An Early Christmas Gift

"So, it's not like a gay couple is going to be able to rush out and get married tomorrow," I ask attorney Peggy Tomsic, really as an aside, at the end of our interview at 3PM on Friday.  Tomsic, who argued for marriage equality in front of Judge Robert Shelby,  sits up in her chair, adjusts her reading glasses, and with some urgency, makes a dramatic correction, "they could go out and get married right now!" she peers at me.  "Wait, what?" I respond, and at that moment, I realize, history is unfurling in front of us all, and I am just now understanding the implications, and the early Christmas gift getting ready to be delivered to a large portion of Utah's population.

Peggy Tomsic

I knew that Judge Robert Shelby's ruling that Utah's ban on gay marriage was unconstitutional was big, but I assumed, wrongly of course, that there must have been a stay in place until the state's inevitable years long appeals of the Shelby's proclamation was settled.  There was not.

Shelby has ruled that banning gay couples from marrying as Utah voters had done overwhelmingly in 2004, violated those citizens due process, and consequently is a violation of the U.S. Constitution.

Thus began a frenetic, electric, buzzy, and most importantly, monumental day in the news.

The Salt Lake County Clerk's office is one of a handful of a few that decides they will begin issuing marriage licenses.  The clerk's office is bulging within the hour.  Impromptu weddings are being conducted in the halls, and back offices.  For those couples it was absolute, unexpected jubilation.

For those who support the idea of traditional marriage, judge Shelby's ruling was equally unexpected, but evoked a wholly different emotion.

Judge Robert Shelby

"So, attending any weddings anytime soon?" I joke with Gayle Ruzicka, the head of the ultra-conservative Eagle Forum as the photographer quickly adjusts his focal length on the camera in preparation of our interview, "oh yeah," she laughs on her porch, adorned with a pair of fanciful snowmen and, as you might imagine, a complete manger scene.  "Can you believe it?!" she joshes, "I didn't even get an invitation to Jim's wedding!"  Ruzicka is talking about State Senator Jim Dabakis, the openly gay lawmaker, who was among the first to be married in the wake of the marriage equality ruling, and he  did so very publicly on 2News live at 5 PM.

Gayle Ruzicka, Eagle Forum

Ruzicka, is much reviled and conversely, beloved by many in Utah for her unabashed and often curt criticism of anything that falls slightly to the left of her ardently conservative views.  Despite her prickly persona, and pronounced politics, in conversation she always allows for some humor.

When the camera gears up, Ruzicka assumes the position, and begins to breath fire, using words like "incompetent," to describe the Utah Attorney General, and "disgusting," to characterize, Salt Lake City Mayor Ralph Becker, proceeding over wedding in Salt Lake County.

Ruzicka finds herself talking about a very different Utah, a Utah that she and fellow opponents of gay marriage, ironically helped to create.

The campaign to ban gay marriage was frenzied 9 years ago, with pro-traditional marriage groups working long hours, knocking on countless doors, and sending out thousands of fliers in the mail.  They worked hard, and their work payed off for them, the Amendment passed overwhelmingly in a referendum by 66 percent of the vote.

Had the ban never existed though, Peggy Tomsic would not have had anything to challenge, and Judge Shelby would have had nothing to overturn.  Ruzicka and others it appears, made all the slapdash wedding spilling into the halls of the Salt Lake County building on 2100 South, possible.

As we pack up our gear, and leave Ruzicka's Alpine, Utah home, I turn and toss a parting quip, "Don't forget to pick up some wedding gifts this weekend," She guffaws, "Yeah right!", and waves us on cheerily, unaware that in many ways she actually helped wrap the gift of marriage equality for gay couples, just days before Christmas.

Accidentally Perfect.

"You know," I say, as the white lights from our Christmas tree dance across her clear eyes, I caress the flawless, gentle skin of her cheek,  "I'm going to get old," I press aside a lock of blond hair that, like a velvet curtain in a old movie house,  reveals her large, deep blue eyes.  "I'm going to get old much faster than you."

My wife Amanda is 17 years younger than me, I am 43, she, 27.   "I'll love you forever," she frowns, offended at the mere thought that she would ever find my sagging skin, creaking knees, or chaotic morning snorts unappealing.  "You are my dream man," she says as she thrust her blonde head into my white t-shirt and closes her eyes, pressing her forehead hard into my chest, and she smiles, content.  "I love you," I say as I run my fingers over her recently washed and beautifully chaotic, accidentally perfect mane.

Oddly enough, my dad was 17 years older than my mother. There are patterns in nature, birds, they say, fly south for the winter and the currents keep salty water moving across the globe, and it turns out, at least in the case of the Jones family, we follow familiar patterns as well.

I never thought I would replicate my father's life.  I thought babies, families and dogs were for squares, and I never wanted a wailing child, or K-9 eager to play fetch, to ever interrupt my date with a mug of beer, or a rocks glass teeming with whiskey.

Today, at the dog park, as Daisy bounded towards a crusty old pug, and wiggled her bobbed tail at the sight of a spastic Terrier, I found myself, encases in gentle, subtle, happiness, better than the achy, bloated high I got as I dragged fermented hops out a bottle.

Today I find myself, smiling unconsciously,  at a life I didn't particularly try to achieve, but one, that I stumbled upon on with accidental perfection.

A while back, Amanda and I kicked our way down the wet gravel of Doolin, in Ireland, just a mile from the Cliffs of Moher, it was frigid, and the icy drizzle, peppered our faces with uncomfortable pinpoints of stinging rain.   The ornate restaurant seemed "good enough," as it was flanked by tour buses, and purple haired grandmas from Kansas slowly creaking their way off the massive people hauler and into the teeming restaurant. The building was crammed full, like the backpacks worn by 20 something college kids from England on holiday looking for an "authentic" Irish experience.

As the waiters, all in matching t-shirts sporting the restaurant's name, scurried quickly from table to table, bringing plate after plate of fish and chips to bulging tourist, Amanda and I, burst from the trap, back into the rain, and took in deep breaths, as if we had been submerged under water for too long.  We walked for a quarter mile in the damp air, and pushed our way into a nondescript little pub.  It was serene and soft inside, only the clouded natural light, barely pressing through the smudged widows lit the place.  We sipped Guiness, as a handful of American's quietly chatted and laughed.  Amanda and I warmed by the popping, hot embers, housed by a 500 year old fire place.  As Amanda pressed the spoon into her mouth, her eyes widened, "This is the best claim chowder I've ever had!" she grinned, as we both dipped into the white creamy soup.  After a couple of hours (and more than a couple of beers) we began gently singing to each other, composing a little song, then as we giggled, recorded the tune into her cell phone,  then we kissed.  It was accidental perfection.

In 6 months, Amanda will give birth to our first child. I'm much older than my wife, like my father before me.  The parallels may simply be accidental,  but I know, they are perfect.

Baking Up Trouble

Timothy Lawson, is a name dropper.  Constantly evoking the nature of his friendship with former Attorney General Mark Shurtleff.  In fact he did it so much in casual conversation, that his easy use of the AG's name, would eventually, one attorney in the AG's office prophetically predicted, "bring down the whole house of cards."

Lawson was charged yesterday with 6 felonies, including tax charges and trying to intimidate potential witnesses, just to name a few.  The Davis and Salt Lake County District Attorneys alleged that Lawson was a bit of a political fixer.  He would get paid thousands of dollars by a crooked businessman, Marc Jenson, to try and curry favor with Utah's top cop.  Jenson, although serving time in  jail on fraud charges bought by Shurleff's office, was paying for Shurleff, and his deputy John Swallow to stay at a swanky California villa.  Lawson allegedly did all the dirty work, using Jenson's money to pay for Swallow and Shurtleff, to get massages, and gorge themselves on fresh fish pulled right from the Pacific Ocean while the squinted into the soothing West Coast sun.

