live apartment fire Suspicious packages, and more

Perhaps you’ve noticed an absence of activity on this site of late.

I need a vacation.  As I’m immersed in the minutiae of newsgathering , I’m less amused by the foibles I’d normally use as fodder for this site.  The recent “dumb luck” post was a good example of what’s not particularly interesting about my job.  I published that simply because I felt compelled to post something.  Apologies to all.  This post isn’t much better.

The Reviving Church of God, Thomaston GA

This is not to say that the job has been uninteresting.  I produced several pieces I really liked.  Most of them required trips of eighty or more miles out of Atlanta.

A Memorial Day story about a segregated “white / colored” war memorial at the Upson County courthouse was an adventure.  Photog Bruce Mason and I flew by the proverbial seat of our pants to Thomaston one day.  I only knew that the monument existed, and that there was an American Legion post named after the first name on the “colored” World War I monument.  We careened all over town looking for folks to talk to.  Our best decision was to lurch to a stop at a shotgun house / church that caught my eye.  The pastor emerged from across the street and excitedly provided us more guidance than we deserved.

I shot and edited another piece my ownself about a pro baseball player who’s a fringe prospect for the Seattle Mariners.  I’ve known his parents for twenty years.  Whenever I’ve talked to them about his chances of making it to the big leagues, the conversation always started with a snort of skepticism on their part.  When his team visited Chattanooga, I met his mother at Lookouts stadium, got a credential and brought a camera (and a buddy, the one and only Brad Johnson, who helped me schlep gear).  The story was not easy to write, because it lacked many of the usual heroic qualities expected in sports stories.  But its focus on the player’s “plan B” made it unusual.

Even the Suspicious Package segments began to go by the wayside a bit.  There were a couple of weeks in May where I was unable / unwilling to produce one.  I recouped last week.  The one I wrote with producer David Ries was a hit internally, since Ries is such a deadpan, likeable, professional producer guy.  Fortunately it didn’t take much to sweet-talk him into joining me on camera.  He gave me none of the hand-wringing you often get from behind-the-scenes TV folk when pitching such stuff.

I hope to rebound this Sunday with a piece using the mechanical gorilla at the Two Minute Car Wash on Piedmont as a prop.  So, stay tuned and thanks for your patience.