At the risk of gilding the lily, I’m compelled to add my two cents to the Sunday column by Times editor Bob Blubaugh under the headline, “Important info about local issues easy to access (but easier to ignore)."
My life’s mission has been to bring the facts to people who like to think they are the masters of their own fate. We all need the facts if we’re going to make good choices and keep having the freedom and the resources to make more good choices.
Journalism was not my first choice. I wanted to write short stories or novels. When a teacher (THE teacher) told me that I had wasted my life so far and would waste it entirely if I did not educate myself and use the tools of my talents, I ignored her for three years, visions of the obnoxious courthouse reporter turning me away. Then a miracle happened.
It happened because I was reading a newspaper. I was reading a newspaper because I was smart enough to know that whatever its limitations, my daily paper was the source of a continuing education. It was a way of keeping up with the world that I was finding out to be more complicated — and less accommodating to my wonderfulness — than I had expected coming out of high school.
The miracle happened in stages. First, I was browsing classified ads and for no reason I stopped on a help wanted item: Reporter/Photographer for our Westminster Bureau. Stage two was being offered the job, and stage three was that I accepted it despite the fact I had no idea how to write a news story, had never taken anything but vacation pictures, and would have to go back home and tell my wife of only three months that I had accepted a $30 cut in pay from my airline clerk’s salary. She was in her second year of college.
Another miracle: We’re still married.
So, the kid who hated the confines of classrooms signed up for night college courses, particularly in journalism, and learned on the job, thanks to the help of others; the kid knew even less that the courthouse clerks thought possible.
Covering school board meetings on the second floor of the county office building at the same time there was a meeting of the commissioners on the first floor was possible thanks to help from county clerks who tipped me off when would be a good time to dash from one session to another.
One big lesson I learned was that thing about choices: You can pay attention now or pay the price of ignorance later. The more you understand, accurately comprehend, the more often you’ll make good choices that will pay off later.
A bonus lesson was that the more you become aware, the more curious you are about what else there is to know. Life’s riches are more than gadgets; the best things are experiences and the epiphany that comes with being fully engaged with your world, and knowing you play a role even if it’s only as an informed voter.
Over the years, I’ve watched as new faces take the reins of leadership in the community and in politics. The best ones get a surprise: It isn’t going to be exactly how they thought. They adjust their expectations and adapt to meet the challenges to the ideals and perceptions they came in with.
The good ones keep the ideals and rid themselves of artifice or self-delusion. Working for and with the public brings out either the best or the worst in us.
Many got their first knowledge of the tasks facing them from news reports and public exchange in social settings. They’re the ones who grow into useful leaders and best serve the people.
Those cultivated to be partisans — know-it-alls — or who fail to learn and change are threats to the public good.
Dean Minnich writes from Westminster; he served two terms in county government. His column runs Thursdays. Write to him at dminnichwestm@gmail.com.