Resigned to resignation

Two news co-anchors surprised their co-workers, their audience, and their bosses when they tendered their resignation live on-air. Former co-anchors Cindy Michaels and Tony Consiglio announced that they were quitting at the end of Tuesday's 6pm newscast on Bangor, Maine's ABC affiliate station WVII. Prior to the statement, they had not told anyone else of their plans. They later cited frustration with their management. On the newscast, the two didn't give specific reasons on the air for their sudden departure. Consiglio said that while they enjoyed reporting the news, "some recent developments have come to our attention, though, and departing together is the best alternative we can take." I don't blame them. There are times in my almost quarter-century on this planet where quitting the activity I was engaged in at the time would've made a huge statement. For instance, in August of 2004, during a rehearsal for The Diary of Anne Frank. My class were doing an abridged version of the play, which meant that one character wouldn't have any lines for four consecutive scenes, so some of my lines in Act 2 Scene 1 had to be re-assigned. The change wasn't communicated to everyone adequately, so both of us were saying the same line at the same time (which starts out "It's a man in the storeroom" and can be viewed here), which led to a shouting match (which wasn't helped by another of the cast members refusing to give me a chair to hit the other person with) which ended in me not exchanging any blows and instead getting the principal involved. Maybe quitting the production would've made a stronger statement five weeks out from final performances. And speaking of Anne Frank, today is a week after the 70th anniversary of the eighth member (a dentist named Pfeffer or Dussel) joining the Secret Annex. In other news, signs of a boom abound in Myanmar. Flights to Yangon are full, hotel rooms booked solid. Foreign bars are packed with well-fed Westerners in khakis and jeans, 21st-century prospectors drawn to this golden frontier. Myanmar got a further boost this week from President Barack Obama, who became the first serving U.S. president to visit the long-isolated nation, an endorsement that has not gone unnoticed by global investors. But despite America's leadership in welcoming Myanmar back into the international community, U.S. companies have so far not signed any big deals — a situation few expect to change soon.