There Was A Mighty Wind ...

Meteorologist Jay Webb in the weather center at the station. This is one of the very few times I wish I had shot in color; around him are radar displays in bright reds, yellows and greens, indicating dangerous thunderstorms in the area.

Earlier, a line of storms had generated tornadoes to the south, in Pulaski County. The morning after, reporter Chris Hurst and I were dispatched there for a live report from the scene for the morning show.

The aftermath of the storms left the entire valley shrouded in thick fog. We drove for an hour in a blanket of dawn-lit white. The center of Pulaski proper seemed fine. But for the heavy police presence, one might have thought the town escaped unharmed. We set up by a state police roadblock.



After the morning show, we set out to find the scene of the damage. Local police with the aid of state police had thrown up roadblocks to seal the area off, but we knew more or less where the tornado had struck, and found a road that was open. The scene was devastating.



The white stuff (pink and yellow actually) is household insulation, shredded and blown across the neighborhood when roofs and walls were peeled away from houses.


A teddy bear -- just one of an uncounted amounts of personal possessions scattered about. In the news business, there is a certain standardization to this sort of thing, a regularity to the randomness of disaster. You can count on the unbroken window in the only remaining wall of a destroyed building, or the yard chair tidily deposited in the tree branches. But perhaps the cruelest thing of all is the casual smearing about of the flotsam of life, all that stuff either tidily packed away or perhaps thoughtlessly tossed in a drawer. Now it's everywhere, covered in mud, pitted and bent and soaked with rain: a picture of Mom here, a towel there. And there's always a teddy bear.

Unfortunately, even in color, the brown bear didn't really pop against the muddied background, making it hard to figure out what it was in a short look, so the shot didn't make it to TV. I'm not sure that it's that good a still, either, but I cling to it for some reason...



After filming in Pulaski proper, we headed out to Draper, a small town out in the county. Chris had been out there the night before, when the storms were still raging (he was operating on about two hours sleep as we worked). "I want to show you something," he said insistently as we drove out of town. We went to the Draper exit from the interstate, where a hollow (pronounced, as a general rule, "holler," around here) had been hit by the storm. Trees all down the hillside had been sheared and pushed over.

But now it was a tourist attraction, with a constant series of cars pulling up to stare, people parking to climb out, gawk at the scene, and take pictures with their cell phones. Across the highway, a gas station had been utterly destroyed, but it didn't draw the attention of the cutoff trees in the tiny valley.

We parked the car at a sheriff's roadblock and walked in to the scene of a trailer home that had been lifted from its foundations, reduced to its component parts, and then deposited some 20 feet away.

It's hard to wrap your head around a loss at this scale. Fortunately, the owner was out at dinner when the tornado struck, and was left unscratched. But everything he owned, all of his physical life, had been crushed, scattered and soaked.

I often try to put myself in the place of story subjects. I think we all do: How would I have escaped the killer? Where would I have taken shelter from the flood? How could I cope with the loss of ... everything? I don't know. Oddly, it reminds me of the challenge of cleaning an out of control, cluttered room. I often find myself paralyzed by the enormity of the task; where to begin? Where does this guy begin?

Meanwhile, During the Election...

This is Morgan Griffith, Republican candidate for the 9th District of Virginia, campaigning in Pulaski, deep in the Southwest of the state. It's the Saturday before election day, and I was filming the rally -- which seems a rather grand term for what it was, truly, a gathering of about 30 or 40 people at a landscaping company, standing about amidst bins of gravel and mulch -- for WDBJ. My reporter, Chris Hurst, can just be seen behind Griffith, between him and the garden shed. He's holding a radio microphone, so we can get better audio of the speech.

Griffith was a long shot. Although he was the majority leader in Virginia's legislature, his opponent, Rick Boucher, was a 20-plus-year veteran of the US House of Representatives. As anyone with a passing knowledge of American politics takes for granted, an incumbent is difficult to dislodge. A 20-plus-year incumbent is all but undefeatable. It's a "safe seat."

However, this year, the tide was turning, and Griffith sensed the flow. As he said during this speech, if others in Virginia -- like Tom Periello in the nearby 5th District, a one-termer -- lost their races, pundits could say that the seat was traditionally Republican, and thus the election just a readjustment to the norm. (Periello defeated longtime veteran Virgil Goode, riding on the coattails of President Obama.) But, Griffith said, urging his followers to action -- specifically the action of voting -- if Boucher lost, then it would be a real sign, a symbol that the recent liberal actions really were rejected by all the voters.

