Before She Broke the Internet

Photo:  Paper Magazine 2014

Before she tried to break the Internet, we broke secrets of Kim Kardashian's flawless looks. 

Kim has featured some of her favorite places in my Santa Monica neighborhood on her reality show.  I was astonished when I ran into her that she is quite gorgeous and even more petite than me, except her booty!

During a recent season of Keeping Up with the Kardashians, I interviewed celebrity beauty expert Dana Waldie about treatments and products stars like Kim use to get their red carpet looks.  

Check out the links below for tips on everything from choosing makeup to help you get that celebrity glow to determining the best facial treatment for your skin type. 

Keeping Up with the Kardashians beauty series:

Part 1:  Look younger without injections

Part 2:  What it's like working on a TV set

Part 3:  Expert tips for a flawless face

Part 4:  How to get the best facial for you

Is there really any value in Kim's full frontal strip show for Paper magazine?   True beauty isn't measured by the junk in your trunk but by the light of a soul set ablaze.  Still, no harm in stealing a few A-list beauty secrets.

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No Prayer Is Ever Wasted - #bringbackourgirls

Did you know there are bottles in heaven that hold our tears?*  I imagine some are filled with the tears of families whose girls were kidnapped in Nigeria. 

Visiting Nigeria has been on my bucket list since my family traced our lineage through DNA tests.  Before news of the kidnappings broke, I'd started researching the Kanuri tribe, where our bloodline originated.  

News that the kidnappers spoke Kanuri left me feeling sick - a sense of violation that brothers I had never met had done something so twisted to sisters I had not yet known.

As journalists, we often walk a line between our acute awareness of danger and death and yet somehow feeling "shielded" in the midst of it.

Like so many others, that is my prayer for the 230 Nigerian schoolgirls who were unable to escape - that somehow they will be shielded. And return home safely.

Prayer. Such a mystery.  Why does one plea meet with near instant manifestation of an answer and another seemingly goes unanswered?  Forever. 

I've thought a lot about prayer since covering the 2010 earthquake in Haiti - so many lives lost; so few prayers met with heaven's 'yes.'  And then on a return trip, doubt was erased after an experience that could have been deadly.

Our host had taken us to the pristine coast outside of Port-au-Prince.  On the way back, our truck broke down.  A storm was heading our way.  The sun was giving off its final golden rays.

We were in trouble.  The US State Department had warned travelers not to be out after dark due to a growing number of kidnappings.

"I have to get you off the road," our host turned to me - the only woman in our caravan of a half dozen Brazilian missionaries and an American EMT.

"I could never live with myself if..." his voice trailed off. Rape. Torture. God knows what.

I tried to stay hidden in the back seat while the men worked under the hood. It was one of those nights when you can feel evil in the air - like a pressure on your chest.  Breaths come shallow.  Nerves flinch at the slightest movement.

A man approached the truck.  Picked up a large rock.  I covered my face expecting the window to shatter.

Instead, he shoved the rock under the back tire to keep the truck from rolling.  He never said a word, just kept walking...

We found out once we had cell signals that two of us had received calls from friends overseas with the same message:  I don't know why, but I'm compelled to pray for you right NOW.

We later learned that kidnappers had abducted two people near where our truck broke down...

Will prayer help bring back the Nigerian schoolgirls?  Our prayers are not always answered in ways that makes sense to us...but no prayer is ever wasted.

*Psalm 56:8

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Hotshots 6.30.13

Photo: City of Prescott AZ

One of the reasons I've moved away from strictly reporting hard news into TV hosting is that some stories now affect me in a way that kills a broadcast news career.  

Such is the case with the deaths of the 19 Prescott firefighters - The Hotshots.

Some of my first big stories as a reporter were covering National Forest Service hotshot crews for an Oregon TV station.  The station would often use stringers (freelancers) to get footage from remote mountain areas but if a fire threatened lives and structures, we got the assignment.

What had started as a controlled brush fire in Eastern Oregon was turning into a raging inferno when we got the call.  The fire was burning so hot, it had jumped a river.

