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Deal Me Out

Will Work For Food

Unsolicited advice is almost never welcomed, but I’m going to pass out some anyway: Don’t subsidize what you don’t want.

Beggar I think about that every time I ignore a beggar at a highway intersection, with his plea spelled out in block letters on a soiled piece of cardboard: “HUNGRY NEED HELP ‘GOD BLESS'” or “HOMELESS VETERAN.  WILL WORK FOR FOOD.”

I’ve never given money to one those guys. And why is it almost always men? Do women just have more pride?   Think about this for a second: If everyone was like me, there would be no beggars. Begging would be a waste of time.

OK wait, wait a minute.  Calm down.   I don’t give pocket change to beggars but we do contribute folding money to North Raleigh Ministries, where I used to volunteer one afternoon a week.  NRM provides needy individuals and families with food and other assistance.

I don’t give to the guys begging on street corners because I won’t subsidize what I don’t want. What they’re doing is humiliating, or ought to be, and I won’t contribute to that.

I Often Wondered

All of us have things that distract us from our work. Relationships are important and have to be tended.  Money problems, maybe, or health issues.  A parent, or spouse, or child who needs our care — our time. Or some other responsibility that can’t, or at least shouldn’t, be ignored.

But have you ever wondered how good you could be at your work if you had no distractions?  I used to think about that a lot:  How good could I be if I were as good as I could be?

Deal Me Out

Slot machine
Slot machine

I’ve never put a quarter in a slot machine or bought a lottery ticket. I don’t gamble, well, excluding fat bets I don’t gamble. And I don’t think of fat bets as wagers –I’ve never lost.  I look on them as my way of helping other people lose weight by punishing failure.

I don’t think gambling is immoral, I just think it’s foolish. I’ll never understand why people play games that are stacked against them, games that, if they play long enough, they’ll lose everything.

Coming Monday:  Who ARE You?

 

 

My Free Pass

Melanie Sill was honest, smart, hard working, and ambitious for herself and for others. She had excellent news judgment, too.

Melanie Sill
Melanie Sill

She was the investigation editor at The News & Observer and although she had never done any investigative work herself, she was proof that you don’t have to hang somebody to know how to build a gallows. I was an investigative reporter at The N&O and for years she and I made music together.  In the mid-90’s  Melanie; Joby Warrick, my reporting partner; and I teamed up to win a Pulitzer Prize.

Do you sense a “however” coming?

Well, here it is: When Melanie became executive editor of The N&O and, at my request, made me editor of the North Carolina Desk, I spent the most miserable 18 months of my newspaper life working for her.  She was, in a word, overbearing.

In the middle of those dark days, Melanie gave a most wonderful gift to me and other graduates of an in-house school for editors: a piece of paper, a pass that entitled each of us to one day free of criticism.

She may have meant it as a joke but it was no joke to me. I put my pass in my wallet to save for one of those perfectly horrible days that came along just about every week.

I didn’t use it right away. I endured some bad days, but no horrible days, and I had no intention of using my pass on a run-of-the-mill bad day.

At last, my patience was rewarded.

In theory, three editors and 18 reporters worked for me. In reality, however, the North Carolina desk was set up so that I had no control over two of the editors and their reporters. I was just there to take the heat when they failed to produce.

On the day I decided to use my pass the 21 people for whom I was responsible had no stories to pitch for the front page. That was a capital offense and I knew Melanie would be extremely unhappy. I got my pass ready.

She was sitting right beside me at the 10:30 editors’ meeting when I reported that the North Carolina Desk didn’t have any  stories good enough to put on 1A the next day.  She swiveled in her chair and was about to unload when I held up her gift and said, “Melanie, I’m going to use my free pass today.”

She swallowed all that venom without uttering a single word and turn back around.

What a blessing! Hallelujah! HALLELUJAH!

But when the meeting ended a few minutes later, Melanie swiveled back around.

“I want to talk to you,” she said, sternly.

“Melanie,” I said, “I used my free pass.”

And she said, “It’s not good for all day.” 

Postscript: Sill, a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of UNC, has held a series of top executive positions, at The N&O; The Sacramento Bee, McClatchy’s flagship paper; and at Southern California Public Radio.  More recently she has been a journalism and organizational consultant and independent editor.  Next semester she will teach journalism at Davidson College.

Coming Friday:  Deal Me Out