Lawson, according to charging documents, was quick to throw out Shurtleff's name when he and Jenson, didn't like what someone was doing.  Lawson allegedly told one man that he was Mark Shurtleff's Porter Rockwell, referring to the notorious and colorful "Avenging angel of Mormondom." Rockwell was the body guard for both Joseph Smith and Brigham Young, some historians say Rockwell, was quick to do the bidding of the two men, sometimes violently.  Rockwall was said to have tried to assassinate the governor of Missouri by shooting Lilburn Boggs through a window in his study, Rockwell was arrested, tried and acquitted of all charges.

Unlike Rockwell, it appears Lawson's most active weapon was his mouth.  One neighbor told me, that his son had a playground tiff with one of Lawson's daughters, Lawson allegedly called up this neighbor and warned him to keep his boy in check because Lawson, "Is good friends with Mark Shurtleff."  "Really?"  The balding man exclaimed, shaking his head, as he watched a handful of FBI agents scurry around the exterior of Lawson's expansive, Tudor home.

"He's a wheeler-dealer," the neighbor told me as he walked into his home, looking back one more time at federal agents as they rolled large plastic crates into Lawson's house.

Lawson, is, of all things, a baker.  He apparently does a sizable business, selling gluten-free bakery goods from right inside his home.  He has dozens, if not hundreds of large, yellow food crates stacked high on his front porch, and at least two large cargo trucks, crowded tightly into his driveway.  Even as a simple baker, Lawson found an opportunity to puff up his cream puffs, by making mention of the Attorney General in the "About me" section on his bakery website:

They see him as the “Shield of Truth” against injustice, the voice of the faceless masses and the “Sword of Justice” for the people’s right to live in a free Democracy. To me, he was my dear friend, my sounding board and my confidant that always listened, always cared, and always tolerated me.

It's customary to mention when you started your business and why, but it seems a bit odd to expound romantically about the prudence of the attorney general on a website that sells multi-grain dinner rolls.

"What's going on in there!?"  An older woman says, darting her blonde head into the open front window of our news truck.  "Lawson's been arrested," I say,  as I prepare for my 5 PM liveshot.  "Good!" she folds her arms with satisfaction.  I thought she was excited about Lawson's incarceration because of all the news about he and the AG's office, but that wasn't the case, "Hopefully now we can do something about all this bakery business baloney." The woman claims Lawson has 30 employees who report to his HOUSE for duty everyday, crowding the winding, narrow streets outside his home.  "I have no idea how this has continued to go on," she says, almost shouting.

Lawson has been running this business out of his house for some time say neighbors, and despite repeated complaints to the city, he continues to produce gluten-free sourdough bread and pecan caramel bars from in his kitchen.

Perhaps Lawson's "wheeler-dealing" allows him to continue to run a large bakery in a residential area or maybe he tossed around a certain name to help keep production running, either way, as he sits in jail trying to come up with $250,000 dollars bail, it is clear, Lawson has baked up a batch of trouble for himself, and it's possible, others might get a taste of that as well.

One Last Chance

He slinks into the pawn shop, low to the ground, shoulders hunched, eyes flashing left to right as he passes each customers, fearful that one might lash out in violence towards him.  He is rail thin, and his cheeks are concave, and his slight frame accented by a shaved head, which makes me think of grainy news reels and photos taken in the waning days of World War II, as Allied troops stumbled into places like Auchwitz and Treblinka.

This was years ago, I was working at a competing station at the time, and a wild police chase had brought me to this State Street pawn shop.  The whole screeching mess crash landed near the store front, and I was wondering if anyone inside had seen anything.

The shop, with its high ceilings was a chaotic mess.  The store was bulging with grey metal shelves crammed with an assortment of overpriced, worthless trinkets.  The cinder block walls are painted yellow.  The shade is sickly, like the hue that coats the inside of a frequent smoker's car windshield.  It smells of mothballs and gasoline, and is filled with old screw drivers, covered in a thin layer of maroon rust, and a wall lined with what appeared to be miles of guitars, surrendered by struggling musicians, or more likely, novices who purchased that guitar to "get girls," only to find the "like new" instrument sits in the corner for years, unplayed.

"I really didn't see anything," the owners tells me with disinterested indifference.  "I've seen a lot of things here," he adds, "but I didn't see what happened over there." he announces as he points at the crime scene tape across the street with a bent ski pole over a row of dusty, outdated boom boxes, and CD players.

As I glance around at the Weed eaters, coated in dry oil, and look at the scuffed snow boards, the slinking skinny man fumbles with old TV remotes, and fiddles with the rabbit ears on an old console, I can tell, he isn't interested in the electronics.  He makes his way to the counter, and pokes and prods at a well-worn plastic grocery bag, hunting for the opening, then pulls out a set of frequently used jumper cables.  I imagine how many times he must have yanked those black and red wires out of his cluttered trunk to bring back to life an exhausted old jalopy, that likely should have been retired years ago.  He places the cables on the counter with gentleness, as if the dirty, matted mess is a Faberge egg.  He says nothing, but looks at the clerk with wide-eyed hopefulness, rocking quickly from foot to foot, dragging the back of his rough hand across his wet nose.  "What do you think?" He finally asks gently.  The owner, continues to jot prices on small white tags with little white strings attached, knows he isn't going to take the cables, gives them a casual look, "I can't use 'em, bro." he shrugs, returning to his pricing.  "Oh," the little man," says pulling his palm over the top of his shaved head, then stuffing his hands into the pockets of his grey sweatshirt, pondering his next move.

He stands for a moment then, hunching his shoulders even lower than when he entered the store, floats to the door.  "Hey!" the owner announces, "you're cables."  "Uh," the man looks back with his eyes now glistening with moisture, "you can have them," then he presses out the door, and hustles across the street on foot.  The car on which he once used those jumper cables long dead, stolen, or sold, and the cables, likely his only possession, left hopelessly on a counter where plenty of last chances had been placed before.

Pain and Generosity

"No really, we can't," I decline politely as photographer Dave Yost and I make our way back in the dark to our news van.  After a few steps Dave whispers to me, "I think she's following us."  I glance over my shoulder, to see a smiling young woman in a sarong dutifully trailing behind us. "Again, really, we can't, you are too kind," I smile to the gentle face holding two heaping plates of food, "I'll get in trouble if you don't take these," she says grinning stubbornly.   Refusing the saucers filled with cake, turkey wraps, and homemade rolls would have been impossible.

The Asiata family, despite their stunning loss, still manage to pile mountains of food onto 6 separate plates and offer them to the three pairs of photographers and reporters who had just invaded their home.

Pita Asiata was killed Monday night when the charter bus he was driving rear ended a large industrial auger attached to a construction truck.  He was killed instantly, sending a shock wave through his close, Pacific Island family.  Perhaps most known to Utahn's, among his 5 children, is Matt Asiata, a University of Utah football star, who later, as an undrafted free agent, made the 53 man roster with the Minnesota Vikings.

The Asiata's have just directed our coordinated horde of journalists into a medium sized living room.  The furniture, we are told, had been removed, and the floor is lined with blankets, for a family ceremony.  Still remaining however, are rows of plaques, pictures, and trophies lining the walls, documenting the impressive sports career of Matt Asiata.  "His blood runs in my veins," says the bulky running back, in a purple Vikings T-shirt, his face punctuated by a pair of Ray Ban sunglasses, to shield his teary eyes, from the gaggle of strangers.

As we pack up our gear, Sega Asiata directs an army of nieces and nephews who are flooding out of the Asiata kitchen armed with plates of food.  "It's our culture," Sega smiles a grin comprised of one part pride, in her Pacific Islander background, 2 parts pain, over the loss of her father.