A photographer and I met the captain at a base camp before heading to the fire line. We would follow him in our truck to get footage from a safe place; crazy that you can literally walk to the edge of a fire line and not even get singed. 

The scene at a wildfire isn't nearly as chaotic as when a building is burning in a densely populated city. I'm seldom afraid covering natural disasters and that day was no different.  We don't think about dying, we simply do our jobs.  This is what we signed up for.

"Get out! Get out now!"  There was no warning.  In a flash, the wildfire had shifted direction.  We were trapped by an inferno on three sides.

We raced to the trucks but turning a satellite rig around on a narrow dirt road is no simple maneuver.  We hit the bank, nearly tipping.  In these situations, it's not seconds that determine whether you live or die, it's a fraction of a second.

Reporting has made me aware there is no such thing as luck.  Luck cannot keep a truck upright, set its tires straight and turn it to exactly the right degree to slip through an inferno - in a fraction of a second.

For the Granite Mountain Hotshots, a fraction of a second was not enough time.

We ache with the families. I've spent the last few days bearing the weight of a sorrow that makes no sense in the natural. I've come to understand this unexplainable grief I feel over certain stories is a God thing - ironic for someone who spent half a lifetime running from Him. 

There's a spiritual definition called "intercession" but to me it's just means you literally feel heaven's burden on earth.  Yet, it isn't a hopeless grieving, but one that says there is divine purpose yet to be fulfilled.  We often can't see the greater reason but heaven can.

'What went wrong?'  In this intercession place, it's not a question to place blame but, like Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemene, pouring out the weight of sorrow.

Tears are of little use to a reporter; no weeping on the nightly news.  Foolish girl, my mind warns, Stop crying for strangers. And instantly the heart responds by shutting down.

Until the tears keep falling anyway...Tears won't bring back the Prescott firefighters  but they will honor the heroes who gave their lives on their last call. 6.30.13.
---  
A Facebook page has been set up in memory of the 19 Prescott firefighters. 

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Mean Girls

Lindsay Lohan star of "Mean Girls."  Photo:  Humza 

A talent agent told me I come off too sweet. "Too 'pink,' not enough flavor," she said. "We need to see the naughty in you."

I can hear my childhood friends roaring with laughter.  I was a mean girl long before Lindsay Lohan.  

The trouble started in 1st grade with a new kid at school.  He  didn't fit in wearing Sunday clothes to school.  He cut in line at recess. I punched him.  He socked me in the eye.

By 4th grade I'd moved on to bullying - teachers. "Hey, guppy lips!"  I taunted one who had a mouth like Mick Jagger.  

Another time Mrs. L. broke down in tears as I led a class revolt against 'the witch.' 

By high school I was hanging out with a crew of misfits who cut class and drank Mickey's in the park. 

Despite the trouble, A's came easy.  "You're going to college," my dad insisted, shipping me off to the Ivy League with the warning, "I don't do bail once you're 18."   

Later as a crime reporter, I confronted killers, gang members, sleazy politicians, with the steeliness of a true mean girl. 

Yet God - radical love - had somehow begun to pierce a hardened heart. 

Too sweet? A friend put it best: "When you're looking for a brand of 'edgy' that is filled with desperation, despondency, depression and dejection and encounter a different brand of edgy filled with love, joy and peace it's difficult to deal with." 

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Failure. Grace.

Funny how the closer you get to a dream, the more impossible it can seem. The nearer the time of fulfillment, the greater the battle.

After working with a TV coach for two months, I'm ready to shoot my new reel (video to send casting directors). In Hollywood, the reel can unlock destiny.

To think this reel will open doors is nuts really.  I'm just one of thousands among many who are more talented/prettier/younger/sexier chasing the dream.   

I recently failed so badly, I almost quit.  The battle raged not with shouts, but whispers:  not good enough.  not worthy...

Back in journalism school, a professor advised us to write down our names before live broadcasts.  "The pressure," he warned, "can make you forget even that."  

Seemed like absurd advice.

