When You Burn A Church

Several churches have been set fire and destroyed in Alabama. Let me re-work that sentence. Several church houses have been set fire and destroyed in Alabama. Whoever does this kind of thing does not destroy the church, because the church is the body of people who gather under that roof.

Rather, someone has burned the extra money saved up at the end of the week; maybe from selling a few extra dozen eggs. I am sure dozens of cake-walks and bake sales went up in smoke when those buildings burned, along with all of the love and care put into that fine southern food.

I can smell the sweat equity the men of those churches spent to build those churches, to maintain them, keep decent roofs on them when their own houses might have been leaking. The gallons of paint spread on Saturdays so the pastor could comment on Sunday about how nice the place looked.

Memories cannot be burned, but landmarks can go away in a pyre and a plume of smoke; places where weddings were held, final rites were said over the dead, and countless deep, deep decisions made over how a person should handle some personal business.

There is a great groaning when a church burns.

Firefighters hate to lose the battle and sometimes have to be nearly dragged out of the places where they may even worship themselves. Church fires can be dangerous because of large open spaces that draw air, that dangerous third part of the fuel,heat triad that takes down buildings.

It's hard to watch church members watch their church burn.

It's even harder to think of who would do such a thing.

That long-time symbol of freedom, love, peace, redemption and respect for our fellow man must be a powerful threat to some people. Or some thing.

You always wonder if there's someone filled with enough hate, anger, or rage out there. If you have any kind of public life at all, you wonder, and worry sometimes.

I have been on-the-air since 1969. That's a long time. There have been a few incidents where I was worried for my life.

The one that comes to mind first, was when I was covering a protest march by a white supremacist in Atlanta, and an angry crowd was throwing rocks the size of bricks. One of them could have easily cracked a skull. Fortunately, they missed any vital parts. One man, a paramedic did get a bloody cut from a rock that grazed his head.

That same day, some Klansmen chased me into the corner of a parking lot, and if it had not been for a photographer for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution who scared them away by snapping photos, I am sure they would have attacked me.

Once I was filming (yes, film..and I again date myself) a stabbing in Knoxville, and a man whispered a threat for me to stop shooting or I would end up stabbed, too.

Years and years ago, some law officers threatened to club me if I continued to take photos of a fight. Later on, I learned it was a county judge drunk out of his mind and flailing away at officers.

I have been way too close to a couple of shootings, and crash landed in a helicopter twice. Oddly enough, the flying mishaps are the only ones that have left lasting damage through a bad back.

Police have taken my photo and investigated me because I was at a few too many crime scenes where victims of a serial killer were found. And once, I nearly got into a fight myself, when a jackass brayed a taunt while I was trying to cover an execution.

Once a man cursed me continually while I was trying to record an interview. He even smacked me on the back of the head. As I turned to poke him in the kisser, a very wise photographer from Channel Eleven grabbed my hand and said "it's not worth it". He was right.

And since that last threat, those words..."it's not worth it" are coming back in my mind, in a new context.

Forget South Beach, Here's The South Knox Diet

Everybody has some kind of diet.

There’s the South Beach, The Bible Diet, The Sonoma Diet, and all kinds of companies where you pay money for information on how you can lose weight by their method. I suppose they all work to one extent or another.

My wife found a diet of her very own. It’s called “The Have My Innards Re-Plumbed Diet”. It works better than anything I have seen. After five months, she can run around inside clothes she used to wear, and never touch the fabric.

But I am not too big of a fan of leaving the operating room with tubes placed in naturally occurring body orifices, plus a couple of extra tubes where the doc made his own sump.

I think I will write my own diet book. People tend to buy diet books without ever considering whether they will follow the rules of the diet. So I believe I’d be pretty safe, plus, if they bothered to follow it for a few days, think of the endorsements from happy followers.

The first day would go something like this:

Breakfast: A cat head biscuit or two with country ham and red eye gravy made with strong coffee, fried apples, and extra biscuits with cow butter and some apple butter made outside in a copper kettle over an open fire. If you have coffee or tea, please use artificial sweetener.

Dinner: Pot Roast with carrots and onions, Irish Potatoes boiled and served with butter, green beans, and cornbread. Banana Pudding and plain tea with no sugar. If you drink sweet tea made with artificial sweetener instead of sugar, your eyebrows will grow together and you will want to move up north.

Supper: Meat Loaf, mashed potatoes and gravy, corn on the cob, slaw, and macaroni and cheese. Please make sure the macaroni is not from a box, but from scratch. Yeast rolls, but leave off the butter to save calories. You may, however use some gravy on them in moderate amounts. Coca Cola or Pepsi, not “pop”, and not “diet” anything. After dinner; odd-man for the rest of the “nanner puddin”.

