Kim Jackson

This blogging thing is tough.

After Friday I went into a three-day weekend in which I spent most of it cleaning our house and nurturing my new lawn in the back yard (watch this space for a future new-guy-seeding-new-lawn-not-very-well blog), taking care of my grandson and tending to other bits of life. So, my apologies to my faithful readers (3). Keep reading and enjoy this little tidbit:

Every day I slog through the wire, looking for stories to fill some of the pages of the D-H . Most are boring, some interesting, and a lot are distressing (see “Man kills family, then self) to the point of making me think, “I quit.”

But a few rise to the level of heartwarming and life-affirming. I found one of those today.

The story was on the National wire, which takes in all of the stories from around the U.S.  There is more to it, but this is the gist.

It happened in N.Y., where a man attempted to rob a Long Island convenience store with a baseball bat. The owner grabbed a rifle from behind the counter and told the guy to drop the bat. The robber then broke down into tears and said he was out of working and only robbing the place to feed his family.
Now the store owner had a few options (shoot him, call the cops, take the bat and hit him), but he chose a refreshing one: compassion. He gave the guy $40 and a loaf of bread and told the guy to never rob again. When the owner went to the back of the store to get some milk for the man to take home, the robber fled.

The owner, who had come to the U.S. 20 years ago from Pakistan, said he felt very good about what he did.

So do I. It’s just a reminder that there are far more good people in this world than those who would do harm.

(Look for this story in today’s D-H.)

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