Rochelle Riley

I love it when an old man calls me “baby.”

I know that when it happens, the man means no harm, no offense, that he is remembering, that he is, for just a moment, living another time when he was a mack daddy and he called all the girls “baby.” He might have, for a moment, been thinking of his daughters or granddaughters and let me have their term of endearment for a moment.

The man, whenever and wherever he is, could have been my grandfather, who called me that almost every day. My grandfather was a gruff, hard-working man who raised two families and never complained. He called me baby and he called every boy and man in our town “Charlie.”

I was as amazed that he did it as I was that everyone let him. No matter who he saw, he’d cry out, “Hey, Charlie!” And they’d always say, “Hey!” – whether it was Donald or Nathan or Bridgers or Derek or Tony or Nino or Winston.

The man on the scooter looked nothing like my grandfather, save skin like ebony and a wonderful smile.

I was walking, Desi, The Wonder Dog, when I saw the old man this evening. He was on a scooter with a basket in front and his cane in back. He was bowed over his lap. My heart stopped. Had he died while out for a ride? I called over, “Sir, are you all right?”

Nothing.

I called louder, “Sir, is everything OK?”

And he stirred as if from sleep, because that is what it was. He raised his head, still looking forward, never at me, and raised his thumb in the universal sign of “Everything’s all right.”

I smiled and continued our walk. But before I got to the corner, the old man was flying past, doing at least 5 miles per hour. He was totally awake, vibrant, the lost moment gone. He turned and waved, “Hey baby, how ya doing?”

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She was trying to help.

Rachel Beckwith decided last spring that her friends should skip the birthday presents and instead help her raise money to provide clean water to African villages. She was trying to raise only $300.

On the page, she wrote this message: “I found out that millions of people don’t live to see their 5th birthday. And why? Because they didn’t have access to clean, safe water so I’m celebrating my birthday like never before. I’m asking from everyone I know to donate to my campaign instead of gifts for my birthday. Every penny of the money raised will go directly to fund freshwater projects in developing nations.”

By the time she turned nine on June 12, she had raised $220. She closed her page.

Rachel didn’t live to see her tenth birthday.

She was killed last week in a 13-car pile-up not far from Seattle. The pastor at her church, Eastlake Community Church, reopened her page. Rev. Ryan Meeks gave Rachel a second chance at her goal.

By Thursday morning, she had raised $518,916 – and counting.

From tragedy, miracles rise like phoenix from ashes.

Her heartfelt effort keeps Rachel alive for her community and for her nation. That moment when she decided to put passion to action meant she would continue to make a difference for people she ever met. Her generosity of spirit should inspire us all.

When the pastor takes the money to whatever country Rachel had in mind, I hope the TV cameras go with him. Or maybe he can call the folks at www.water.org, the charity that actor Matt Damon supports, and they can make the trip for him – and for Rachel.

We’ll be watching – and remembering a little girl whose heart was as big as the world and whose passion could inspire a generation.

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My friend, LC, and I were at it again this morning, lamenting the state of American television, which has been sharked to death by so-called reality shows.

What was making us happy? The fact that some networks are re-making some of our favorite TV shows (Dallas, Hawaii 5-0).  This means two things:

First, we’ll have even more great shows to add to our must-see TV list that already has: “The Good Wife,” “The Closer,” “Burn Notice,” “Suits,” White Collar” and “Rizzoli and Isles.”

Second, it might hasten the demise of fake reality TV. The difference? “The Amazing Race,” a travel game show, is good reality TV.

Any “Housewives” show? Baloney.

Reality? Really?

Seriously, if cameras followed us around all day, they’d see carpet cleaners come and go with the dog barking the entire time, us sitting with piles of papers paying bills, us putting away groceries, which these women never seem to buy. They’d see real desperate housewives trying to fit 30 hours worth of into a 24-hour day.

