Wednesday, October 30, 2013

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.





Saturday, October 19, 2013

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.







Sunday, October 13, 2013

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.



Tuesday, October 8, 2013

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.  













Monday, October 7, 2013

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.








Tuesday, October 1, 2013

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.