[Viewfinder BLUES] The Frigid and the Hidden

[Lenslinger]

Is it wrong I ran for cover when Mother Nature took a dump? It's a question that's vexed me all weekend as I laid by the fireplace watching SpongeBob SquarePants. Outside, countless colleagues scrambled onto the sudden tundra of a fresh snowfall; stringing cable across parking lots, pointing dishes into falling sleet, sticking lenses into motorists' frozen grills. 'Should I be out there among them?', I wondered as I switched from a stout and stammering starfish to a bundled coworker yammering on about salt trucks... Did I flee from the action as the front lines formed? Did I doff my very logo as others layered up? Did I skulk off knowingly as bolder souls threw themselves on ticking snowballs? Yes. No! Yes. More than anything I just went home for the weekend, a reasonable enough maneuver after navigating five days of deadlines. But as I prepared to leave work Friday, it was hard not to notice the invasion force forming around me. Talkers, shooters, stackers and techs - all bustling about in shimmering winter gear. Heck, I saw one guy who never leaves the building sheathed in neoprene! I'd have talked to him to, but I was too busy crawling on my belly toward the door.

Not Weaver. He loaded up in a live truck and decamped to Thomasville. Saturday morning he arose mid-blizzard and steered that lurching stagecoach into the teeth of the storm. What followed was three hours of staggered remotes - shot, produced and starring one burly photog. And it wasn't just the Mighty Weave. A county away, Roy's Folk impresario David Weatherly turned a camera on himself and threatened to lick a lightpole if people didn't heed the advice he himself scoffed at: Stay off the Streets. Sure, we also had other two-person crews filing live reports from elsewhere, but for my lack of input, the most compelling content came from the two shooters operating sand assistance. Perhaps it was the lack of polish. Maybe it was the way Weaver interviewed the two Biscuitville chicks who brought him food, (thus exposing a snow coverage tradition: setting up live shots near fast food restaurants. Cowinky-dink?) It could have been that crazy redneck who slung a few intentional nasties in front of Weatherly's camera - before we abruptly cut away ---

Look at me saying "WE". Fact of the matter is I was decimating a box of Honeycombs with my offspring while El Ocho soldiers were surviving on generator fumes, snow cream and acres of face time. I don't expect my extended friends and family to understand what I've done exactly but I want you all to know that the guilt I feel from my desertion will live with me for many, many years to come ... or at least until my phone rings in the middle of the night and I alone am sent alone to check out the sludge spill at the Wastewater Treatment Plant.

Then we even...


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