SolitaryRoamer

Emotions

Last week everything went so smoothly. I finished stories ahead of time. I slept well. I even felt good.

This week it’s been the opposite. I had writer’s block — one of the worst cases since I began making a living as writer five years ago. I haven’t slept well, except for last night (which was wonderful) and I’ve had headaches and back pain all week.

To top it all off I’ve been extra emotional. Thursday night I watched “Waltz With Bashir,” an animated documentary about a man who served with the Israeli Army during the Lebanese War and was near a massacre of Palestinian women and children at one point. It was hard to watch much of the film, but because it was animated it was less realistic. Then, toward, the end, you hear the wailing Palestinian women and suddenly the animation fades and you’re watching actual documentary footage from the aftermath of the massacre. And there, lying on the streets are the tiny Palestinian children the Israeli soldiers brutally murdered. It was horrifying. And I lost it. I’ve never felt so emotional while watching a film — maybe because I understood that this was not fiction. This was real and those were real, murdered children.

So I was still a little emotional when I went to work Friday and began writing  a story about Amy and Melissa McDonald, two local sisters who taught at the Shanti Bhavan school in India over the summer. The school only accepts children from the “untouchables” class of people — lower than the lowest caste. It wasn’t my own writing or even the interviews with the sisters that got to me. It was Amy’s blog. She’s a journalism student and has a beautiful way with words. I made the decision to include snippets from her blog in the story. And it was reading those snippets that got me. Hearing her talk of these sweet, innocent children and the love she developed for them made me think of all the kids in these less-than-ideal circumstances across the globe. I thought of the Palestinian children in that documentary. I thought of the little African girls that occasionally come to St. George to dance and raise awareness of their plight. And I thought of the sweet Filipino children I knew on my mission there 10 years ago.

And I cried. Right there in the office, sitting at my computer, trying to write a story. I did well hiding it. The blurry eyes made it difficult to see the screen. And as I fell myself falling into tears, I would take a deep breath and fight it off. I had a deadline to meet. I couldn’t cry all over my keyboard.

Now I don’t cry in many stories. I can only think of a handful over the years that have brought me to tears. I cried when the local National Guard unit left for Iraq and I covered their farewell parade. I also cried when they came home and I saw those soldiers kissing their little children, some of whom they had never met. I cried while writing about a case of child abuse that made me realize I had to get off the news desk or get out of journalism. And I cried when covering the devastation left in the wake of Hurricane Katrina and the people left without homes. But that’s a handful of stories among the few thousand I’ve written in the past five years.

Then Friday night I went to see “The Time Traveler’s Wife” with a few friends. I loved the book (and cried while reading it) and was skeptical about the film version. I didn’t think it would come close to living up to the book. Of course, it wasn’t as good, but it wasn’t bad either. And there were a few instances that nearly brought me to tears. However, I tried to fight back the tears because I was at the movie with four girls (now that’s the way to see a chick flick). I had to appear tough, right? But when I admitted that the final scene did create one tear (one that I wasn’t able to control and fend off), one of the girls said it was “cute.” So maybe it’s OK to shows those emotions.

And maybe all these emotions I’ve felt in the past few days are the reason why I was able to sit down about an hour ago and finally type out a full synopsis of the novel that has been banging around in my head for about a year. And I like where it’s going. Like every other novel idea of mine, it begins with someone dying. And there’s plenty of heartbreak throughout the plot. But I think the ending may be hopeful. We’ll see. But I’m excited about it.

Maybe the hopefulness came from a great night in the mountains of Pine Valley. One of my friends hosted a party there at her family’s cabin and it was just a wonderfully fun and relaxing evening. It was a good day.

Don't forget home

I had another one of those days where the job satisfaction was very high. It wasn’t because of yet another City Council meeting. It wasn’t because of ongoing municipal election coverage. But once more I found out that a story I wrote made a difference.

Less than two weeks ago I wrote a story about how local charities like Dixie Care and Share were badly in need of food and financial donations. Because of Hurricane Katrina, the shelves of many local charities were empty.

But the day after my article appeared in the paper, the Care and Share received 10,000 pounds of food and an additional $10,000. They have now received nearly 30,000 pounds since the article ran.

I wrote about this very thing on my blog right after Hurricane Katrina hit. It was a great thing how the nation came together to donate to the victims of the hurricane. But in times of great disaster, we all must take care not to forget about our very neighbors who are always in need.

