-- You can email Jeff at jeff.dore@wsbtv.com

3/29

I wish the good people who work so hard to shut down stores that sell sex items would put an end to the public orgies going on all around us and making Atlanta a truly horrible place to live for sensitive types like me. The product of male reproductive exuberance is on our streets and windows, coating our cars and on our clothes. Gross, you say? Darned right! The producers of this stuff are having a public frenzy and it’s driving me crazy! Someone do something about it!

All that yellow-green powder swirling down Peachtree Street, coating our cars, getting in our grits and souring our lungs is pollen, the male DNA of pine trees pining for mates. I could put up with pine pollen alone; their cells are big, fat goobers compared to the finer, grittier emissions of pines’ more twisted cousins, the poplars, oaks, and other culprits issuing forth in public what should be kept between consenting trees in the privacy of their forests and groves. Those are the spores that cling to our eyelashes and battle their way to our eyeballs as if armed with swords, maces and daggers.

I hate to be a prude, but all this tree mating is making me miserable. Oh, sure, you’re saying, he’s just bitter because no cute, syrupy maples are sashaying his way, waving their branches seductively, gesturing “hey, big boy, let’s make saplings.” I swear, that’s not it. I’m miserable because all that pollen makes my eyes feel like bugs are ice skating on them with sharpened blades; like someone loaded my Visine with broken glass; like pirates are using rusty picks to dig treasure holes in my eyelids.

And my nose! Don’t get me started on my nose! The seismometer at Georgia Tech has been recording my sneezes, causing them to issue tsunami warnings on Lake Lanier. My sneezes are so disgusting, if I explode outdoors, the Department of Natural Resources fines me for outdoor watering in a drought. My pastor cancels church services if I show up. There’s simply no use trying to preach with all that commotion going on.

I have done news reports on the pollen and learned a thing or two. First, I have LOTS of company. Brothers and sisters in Benadryl, I feel your pain. I got a prescription for some good eye drops from my friend and eye doctor, David Ross, who also said putting cold compresses on the eyes help cut down on the irritation and reaction to the pollen. The flip side of that is that, while the steam in a hot shower is good for the sinuses, we have to keep the hot water off our eyes. Have you noticed that? Trees emit the most pollen in the morning when we’re trying to bathe, and I get the urge to wash it off my face by putting my face right up to the shower head and rinsing my eyes. Not good! The hot water makes the itching a LOT worse, whereas holding cold water up to my eyes makes them feel a lot better. I enjoy mowing the lawn, and have to do it whether I like it or not, so I take an antihistamine BEFORE I mow and wear a dust mask WHILE I mow. Then, when I come back indoors, take a shower. Even though this is the best time of year to keep doors and windows open for the perfect temperatures outside, I keep them shut to keep the pollen out. And when I drive, I put the air conditioner on recycled air so it won’t suck pollen in through the vents and shoot them into my sinuses.

So there. I hope my tips help you. Now you help me. Contact your legislators, call the governor, harass the mayor, and get them to curb wanton tree lust. It’s disgusting.

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3/7/07

I sent this email to one of my bosses about why we should never book rooms in a particular hotel again. All this happened during our coverage of the tornado that struck Baker County March 1:

So we finish up the five and six o’clock shots Friday night, hang around awhile, shoot the Salvation Army serving stew (my first meal of the day), shoot the sun setting behind the chow line and other evening stuff for the 11:00 show, then Damon and I go out to shoot new night video.

We get power crews, we find the county EMA director and do an interview, and then stop to use the bathroom (my first time today) at…this is no joke…the only restaurant in Baker County. Figure while I’m there, I’ll get a bowl of soup. As you might imagine, being the only restaurant in the whole county, it does a good business on a Friday night. It took about an hour for a burger and a bowl of soup.

When we get back to the truck, we learn that we aren’t in the 11p show at all, but in the early mornings for the next two mornings. Since no one told us this until after we’d started shooting, and Cingular cell phones don’t work in Baker County, we found out late. We drive up to Albany to the Wingate Inn, where Janice has booked four rooms (I guess one for Leonard, who had been working with us earlier, but moved to another city). We straightened that out with the desk clerks and I signed and initialed three forms for the three rooms—a very important point to belabor; three forms, three signatures, three rooms.

