A Blustery Blurr

We'll see what tomorrow brings. Yeah, right. Thank you sir, may I have another!?

I knew there would be a lot of wind, but I didn't expect so much to happen. All weather outlets told us the wind  would knock over trees that had been weakened by all the water that has fallen thus far. What we got was a lot more. This pine tree fell in Lucille Piggott's Greensboro backyard, but it did not hit her house! A couple of small Dogwoods, a Pink Azalea, and her gas grill got taken out. Lucky Lucille.

This steeple on Centenary Methodist Church in Greensboro got pushed over, but didn't come down.

The sign at the Downtown Greensboro Hardee's took a hit too.

I also spent time at the PTI airport where many flights in and out of GSO were cancelled.

This sign, one of many hanging along the road outside the airport terminal advertising an upcoming skating competition got slashed by the sheer of the winds.

On my way back to the station I saw this set of traffic lights swinging in the wind at Hwy 68 and Thorndike Road. Some drivers were not sure how to handle that. A dangerous situation on a major intersection.

Then it was off to Guilford College for some basketball. The #1 3A school last year hosted the Mennonite Royals. The only team that can beat the Quakers. And tonight they did it again in a big way, by about 30 points.

So, yet another action-packed swing shift is over. I'm exhausted. For the first five hours of my shift I did not stop. I had a break for refueling me and my news assault vehicle, then it was on again.

Spin the Wheel

Tuesdays and Wednesdays my shift is called "Swing Photographer". The term is supposed to mean instead of a morning, day or night shift, you come in an hour before the night shift, and leave an hour early. Also, you never know what kind of day you will have,what kind of variety of stories you will do, or who you will meet. That pretty much goes for any other day in which I team up with a reporter. But on those days, while you still don't know what you'll do, where you'll go, or who you'll meet, you will generally end up doing one story for the day. On "swing" days, you do multiple stories.
Tuesdays and Wednesdays my shift is called "Swing Photographer". The term is supposed to mean instead of a morning, day or night shift, you come in an hour before the night shift, and leave an hour early. Also, you never know what kind of day you will have,what kind of variety of stories you will do, or who you will meet. That pretty much goes for any other day in which I team up with a reporter. But on those days, while you still don't know what you'll do, where you'll go, or who you'll meet, you will generally end up doing one story for the day. On "swing" days, you do multiple stories.
Today, I had five stories, and what a variety. It began with shooting a story with Cindy Farmer about how you can get fit at home using some things you may already have, like stairs or a weight like Cindy's using here. This story involved minimal set up on my part. I go in with Cindy, put a wireless mic on Mark, the fitness trainer, and off we go. No special lighting, not even the tripod I brought in. I just needed to find creative ways to shoot the thing. This story will air in a few days.
After I got back to the station, it was on to something completely different: they needed some exterior shots of the Allen Jay School on Allen Jay Road, next to Allen Jay conveniece store. Mr. Jay was a Quaker minister, an evangelist, and an outstanding educator, according to the school's web site. But, as it is, the Guilford School District has other plans for the mothballed building. So it was, about a minute's worth of shots, and about 20 seconds of air time.
I brought that back to the station so it could run in the 6pm show. Then it was off to Davidson County for two things: a pot hole and a commissioners meeting. WOO-HOO! Can you feel the sarcasm? This whole pot hole patrol is a community service franchise, but being early in the game, it needs some tweaking. We have people call or email us to let us know where there are any alignment shifting craters in the road. The details are, as we like to say, sketchy. For example, the one I was in search of was to be found on Swicegood Road near Hwy 150. Keep in mind I'm searching after 6pm and in the rain. You think it would be as easy as driving on the road and you'd run over it. Well every pot hole I've seen isn't much of a hole. My standard has been set in my home state of Minnesota, where the pot holes can swallow compact cars. So running over a pot hole in North Carolina barely registered. Before I found the offending cavity, I noticed the Northbound lane had all the flaws, the other side looked as if no one had driven South since Winter began. I figured this hub cap sized divot had to be the star as it was the only one of dozens that didn't have any of that gooey asphalt filling. You know, the kind that resembles Rice Krispy marshmallow treat batter. Since Swicegood Road is one of those rural two lane things, there was no place to park except someone's driveway. So I backed into one that opened straight to my target. My headlights were spotting my subject just right, and fortunately every time I set up a shot, a Northbound car would come by and hit the hole. That made for a quick exit out of that driveway.
Then it was on to Lexington proper where the Davidson County Commissioners were meeting. I would be there to find out what kind of carrot the board was to dangle in front of an anonymous company that was looking to expand. The economic development board spokesman told the board how valuable it would be to have this company in their county. The extra income and jobs it would create. Only one person spoke up during public expression, and what he said was so full of numbers and inside information, that he may have been the only person to understand what he was saying. He was the board watchdog. Every board has one.
I got back to the station with the last two items around 8:15 and opened up my lunchbox to have dinner. Shortly after that, I was called out to see what I could get on a fatal accident that happened on I-40 near Winston-Salem. In the photo, a State Highway Patrolman inspects under the hood of the truck involved. It is policy after an accident to give the vehicle a physical and inspect the driver's log book to see when and how often he drives. The accident happened an hour earlier, but sometimes these things take awhile to clean up. It was at the junction of I-40 and Highway 311. Somehow an 18-wheeler struck and killed a pedestrian. Seems like an unlikely place for a pedestrian, but since the investigating State Trooper was in the process of informing the victim's family, I could not get any other information about the accident. And, for the record, while I'm in the business of trying to be the first to report something, I do not ever want to be the first person to broadcast to a victim's family that one of their own has been killed.

