In one of the newsrooms I used to work at there was a cardboard sign randomly tacked on the wall with some words scratched on it with a Sharpie. The sign might have been from an old joke, a staff prank or leftover from a mock street demonstration. The sign read: “Will Write For Food.”
Whatever its genesis, those four words may be the best summary or motto of my long journalism career that I could ever have come up with on my own. Now retired from newspapers since the 2020 pandemic, I am still writing for food and I am very grateful for this Substack platform and for all of you, my faithful readers.
A loaf of bread cost 28 cents when I started my newspaper career back in 1974 and it takes a lot of written words these days to buy a $7.50 loaf of Costeaux French multigrain. (I’m not starving, but secret be known, some days I settle for a cheaper brand of bread.) But it’s not a secret to those who know me best that, bread or no bread, I’d still have to keep writing every day. If I am not writing, I am not breathing.
This June marks the first completed year of my “Moral Dilemmas” Substack newsletter and website. I have now written and shared 70 essays, commentaries and “first drafts” for my gradually growing number of free and paid subscribers.
It has been a daily pleasure for me to sit here at my keyboard and pick topics out of thin air and capture them in readable, bite-sized dispatches for you, me and us.
Thank you for reading and thanks for your occasional comments, criticisms, fact-checking and dietary support.
Most of you reading this update, have been on my subscriber list since the beginning a year ago. Besides reading my own Substack postings, I hope you also have discovered some of the wealth of independent writers and journalists being hosted elsewhere by Substack. Personally, I read many of these writers every week.
Please consider another year of support
Looking back at my year’s worth of Moral Dilemmas writings, I am sure that every topic did not hit a hot button or twitched a bone of curiosity for every reader, every time. But I think I deserve credit for offering a very wide assortment of dilemmas and topics worth pondering. After all, my Substack archive ranges from an uncensored examination of the ‘F’ Word to the sensitive issue of transphobia and to a memory trip of my long ago interview in 1977 with Buckminster Fuller.
My Moral Dilemmas posts have been both timely and timeless. I’ve put my journalism tools to work to report on the current state of the death penalty in the United States, our under-reported childcare crisis, the faux Marxism of Donald Trump and the emerging existential threat of Artificial Intelligence.
My “timeless” topics have examined the shifting definition of “Infinity;” the seductive idea of “Human Immortality;” what happens after we reach “peak oil;” and, a warning that we all may be living in “Plato’s Cave” and still don’t know it.
Together, as writer and reader, we have contemplated the existence of angels; why sports stadiums cost taxpayers billions of dollars; why we should stop eating so much salt; the hidden popularity of human micro-chipping; and, a survey of GMO fake fruit and more. I ask, where else, dear reader, can you get such a smorgasbord of nutritious and guilty-pleasure jottings?
As a journalist, I present my essays with supporting facts and a breadth of sources and resources. The average Substack entry takes less than 10 minutes to read. Most don’t take much time to write but each represents a few hours of my own readings and research.
Let’s keep doing this
My biggest problem is keeping up with the ideas and current event topics that confront me in my daily routine where I am mostly focused on doing the very best refinement of what it means to be “retired.” To no avail, my list of pending and unanswered “moral dilemmas” keeps growing. Now that I do not have to schedule my days or workload dictated by the day’s breaking news headlines, I strive to dwell around the edges of current events, controversies, curiosities and a dab of politics.
I have no doubt that each of you has a similar list of conundrums, queries, frustrations, political angsts and nagging doubts. All of us could use an extra stream of release and reflection. And that is my true purpose behind all of my written Moral Dilemmas.
What I propose to you, in the ongoing second year of my Substack Moral Dilemmas is to continue to offer moments and thoughts aimed at resolution, reflection and sane realism.
Are you with me? Please help me buy some bread.
— Rollie Atkinson
6-18-2024
6 Comments
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Rollie, I’ll continue to support your thoughts, but as far as breads, we in the North Bay have a valuable resource, Central Milling flour company in Petaluma. They probably supply most of the business that bake around here, but best of all, they have a full professional kitchen where anyone can learn to economize or create, making a multitude of edibles. Take a browse and a short drive. By my subscription, I can give you bread, but more satisfying is to make your own.
https://centralmilling.com/
Best regards
I believe that your readers Will stick with you through thick and thin. So you don’t even need to ask.onto another subject. I am so sick of Password authentication. I have an account I’m paid up and boom They want me to redo my password.this week it’s been YouTube Substack and Google. The bottom line for me is I don’t care about passwords and I really don’t enjoy threading the needles for them. Rollie this just happened as I was trying to reply to your question. They say they’re trying to protect my identification, bullshit. They’re trying to maximize their monetization platform through Some incongruous, to me, modeling. Paul.