This is not the first time the Asiata's have fed us today. About 4 hours earlier, I stood on Pita's front stoop, visiting the family unannounced.  "We just want to give you the opportunity to talk about your father," I tell Sega. "Give me a second," she says kindly, "I just want to talk to my family for a minute."  As Dave and I stand awkwardly in the Asiata's yard, a pair of nephews hustle after a baseball, an aunt embraces another family member, and an uncle hauls a casserole dish, into the family living room.

Moments later 3 teenagers pour out of the front door, one with a pair of glass plates teeming with food, another with two chairs, and a third with 2 can's of Coke. My head darts from left to right as we are surrounded by unexpected generosity.  Sega follows, "will you come back at 7?" She asks kindly.  I agree, as I glance down at the giant plate of food, "oh," she says, "take them, give them to the D.I." she smiles, unconcerned about where these dishes, which have likely been part of happier family gatherings in the past, will eventually end up.

I've seen this sort of unabashed kindness many times before in the Pacific Island culture.  Several months ago, I found Myself in a very similar situation, as I stood in the garage of Sgt. Ivan Taufa.  His son Josh, while on an LDS mission, was electrocuted in Guatemala, while fixing a leaky roof for a family.  As Ivan collected himself for an interview, his brother, sat quietly next to a large, red and white cooler, mixing a concoction of watermelon juice and shredded coconut with a large wooden spoon.  "it's called Otai," he nods towards the swirling bath of red and white.  "it's for the family, when they all gather here tomorrow," He then snatches a red Solo cups from a stool nearby and scoops a healthy helping into the plastic and thrusts it into my hand, "Otai," he says nodding.  I take a large swig,  it is delicious.  I gulp down the last bit, then conduct my interview with Ivan.  As I'm leaving, Ivan's brother sloshes another ocean into the cup, and forces it into my hand, "Otai," he says, then gathers me up into his ample frame and gives me a bear hug.

Just moments before interviewing Matt and his sister Sega about their father, I hand those 2 family dishes, back to an Asiata aunt, "We cleaned them," I announce, She looks at them stunned, "you didn't have to do that," she shakes her head, "neither did you," I smile.

Much Ado About Everything

"What a bunch of Twinkie eating, stupid, fat idiots," John fumes. Danielle comments a few spaces below, suggesting that the two men be tossed in jail, and not JUST left there to pay their debt to society, but rather, she suggests, the two should be visited in the middle of the night by a fellow inmate with a disturbing kind of love on his mind.  There are nearly 1000 comments on the 2 News Facebook page, and those 2 make up the "polite," things people are saying about Dave Hall and Glenn Taylor.  Also, the two men have reportedly received death threat.  The reaction that the so called Goblin Topplers are receiving is akin to what you might hear people seethe about a child molester, or puppy killer.

I was caught off guard by how vehemently people would react to the actions of the two men who noisily pushed over a hoodoo rock formation at Goblin Valley State Park.  The video has, as they say, gone viral, as shows Taylor belly  up to a 200 million year old rock formation, wiggle and wrestle the 2 ton sandstone boulder to the ground as his son and his buddy Dave, running the camera, whoop and high five as if Taylor had just won a hot dog eating contest.  The two men contend when they stumbled upon a wobbly boulder, that it was just a "gust of wind," away from tumbling to the ground and possibly killing someone.  Dave Hall told the Salt Lake Tribune, he was "prompted," into action.

When I stopped Taylor as he was pulling out of his driveway, he was unaware that an investigation into his actions had already been launched.  "I thought we were doing a good deed," he murmured sheepishly.  It appears the weight of the consequences of that toppled boulder was beginning to rest on him.  Since I interviewed him, in subsequent interviews, he has shown weary remorse for his actions.

Dave Hall's is different.  On the stoop of his large, newly built mini-mansion, "you know what, I don't regret it one bit," Hall chirped, forearm resting casually on the cherry wood door frame, "would you do it again," I asked, "absolutely," he says with headstrong, unabashed, certaintly,  "ab-so-lute-ly," he continues, as if the question is offensive.  I half expected him to look into the camera lens, tip his baseball cap, bow,  and say with a grin, "you're welcome humankind."

In a country that seems unable to agree on anything, religion, politics, even how to keep the trains running, (see: Government shutdown) it seems we can agree on the conscience altering beauty of nature.  Maybe that's why people are having such a primal reaction to the goblin toppling.

Places like the Goblin Valley, weathered, worn, and shifted over 200 million years, unite everyone.  If you believe in an all seeing, all knowing omnipotent God, then you can marvel at his, or her majesty.  If you believe it is all just a wonderful cosmic mistake, you can shake your head and stare into the draping of stars above you and ponder how it all got there.

I can only image how many lives have been altered, under the night sky, laying beneath a sandstone hoodoo, under a cloak of celestial pinpoints.  How many people have been inspired to put on a monk's cloak, sell all their worldly possessions, or commit to gaining everything money can buy?

There is something rather comical about the Goblin formations, they make you think of the drippy, dopey animation in a Dr. Suess book, but there is also something empirically serious about the place, a place that has outlasted presidents, nations, and empires.  A place that precedes our species, and people believe it deserves a certain reverence.  When Glenn Taylor pulled a WWF wrestling move on that boulder, and his friends whooped clownishly, and flexed their imaginary muscles, some people might think the gaggle looked as if they were at a Super Bowl party, celebrating after a "pick 6," and wondering who will bring the guacamole.  The school yard antics don't respect the wonder in which they find themselves.  You could say, It's like spiking a football in the Sistine Chapel.

The men believe they saved lives, but some people would likely argue, it isn't up to a salesman for a pre-paid legal company and a person in a souvenir San Diego T-shirt, to permanently alter a piece of nature's masterwork.

In a few days the hub bub about the hoodoos will pass, and Taylor and Hall will return to their lives, and most people will forget about the video, and the faces connected to it.  More importantly the Goblins will continue to stand sentry in Emery County, and will outlast us all, depending of course, on what two Highland, Utah residents might have planned for their Memorial Day Weekend.

Not Idle Hands

When I shook his beefy palm, I could feel the hard callouses, like nobs on a bicycle tire.  After a vice grip shake, he pulled back his gritty fist.  That, and his other hand are both darkened after years of being splashed, and submerged in oil, lubricants, and gasoline.  Those thick stubby fingers, are now permanently tattooed with his past projects.  The solvents have seeped deep into the cuts, and heavily lined mitts.  I Imagine, Sam, preparing for a wedding or a funeral scrubbing hose hands with a brush, only to pull back two deeply sanitized appendages, highlighted with dark lines, as if a mapmaker had sketched a series of dirt roads onto a weathered, peach colored map.

 Sam Pittman works, and works hard for a blasting and vacuum company, and everything about him tells you that is true.  His red, hooded sweatshirt is sprinkled with a sandy material, perhaps wood shavings.  He looks as if he's been coated with a tasty cinnamon dusting.

He's talking to me today because his son Nathan, who had just been sentenced to 22 days in juvenile detention, was left, over night, for 16 hours in a holding cell at the Carbon County Courthouse.  Nathan didn't have any food, water, or access to a bathroom.

Nathan, in a typical teenager costume, tells his story of inconvenience with a sly smirk on his face.  "So," I ask him, "what did you do to get in trouble?"  His smirk turns into a frown, as if he'd just been told to put away his book, and get ready for a pop quiz.  Nathan was originally charged with disorderly conduct, and destruction of property, but that isn't why he was sentenced to those 22 days.  Apparently his parents caught him smoking Spice, a synthetic form of marijuana, and guzzling cough syrup.  Sam, essentially turned his son in, knowing that it would mean the 17 year old would be locked up for some amount of time, and that Sam himself, would likely have to put in some extra hours, to come up with the money to pay his son's fines or restitution.