This is Rick Boucher that same day, just a few miles away and a an hour or so later, being interviewed by the competition after a rally. The chairs were all full when he and Sen. Mark Warner spoke, and the followers enthusiastic. As I left, I overheard one say, as he walked out the door with a friend in front of me, that he couldn't understand the polls. From what he saw, Boucher should win by a landslide.

However, the polls -- especially WDBJ's Survey USA poll -- showed a dead heat. Our most recent results actually had Griffith ahead by a point. Boucher was adamant, in his speech (when he pointed out our camera) and in an interview afterwards, that his poll results showed him ahead. It was just bad methodology.

That was Saturday. On Tuesday, as the results came in, the "shellacking" -- as the President would later term it -- became clear. And in the 9th District, there was a double surprise: Griffith not only won, he won by a margin large enough to have that election called before the long doomed Periello race in the 5th. As Griffith predicted, I think, his race is symbolic. There was more than a pendulum swinging back to the center here.

and that's how election day went. Welcome to my world...

Meanwhile, In America...

Okay, I know I'm no Robert Frank. (Makes me think of The Online Photographer's immortal comment about how to shoot with a Leica. He said, when suggesting using a 35 mm lens, "I know Cartier-Bresson's favorite lens was a 50. You're not Cartier-Bresson." I can't find the link, but this is the start of the thread...) But I'm still stuck on my concept of "Meanwhile, In America ..." -- a modern, more upbeat version of Robert Frank's The Americans. So now you must suffer through more pictures of the sort I would do for that project...

Here we see the talent and producer (Kim Pinckney, the one holding the papers, is the producer) of WDBJ's weekday morning news show, Mornin'. (Yes, absent the G -- it amuses me.) They are looking at the ratings. They're number one.

Inside a Roanoke, Virginia, firehouse, shortly before it was closed and replaced with a new, more modern facility nearby. The stairs lead from the garage-like area where the fire trucks are kept to the living quarters for the firemen.

Jefferson Street, downtown (it always amuses me to say "downtown" in a town of 7,000) Lexington, Virginia.

The owner of Roanoke's Putt-Putt golf course, during a tournament involving both amateur and professional players. Yes, professional Putt-Putt golfers. Really. There's a tournament circuit, just like Tiger Woods plays, but with giant gorillas and giraffes and windmills and stuff. That's not why he's laughing; he was once a pro himself.

The president of Roanoke's Tea Party, shortly after I interviewed him for WDBJ7 at a July 4 rally in Elmwood Park. As I've mentioned before, I think the Tea Party movement is something to be respected and attended to, not ignored and dismissed. I still haven't grasped what it is -- and I asked him for the opportunity to talk some more in hopes of getting closer -- but I sense a geological force (not a "shift," as I think it taps into something quintessentially American, whatever that might mean) that the Tea Party represents.

I think there is a really important article, or story, or book maybe, to be done about this -- one that isn't snide or superior or disdainful. Something not written in the tone of an educated elite regarding the boobocracy as if they were animals in the zoo. Something not written by today's H.L. Menckens.

I had read about George Plimpton's fascination with fireworks a long time ago, but it stuck with me. I saw my opportunity this July 4, and convinced the station to let me cover the setup for Lexington's fireworks. I was surprised; just two guys, a lot of wood planks, some PVC tubes for mortars, and boxes and boxes of explosives shipped all the way from China. (That was a somewhat scary thought, I've got to say, when I learned it. There must be shipping containers full of high explosives [!] on the Pacific as I write.)

The guy in charge, shown here, just started when a friend suggested he help out on a show. His day job is as a barber. He's going to beautician school now, to expand his business.

Pray and Play, and effort by a black evangelical church to occupy youth in a poorer neighborhood in Roanoke. I ended up covering it when the minister called the newsroom one Saturday seeing if we were interested.

A gospel rap group, associated with the church, was also there. I gave them my card, and I hope they call. That would be a good story, I think.

This is Josh Harvey, a friend, playing organ for a wedding in Lee Chapel on the Washington and Lee University campus in Lexington. A nice picture of a nice guy.

All of the pictures have been shot with a Leica M3. For some I used a 34mm Leica Summicron, some a Zeiss 21 mm Biogon. Most were shot on Tri-X, though Josh's is on Plus-X, and I shot one roll of Fuji B&W film because it was in the fridge. (I'm working my way slowly through everything in the fridge, as I can't afford to buy new film. I'm also now out of negative sheets.)