And then it happened. I froze on camera.  Gratefully, only a studio audience witnessed it instead of countless TV viewers.

"What happened?" asked my coach.  "I didn't expect you to freeze."  

Neither did I.  Unscripted TV's always been my strength.  I'm used to adlibbing, no teleprompter, thanks to years of covering breaking news. 

I lay awake tormented by fear and a perfectionism that can neither forget nor forgive such a fundamental blunder.  And then...a new whisper:

Sometimes failure is the gateway to My grace.

But what if it happens again?  On live TV?  What if the failure is so great, people won't forget it? 

My grace is sufficient.

This grace - there is only way one to know it.  It requires moving forward when every impulse screams quit.  And soon you discover grace is fighting the battle for you.

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I Forgive Oprah

Oprah Winfrey. Photo:  Rolling Out.

It feels like I've been away in rehab but really just reinventing myself at Hollywood's Become a Host TV coaching program.  

"We haven't had a breakthrough until someone's in tears," our coach said. 

I had a breakthrough.  I forgive Oprah.

Back when Oprah shot to fame with her Chicago-based talk show, I was an overweight Black girl on the way to becoming a newscaster; the same way Oprah got started. Given the similarities to Oprah's story, maybe the nickname was inevitable:

Little Oprah. 

I hated it.  I wanted people to view me as a serious journalist, not a daytime diva.  I wanted to cover disasters and wars;  not celebrities with egos as inflated as their paychecks.

And truthfully, Oprah's extra curvy figure wasn't...Well, like many girls, I fantasized about being the hot, thin star on those glossy magazine covers.

I stayed away from the drama of daytime talk show positions or jobs that required interviewing celebrities - leave that throne to Oprah.   

Later, after years on the crime beat, I was so hardened that our news director would send me to cover gruesome murder scenes that none of the men wanted to see.

I tried so hard to prove I was not Little Oprah that I missed my own story.

"I made a mistake," I told my coach.

"You took a different path," she replied reassuringly.

Honestly?  Oprah doesn't need my forgiveness; she's not to blame for my missed opportunities.  Sure, I still want to tell stories that set the world ablaze but now that may mean sharing the set with a celebrity or two.

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Kinky. Nappy. Frizzy.

Gabby Douglas. Photo: www.fleurdecurl.com

Gold medalist Gabby Douglas responded beautifully to haters who said her hair looked "unkempt" at the Olympics:  "I just made history and people are focused on my hair?"

I lived in Gabby's Iowa town back when I was chasing presidential candidates through cornfields for the NBC station. I covered politics but that changed the day I was sent to fill in at the murder trial for two teen brothers.

The brothers claimed they had just meant to scare the victim - chasing him with a shotgun - but a bullet had ricocheted off the ground. The courtroom drama was made-for-TV stuff.

At one point, the prosecutor grabbed the shotgun off the evidence table, aimed at the jury and cocked it.  Screams.  People ducking. Banging gavel.

The prosecutor had made his point:  Waving a gun in the air? That's scaring someone.  Pulling a trigger?  That's murder.

"You're on the crime beat now," my boss said after my stories aired to stellar ratings.

On that beat, you quickly see that weapons are more than guns and knives. Sometimes they're words...like the ones hurled at Gabby Douglas.  Meant to crush not the body, but the spirit. 

Someone needs to give her a hair intervention.  

She needs some gel and a brush.  

She needs to represent. 

Kinky. Nappy. Frizzy.  For many Black women, our hair sometimes feels like a crown of thorns.

Gabby doesn't see it that way. "It can be bald or short," she said, "it doesn't matter about (my) hair."

The name of my blog comes from a critic's comment, "Honey, blot your lips!"  We pinned up that note as a reminder to check each other's appearance before going on air.  We learned to turn meanness into motivation and garbage into gold - just like Gabby's done.

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Breaking Bad

Experts say it takes six weeks to break a habit.  I'm not battling pills or booze but I am trying to break a style picked up working the TV news crime beat. Newscasters have a distinct on-air style that's hindering me from doing more creative work - work that doesn't require covering dead bodies.