After going to Target for a few supplies, we came back to the hotel where I shot-sheeted the latest tape and wrote a package for the early-morning show. We figured it would be better to finish it now and sleep a little bit later at the other end of a short night. Damon stayed in the truck while I went to my room, one of three rooms we rented for the night, using three signatures on three forms. I got to bed about 11:15 with a wakeup call for 4:20. We all had wakeup calls for 4:20. Three wakeup calls, one for each of the three rooms on the three forms with the three signatures.

At 2:15, the phone rang and, thinking it was my wakeup call, I answered. It was Jessica on the front desk asking did we want three rooms or four rooms? I said three rooms and went back to sleep. At 3:15 the phone rang again. It was Jessica. Did we want three rooms? Three rooms, Jessica. Three rooms. We filled out three forms. Well, she said, she didn’t have any forms. Nobody left her any forms. I said that after two calls, my rooms should really be comped and she said without a manager there, she couldn’t do that. Then she said…I swear I’m not making this up…I’m sorry I had to call again, but I thought the first time I called you said you didn’t want the rooms.

That’s when I figured yelling might cure her incessant calling. Didn’t want the rooms?! How could I not want the rooms? I’m IN one of the rooms trying to sleep! You keep waking me up in one of the rooms. How could I not want the rooms? I want three rooms. One for tonight, one for tomorrow night, or later tonight, whenever that is. Sunday night. She told me I shouldn’t be yelling. I said if she called me again before my wakeup call, I would call the police on her. For what crime, exactly, I couldn’t figure out, but stayed awake plotting it.

What I didn’t know was that at about three in the morning, Jessica rented Tony’s room to a couple, who opened his door and walked in on Tony, whose heart was pounding so badly after the experience he never got back to sleep. That was why she called me (after Tony called her) to see if we really wanted the three rooms.

Still awake at 4:17, I got out of bed, did the bathroom thing, listening for the 4:20 wakeup call. At 4:23, I still hadn’t gotten it, so I called Jessica and said, I was supposed to get a wakeup call at 4:20. She said, well by my watch it’s still two minutes away, and I didn’t want to wake you up early, like I was being SO unreasonable about being woken up all the time. She said, I don’t know what else you want me to do, sir. I said…and I wasn’t shouting this time, but there was a certain sleep-deprived steeliness to my voice…I want you to fix your watch. And she asked, Sir, are you going to yell at me all night? I explained that I wasn’t yelling and she said well you’re talking to me very loudly. And then…I am not making this up…she said, you just wanted the rooms for the one night, right? So I explained we wanted them for two nights, and that she was a nut and hung up.

When I went downstairs, she saw me and said, yes, sir, I am the nut, and told me the night clerks hadn’t done any paperwork on the rooms, hadn’t checked us in and she had spent all night trying to straighten it out. She took my suggestion to heart that she comp my room for the night. I asked if she couldn’t have straightened it out in the morning? That didn’t go over well. Tony was outside, told me about his barge-in wakeup (which also explained why at about 3:15 some disgruntled, non-guests had started honking their car horn outside our rooms). Damon dropped off his stuff at the car, then went back upstairs to get the cameras. His room key had been disconnected.

He went downstairs. She asked what room. 321, he said. She swiped his card in the machine and he went upstairs. Still didn’t work. Back downstairs. What room, sir? 321. Oh, she said, you told me 221 the first time.

Even though Jessica assured me we were booked for two nights, I took all my stuff out of the room. I really don’t trust her not to check someone else in there, or set the room on fire or something. The whole experience was surrealistically bad, I seriously thought for awhile that she might be involved in one of those pranks where they piss people off to get their reactions on camera for a bad t.v. show. Bottom line; don 't ever, ever, ever, ever book anyone into a Wingate Inn again.