NOTE: Keep checking back. On my first upload of these pictures, it's ten o'clock at night and I don't have all the data -- like names and dates -- in front of me. I plan to keep updating these entries as I get the chance.

Also, check back on previous entries. I've been adding pictures as I get them processed and scanned.

Welcome to My (Election Day) World...

So the off-year election this year in Virginia -- involving the races for several state legislature seats and, most importantly, the governor -- got some national attention, as it as seen as a bellweather of everything from President Obama's popularity to the future of the Republican Party. At any rate, what it meant for me was getting up at 4 a.m. to drive to Millboro, Virginia, a small town in Bath County that happened to be the home of Creigh Deeds, the Democratic candidate for governor.

Deeds was to start his day by voting ... at 6:30 a.m. It was the first time he would be seen for a whirlwind day of appearances, the next not until 11 a.m. in Charlottesville, so as cable news and networks spoke about the election, the only footage available would be that early morning voting imagery. My imagery. Cool.

But that's not my story here. To jump to the end of the story of my experience, I got the pictures, drove back to WDBJ an hour and a half away (stopping to pick up additional footage of people voting in Lexington as I passed through) and sent it out on the feed. I owned the airwaves ... for a couple hours. Then the Charlottesville stuff came in, and then the final Richmond appearance, where Deeds again made himself available for a final round of interviews. My stuff disappeared, without so much as the last greasy bubble of a sinking ship, never to be seen again. "Remember," the slave would whisper into the victorious Roman general's ear, "All glory is fleeting."

No, the focus this story from my world that day is not me, but a young reporter/photographer from another local TV station who came skidding into the parking lot shortly before Deeds voted. He climbed out and began pulling equipment out of his aged, dark red hatchback, all arms and legs and and elbows and knees and lenses and wires. It looked like Roberto Begnini had been hired to do a comedy routine on a TV photographer. Nothing was in bags, the spindly tripod legs went in three different directions while his legs went in two others, his knees barely supporting what his hands couldn't hold. Microphone cables trailed out in tangled loops as he struggled over to me and the two still photographers (from AP and Getty) who waited outside the voting station. "Am I late?" He breathlessly asked. "Did I miss it?" We assured him all was well. There was plenty of time.

Off he went, and I heard the clatter and click as he struggled to pull everything together. There was a pause, and then he was at my shoulder. "Are you shooting P2?" He said, sotto voce.

It was a curious question. I was indeed shooting P2, Panasonic's digital video system that records the "footage" onto a largish memory card (available only from Panasonic at a fairly substantial cost) rather than onto tape or (as Sony's system does) a DVD. It's one of several systems currently in use, and one well suited to news gathering, but the question is one usually asked while standing, bored, after exhausting subjects like the weather and mutual acquaintances. "Uh," I said. "Yeah."

"Can I borrow a card?" I looked down at his camera. The little bay, which can hold up to five cards, was empty. He had left his office -- some two hours away -- without any media to record events. Put simply, he had just arrived after a long drive to a news event with the world's largest, heaviest, most complicated and expensive doorstop.

I had a dozen thoughts at once. This guy, I realized, was totally screwed. There was no time to go back and get a card, but without a card, he could do nothing. He might as well have not shown up. I knew well the feeling of sinking panic he was surely experiencing. But he was also the competition, and a moment from "The Apprentice" (of all things) flashed into my head. One of the competitors had won immunity, but was so confident of his later work on the show that he told Donald Trump he would wave the immunity. Trump fired him on the spot, explaining that passing up an advantage like that was just stupid. Cutthroat, but he had a point. If I refused, mine would be the only TV pictures of this event. How would the people back at the station feel about that? Were my bosses as cutthroat as Trump? And how would they feel about my blithely handing over a not inexpensive item to what in truth was a total stranger? Furthermore, what if I needed the card later? Sure, with the three cards I had in my camera, I had over two hours of available recording time, but it wasn't impossible that, between this event and my return to the station, something massive would happen. I could be trapped out in the field, frantically recording events and ... run out of memory because I had given a card away. Then I'd look as stupid as this guy, and over something far more important.

I looked at my card bay, its three cards nestled in their slots, and back at his, gaping and empty with its sliding door open ... and relented. I pulled out a card and handed it to him. Someday, I'd be trapped somewhere, hopeless and needing help (though hopefully not because I did something that stupid). At least, that's what I told myself as I pushed back all those questions and fears.