"We just need to get the newscaster out of you," TV coach Marki Costello said at our first session.  I'd called Marki after seeing her help former NFL pro Hank Baskett move from the football field to the studio.

Marki teaches the same technical skills like TelePrompter and breaking down copy that newscasters learn but in a way that fits the style of TV hosting. Hosting is a completely different beast than news; sort of like the difference between boxers and wrestlers - both compete in a ring but they need different abilities.

"Reveal something about yourself we'd never know by looking at you," Marki instructed in her Hosting Boot Camp, "to help the audience connect with you." 

Hosts share intimate secrets with their audiences; as newscasters, we're trained to hide behind the camera. Newscasters tell other people's stories, not our own.  Strip off that protective layer?  No way.  

I revealed that my military dad had me in boxing gloves before I could read. My tone conveyed my message: back off.

Next assignment was reading copy for a dating show. Marking stopped me after a few sentences demanding, "What do YOU think?"  

As news anchors, we're trained to stay out of the story; whereas hosts make money off of their opinions. 

"That petite woman who won't date tall men has no idea what she's missing!"  I blurted out. Great. Now the audience thinks I sleep with NBA players.

Then came a live co-hosting drill. In news, we face a camera - not a crowd. The live audience felt like a jury. I mumbled a few words about the topic - travel, told a story about a recent trip to a Third World country - and crept back to my seat. 

A hot guy from The Bachelorette leaned over and whispered, "Do you know you said, 'pooped in a can?'" 

Despite Marki's coaching, I felt  stuck.  Too old to change with habits too big to break. Six weeks in TV rehab?  At least there shouldn't be any dead bodies. 

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Girls Who Wear Pink

Kendra Wilkinson & Hank Baskett.

As a kid, I did not wear pink.  I lived in sneakers and overalls and my dad's army boots.  I loved clomping around in  his big, spiffy combat boots.  They were black and shiny and made me feel fierce and unstoppable.  

I still prefer to wear combat boots over high heels but thanks to a Playboy Playmate, I'm finally becoming one of those girls who wear pink (not a bunny suit!). 

I tuned in to the TV show Kendra on Top to watch a friend's guest appearance on reality the show. The show follows a racy former Playmate and her husband, Hank, as they leave the fast lane for family life. I caught an episode about Hank training to break into TV after retiring from the NFL. 

Watching Hank work with a TV hosting coach, I wondered if she might be able to help me, too.  Newscasters have a distinct on-air style that's gotten in my way when I audition for more creative roles.  At one commercial test, a cranky agent even snapped, "I want you to sell the sugar, not put it on the news." 

A phone call and $600 later, I was signed up for a weekend with Hollywood's self-professed Queen of Hosting. Marki Costello's roster includes celebrities like Cee Lo, Khloe Kardashian and many more.  

Time to step up my game fast. Hosting Boot Camp was just a month away. 

Since we'd be filming against in a green screen studio, I knew I'd need new clothes.  My closet is full of dark and neutral colors that look fine for reporting in the field but that are way too dull in the studio.  

Time had come to join the girls who wear...

Yep.  Pink would perfectly "pop" with my skin tone.  Bought my first-ever pink blouse.  Hope it looks okay with combat boots.

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Thrill Seekers. Younger Dates. New Cars.

**post contains graphic content**

Why is it that after doing something you’ve dreamed of for a long time, the thrill fades so quickly? You’re left wondering, “What's next?” 

I didn’t expect to hit that place so soon after skydiving.  My brother thinks he knows why:  “Some people have a mid-life crisis and buy a new car or date a younger person,” he says. “My sister jumps from a perfectly good airplane!” 

I prefer to think some of us are born with an extra adventure gene. Besides, journalists are wired to take risks; our jobs demand it. 

But those risks often come at a high emotional cost and there are few healthy outlets. How do you escape memories? 

...a teenage girl dying naked in the street fleeing the jilted boy who stabbed her...a mom's mangled body as a drunk driver who slammed into her car sits unscathed in his...fathers blown to bits in a freak accident...