Evening snack: Slice of chocolate layer cake, or cornbread and buttermilk in a glass. That ought to hold you ‘til morning.

That’s a diet I could live with. But somewhere, my doctor’s stethoscope is burning.

Alive, Then Dead

I can't imagine how awful it was for those families in West Virginia to have hope, then relief, and then everything snatched away from them in a moment.

Of course, I'm talking about the horrible mistake that was made, when somehow the families waiting on news from a mine explosion were told their loved ones were found alive, with only one fatality. Turns out, it was just the opposite, only one man had survived.

So who gets the blame for making the mistake of telling family members that the miners were found alive? We may never know. But I am sure that the person, or persons responsible know themselves what they did.

This event will be the object of studies in many journalism and public relations courses. I think it shows several things:

• The need for one person, and only one person who speaks for emergency crews and the company or persons involved in a crisis. There should be one place to go for information, and one person to give it. That human funnel's job is to make sure the correct information is given.
• Family members should have been the first to be notified about their loved ones. Why in the world did the Mine Company wait so long, knowing that the families were celebrating, when they should have been making funeral plans. Bad news is hard to break to people, but it was terribly wrong to delay it.
• Talking in "code" as they were inside the mine...such as "one item found" when they meant one person found...is extremely dangerous when communications equipment does not work properly. Better to talk "in the clear" and be clear. And why was a loudspeaker open to an entire tent full of people at the command post?
• There's a tremendous competetion in the news business, and newspapers are time conscious also...because of their web sites. The pressure on reporters at-the-scene to "get it first" is tough.
  
• Did reporters make a mistake by releasing the news? Not if their source had been reliable and official, such as a mine company executive, or someone with the rescue team, or better yet, from a family member who sincerely believed their loved one had been found alive, and had been told so by somebody...(who knows who, yet?)
• Mine work is complicated, dangerous, and tough. Few people understand exactly what happens under the earth. There were many common mis-speaks, the most often statement was that "oxygen" was being pumped into the mine. They meant "air". Oxygen would accelerate any fire, much more than air.
• And, we are talking about the middle of West Virginia, in a place that is not used to scores of reporters and cameras, and not used to dealing with that kind of magnifying glass scrutiny. It's easy to see how the claw for information could get out of hand.
  
• I really fault the governor's office for following rather than leading. Why didn't the governor assign someone to help the mine company with handling accurate information?
  

There are lot's more criticisms and observations.

But none of it... will bring back those who died in that mine.

Mountain Heartbreak

I got a long distance call from my youngest daughter this evening. She wanted to know if I had been called to go to West Virginia where thirteen miners are trapped below the surface.

She remembered the story I had told her. And her call brought back memories. None of them were good.

In Whitesburg, Kentucky in the late 1970's, The Scotia Mine blew up. And when a crew went in to rescue trapped miners, it blew up again.

More than twenty men died. I remember the family members standing, waiting on word on their loved ones. The weather was cold, miserable, and wet. And the inky dark seemed to soak up the illumination from your headlights.

Nobody was telling reporters much of anything. I spent the night in some guard shack, waiting on any information to call back to Channel Ten. This was before cellular phones, but I doubt they would have worked in Letcher County, anyway. We had to bum a telephone, and call the newsroom collect.

But my misery was nothing. Those people waiting to hear if their daddy, brother, uncle, husband was alive or dead...that was misery.

The story ended like so many other mine accidents where men work way below the earth's surface to gouge coal out of the Kentucky earth.

They were all dead.

And I don't care if I ever cover another mine explosion again.

Broadcasting's Needle Is Stuck

There's a lot of heat, and not much light coming from the syndicated talk shows at the end of this year. And television news is as stuck as a phonograph needle on an old '78 RPM record. For those who are not familiar with how a a stuck phonograph needle sounds, ask your grandpappy.

There's no denying that the issue of federal snooping on it's own citizens is a major issue, one of the top ones of the year. After the second week of talking about it, though, we are running out of things to say. Talk show hosts are repeating themselves and the callers are saying the same thing.

It's under investigation, Congress is home drinking hot Dr. Pepper and eating chicken salad finger sandwiches. The issue has been talked to death for now. Please, wait until something new happens. The self-appointed Washington TV experts need some time off, too.

There are some excellent reporters in Washington, DC. One of them is a former WSB newsman, Peter Maier. He is fair, conscientious, and a hard worker. Hence, he is on radio. Listen for his reports on CBS, and Westwood One. Peter was the "go to" reporter when they needed someone with experience, compassion, and ability to cover the horrific Tsunami when it happened.

