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The Slice: Recognizing the Slice Reader of the Year
Maggie Fritz’s designation as Slice Reader of the Year is really more like a lifetime achievement award.
She has been putting up with this column for a long time. But she keeps reading it.
Here’s her self-nomination.
“Hi, Mr. Slice.
“I should be Slice Reader of the Year because I still read your column religiously even though you don’t support my commitment to natural immune boosting, even though your paper is unkind to the VA where I have dedicated 27 years of my life, and even though your column slights my demographic – the childless spinster.
“I always mentally answer the Slice questions even when I don’t write you my answers. When you have a long list with letters for bullet points, I read EVERY ONE.
“I still have a daily subscription and read the Spokesman, as I have since arriving in Washington in 1984. I have read The Slice since its debut (in 1992). And I will continue to read religiously no matter who you pick for Slice Reader of the Year.”
To me, Maggie embodies an attitude I’ve long hoped at least some Slice readers would adopt. That is, a realization that sometimes I can be an idiot but I mostly mean well. So this honor, if I may call it that, is my way of thanking Maggie for her tolerance and loyalty.
Moreover, she embraces an outlook that seems increasingly rare in 2017 America. She doesn’t insist that everyone agree with her about every damn thing. (My advocacy of flu shots is just one of my stands that bug her.)
A longtime addiction therapist who lives in the Logan Neighborhood, Maggie came down to the newspaper this week so I could take our picture. She noted that she had read I’m not much of a hugger, so we shook hands and I presented her with a coveted reporter’s notebook.
But later, as she was leaving, I did give her a hug. I’ve owed her one for a long time.
Today’s Slice question: What would qualify as a Christmas miracle in Spokane?
Write The Slice at P.O. Box 2160, Spokane, WA 99210; call (509) 459-5470; email pault@spokesman.com. We won’t go until we get some.