...They were repairing a gas main when it exploded.  We were the first TV crew to arrive.

“GET BACK!” yelled police cordoning off the scene. “You’re stepping on them!”  

We'd unkowingly walked into the blast area, trampling bits of flesh.

After doing interviews, I went to take notes.  Something in the brush - a stark, white boulder? - caught my eye.  It wasn't a rock. 

“Commander!" I yelled, "Over here!"  A man's head...the blast area was wider than we'd realized.

Fathers. husbands. sons. How do you forget?  I've watched friends get lost trying - drinking, drugs, eating disorders. 

Without faith and adventure I'd probably get lost, too. 

So yes, I plan to skydive again. Without my brother.  "No thanks," he said, “I don't want my last words on earth to be with some man strapped to my back."

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Almost Jump Time!

Three days until the big jump!  Of course, the news would keep showing video of the 80-year-old grandma's near fatal skydive when her harness malfunctions...*

Still, we're ready (my jump partner is an EMT I met heading to Haiti after the  earthquake).  I'm more worried about the heat. It's supposed to get up to 110 at the drop zone - could be trouble for someone used to 70 degree coastal temps.

Skydiving Magazine says freefall doesn't feel like the roller coaster drop most people expect so that makes me less nervous.  They say freefall is more like "a comfortable sensation of floating; the closest thing to human flight." 

So why skydiving?  I'm still trying to answer that question but maybe it just comes down to this:  adventure.  

Whether reporting in a disaster zone or caring for orphans in a Third World slum, adventure forces me to draw on my faith in ways ordinary life doesn't.  Away from our comfort zones, we're far more dependent on God and can sense a grace higher than any adrenaline rush.

Who knows, maybe facing fear opens the door for greater grace?  And grace always precedes great exploits.  

A demon-possessed man who lived in tombs?  Grace restored.  

A soldier whose ear got cut off ambushing Jesus?  Grace healed.  

A woman caught in adultery?  Grace forgave. 

And a grandmother who almost died skydiving?  Grace saved.

Grace and skydiving? Who knows.  In any case, I like what the thrill-seeking grandma said to a reporter who suggested safer hobbies: "Knitting is boring." 

***

Grandmother's near fatal skydive:

http://www.wtsp.com/news/national/article/256956/81/Grandmother-talks-about-terrifying-skydiving-jump

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Whitney

Whitney Houston in "The Bodyguard." Photo: Noel Phillips

What happens when you reach the end of hope?  

Not a comforting thought to wake up to on Valentine's Day but there it was...then just names - lost hearts. Whitney Houston. Amy Winehouse. Michael Jackson...

What about faith?  Doesn't that sustain even when hope fails?  

Whitney grew up in the church.  She knew faith. divine love. even sang "Jesus Loves Me"  to party guests the other night. 

Why didn't that carry her through the storm? 

Most journalists will tell you no matter what the coroner eventually says, Whitney's another statistic.  Most of us have seen prescription drugs trafficked from Hollywood to the Hamptons as openly as fake Prada purses.

Not long ago I got a lead into some places filling questionable prescriptions. Went to my publisher with the story idea - an investigative piece exposing suppliers might put some out of business and save lives.  He killed the idea. 

"No one will buy an ad around that kind of story," he said.  Wary advertisers meant lost sales.

News directors had quashed some of my controversial stories before but this time I was furious.  Where was our courage? We had a platform to confront our nation's drug epidemic and instead we walked off the stage because a pharmaceutical giant might yank an ad?

where do broken hearts go. when melodies are gone. can they find their way home...Whitney, I pray you did.  We will always love you.

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Half-Naked Neighbors and Miracles

Obstacles conspired against me as I tried to get home for Thanksgiving.  We were even forced to evacuate my building as I was packing - the piercing emergency sirens sent one resident fleeing half-naked and barefoot.

Another resident emerged seeminly ready for the apocalypse: wearing a backpack of supplies, layers of clothes and heavy boots.