And so Creigh Deeds cast his vote. AP and Getty made stills. The other guy and I recorded it for TV. Deeds paused outside to talk with us, first interviewed by me, then the other guy, then chatted with his friends and supporters gathered in the parking lot before climbing into the limo (driven by state troopers, assigned that day to both candidates so as to be in place to protect the future governor) and leaving. After every news event like that, there is a pause, a moment to catch your breath, gather your equipment, perhaps socialize a moment with your colleagues, and head out.

The young reporter came to me. "I really appreciate your helping me out," he said, his camera still on its tripod about a dozen feet back. "You really saved my life..." And as he spoke, I saw the leg brake -- the thing you tighten on the extended tripod leg to keep it up -- begin to slip. I started to speak, but it was gone. The leg slid closed and his camera fell forward onto the ground, landing lens first.

Small pieces flew away on impact. The lens snapped away from its mounting, hanging from the camera only by the cable which connects the zoom control to the camera's power. We rushed to it and gently turned it over, like paramedics at an accident scene. I detached the lens cable, thinking it would do more damage for the lens to pull at the plug, and picked up the loose parts I had seen fly away. The lens mounting ring was sheared, the front plate of the camera pushed back by the impact. "Can it be fixed," He asked fearfully. "Yep," I answered. "But your day is over."

I flipped the body onto its side, revealing the card bay. As I expected (from my own camera falling experience) the card had been popped out of its slot by the impact, requiring me to force the door open. I removed the card and handed it to him. "Your footage should be fine, but you'll want to take care of this."

It was the icing on his bitter cake, simply the Worst Day Ever for a news cameraman. He mailed the card back to me in a couple of days, and my bosses were understanding. One colleague was actually quite supportive. "Good for you," he said when I told of handing over the card. "Pay it forward, man." But I shall always be thankful it wasn't me, while simultaneously dreading my Worst Day Ever. Welcome to my world...

Tromp, tromp, tromp, the boys are marching...

Seven VMI cadets are reenacting the march their predecessors did over 100 year ago, when they left the campus in Lexington,Virginia, in May of 1864 and marched 85 miles in five days to New Market, to the north, where they took part in the battle there on May 15.  The 2009 cadets are dressed in period clothing and (perhaps most importantly) wearing period shoes.

I had often said that it would be an interesting little film to follow such an adventure, but no one had done it since the last effort in 2005.  So when I was told it was happening this year, I could hardly back out.

Here we see the cadets marching up Route 11, having already been on the road over a day:

And at their campsite at the end of the second day (last night), at the Frontier Culture Museum in Staunton, Virginia:

It's not much helping the drama of my show that they all seem rather cheerful, with high morale, and not very worn down by the beating their feet are receiving, after an 18-mile march on the first day and 19 miles on the second...

No teabagging jokes...

I've got to agree with some commentators that, tempting though it is, the current fascination of both open liberals and some "legitimate journalists" (put in quotes, because I'm not sure what exactly those two words are meant to mean in conjunction, sort of like "social justice") to make snotty comments about the Tea Parties last week -- particularly comments related to certain sexual activities and their slang names -- is not really commentary and is just an indication of a willingness to not take a serious thing seriously.  Would they dare make similarly dismissive and "humorous" comments about some of the wackier Islamic extremist terms?

Anyway, there was a Tea Party here in Lexington, Virginia, in the small park that sits in the center of town, attended, by my guess, by 100 to 150 people.

Here we look out into the town from the pergola in the park, past the speaker.  

Here we look back toward the pergola, visible in the background.  As you can see, it was a cool and drizzly day.

After the evening rally (from 6 to 7 pm), people lined up to sign letters to their congressman and senators.

I know I announced at the beginning of this blog that I wouldn't do politics, and I like to think I'm not doing that here, but a hundred people in a town of just 7,000, with a social scene dominated in many ways by two college faculties, turned out on a cold rainy evening to make a statement against an otherwise popular president.  This is something that deserves a reaction besides dismissive sarcasm...

POSTSCRIPT: An interesting comment today in the New York Times by David Carr, simultaneously doling out scorn to cable news for ginning up the Tea Party phenomenon and noting interest in the symbolic connection to history.  Who would have guessed an event in today's shallow culture would still use the resonance of an historical event to inspire it?