Sam is articulate, as he digs his fingers deep into his tired knuckles and asks, "what if the building had burned down, or my son had a medical emergency?"

After Nathan tells me his tale, he adds that there is a silver lining.  The courts have told him he doesn't have to serve the 22 days in DT because of the holding cell snafu.  Nathan, was talking about a concert he was hoping to go to, now that he doesn't have to go to jail.  Sam was talking about how he needed to go, because he had to return to work.

As I shook Sam's hand once again, and said goodbye, I remember being envious of those paws.  My guess is, Sam can replace the transmission on his truck, put up dry wall, and construct a wooden fence  in an afternoon.  I sadly can do none of those things.  I mean I've assembled a TV stand from IKEA, but that doesn't exactly qualify as manual labor.   I am, I suppose, my father's son.  Bill Jones was not the "handy," type.  His thought was, "if you can pay someone to do it, then pay someone."

I thought about Sam, this morning when my wife Amanda suggested we take a wood working class, to which I enthusiastically agreed.  I can imagine the two of us, surrounded by other Yuppies, drinking espresso, and Oolong tea, fumbling with a lathe, or trying clumsily to push a wood saw through a 2X4, attempting  to learn the kind of skills in an afternoon, that guys like Sam have been acquiring their whole lives.

Tell Me A Story

Don is a sound engineer in the movies, he worked in Hollywood for 3 decades before coming back to Utah 2 years ago.   Russ use to run Salt Lake City International Airport.  As the seasons change, he and his partner Steven hang beautifully crafted wooden ornaments from the light posts on his street to signify the changing of the seasons and the holidays.  Jack-o-lanterns in November, Snow flakes in December. His neighbors love it.  Russ gets irked when Steven leaves him out of the loop.  "I didn't know anything about that," he says annoyed, as I explain the story we are working on, and the fact that Steven, who is on the community council, may have heard about it, "he never tells me anything," Russ frowns with subtle consternation.

Maggie is the neighborhood spy,  Steven only moved in 2 weeks ago, and  Sarah's pipes broke after she'd only lived in her home for a couple of months.  These are just a few of the gentle story lines we uncovered accidentally this day.

On Monday, photographer Patrick Fitzgibbon and I spent 2 hours bobbing up and down several SugarHouse blocks, in search of a ghost.  Literally.  Along the way, we casually tucked our heads into the ongoing story lines of more than a dozen people, getting to know them, if only for a minute or two.

Salt Lake City Police have been circulating a picture captured from an in-home surveillance camera.  It is of a man burglarizing a SugarHouse home, but it isn't so much what the crook stole, but how he looked when he did the crime.  The night vision lens on the security camera captured a bizarre image of the crook.  He is awash in a white ghostly sheen.  His face appears to be skeletal, and the shadows and light, give the illusion that he might be floating.  The otherworldly apparition is getting quite a bit of attention, so I went looking for the home in which the picture was captured.  The bad news is, police won't release the name of the person who was burglarized, and officers gave us a VERY general address of about 2600 South 1500 East.  "It's around there," Police said.

So...We knock, and we knock, and we knock.   Along the way we gathering tidbits of information about people's homes, "Well," says one friendly woman, rubbing her chin, and staring into her eyebrows for answers, "this neighbor used to have a security system, but they just sold the house two weeks ago." She says casually answering my question about neighbors with cameras.

We also glean tiny story lines about the people who live here.  "I couldn't believe it," says Russ during a causal exchange with me, "she actually wanted to know every paint color we used on our house," he says of a neighbor across the street, "she was going to match her home to ours exactly!"  

As we bounce from house to house, we pick up clues that get us closer to the poltergeist.  "I think it was on Kensington," says one man.  "I thought I heard it was a brick house," says another.

"You know," says Patrick, after a woman tells us she doesn't have any cameras in her home, "it's a good thing these people recognize you from TV, because it kind of looks like you are casing the neighborhood."

Patrick is right.  During our stroll down 1500 South, I have asked the following questions:

1) Who has a security system on this street?
2) Which person is the most likely to have information on other neighbors?
3) Who has been burglarized recently?

All typical questions a seasoned burglar might ask when deciding which home to break into, but also the same kinds of questions a reporter might toss out when trying to find the family who captured that haunted image.

Just before 6 PM, Maggie, whom I spoke to a few minutes prior, tracks me down a block away, "I think I know what house you're looking for," she says with excitement.  "It's on Dearborn, I saw something about it on Facebook." she says pointing Southwest, "talk to Connie, she has a rod iron fence and green siding.

"Oh yes, I saw the picture myself," Connie chirps excitedly, "Creepy!" She exclaims, "You're looking for Don Malouf, he lives right there.  He's such a nice man," Connie point across the street, at a stately Tudor home. "You know I was burglarized recently, I think it might be the same suspect," she whispers and shrugs with her index finger still extended.

 Don is happy to talk to us, and tell us about his scary surveillance image.  As Patrick adjusts the lights, and moves the furniture preparing for the interview, Don tells me he worked for Disney for 15 year and won an award for his sound engineering on "The Fox and the Hound."  He laments about friends who have been laid off recently from the iconic studio.  As his wife prepares chicken sauteed in garlic, and a fresh kale salad, he wonders aloud, "How are you supposed to do all that work?" he stares into his palm, with his brow furrowed, "with just a handful of people."

After 2 hours, nearly 2 dozen doors, and conversations with almost 20 people, we finally found the one story for which we were looking today, but along the way, we heard a dozen more, all of them part of the tapestry that tells the tale of this neighborhood, each stitched together, one conversation at a time.  

ON Your Front Porch

"I'm too old for this," I say as I shake my head and attempt to step onto the fraying Astroturf splayed carelessly over a drooping wooden porch.  "Don't be a wimp, just get up there," says my photographer Randy as he stands at a safe distance.  "That's easy for you to say, you aren't entering the Temple of Doom." I dart him a look, as I balance, surrounded by hundreds of empty, brow beer bottles, half-filled pesticide containers, and a bail of insulation, bleached white by the sun, and melted into a brittle pile by the rain.

During an ambitious moment, the former tenants of this drab, sagging trailer home, intended to make this place livable by finally installing some insulation, but as evidenced by the filthy chaos on the collapsing porch, they gave up once again.

I rap my fist on the faux-marble, peeling mercilessly from the cheap plywood it hides underneath, as if the textured linoleum is trying to escape this weathered trailer as much as I want to.  There is no answer, and as I tip-toe over an old construction helmet and an empty utility bucket, I say with exasperation, "I'm done."

I'm in Eureka.  A tough little Utah town, once famous, and financially thriving thanks to the mining of gold and silver at the center of the Tintic Mining Distict.  During it's heyday, Eureka was home to mining barons, a bustling Main Street, and the second ever JC Penney's in the country.

Those days have since passed Eureka by.  In 1920, nearly 4,000 people called the mining town home.  In the 30's and 40's the gold and silver started to dry up, and the mining operations shutdown. By 1957 the last major mine shuttered it's door and in 2000, the EPA found alarming levels of lead throughout the town, and began a massive clean up effort, helping to drive the population down even lower. Now about 800 people remain in Eureka, scratching to make a living.

As we coast down Main Street, passing weathered, shuttered store fronts, I think about the place I was just a day ago.

Just 24 hours earlier I sat silently, adjusting my tie, and earpiece in a studio in downtown Salt Lake City, waiting to be interviewed by Carol Costello of CNN.  This after a story we aired in which Senator Mike Lee said, dispassionately, that he had every intention of taking his sizable paycheck, despite the fact that nearly 800,000 federal employees had been furloughed.