"Hey, how'd you pack all that so fast?" asked a neighbor who'd managed to save only his shaggy, white puppy.  "Um, I was getting ready for a trip." 

I confess. I'm the  panty-packing, toothbrush-toting survivalist.  But let me explain, lest my neighbors think they live next to Unabomber's disciple.

One of my first big TV news assignments was covering a freight train derailment miles from civilization.  The engineer hadn't realized that a driver had somehow crashed into the side of the train and had dragged the truck for miles.  

Rescuers had found the body of the driver, a young mom, but not her baby who'd been strapped in a car seat when she left home. There was a chance the baby was still alive, maybe ejected in the crash.

I'd been on my way home when I got the breaking news call so wasn't prepared to spend the freezing night outside in the middle of nowhere; there wasn't even a 7-11 nearby to get extra gloves and snacks.  

Still, my photographer and I walked the dark tracks with the rescuers.  Maybe our camera's light might illuminate the tiny body...

Then at dawn, a miracle of sorts.  Word came that the mom had inexplicably left the baby with a sitter just before the crash--the child had been safe all night.

That long, cold night taught me to always keep a bag packed...and that sometimes miracles happen long before we can see them.

(And the half-naked neighbor? Well, we all escaped the stove fire just fine.)

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Twisted Truths: What Parents Need to Know About the Joe Paterno Child Sex Scandal

As journalists, we make a living reporting about the wreckage caused by peoples' actions, like Penn State's Joe Paterno.  

There will always be questions about why he didn't call police when he learned his assistant coach might be molesting boys.  If the allegations are true, Paterno and others did nothing while the rapes went on for years.  One of the most alarming accusations says university employees knew "Victim 8" was being assaulted in the shower but didn't call 911 because they were afraid "they might lose their jobs."

Every parent should read the grand jury report (if they can stomach the graphic content) to see how a predator got away with it for so long.  As crime reporters, we get so used to people lying to us that we always look for twisted truths.  But most parents aren't so distrusting - as seen in the grand jury report.  It reveals how parents swept suspicions aside and never seriously tried to answer disturbing questions - questions that could protect your child: 

Why does this adult give my child gifts for no reason? 

Is my child acting out when seeing this adult?

Is an adult spending odd hours with my child, like taking them out of school? 

Is something "off" about my child's appearance, like disheveled clothes or wet hair, after being with this adult?

If this scandal has a redeeming side, it's that maybe we'll be better equipped to identify predators...and also compelled to protect children - even if they're not ours.

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Ridiculous, Crazy Faith

Artists Wanted.  © 2011 Maria Peterson Photography

create.

A reporter being given a new assignment says in Overheard in the Newsroom: “I’m kind of glad to get away from pot for a while and move on to perverts.” 

Sometimes you feel so stuck that even covering stories about sadists and rapists brings a needed change.  

I'm about ready to go back to covering perverts.

I thought freelancing would give me more time to pursue creative dreams.  Writing children's books. Studying photography. Acting. Baking. 

I was wrong. 

"Being a freelancer means being a hustler," my friend Patrice says.*  "If anyone tells you that being a freelancer is easy, they are on some serious 1985 cocaine."

I'm not good at hustling so on top of freelancing, I took a coporate job writing marketing materials and the work has exploded. But there's a cost to doing work you're not passionate about. In time, the artist inside revolts.  A sense of futility sets in.  A crisis of faith hits.
 
"Being a freelancer takes a person of ridiculous, crazy and often stupid-looking faith," says Patrice.  

So we cling to this ridiculous, crazy faith that God is working out His plan...and because the true artist will continue to create - must create - even when there is no paycheck.

*Read Patrice Patrick's post on freelancing here

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Most Wanted: Whitey Bulger

James "Whitey" Bulger as a young mobster

I've been mourning my losses.  Well, not exactly my losses but what could have been my gain if I'd been more observant of my neighbors.

The press is reporting that a former beauty queen named Anna will get the $2 million reward for the tip that led to the capture of mobster James "Whitey" Bulger.  Bulger, who ran the Boston Winter Hill Gang, had been on the FBI's "Most Wanted" for the murders of 19 people in the 1970's and '80's.

