What's the best way to say goodbye?

We liked that last scene in MASH, when Hawkeye's helicopter lifted up to see the giant "goodbye" BJ Honeycut had written with stones.

And one can't forget Indiana Jones riding off into the canyon, post-Holy-Grail-experience. (But, it turns out, that wasn't goodbye after all.) Perhaps that final scene of Seinfeld, with the entire cast in jail, would be more appropriate in our case.

But equating this little statement with any of those iconic scenes of human history is presumptive to the extreme — not only are we incapable of saying 'so long' so well, but we are not in the same realm of reality of reality as those pieces of Americana. We owe a debt of gratitude to so many people. Many contributed in some way, at some point. They include (but are not limited to) Chapman Rackaway, Mark Colwell, Matthew Musgrove, Stacy Ward, Mike Hammett, Casey McAvoy, Mark Keller, Ashley Inslee, Chris Jones and more.

This little project started in the summer of 2006 with a committee of about 15 people. The following January it evolved into a once-per-week newsmagazine, and then to a Web site. Now it's time for The Stir, and thestironline.com to saddle up and follow John Wayne into the sunset.

We can't say we've enjoyed every second of this ride. But taken as a whole, we've enjoyed the hell out of it.

Those of us that've worked on the staff of The Stir — Scott Rader, Jordan Gray, Brandon Worf, Kaley Lyon, Nick Schwien, Will Manly and Micah Mertes — will be forever grateful for the opportunities we got here. We appreciate our readers' loyalty and friendship. That's something that we'll never forget, and something that can never be taken away from us.

Now that we've finished The Stir, we'll send the PDF pages up to the big printing press in the sky. Someday everyone will get to read that edition but, until then, we don't want to spoil the contents. We'll just tease you with the headline: Long live Nic Cage.