PUBLISHER’S DESK: THE MAN IN THE MIRROR
I don’t know a single journalist who doesn’t thrive on the opportunity to hear people’s stories and then share those stories with others. After all, it’s at the heart of what we do. And, since returning to my home community in May of 1999 to begin my career as a full-time journalist, I have had the privilege of telling hundreds of stories of all shapes and sizes.
But none like this week’s feature on Mike Peterson.
I first broached the subject of visiting with Mike for a story more than a year ago, when he stopped in the office and asked if I would be interested in publishing a short story he had written — an abbreviated summary of life.
“You write?” I asked him.
Not only did I learn that he wrote — stories and poetry — but that he had taken up woodworking as a hobby and made small, ornamental knick-knacks, and that he enjoyed art and literature.
“Really!” I said. “How about this; I sit down and interview you and write a story called ‘The softer side of Mike Peterson.’”
One week later he was back in the office with a gift — a small wooden pyramid made to scale of the Great Pyramid of Giza — and we sat down to talk. Our conversation was all over the board and one of the most off-the-rails interviews I have ever done, and I loved every minute of it.
Mike and I chatted now and again throughout the remainder of the year, but the story was on the backburner until he reached out again a couple of weeks ago. Having his story shared was important to him, he told me, and so I returned to my conversation with Mike, not in my office, but in his shop.
Much of what he shared with me was similar to our visit a year ago, but with more details and, in that, more context. He was shockingly honest and strikingly vulnerable, and as we talked, I kept thinking to myself: This isn’t a soft quality; this is a paradox.
Before I left, I had one last, very important question.
What’s off limits, I asked.
“Nothing,” he said. “Because that would be a lie.”
The result is this week’s cover story about a man for whom I have the utmost respect. It is honest and true to who Mike is, and a fair and just reflection of the complexities found in a hard life. I wrote it as if Mike was looking in a mirror, and the man in the mirror was looking back at him.
I am taking much away from my story about Mike, and I hope others will, too.
Don’t judge.
Listen.
Recognize that we don’t get to pick which circumstances we are born into.
Life is hard.
Life is beautiful.
I will cherish for the rest of my life that wooden pyramid Mike gave be, because it’s him, crafted with precision, imperfectly flawed. Just like us.