 "I'm working, I'll continue to get paid," he told me dispassionately over the phone.  The next morning all hell breaks lose as BuzzFeed and Huffington Post pick up the story, and Senator Lee's press team finds itself in damage control mode, unfortunately for the senator, their damage control steps only created more damage.  Brian Phillips, Lee's director of communications, tells our managing editor, that the senator had made some "muddy," comments and that he had intended all along, to "donate," his salary to charity for each day of the lockout.  No big deal, he implies, and asks us to update that part of the story which we do.  Here's where they fumble: Phillips then contacts BuzzFeed and tells them that we had gotten the story "wrong," and he had asked us for a correction.

The problem is, we had taped the entire interview, and we released the raw that afternoon, that's when CNN and MSNBC began to make an issue of Lee's back and forth on the pay issue.  I remember watching is shock as Rachel Maddow of MSNBC, hammered the senator on the issue, playing long cuts of our interview, and thinking I wonder what I'll be working on tomorrow.

That's when Mistie Carlson enters the picture, I found her name while searching some court documents.  She could be a candidate for worst grandmother of the year.  Police say Carlson, was drunk, and went to her drug dealers house, with her 2 year old granddaughter in tow, after she scored some meth, police say she smoked it with the toddler strapped into the back seat of her car, and for good measure, cops say Carlson also had a handgun in the center console.  It was obtained illegally we are told.  That shabby shack in Eureka, was where her family may have lived according to people who knew her.

Senator Mike Lee, and Mistie Carlson, seem a million miles away from one another in almost every conceivable way, but this week, thanks to some clumsy moves by them, I found myself, figuratively and literally, on both of their messy doorsteps.

Hello, No One's Home

"Hello, this is Jason," the words leave his mouth, bouncing off the majestic marble of the US Capitol walls.  I was caught off guard.  It was him.

"Congressman," I say, expecting to be greeted by a pleasant but automated voice mail system filtering phone call after phone call into a digital cloud to be sorted and lazily logged to by a bored congressional page in a blue and red stripped tie, dreaming of his first senate race.

I had forgotten that Congressman Jason Chaffetz had casually given me his personal cell phone number 2 years ago while wild fires consumed cheat grass and quaking aspens in his congressional district.  "If you have any questions, just call me," he said after he read off each digit.  As I tapped the numbers into my phone, I joked without looking at him, "you just made the biggest mistake of your life."  We laughed, and he turned and marched towards a podium surrounded by reporters in search of a sound bite.

Chaffetz was the third of three legislators from Utah's congressional delegation, I would talk to on the phone today about the shutdown of the federal government.

We wanted to know which lawmakers would decide to forgo, defer or donate their salaries during the lockout of federal employees.  Dozens, of legislators across the country have vowed not to take a paycheck during the messy battle.  None of the lawmakers are required to turn down the check.  In fact the 27th amendment says congressional pay cannot be increased or decreased unitl the next term of office for representatives.  None-the-less, Chaffetz will defer his check until the mess is cleared up.  Rep. Jim Matheson will do the same. 

As Congressman Matheson waited patiently for me to power up a telephone recorder, he attempted to do an equipment survey, "well, it looks like the phone lines work here in Washington," "Well at least something works there," I joked, and he laughed knowingly.

Both men were friendly and enthusiastic while chatting with me on the phone.  That's probably pretty easy when you are telling a reporter of your voter friendly plans to give up a pay check during the shutdown fiasco.  

My conversation with Senator Mike Lee was a bit more thorny.  Lee is in the thick of the shutdown logjam.  He and Senator Ted Cruz are seen as the guys who turned out the lights on the government last night.

I asked the senator if he intended to give up his pay check like the others in the congressional delegations. "I'm working I'll continue to be paid," he confessed curtly, 

"You know, you could almost take one for the team," I said pressing the senator, explaining to him, that giving up a payday might endear him to the 800,000 federal employees with mortgages and car payments, who don't know if those bills will be paid in the weeks to come.  "when lawmakers are in session," the senator recited with a certain level of matter-of-factness,  "When lawmakers are working they are considered essential they aren't considered expendable " 

I will let you dissect that last statement however you like.

It was difficult to get in touch with others in  Utah's Congressional leadership tonight, many of their offices have been shuttered and their employees told to "stay home."   

If this shutdown continues for too long, Utah senators and congressmen, might have to take a page out of Jason's book, and start answering their own phones, among other things.

  

Taps

It seemed like a strange place for an alfalfa field.  Acres and acres of it, for as far as I could see.  The clover was dark green, and dotted carelessly with purple flowers, as tiny bugs scrounged and foraged and bees flew in precise, yet seemingly clumsy loops as they hunted meticulously for sweets to take back to their hive.  Life is active, careless, and humming in this vast expanse.

Across a simple asphalt path, there is another field.  This one teeming with somber humanity, this one rigid in it's organization, as columns of tombstones sprawl across a neatly manicured tarp of grass.  Grass that is likely sprayed regularly to keep pests and weeds away.

At attention are hundreds of police officers, sweating under the hot Utah sun.  Some are in their dress blues, motorcycle helmets fastened to their chins, hands extended above their right eyebrow, as they try, most in vain, to choke back tears.

Organizers had asked the media to station their cameras in the alfalfa field, a request we all accepted in an effort to give the family a respectful distance.  As the coffin gently sailed, towards its plot, with uniformed officers manning each corner of it, honey bees zipped past my ears, and a thousand American flags rubbed and flapped, tossed and pushed by a brisk, hot wind.

Sgt. Derek Johnson, rolled up to a grey Volvo parked awkwardly on quiet, residential Draper, Utah street.  According to investigators, before he could even unbuckle his seat belt, the officer was met with a hail of bullets, his SUV then sped chaotically away, hitting a nearby tree at a high rate of speed.   Johnson died later that night at a hospital.  Troy Walker is accused of shooting Johnson, his girlfriend then turning the gun on himself.  Walker survived, his mugshot shows him, with a crooked frown, and his head and jaw, trapped inside a metal contraption, reminiscent of a Terry Gilliam film.

Funerals for police officers and fallen soldiers have familiar story lines, a plane or helicopter flyover, taps, bagpipes, a 21 gun salute, and the folding of the American flag followed by one of the most difficult moments you will ever see, that flag presented to the fallen officers wife, or husband.

In my career, I would guess I've covered more than 50 funerals, every one of them for strangers whom, I've met only in grainy pictures, pulled from a dusty frame, or carefully plucked off a hallway wall.

When families allow me into their homes to discuss their worst tragedy, they will often also oblige me by allowing me to take pictures of their loved ones.  I've seen hundreds of grieving mothers and fathers thumb through picture albums, glassy eyed, grinning at captured, tender moments at Disney world, a wedding, or in the hospital, after the birth of a child.

I'm pretty good at keeping my emotions in check at funerals, I have trained my mind to understand the gravity of the pain being felt by the families without being consumed by them.

I have only been to three funerals in my life, that involved someone I was intimately associated.
My grandmother and grandfather whom the grand kids called MaMa and PaPa.  It's endearing to think about those nicknames, and to recall grown adults, in their 30's and 40's referring to another adults as MaMa.

The third was my father's, who died two months ago.  By his own design his was a decidedly low key affair.  Bill Jones, would never allow for a bagpipe, a singer, or a slide show at his funeral.  He even paid most of the burial expenses to reduce the "drama," for his kids.

Although he was the greatest man I'd ever known, I didn't cry at his funeral.  Maybe it was because of the utilitarian design of the affair.  Perhaps it was because I was named co-executor of his estate, and I had busied myself with dealing with Dad's apartment, his accounts, and finding a storage facility for his things, that I didn't allow myself to mourn.

