine was at the White House compared with the plain fare at Andover, and when I told Mr. Bush, “We could be back there eating fish sticks,” he smiled, his eyes dancing, and he pointed, as if to say, “Bingo!”

I stood in the White House driveway that day and thought of my immigrant grandparents and how impressed they would have been.

Four years later, I interviewed President Bill Clinton in his limousine when he campaigned here for Patrick Kennedy’s bid for Congress. An aide had told me the ride would be between Providence and the airport or from Pawtucket to Providence. I said you better make it the airport run because Pawtucket to Providence was only 10 minutes. He said, “Yes, but the president doesn’t get out of the limousine until he wants to.” Sure enough, the ride from the Portuguese Social Club near McCoy Stadium to the Rhode Island Convention Center went by in a flash, but, after heading up a ramp and into the building, the vehicle parked inside, and Mr. Clinton kept talking, and the conversation lasted 28 minutes.

I have spoken several times with John McCain. And Barack Obama told me in a 2006 telephone interview that he would not run for president this year, but I do not hold his change-of-mind against him; as I am seeing in my own life these days, things happen.

I had the honor over the years to talk with Ronald Reagan, Mikhail Gorbachev, Ted Williams and Chris Evert, and towering men of conscience like Cesar Chavez, Elie Wiesel and U.S. Rep. John Lewis, an early hero of the civil rights movement.

I regularly dealt with Rhode Island political giants like John Chafee and Claiborne Pell, and with their estimable U.S. Senate successors Jack Reed, Linc Chafee, and Sheldon Whitehouse. And with dedicated, decent state legislators like former Sen. Lila Sapinsley, the late Rep. Paul Crowley and former Representatives Jeff Teitz and David Cicilline.

Cicilline became Providence mayor. Teitz led the 1986 House inquiry into the impeachment of Supreme Court Chief Justice Joe Bevilacqua. As an offshoot of that inquiry, I met Raymond “Junior” Patriarca, a contemporary of mine who was the reputed mob boss of New England. Over the years we had several conversations — a very interesting guy, breezier than you might imagine — and when he went to jail he’d remember me with holiday greetings.

Some people who impressed me were less famous, folks like Leisa Young, whose son, Cornel, a black off-duty policeman, was accidentally killed by two white colleagues. Several other people are gone now, including the Poverty Institute’s Nancy Gewirtz, and Julie Pell, philanthropist and gay-rights activist. And Noel Earley, who had ALS and, from his Lincoln apartment, was a voice for assisted suicide.

At the State House, it’s always a joy to see Frank DiPaolo Jr., a Kennedy friend and mentor, who is a legislative doorman and is 101.

But issues that confront the State House can be grim. On the lawn, I once met Catherine Rhodes, who had spent the night in a tent there to dramatize the need for affordable housing. I would encounter her again on a five-day march for a housing bond, the same march that brought out Bishop Thomas Tobin, who told me of a man who was agonizing about poverty and said to God, “How can you let this happen?” and that God replied, “I was going to ask you the same question.”

And on the South Side of Providence I met Southeast Asian teenagers who thought spending cuts by Governor Carcieri showed disrespect for their community. The refusal of Governor and Mrs. Carcieri to meet with these youngsters was, symbolically, the most chilling moment in the history of this administration.

As a reporter, you are blessed to go places — to conventions, to legislative debates, to court hearings — and to see history taking shape.

In 1997, I went to a press preview of the Franklin D. Roosevelt Memorial in Washington and walked the grounds with the architect and sculptors.

It was all work, of course, but it also could be fun. One December, I was dispatched to keep tabs on a delegation of Rhode Island lawmakers at a conference in the Virgin Islands.

Sometimes life was offbeat indeed — a ride with Mayor Buddy Cianci on a Providence gondola, a hands-on visit with Senator Reed to a family-owned sausage plant in Westerly, or, more my domain, an excursion to a mammoth kosher-food trade show in New Jersey with Providence delicatessen king Joslin Davis.

I went to Laurel racetrack in Maryland to see a horse named M. Charles Bakst, whom an East Providence couple named for me. He would win several races before coming to a sad end at Rockingham Park in New Hampshire; that was like a death in the family, and Cianci sent me flowers.

With Gov. Joe Garrahy, I went to dedication ceremonies for a huge hydroelectric facility in the middle of nowhere — I mean nowhere — in frigid Quebec.

As Hurricane Gloria approached Rhode Island in 1985, I spent the night sleeping on the floor of the State House press room so I’d be on hand first thing in the morning, and I remember how extraordinary it was when the storm finally hit. I wrote, “The wind whipped through the fireplace flue in Governor DiPrete’s large office, making sounds like thunder from the gods, and an air conditioner on the windowsill bounced so much it had to be removed…”

In 2002, I joined Gov. Lincoln Almond, a URI alumnus and basketball fanatic, on a preview visit to the school’s Ryan Center, the terrific facility he put across, and whenever I go there now I look for him in his excellent courtside seat, and he’s there.