I walk by Bulger's apartment nearly every day on my way to the beach. The area is unremarkable except for it's proximity to the ocean; mostly 70's apartment buildings along a wide, palm tree-lined street.  

Posing as a retiree, the mob boss had been living "in plain sight," as cops put it, for more than a decade. 

Seems simple "girl talk" brought down the most wanted fugitive who'd been right up there with terrorist leader Osama bin Laden.  

"Anna had befriended Bulger's girlfriend after the two women took an interest in a stray cat," says writer Randy Economy. 

Anna turned in the 81-year-old Bulger and his girlfriend after seeing them on a TV report. She's now $2 million richer and certainly the heroine of a future movie.  The TV crews are gone for now but I'm sure they'll be back when a deal is struck. 

During the raid on Bulger's place, the FBI found a tidy nest egg stashed in the walls of his apartment, along with an arsenal of weapons.  Forget Bingo - wonder what else those retirees across the street are up to? 

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After the Vows...

Wedding day.  Photo: K. Lewis 

If marriage is God's design, why does it seem so hard to make it work? And virtually impossible in Hollywood?  

I got to thinking about this as a friend announced her engagement; the same day another friend announced her break up. 

Sadly, I've seen as many endings to marriages as beginnings.  Covering the crime beat, cops will tell you some of their riskiest responses are when one partner is trying to leave the other.

To make ends meet at my first small market TV news gig, I took a part-time job at a women's shelter.  Police brought in most victims with only their kids and the clothes on their backs.

I never got used to seeing the swollen faces, black eyes, bruises...I didn't understand how mothers stayed with men who shattered their kids' bones, or worse. 

"They feel like they have no choice," the director tried to explain, "Most go back."

Later, I was the one dialing 911 for a friend fleeing an explosive husband.  She was terrified he'd come home and find her packing. 

I'd been there when they met.  Celebrated their engagement.  Helped pick the wedding decorations.  We saw no warnings; the beatings started after the vows.  

"I'm calling the police," I said, "That'll give you time to get out."  I'd covered enough crime stories to know this one could turn fatal.

My friend's experience is common; one in four women are in abusive relationships.* The reasons a marriage goes from flowers to fists are as intricate as the lace of a wedding dress.  And love's promises - to have and to hold, for better or for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish...until death do us part - just as fragile. 

*Domestic Violence Resource Center www.dvrc-or.org

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She Still Stands

The LA Times is running this photo I shot outside a West Hollywood antiques store.  The owners display collectibles and old movie props  but weeks have passed without a buyer for the 8' statue.  

Just before the 10-year anniversary of 9/11, Lady Liberty reminded me...

As journalists, we make a living reporting other peoples' tragedies.  Lost lives usually mean bigger ratings; 9/11 was no exception.  Except it was our tragedy, too.  There's a saying, "History always leaves a witness."  We were all witnesses.

I lived near the Golden Gate Bridge at the time.  The area around the monument went into lockdown.  The F-14 military fighter jets flying overhead made a threat to our lives seem imminent.

Tears are of no use in the newsroom; mine would not stop.  Only one other story had hit me so hard: the crash of TWA Flight 800.  

I'd instantly felt the explosion that killed 380 people was not an accident...even before I learned that my friend, detective Sue Hill, was on board; we'd met years earlier working the same crime scenes.

No tributes mark the crash site of Flight 800.  No monuments honor the victims.  No one can prove whether a missile or mechanical failure brought down Sue's plane but I'm convinced  these tragedies five years apart - on 7/17 and 9/11 - were somehow linked. 

These lost lives remind us of the price we pay to live in a free country - by no means perfect, her leaders are often wrongly motivated; her people often selfish and arrogant.  Yet, despite terrorism, catastrophe and war, her Light still shines.  She still stands.

*"The Mysterious Death of Detective Sue Hill," The Rap Sheet, Nov 2005
http://www.portlandpoliceassociation.com/rsissues/Nov05Rap.pdf

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