If I see one more Katrina recovery story, I am going to evacuate myself. Every potential angle has been followed in the past two weeks. Why? Because it is a slow news time. Those year-ender pieces from New Orleans say very little that's new. Same for Tsunami pieces. They are rebuilding a shattered piece of the world.

If you ever hear "continue" in the first line of a news story---beware. "The clean-up continues" , "The furor over internet snooping continues". The word "continues" is news-speak at best for:"nothing new is happenning", and at worst for:"whoever wrote this couldn't come up with a compelling lead".

Here are just four on my list of stories that I believe are not getting the coverage they deserve right now:

• Newspapers in Europe and in Turkey say the United States and allies are planning a pre-emptive strike against Iran and it's nuclear industry.
• What is happening in the housing and construction industry? Is there such a demand for materials to the Gulf Coast that prices in other places might cause a big slowdown in new home building? And what would that do to existing home sales, home improvements,etc?
• Our southern border is broken, and bleeding immigrants.
• What are our elementary, junior, and high school students learning. How does this state compare with others. And how many teachers are saying "forget it" to disclipline problems and government paperwork, and either entering another field or private school?

If I were in on one of those assignment/editorial meetings, I would bring those ideas to the table, and some more. And then, I would probably be asked to go for coffee.

Catching Up On Old Business

My apologies for neglecting this site for so long!

Somewhere between the last post and this writing, Christmas happened. Many of my friends have said the same thing; that this Christmas was upon us quickly, and it was very hard to get into the "Christmas Spirit"

If you watch and listen to some of the pundits, there was a war on Christmas this year.

I would respectfully submit that whatever war is waged on Christ and the celebration of His birth is already won by The Prince Of Peace. Jesus Christ lived out the prophecies of ages before him, conqured death, and did exactly what He said He would do.

I am not the best Christian witness, nor a Bible scholar. But even, as the song says "a wretch like me" realizes that the war on Christmas is a paper tiger. The war is over. Christ won the war, not with His birth, but with his sacrifice.

It seems to me that there is no war, just an effort to highlight any and all efforts against Christian oriented displays.

They can take down all of the displays. The Truth will live on.

I read the back of The Book.

THE END OF TRICKS AND TREATS

It ended last night when the doorbell rang at 9:30- six hours before my wake-up time. It was the last doorbell of an era.

No more Halloween at this house. I am sorry to say that the once-fun practice of dressing up and going door-to-door for treats has ended. For good.

For us baby boomers, it was a fun thing to do. It was elementary school-age fun. Costumes were seldom store-bought. The best we could usually manage was a hobo, a ghost (made from an old sheet), or a cowboy or princess. It was simple. The little ones are still cute as ladybugs, princesses, and spider-men.

But last night, kids old enough to drive themselves door-to-door were ringing my doorbell. They had a peck of candy...at least ten bucks worth of loot, and enough sugar to send Dumbo the elephant into a three week sugar high. I have an idea for the older kids: Get a job and buy your own candy!

And then there is the dark side of Halloween. It wasn't considered years ago, but now there are sinister connotations. One kid- about ten years old told me he was the magician from The Dark Side- a comment that tells me he is hearing that kind of talk from somewhere- and I don't think it's Sunday School.

Churches have tried to combat the day with "trunk or treat" or similar programs. I say forget it. What would be wrong with saying that Halloween is a day when dark forces are celebrated, and we simply don't do that?

In Atlanta, a convicted sex offender was running one of those "haunted houses". Outside of the presentations by various churches, we are not sure exactly what our kids might see in a place designed to scare the daylights out of you.

There are real monsters out there. And call me backward believing Bible Belt ignorant if you want to...but I believe when we start fooling around with demons, and messing with the dark side, we might be tickling the tail of a dragon that is better left alone.

Dress up. Eat all the candy corn you want. Say "boo" to each other. But next year, it will be on your dime, mom and dad.


As for me and my house... .

STANDING IN THE WIND TO PROVE IT'S A HURRICANE

It appears NBC weatherman Al Roker is catching some criticism of his antics during the latest hurricane, when he was knocked down by the high wind. He defends his actions, and goes on to imply that some other journalists are simply jealous. Here is a copy of an e-mail I sent him:

Twice, I have reported live from the middle of a deadly gun battle. Both times, I happened to find myself caught in the crossfire. I have been in other dangerous places. Once I was trying to get natural sound of a C-5B cargo plane, and the jet wash knocked me down and tumbled me about a hundred feet along the ground.

But when I covered hurricanes on the Georgia and South Carolina coast, I knew it was going to be bad, and had sense to get inside a shelter during the worst part of it. The real story is not what is happening outside. The real story is the fear and worry that is happening inside shelters while the wind is raging. And to tell you the truth, I didn’t see any of that during any hurricane coverage this season.

Did you?