As the bagpipes breathed in and out at Sgt. Johnson's funeral, I thought about his family, but, as I stood, in the spongy alfalfa field, across from the cemetery, I thought mostly about my dad.  The bees went about their business, Sgt. Johnson was laid to rest, and for the first time in months, I cried for my father.

I don't know you, but I hate you.

Although the setting sun was to his back, the eyes of the middle aged man were squeezed into narrow, angry slits.  His lip curled at the right edge, and the snarl was powered by some latent hatred, that seemed to radiate from a place, if questioned, even he could not pinpoint.  It was the kind of hatred, that comes from his DNA, perhaps from generations ago, attributable to his wronged and abused forefathers.  The nastiness was palpable.  To punctuate the smoldering animosity, was his right, middle finger raised in a proud, yet profane salute to me.

Photographer Patrick Fitzgibbon and I had just made a right hand turn onto Broadway, out of the 2News parking facility located in the Wells Fargo building in downtown Salt Lake City.  Moments earlier we had just 

Commented on how sharp the news truck looked, after a sign company had recently wrapped the vehicle in sharp, crisp graphics.  "I think it looks pretty cool," I commented as I slapped my satchel in back of the truck, and perched myself proudly in the passenger seat.

Patrick was building his argument for how he thinks the show, Breaking Bad, of which we are both fans, will end in a few episodes, when I saw the salute, and the hateful face that eventually morphed into a gleeful grin the moment the saluter was certain that I had seen his insult.  

His satisfaction was an oozing, slippery smile that crept onto his face like that of a movie villain, when he blows up a building, or triggers a trap door that sends the hero into a cavernous dungeon filled with cobwebs and Gila Monsters.

I lost connection with Patrick's theories for several minutes as I pondered the anonymous insult, hurled at me for likely no other reason than, I worked in media.  "I'm just shocked," I crooked my head and shut my eyes, searching for the logic, "that a perfect stranger thinks it's ok to insult us for no other reason than he sees us in this truck."  

The man appeared to be a functioning member of our society and by that I mean, he wasn't a wild haired maniac kicking around the streets of Salt Lake City, wearing a pair of ski pants for the third month in a row and screaming randomly at passersby about flying saucers.  

He seemed to be someone who understands social cues and norms.  He was dressed smartly in a green, pressed button up shirt and a pair of creased khakis.  He likely says "yes sir," and "No sir," has a firm handshake, and opens the door for his wife. He could have been on his way to a business meeting, or to pay his mortgage at the bank branch located in the building in which I work.  Oddly, the sight this gaudy news van, made him go "caveman."  His docile, casual thoughts about his next vacation, how he would pay his kids tuition, or what he might eat for dinner, were interrupted kinetically, by a visceral, prehistoric tool box, from which he pulled out "the bird" to insult some anonymous stranger, who was passing the time of a 20 minutes ride to Centerville, Utah, by chatting about a program on basic cable.

Sadly this kind of thing happens pretty regularly.  Several months ago, as I stood outside a downtown tattoo parlor, as police swarmed a neighborhood, looking for a man who had recently fired a gun at two people, a pleasant fellow sat calmly on the crumbling stairs outside an aging, brick apartment building sipping a Pabst Blue Ribbon and taking short drags off of quickly shrinking cigarette butt.  He nodded his head, and smiled enthusiastically at me as I waited for a public information officer from the Salt Lake City Police to round up reporters and give us an update on the search.  I looked at the man, smiled broadly and chimed, "hey, how's it going?"  To which he cocked his head, grinned and said with sugary venom, "why don't you go f*#k yourself."  I just stood there, stunned, as he geared up for a frothing diatribe, "go get a real job!" he groused, "stop perpetrating hatred, do something productive with your life you jackel."  To which I said, "you mean productive like you, guzzling cheap booze on the steps at three in the afternoon."  Admittedly, the prudent choice would have been to say nothing, and I realized that as he thrust his filter less cigarette towards the pavement and barreled, headlong at me before being intercepted by a nearby officer, who seemed unaffected by the man's rolling rant.  The guy circled back to his PBR and his concrete step with the parting salutation, "f*#k you!"

I suppose you get used to it.  Check that, you don't get used to it, you accept that you are a simply an empty vessel in which people deposit all their frustration about what politicians call, the "lamestream media."

Before my dad passed away he used to call me up and complain about something he'd read in the Wall Street Journal, or something he'd seen on the CBS Evening News, "why do you guys do that," he would demand.  "I don't know dad, " I would joke, "I'll chat with the president of CBS News when I get to work."

I suppose when people, "flip me off," tell me to 'go to hell,' or call me names, it's less about me, and more about the vast, billowing media world that angers them, from Mylie Cyrus, to the New York Times, to Fox News, to Twitter, to Facebook, to layoffs, to Syria you name it.

I guess, that polite man in the clean shirt, on his way to a lunch meeting is just sick of it all, and I suppose I'm the guy in the news van, who gets to hear about.  I don't accept it, but I suppose, I get it.

  

   

The Hard Way

My dad, who passed away in July, used to say, "you're just like me, you have to do everything the hard way."  Bill Jones was right, again, about himself, and about his third son.  During his life, the old man, cycled from wild success to miserable failure during his 89 year adventure ride, in which he quit his secure job at age 27, and went into business for himself, never working for another person as long as he lived.

It was a boom or bust existence, I recall one Christmas with a towering, 9 foot tall Spruce, a flood of presents, bicycles, and hockey sticks, surrounded by gaudy decorations, and soaked in catered food. That year a Mariachi band atop a flatbed truck was waiting to haul our family around our streets to sing carols to our weary and confused neighbors standing in there bathrobes, pink slippers, with coffee in hand.  They would wipe the sand from their eyes wondering, "why the hell is their a Mariachi band playing at this hour?  Strike that, "why is there a Mariachi band playing at ANY hour?"

I also recall a Christmas with a tree no taller than a fern, and 2 small, wrapped presents, one for me, and one for my sister, placed gently on a white towel, hastily snatched from the bathroom on Christmas Eve.

My dad ultimately sweat and bled his way to financial stability, founding a chain of discount dry cleaners, that eventually added up to about 200 stores, but he, as he had mentioned to me ad nausium, " "had done it the hard way."

While thumbing through his meticulous files in the days after he died, I came across a letter he had written to a friend and investor 30 years ago.  It read:  "Fred, as you know I have recently filed for bankruptcy, and I promise you will soon be paid the $5000 I owe you, but in the meantime, I want to tell you about a great opportunity in which I think you might want to invest."  He was always working, and always raising money, sometimes in the hardest ways possible.

He did pay back Fred with interest, and Fred, my uncle, did invest with my dad again.  Even though he was as he would say "busted." my dad never stopped working or hustling, he had to, because he did everything the hard way.

As I sat in our news van, perched outside the home of Cheri Walker, the mother of a man believed to have gunned down a Draper, Utah police officer last week.  I was thinking about my dad.

Just two days earlier, Sgt. Derek Johnson coasted up next to a grey, late model Volvo parked awkwardly on Fort Street in Draper.  The tires on the squad car of the decorated officer likely didn't even stop turning, when police think Walker open fire, hitting and killing Johnson.  Walker is then thought to have turned the gun on his long time girlfriend, Traci Vaillancourt, shooting her in the back before rotating the pistol into his mouth, and squeezing the trigger.  Miraculously both survived, and, as is so often the case, that's where I come in.

Outside the home of Cheri Walker, I was pondering some of my dad's old sayings and watching as a woman pulled up next to three reporters from competing stations.  "Do you want to go see what she is saying?"  photographer Patrick Fitzgibbon asked as I propped my feet on the dash, and adjusted my sunglasses, "Nah," I said, with a nervous pit in my stomach, "I hate globbing onto other reporters work."
After 15 minutes, the woman sauntered off, and, my pride wouldn't allow me to chase her down to see what she had told my competitors .