Quite a mixed bag of stories. We'll see what tomorrow brings as I "swing" again.

Fire and Ice

It's not often we do a story in an area in which you feel your life is in danger. The most common for me has been on coastal North Carolina during hurricanes. The previous scare was last year covering a shooting in a New Bern, NC project neighborhood--at night. Last night was different. All day the Piedmont received a coating of ice and snow. And the day before, Sheeka Strickland and I did a story with John Carter, a tree specialist who told us it would be the pine trees that would succumb first to the weight of the wintry mix. He was right. And there are a lot of pine trees in Rockingham county. All along Highway 65, 704, Ellisboro Road and Ayersville Road fresh firewood, softened by many days of precipitation, began falling; many of them blocking those roads. The roads are those two lane ribbons of asphalt that snake their way through rural North Carolina, and are dangerous enough with speeding 18-wheelers steered by sleep-deprived captains. Now you feel like you're running a gauntlet of leaning trees, just waiting for a cold push by old man winter to weed out the weak among them. Their icy claws posed over you as if you're driving through the arctic version of a haunted house. 

Once you step out of the news assault vehicle to get some shots of the trees that didn't make it, you hear crackling of a conifer's canopy, it's limbs, or the whole trunk. And now let's add a sizzling thrill: sometimes, the thing pulls down power lines. We found one that was smoking, and one that had become a fire. I got the shots I needed, and sparked a hasty retreat back down the road. Then, we drive back through the gauntlet, Sheeka at the wheel, and me in the passenger seat, getting footage of the ice claws and downed trees. Suddenly, a pack of deer cross the road in front of us. What a cool and serendipitous encounter. That shot made it into one of two stories we produced for the evening newscast.

We shared high fives at the end of that night because of the great visuals for the stories, and we cheated death, yet again.

Story 1

Story 2

A New Leash on Life, etc...

Today began with a life-saving story, and ended with perhaps a life-ending story. And it was the story I did in the middle that prompted me to say to the people there:"I can't believe I get paid to do this." An exaggeration, of course, but still, I felt the joy of doing "good news." And it's rare on my night shift to be able to do "good news."
My first story of the day was Moses Cone health system donating 19 defibrillators to several local municipalities. Great idea. Heart attacks are the #1 killer in the U.S., and if you have one outside a hospital, you have a 95% chance of not making it. Unless there's an AED (defibrillator)nearby. Any municipality that has some of these things also makes them less of a liability. These will go in malls, parks, and golf courses in our area.

The next story was about Susie, the 8 month old pitt bull/shepherd puppy who was found in a Greensboro park last August with 2nd and 3rd degree burns, a broken jaw, and whose ears had been burned off. She was barely alive. Maggots had set up camp on her. After a long process, Donna Lawrence became the new owner.

Trained by Bob Wall and his wife, Susie behaves like a normal puppy her age, and, other than her ears still missing, her wounds have healed very well. About a year ago, Donna was viciously attacked by a pitt bull. She didn't know how or if she'd survive the attack. She told a group of about 24 children tonight at a High Point church, that it was her faith in God and her christian tenet of forgiveness that got her out of the nasty event, and helped her come to terms with the dog's owner. An animal lover, she later adopted Susie, a pitt bull mix, to overcome her fear of dogs, and she's done very well. She used her struggle for courage to hopefully set a warm, furry, and tangible example of how they too can overcome their fear of the boogeyman, having to eat broccoli, or make a friend. Donna said she'd like to bring Susie into hospitals and burn centers as therapy for patients. What a great story.


No sooner did I put the finishing touches on the previous story, I got a call from the desk telling me to head to Winston-Salem as there was a shooting. I tapped the address into my GPS, and headed out. The scene took place in a familiar setting, yet I'd never been there. After 16 years of gathering crime scenes, you see a pattern. Low income neighborhood, small homes that sit close together, police cars & crime tape. But this time, even though there were half a dozen police cars on the scene parked in random fashion, there were no flashing blue lights, and no on-lookers. Only a few people gathered at the front of their home in case the police needed them. The shooting happened in front of their house. I asked one officer if she could find someone to let me know whatever they can tell me. I know when you've been on the scene of breaking news, you can't expect someone to know enough about what's going on to go tell the media. Usually the person who can do it, or is supposed to do it isn't there. But when you are less than a half hour from air time, you only want a few questions answered. We're not looking for a formal on-camera interview.
I got the video I needed, and headed to our bureau downtown. I cut it, sent it over the microwave feed, and a few minutes later I watched it as it went over the airwaves. I got a lot of video, but we got very little information other than what, where, and when it happened. The who will come later, and the why may never be known. We just know that somebody was shot and sent to the hospital. I wonder if it was the person who tried to kill Susie.