“We are CEOS of our homes, and our children have ballet recitals, dance recitals, swim lessons,” LC said. “And that’s what we’re doing.”

Moreover, she and I are both working moms, so we’re among the women who run the house and run companies or work at full-time jobs.

We don’t know any housewives who walk around in designer clothes on soccer day or drink champagne every weekend – even though some could if they wanted to. But they don’t because they’re too busy dealing with real life. And real life is not loud, unless it’s the children, or boisterous unless a football game is on or the children are moving. We don’t do battle in heels.

“At what event have we ever attended have we seen two women go at each other in a fistfight?” LC asked.

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Rochelle Riley (center) celebrates receiving the Will Rogers Humanitarian Award from James Rogers (second from left), the great-grandson of humorist, actor and cowboy Will Rogers. From right: the award’s founder, Bob Haught, NSNC conference chairman Brian O’Connor and Riley’s editor, Ron Dzwonkowski.

Sometimes, you have to stop. Just stop and live in a moment, life fully in it.

That happened to me Friday night when I stood before a group of hugely talented writers and journalists because someone wanted to give me a pat on the back.

Newsrooms aren’t keen on pats on the back. We are, after all, producing products that are vital one day and trash the next.

But every now and again, someone stops you with a word of encouragement, a pat of recognition and thanks. And it takes your breath away.

For 10 years, I’ve written about adult literacy and the challenge Detroit and Michigan face because of the number of adults who read below a sixth grade level – something that, at the height of American auto making, didn’t matter.

But in the new global economy, one where most auto jobs require college degrees and there are fewer auto plants than in the past 30 years, reading is – as it has always been –fundamental and necessary.

On Friday night, the National Society of Newspaper Columnists recognized me for that decade of work with the Will Rogers Humanitarian Award.

Rogers, Oklahoma’s most famous resident and one of America’s most beloved celebrities of the 1920s and 1030s, was born in November 1879 and died in August 1935, but in that span, he was a humorist, vaudeville performer, cowboy, actor and comedian. A descendant of the Cherokee Nation, he wrote more than 4,000 newspaper columns, made dozens of silent movies and became a a part of America’s tragic lore when he died in an airplane crash with pilot Wiley Post. Known for his quick wit and hilarious stories, Rogers has been among the most quoted Americans in history. His most famous: I never met a man I didn’t like.

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It is the most monumental and historic and important announcement in the history of the world.  The federal government is going to require cigarette-makers, eventually, to post one of nine graphic images on its packages to warn Americans against the dangers of smoking.

Oh yeah, that’ll stop it.

The news was presented as landmark because it’s the first change in tobacco warnings in a quarter century. But what does that actually mean: That the federal government has pretty much done nothing to end the unhealthy scourge of smoking in a quarter century.

This despite medical reports showing the damage done to nonsmokers by secondhand smoke.

This despite statistics showing that 443,000 American die smoking-related deaths every year.

This despite the fact that smoking contributes to many chronic diseases that raise national health care costs. Smoking-related diseases led to $96 billion in health care costs last year, much of it paid by taxpayers

The color images, which made the morning shows, most newspapers and the nightly news, feature images from the real deal: a man with a large scar down his chest, breathing with an oxygen mask, a man blowing smoke through a tracheotomy hole in his throat.

Cigarette package messages haven’t changed much since 1966, two years after U.S. Surgeon General Luther Terry first warned that cigarettes could be hazardous to your health.  It took two years for his warning to get on the packages. Current cig makers will get about the same amount of time to create new packages.

Twenty percent of the U.S. population is killing itself with cigarettes, and the biggest growth is in young people – 4,000 teens a day light up. The children don’t believe that cigarettes kill any more than they believe that sex produces babies.

Lawrence R. Deyton of the FDA’s Center for Tobacco Products told the Washingtoni Post that the campaign features images that people can’t forget, not images that people want to forget. That’s why they include a man in an oxygen mask but not one in a coffin.

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