After more than an hour of waiting for the return of Troy Walker's mother, I decided we needed to do SOMETHING, so I Googled and searched and eventually stumbled upon an address that Vaillancourt had lived at years ago in Murray, Utah.  "No, I don't know her," chimed the sing-song voiced mom, who had just purchased the home a week ago, "The name sounds familiar, but I don't know her," she said eagerly, bouncing a small toddler in her arms, as he munched down a soggy fist full of Cheerios.

It was 7 PM, and for television news, that is the bewitching hour.  If you haven't nailed down your story by then, you are in jeopardy of not making the 10 PM news cast.

"Ok, ok, ok," I sighed heavily as I vigorously ran my hand across the top of my head  as if, the friction would make my brain conjure a brilliant idea, "I have one more address," I bleated with discouragement, "but she hasn't lived in this place for years."

"Who is it?!"  a woman shrieked from inside the non-descript suburban rambler.  "I'm Chris Jones, from Channel 2."  The metal, brown door swept open, "I know why you are here."  

The middle aged woman with smiling eyes, had purchased the home from Vaillancourt's parents several years ago, but knew everything about the family.  She knew Vaillancourt and her boyfriend had a child, that Vaillancourt had a rare blood disorder, and that Walker had guns, but she was unwilling to share any of it on camera, which, of course in the TV business, is what it is all about.  "I'm so sorry," she would shake her head with real sympathy, like a mom, forced by an overbearing husband to carry out a overly-strict punishment on a teenager.

As I peer at my watch, 7:30, I begin to accept the defeat that is looming in the air, "You guys have a nice day," she says pluckily as I turn the door knob, "I wonder if Traci's sister could help you, I know where she lives," she says nonchalantly, burying the lead.

"Yes Traci is my sister," says Vicki King, teeth clinched, brow furrowed,  "In fact she was here the day before the shooting," she announced, eager to tell the story of how her sister went from beauty queen to a woman living in a car and addicted to pain pills.

As I flip on the mic, I am satisfied that we will be the only station to tell this part of the story, until I see two reporters, with their photographers in tow, approaching the front stoop and prepping their camera's for the interview.

As the reporters step back to their vehicles, "how did you find her?" I ask with amazement, "oh," says one of them, "remember that woman we were talking to outside the Walker home?  She told us where Vicku lived."

As I searched my briefcase for my glasses, I could only think of my father, and his words, that rang more true on this day, than they had in sometime, "you always have to do things the hard way."

So Much Information, So Little Information.

The ghastly tale of Susan and Josh Powell, reads like a dense murder-mystery at times, and at others, like a long grocery list.  As you peruse the 30,000 investigation documents released by the West Valley City Police Department, it feels like you're watching a television crime thriller, and conversely like you are glancing at a digital clock as it blinks from 3:31 AM to 3:32 AM.

Many of the pages released are redacted, leaving the reader to scan through reams of black pages, and scores of whitewashed names, but the text is rich with information, some of it engrossing, some of it uncomfortably close, some of it banal.

In a section tabbed photos, you see hundreds, if not thousands of evidence photos, snapped by crime scene investigators.  Many of the images you would expect a cop to take.  Like the out of focus photo of a large bar-b-que tool.  "Could this be a murder weapon?"  A crime scene tech might ask as he or she opens the aperture of the camera and searches for clues in Susan's disappearance.  Or the plastic bag police found hidden in the floor boards of Josh's nondescript Town and Country Mini-van.  The van in which he took his kids on a midnight run, to the frozen desert, the night his wife disappeared.   Inside the white, 13 gallon garbage bag is a two foot by 1 foot section of burnt dry wall.  The frightening possibilities are only outnumbered by the likely, humdrum explanations.

The truth is most of the photos are mundane, a shot of plastic jars of vitamins and supplements from inside the Powell's kitchen cabinets.   A snap shot of a can or concentrated orange juice, a photo of a tin of Altoids.  The tedious documentation by police that shows just how intricately they investigated the frustrating disappearance 

As I flicker through the dearth of images, I remember feeling uncomfortable, as if  I am forced to peer  inside the home of an unsuspecting neighbor as she prepare dinner, or carelessly watch television on her sofa.

There are photos, of Susan's grass stained running shoes and her jewelry.  There are pictures inside her most personal spaces, of her unmade bed, of her toiletries strewn carelessly across her bathroom vanity.  These are places that only Susan had been, things only Susan has worn, and now things and places, at which a dozen police officers, and additionally a dozen reporters are now leering.

Also tucked away inside the puzzle of information stored on a 24 Gig hard drive, are all the crevices in which police have peeked during their search.  Officers, it appears, spent some time tracking down a tip from an unnamed prison inmate, who, looking for reduced jail time, suggested that Josh had had some sort of relationship with a woman, who may have been a stripper and who could potentially have information about Susan's whereabouts   One of the documents includes a list of exotic dancers, their names (redacted) including their stage alias (redacted) and the club at which they danced (redacted).  If I'm correct, it looks like that inmate, acting as a confidential informant for police, called one of his associates on a recorded line, looking for the "real," name of "that b**ch."  His words, not mine.

That inmate makes references to Josh being involved, "with the wrong people," there is also a letter from someone referring to a potential contract taken out on Josh's life.  None of the tips appear to have led to any solid leads, but they are indications of how police walked down every proverbial alley in the labyrinthine tale of Susan Cox Powell.

A transcript of a police interview with one of Susan's co-workers, shows the delicate dance officers did as they attempted to reveal everything about Susan's personality.  The officer asks the male co-worker if knew that Susan had told friends she had had dreams about him, and if the man had ever had a "physical" relationship with the missing woman, "me, no, no."  He responds with surprise.

As you scroll through all the pages, it appears that police have uncovered just about everything regarding Susan and Josh, from the shoes they fastened to their feet, to the vitamins that they put in their mouths.  Everything that is, except the answer to that single, simple, and sadly, it turns out, impossible question.



 

The Ghastly Ghost

Even after his sickening murder-suicide, Josh Powell, continues to thrust himself, zombie-like, into our lives.  Like a reoccurring rash or chronic back pain, Powell's repugnant visage seems to make a return every 6 months or so.

Most recently, he infected the sleepy community of Salem, Oregon.  After a tip from the father of Susan Cox-Powell, the West Valley City Police, packed their bags and made the 13 hours trip to the Pacific Northwest, to root through another open field, poke their heads into more deep, dark craggy holes, and jam their glove covered hands into thistle, thorny rose bushes, and spiky weeds.

Officers didn't find anything, so they slung their backpacks onto another uncomfortable bed, in another nameless motel, and stuffed it carelessly with dob kits, hiking boots and undershirts, then made the 800 mile drive back home to West Valley.  

You likely know the excruciating tale of Susan, Josh, Chuck, Steven and the boys.  Missing woman, suspected husband, brave dad, perverted father, murdered children and fiery suicide.

The last time Josh made an unwelcome appearance was Super Bowl Sunday.  My girlfriend Amanda, who is now my wife and I where prepping snacks for a party when my boss, Jen Dahl called, "Josh Powell killed his children and himself by burning down his house, can you go to Washington?"   After I shook my head, and closed my mouth, I packed a bag for Sea-Tac.

In the airport, as I waited for my plane to depart, I caught a glimpse of  a nondescript play run by the New England Patriots, before hoisting my briefcase onto my shoulder and bouncing around in a line as people scanned their smart phones, talked about Tom Brady, and whispered with hands over mouths about Powell, "he killed his kids too?!"

Before that it was his father's arrest on voyeurism charges, then his dad's weird obsession with Susan, and the interviews,  and the child custody hearings.  