Yes, journalists have tremendous access to places and to people. When Obama was about to launch his presidential candidacy in Springfield, Ill., Abraham Lincoln’s hometown, I asked Rhode Island Supreme Court Chief Justice Frank Williams, a Lincoln authority, to give me a tutorial on the 16th president, his bid for the White House, and his views toward blacks, something well beyond the simple notion that, you know, he freed the slaves. Williams was pleased to accommodate me with his time and with reading materials.

In late 1995, Lt. Gov. Bob Weygand was about to launch a bid for Congress. I wanted to get a better understanding of how it went in 1991 when he — then a state rep and landscape architect — wore an FBI wire and brought down Pawtucket Mayor Brian Sarault in a celebrated extortion case that centered on Weygand’s firm having a contract to upgrade Slater Park. So I asked Weygand to meet me at City Hall, and he showed me where he sat and where Sarault sat and told me how the conversation unfolded.

As a columnist, I learned a lot about myself. You actually have to think in this job and draw yourself out, or develop views, on issues. And you discover how true is the old journalistic adage that all of life is copy. I came to appreciate, and to write about, things I did as far back as grammar school, or summer camp, or trips I went on as a student — to Cuba, to Israel, to the American South — and saw the influences they had on my life.

Readers love nostalgia; one of my all-time popular columns was about the Oldsmobiles my father used to own.

When you are a columnist, you are always on duty. I happened to be at Fenway Park when Clay Buchholz pitched a no-hitter for the Sox last year; naturally, I wrote a column about it. And there’s this: It alarms me to think of how often I’ve been at a ball game and found myself taking time out to check my cell phone for the latest political news; I am not proud of this.

From my sideline seat in the world of politics, I slapped many a government official around. I like to think they deserved it. But I also like to think I did not paint with a broad brush, and I sought to remind myself and you that these are real people with real feelings. When I wrote a 1991 column on Secretary of State Kathleen Connell, whose world had turned topsy-turvy with the indictment of her stockbroker husband for shady financial dealings, she did me the honor of sending a note that said, “Thanks for a fair shake.”

That is all a politician can ask, and it is all that citizens ask of politicians.

The crookedness of so many politicians here — DiPrete, Cianci, Sarault, former Sen. John Celona et al — violated the public trust and escalated cynicism toward government.

I do not forgive the evil these men did.

But I have also come to understand that there are worse things than corruption.

Genocide is worse than corruption, but too many politicians, and too many citizens, refuse to see it or to speak up against it. Some pols and some citizens have sought to do something about the horrors in Darfur. But not enough.

Discrimination against gays is worse than corruption. It robs people of their dignity.

Similarly, exploitation of undocumented immigrants for political purposes is worse than corruption. And so too is indifference to poor people.

Some day, those who exploit and those who close their eyes will have to answer to a higher authority who will ask, “Did you not know better? Did you have no sense of decency?”

I have had the luxury of being paid to speak my mind. I have done so from a privileged perch with the prestige of a large newspaper, backed by the resources and clout of a powerful company.

It has, perhaps, been too easy. I am curious to see whether, off on my own, I will be willing to take stands and try to influence the public discourse. Or will I, like most citizens, retreat into the comfort of my own small existence?

Columnists — certainly conscientious columnists — take great care to research things, to measure things, to choose an appropriate tone and precise language. They develop a thick skin, ready, if necessary, to take criticism.

Ironically, they sometimes lose sight of the impact they are having.

One Sunday morning, then-Gov. Bruce Sundlun phoned my house to complain about a column in that day’s paper. I said, “Forget about that, I have some questions for you.”

He barked, “Sure, you put this stuff in the paper, and then you tell me to forget about it!”

An excellent point.

Still, public officials need to be regularly upbraided, certainly in Rhode Island, and not just because of corruption. I have seen this place in worse crises, but I have never seen it in such drift. Year after year, the State House puts a budget together with baling wire — financial gimmickry and ill-thought-out tax policies — and, of course education, bridges, roads, public transportation and everything else goes to hell. There are too many school districts, joblessness soars, businesses don’t want to move or expand here, there’s only the vaguest suggestion of a two-party system and sometimes the most notorious political crooks wind up with talk shows or pensions.

There is a stunning beauty to the landscape and a marvelous friendliness among the populace.

I love Rhode Island.

But civic life is a mockery. It always seems like amateur hour around here.

Someday, I almost expect, Congress will intercede and announce it is yanking Rhode Island’s license to be a state, half the residents will be designated citizens of Massachusetts and half assigned to Connecticut, and the flag will now have 49 stars, instead of 50.

Maybe it’s a good time for me to walk away and let someone else step into the role of commenting on life in these parts. I wish him or her well, as I wish you wish well.

I enjoyed my run, and I leave with gratitude for having had the chance to serve you.

mcbakst@gmail.com