Images of Katrina

I finally got around to asking my editor for permission to post my photos I took while covering the Hurricane Katrina damage and recovery effort for The Spectrum. So on the left hand side of this page, with my other photos albums, you will see one featuring some of the photos I took while I was there. Still, as I've said on this blog and in the stories I wrote, even the images we see of the destruction can never really adequately show the damage caused by Katrina.

Not my time

I’m back from one of the most life-changing experiences of my life. And I almost died on the way home.

The trip was wonderful until I was two hours from home. Then as we were driving through Las Vegas, the pickup I was riding in blew out a tire. We were pulling a big fifth-wheel camping trailer so we pulled off to the side of the freeway as far as we could. There was at least a car’s width between us and the driving lanes of the freeway, but apparently that doesn’t even deter a drunk driver.

I was crouched down between the truck and the trailer, looking under the truck for the spare tire. The next thing I know I’m in spectacular pain and all I know is that my body is under part of the trailer. The only conscious thought I remember having was waiting for the wheels of the trailer to roll over me and crush me. It was such a weird feeling knowing I was about to die. But then for some reason I didn’t die. I think the stabilizer jack on the bottom of the trailer pushed me along and kept me from going under the tires. But still it dragged me along the pavement for about 10 feet.

When it stopped I jumped up, climbed over the trailer hitch and collapsed on a hillside along the freeway next to the guy I was driving with, Jeff. He had been bending over into the backseat looking for a jack when the trailer was hit so he was knocked onto the ground and hurt his shoulder. As for me, there was a really sharp pain in my lower left ribs, my back was killing me, I had cuts, scrapes and bruises all over and my face was covered in a layer of dust, gravel and broken glass. But I was alive and feeling very lucky.

I called 911 even though I could barely talk because of the pain in my ribs. I told the dispatcher there was likely some bad injuries in the car that hit us since it looked like it had rolled. But when the guy got out, he seemed just fine. I guess having a blood alcohol level of 0.18 helps when you get in a wreck and almost kill some people. He tried to run off but a police detective who happened onto the scene first stopped him.

The paramedics asked if we wanted to be transported to the ER but we decided since we were just hurting that we would have someone drive us home to St. George and just go to the ER there since we would probably have faster and better service anyway. Jeff called his sister-in-law, Amy, and her friend, Danielle — both of whom we had just dropped off in Las Vegas — to come and get us. They arrived and helped move our stuff into Danielle’s car. Since I wasn’t doing so well I was sitting in Danielle’s car when I heard a loud noise and Danielle screaming. She was behind the car loading stuff in the trunk so I thought she had been hit or something. I jumped out of the car and saw dozens of five-gallon buckets of stucco flying across the freeway spraying stucco (basically liquid cement) everywhere. Danielle had jumped onto her trunk to avoid having her legs taken out by the heavy buckets. But she slid off of the trunk into some of the stucco so she was covered in the stuff and crying hysterically. I thought she would go into shock or something so I made her sit with me on the hillside and just tried to keep her calm.

After the highway patrol filled out a second accident report because the semi carrying the stucco was driving like an idiot and didn’t slow down for the accident, we finally drove away and up to St. George. Amy and Danielle dropped Jeff and me off at the emergency room there. I got an X-ray of my ribs and a CT scan on my torso to make sure there was no internal bleeding. They were worried about my spleen, but the scan didn’t show any problems. They told me I could have some fractured ribs, but it was too hard to tell with the X-rays. So they cleaned up my wounds, gave me a prescription for some painkillers and sent me on my way.

After calling my family and my boss, I decided it was time to finish up my last couple of stories. So I spent four hours working to get everything done. Most thought I was crazy to work for four hours after getting out of the emergency room, but I didn’t want the stress of it hanging over me. And it was great seeing the stories on the front page of today’s paper.

Now I’m just going to spend a few days at home trying to heal and save my body from the shock of things like bumps while driving and such. The painkillers make things manageable but it sure hurt when I woke up this morning. It was just a bad ending to an otherwise amazing trip that changed my life.

For some reason my column about driving through New Orleans is not online so I may include it on my blog at a later date. But here are links to the rest of my stories from the trip:

Trip to disaster zone unforgettable one

St. George volunteers seek out the displaced

St. George man compares damage to atomic bombing

Shelters face more than supply troubles

Equestrian Center shelters evacuees

Incomprehensible

It was incomprehensible. There was no way I could have understood it if I had not experienced it myself. As much as I was at a loss for words when I went to the first Hurricane Katrina evacuee shelter, as surreal as my visit to New Orleans was, the destruction on the North Shore of Lake Pontchartrain in Slidell, La. was pretty bad. But even that was somewhat understandable give that many of the homes there were on stilts.