Every 6 months, the chinless Powell, with his spotty goatee and pouting, moist eyes, would saunter into our proverbial eye sight, like an unwelcome house guest, bowling into the living room in nothing but a terry cloth robe, eating the last piece of pizza.

The response to a Powell resurrection is always, exasperatedly, methodically the same.  I have about 10 names in my phone's contact list, under the heading "Powell."  When Josh makes news, the first call is always to Chuck Cox, Susan's father, then to Josh's sister, then the police department.  If you can't get any answers there, your last resort is Cox family attorney Anne Bremner.    Whenever a new Powell revelation pops up, reporters rush down the same worn, and tired path, and usually find the exact same worn and tired answers.  

The Salem lead didn't unveil Susan's whereabouts, so Josh, and the tale of the awfulness he brought to the world is put to bed.  Eventually, we will hear from him again.  I don't know for what or why, but when we do, everyone: reporters, police, Susan's family, will pull themselves out of bed, drag themselves off the sofa, dig their thumbs into their clinched eyes, take a deep breath, and start the tired task of digging in a wheat field or calling Chuck Cox for comment.  

I'm the step-fatherer!

It was about 5:15 when he stumbles up behind the horde of cameras and reporters, his tall Pompadour
balanced on the top of his head, and wiggling back and forth atop his noggin, like a sleepy cowboy, after a long horse back ride.  His hair would waggle, whenever he would emphasis each drunken syllable.  "I was the step-fatherer." He stammers as we interview an animated neighbor who is passionately complaining about all the traffic, and cars speeding down her street. "There's kids here 24-7!"  she shouts, with her fist raised up to her face, drawing tiny circles in the air with them, like an old-timey pugilist.

At about 4 PM, three girls, ages 9,11, and 14 where walking to a nearby swimming pool when a man who police say was texting on his phone hit all three of them.  The girls were all taken to the hospital, but are, as of today, in stable condition.

While Dianna tries, rather incompletely,  to paint the picture of a terrible accident that crashes nearly into her front yard, the Pompadour, inserts his slurry cocktail of disconnected words into the interview, "He weers Texting, when he hut them kidzzz, oh, he's dead!"  Dianna, stammers and stutters a bit, taken aback by the interruption then like a lawnmower with a fresh gallon of gas, she begins revving up her tale again.  The Pompadour, I guess certain that he should be the one in the dim television spotlight, announces loudly, "I'm was the step fatherer in the one of the kidzzz!"

That may have been true, but all the reporters silently and collectively decide that interviewing a dangerously intoxicated man would do little to help advance the sad story, so we simply ignored him.  Which doesn't go over well, "Well F*$k you!"  He spits, "F**k you!"  Dianna, slipping into neighborhood mom mode, figuratively slaps his hand, "you watch your mouth young man!" she blurts, "I'm the step sister...uh...fatherer, of Stacy...so....F**k you!" Dianna, folds her arm, and glares, "what did you say young man," (as an aside, I think it's important to note, that the general consensus among reporters is that Dianna might have been a tad tipsy as well) "I'm the dad, step dader...and F**k you B**tch!"

When I watch the video of the exchange later that night, I catch a glimpse of my face in the corner of the camera's lens.  It is a combination of shock, amusement, and a certain, gleeful curiosity about "where is this going next!"  When the Pompadour, begins slamming his two fists against the aging, rusty, chain link fence,  screaming, "I just wanna, needa, F**king ride, the hosssspitable!" I should have been concerned that this thing might have turn violent, but rather, I was somewhat taken in by the wiggly shelf of hair, bouncing and bobbing on top of his head.  One of the other reporters had had enough, and as I was hypnotized by the follicle ballet, Alex Cabrero from Ch. 5 chimes, in, "hey, what's your problem?"  Things might have gotten ugly if Lt. Justin Hoyal, of the Unified Police Department hadn't intervened and escorted the guy away.

At some point during the melee I had received a call from the station, I click the answer button but don't say anything, as I watch the human house fire burning in front of me.  After Hoyal escorts the man up the street,  I quickly answered the phone, "oh hello, I forgot you were there." On the other end of the line was the producer of the 10 PM news cast, "are you ok?  Do we need to send help?  Did you make someone mad?"  "Oh don't worry about me," I said, "He was just yelling at everyone."

Google It.

As three dozen people rattle into the gymnasium at Lakeview Elementary in Provo, they are buzzing with questions.  "When will I get free Internet?" "Will you provide telephone service ?"  "Do I have to pay for installation?"  And peppered among the heavy coated Provo residents, curious about what channels they will get, are blazer wearing Google engineers, public relations experts and image consultants.  They are pleasant, knowledgeable, and patient...to a point.

Last week Provo city announced Google would swoop in and take over the city's troubled fiber network.  An aging infrastructure, that the city built 10 years ago with much fan-fair, but the thing never made any money, and with a 20-30 million dollar bond hanging around the city's neck, the Fiber is now strangling Provo.

Google will pay $1 for the system and the city will still have to pay for the bond, but the internet colossus will upgrade the system and offer free internet to all Provo residents for at least 7 years.  Google will also offer a gig of internet service for $70.  A gig, is about 1000 times faster than regular internet.

Google is a company unlike any the world has ever seen, and when people think about "big business," they don't couple Google in with those meanies at  Exxon, or Goldman Sachs.  Google is "one of the good guys," Google helps me book my flights, order boots on line, and tells me how old Tony Romo is.  We've all heard about the ping pong tables and massages at Google headquarters, their mission statement says, "don't be evil."  I mean, how could you not love these guys.

The head of Community Affairs for Google, Matt Dunne represents all of that, he is affable, funny, and smart.  He has the polished exterior of a Vermont politician, because, well, that's what he is.  Dunne served 4 terms in the Vermont House of Representatives, and ran for governor in 2010, after his loss, he became a Googler, that's what Google employees call themselves.

When I interview Dunne after the meeting, he folds his hands in front of his waist, and stares with uncomfortable confidence into my eyes.  His answers are precise, practiced, and as you might imagine, always "on message," as they say in the public relations game.

During the question and answer period, the day before the city council is to vote on handing the fiber over to Google, the public relations team, including Dunne, is pleasant, happy and congenial, when they get to talk about the company and all the great options for the residents.  When the questions get a little tougher, like: "What if Google decided to abandon the system?" or "Why is this company with bottomless pockets only paying a dollar for a 20 million dollar network?"  The are not so pleasant.  "That's just, just the way it is," says Dunne,coolly, forcefully, yet politely.

Google is well on their way to becoming the most powerful company in the history of the world.  They own just about everything on the web including your Gmail, Youtube, and the website Blogger, which publishes this blog.   Google now wants to own the infrastructure that delivers the internet, hence, the purchase of Provo's system.

The company archives ever website on the web, and if you have Gmail, they scan each message you send and receive, for personal data, the company says to create relevant text ads for each user.  The company was recently fined when it was discovered their Google mapping cars where collecting data about users as they take pictures of your street.

In the meeting, Mayor John Curtis, seems absolutely giddy as he praises the company in front of the crowd of about 50 people, as Dunne and the other Googlers, smile humbly.    Mayor John Curtis, wasn't in charge when the system was established, and he may have found the very best way to untangle the city, at least partly, from the constricting fiber line.

Dunne receives another slightly uncomfortable question from a plain but pleasant mom, she says she likes the service the city is providing, and she doesn't want to pay extra for a gig she says she won't use.  Dunne, squeezes his lips tightly together, and blinks impatiently, "well," he says, as he shakes his head, "there are, of course, other internet providers out there," he smiles as he points to another hand raised in the audience.  "I'm not saying that, I mean," she stammers, eager to be back in Google's good graces.  It's as if she realizes, she may be a resident of Provo, but she lives in Google's world.