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When people ask me what's great about working for a newspaper, my best answer is a simple one: We get paid to ask questions.

We're like teenagers in love with this city and this state, and we want to know everything. When something strikes our curiosity, we ask "Why?" or "Why not?" and we don't stop until we get a decent answer.

Except for today. Today, once and for all, we stop.

For this last issue of The Trib, I had hoped to publish a time capsule of sorts - a sampler of the day's events that would say "This was Albuquerque in February 2008."

But then it struck me: There's a better picture out there, one made up of the questions we won't get to answer and the stories we won't get to tell. It's a fragmented picture of theories and ideas and preoccupations that makes sense to my journalist's heart. And unlike The Trib, it'll never be finished.

First of all, there's just about the best political year a reporter could hope for, with every seat in New Mexico's congressional delegation up for grabs. In the Senate race are Heather Wilson and Steve Pearce and Tom Udall - and when it all shakes out, it will help define the political face of the nation.

At the top of the ticket, New Mexico will undoubtedly be a battleground again in the race for president - and odds are that the vote count will be a soap opera, too.

Back in Albuquerque, my biggest questions look to the future. If you buy into every press release, we sound like Southern California in the 1950s: an aerospace industry just starting to take off, the film business starting to bust down the doors, a budding solar industry, a spaceport being built in empty desert to the south.

But even if that all comes to pass, I've been to Southern California, and it's a sprawling, traffic-choked cautionary tale. Will we get growth right? Will Mesa del Sol and Westland Corp. redefine the city with their massive proposed developments to the southeast and the west? Will we have enough water? How will the traffic be?

That begs a question that one year or five won't answer, but it's surely a question of our time: What will our lives look like as the climate changes? It's also an Albuquerque question, if you think about it. As desert dwellers, many of us have already thought hard about how our lifestyles (and landscapes) affect the world around us. Will we have something to teach the rest of the country?

But that's all very global, so let's get back to local. Will the Albuquerque Board of Education pick an insider as superintendent next month, or look beyond the state? Whoever that new Albuquerque Public Schools boss is, will he or she be able to make progress on any of the district's intractable challenges, or will the ghosts in that very big machine trip them again?

Will David Schmidly make good on all his high-priced promise as president at the University of New Mexico?

Will the city ever reach its quota of police officers?

And will that really make a difference in stemming the tide of crime?

Will the scourges of gang violence and DWI ever ease? When will the next flare of violence shock us - although just a little less than last time - with its multiple killings and its senselessness? Tomorrow? Next week? Next year?

Beyond crime, there's corruption: Will Manny Aragon, once the main power source in the Legislature, and the other defendants in the courthouse construction scandal be convicted and serve time? Will the Legislature ever pass meaningful ethics reform?

I could go on longer, but I'd rather close with another facet in this picture of Albuquerque: the people who make this city what it is and whom it's been our privilege to profile.

I can't state this as a question, but I know they're out there - extraordinary people capturing our attention in extraordinary ways. The next Bill Richardson, the next Bob Schwartz. The next Johnny Tapia or Don Schrader. We would introduce you to them if we were around a little longer.

The thing is, we won't be. So I'll just thank you, Albuquerque, for inspiring us to keep our eyes and our minds open all these years - and for paying us to ask questions.

We never thought we'd get all the answers. We just knew we'd try.