What really was incomprehensible was a neighborhood on the coast in Waveland, Miss. That was what I will never be able to explain in words. There was destruction everywhere. It looked like a giant bomb had gone off, except many of the thicker trees still were standing. The houses here were not just broken, they were destroyed, obliterated, annihilated. Standing in the middle of the destruction was one of the most terrifying experiences I’ve ever faced — and I was not in any immediate danger.

My trip is now over. We are returning home soon. And somehow there is a wireless connection at the KOA. Crazy. Hopefully by the time I return I will be able to better convey in words what I have seen.

Surreal

I just left New Orleans. It's freaking surreal there. So hard to describe, but nothing on TV will ever do it justice. It's so different when you are there. I'm still kind of freaked out.

No words ...

I'm in Baton Rouge. We went to a Red Cross shelter in Gonzales today where 1,750 people are staying. They have no homes. There are not words to describe it.

Heading South

Oh how the Daily Show was funny Thursday night. Among them: Bush announced there were two vacancies on the Supreme Court. Jon Stewart then said something like, “Coming from this president, that’s about as scary as saying Dick Cheney is coming to comfort you.” Sadly, those are both things Americans are facing. Bush wants to name Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez (see “Torture is OK”) for the Supreme Court (see my entry below about Bush appointees) and those poor souls on the gulf coast have to put up with Dick Cheney after all the rest of the misery they’ve been through.

If I had lost my home and possibly members of my family, the last person I would want to see would be Dick Cheney. Even if I didn’t think he is one of the scariest people alive, Cheney doesn’t exactly scream “comfort.” I mean, look at the guy.

Maybe if I’m lucky, I’ll run into the man (does he qualify as human?) while I’m there next week. Yes, today I got an offer to travel to Louisiana and Mississippi with a local man who is sending four semis full of relief supplies to the victims. We’ll be leaving at 5 a.m. Saturday and likely will be gone for about a week. I’m nervous, but excited. It’s the chance of a lifetime as a reporter from a small daily paper in Utah.

But I don’t know if I’m prepared for the emotion of it all. I’ve had a hard time just reporting from Southern Utah. Today I shed a few tears during an interview with an LDS bishop from Pascagoula. The first relief supplies his ward received — one week after the storm — were from the family I’ve been following with articles in The Spectrum. I could hear him crying as he said everyone who donated the supplies were their heroes.

Times like these I remember why I wanted to be a journalist.

It is possible to change the world one story at a time.

Freaking Brownie

Maybe it’s a good thing I’m not going to FEMA disaster training in Alabama like I was supposed to on Sept. 19. The FEMA director, Michael Brown, might show up and it would be hard to bite my tongue around him. Really, what is Bush thinking when he appoints some of these people? This guy said the federal government didn’t even know about the hurricane victims housed at the New Orleans Convention Center even though they were all over the TV. Ted Koppel even asked “Brownie” if the federal government had television.

Seriously, where does Bush find these people? Does he have a pool of people labeled stupid and/or evil that he occasionally taps for federal appointments? Maybe he really should have let that guy with mob ties take over Homeland Security. At least the mob knows how to organize.

A Movie Moment

Ever have one of those “I feel like I’m in a movie” moments? I get them on occasion, but only if the right song is playing. I also usually get them when a relationship ends. This weekend was no exception, bringing me a couple of those moments.

Most vividly, I was driving home from work at 9:30 p.m. Tuesday after a long day of trying to concentrate on work while fighting frustration with the Hurricane Katrina situation. I had the pleasure of writing another story on the local family’s mission to help their relatives in Mississippi, but it also frustrated me more knowing what some of the people went through there because of the government’s incompetence.

So I was tired. And as I pulled off at my freeway exit and came to a stop at the red right-turn arrow, the movie experience started. I was listening to the smooth sounds of Amos Lee’s “Keep It Loose, Keep It Tight” for the first time and everything turned cinematic. It’s hard to describe, but I felt like I was at that emotional slow part of the movie before everything turns around and works out just fine. The only thing missing was a lonely walk around the supermarket with some soft 80s song playing in the background.

Instead I rented a couple of DVDs at Blockbuster and headed home to write a story on blogging for St. George Magazine and a restaurant review for The Spectrum’s entertainment insert, Where It's @. And that is what I’m taking a break from doing right now at 3 a.m.

Yeah, my life would be a pretty boring movie.