Jeff

p.s. My room keycard didn't work this afternoon. I went to the desk. He said, have you had it near a cell phone? Yes. Oh, he said, those erase the cards. I asked if they should advise people about that and he answered, "oh, pretty much everybody knows that."

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11/7

I'm not working elections coverage today.

Believe it or not, other life goes on.

In between your commercials of candidates ripping each other to pieces for the last few months, our advertisers were still telling you about car sales and groceries and good deals on fashions.

While gubernatorial candidates were attracting cameras when they voted this morning, and voters were wondering if their own, single little vote would really matter, other people were still coping with rain, traffic and the daily mishaps of daily news. And a big murder trial was still going on in a windowless courtroom in downtown Atlanta.

I covered today's testimony in the trial of Scott Davis.

He is accused of killing the guy his estranged wife was dating and then setting his house on fire to cover the crime.

At issue today, phone records; big lists of little numbers. They certainly aren't as interesting or sexy as testimony about a divorce, a boyfriend, a murder and an arson fire. Just little numbers that tell a tale of people making phone calls. But it's those little details...like individual votes...that add up to make the whole story and possibly shape outcomes of trials or elections. All the details count.

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9/16

Lately I’ve had a double identity. You know me as Jeff Dore, Channel Two Action News Reporter. A few years ago, though, I was Jeff Dore, leukemia and chemotherapy patient. If the chemo didn’t work, my doctor said, I’d probably be dead in about two years.

Obviously, it worked, and earlier this year I passed the two-year anniversary of going into remission. I am grateful for a wonderful doctor and nurses, amazing medicine and the support of many wonderful people. I am also grateful for the latest, cutting-edge research that made this remission possible.

That’s why I am so enthusiastically supporting a wonderful cause; the Light the Night Walk of the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. For the second year, they have honored me by making me the Atlanta Walk honorary chairman. The money we raise from donations will help fund more research, maybe the research that will lead me to a cure instead of remission, the research that we hope will save people destined to die from all kinds of blood cancers.

It’s a very cool walk. Everyone carries a helium balloon with a little light inside, so as we walk after dusk, all the balloons glow. We survivors get a different color from all you healthy people.

If you want to join the walk, you can go to lightthenight.org and sign up. If you’d like to join my walking team, click the buttons to Jeff’s Team (clever name, huh?), or you can use this link and donate to the cause on-line; www.active.com/donate/ltnAtlant/1814_jdoreLTN

We would appreciate all the money we can get to fund research, assist patients, and keep the website at lls.org (LLS for Leukemia and Lymphoma Society) going.

Sincerely, with the double identity,

Jeff Dore

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9/15

Have you ever seen one of those National Geographic films of a hundred thousand sea birds crowded together on a wave-battered rock of a rookery, all squawking and screeching at the same time, making a cacophonic racket like 230 banjo players all plucking random strings as loudly as they can?

That’s what it sounded like in a huge tent behind the right field seats at Turner Field as I joined 230 banjo pickers, every one of whom was hammering through disjointed bars, notes, slides, hammer-ons and pluck-offs of “Foggy Mountain Breakdown.” It sounded like crazed, reproduction-oriented terns by the gazillions. It was music to my ears.

My ears are suspect, though; I am a wannabe banjo picker. For decades I’ve been one of those guys of a certain generation who strummed a guitar in private, singing Bob Dylan tunes, imagining Joan Baez gratefully supplying the harmony, trying my hand at writing my own protest, love and anxiety songs. And then few years ago, some guys at my church took up mandolins, and another guy, who has a history of forming new bands almost as often as some potters form new pots, got us together to make a string band with a bluegrass orientation. After a few months of practicing, we took the bold step of playing one morning in Fellowship Hall as people gathered for Sunday school.

One of the older church members came up afterward and told us, “I have a banjo I bought about 30 years ago that I’ve been meaning to learn how to play. It’s looking like I might not get around to it now. If I donated it to the church, would one of you want to play it?” I raised my hand and became the band’s banjo player. Playing banjo requires lightning reflexes in the fingers and a good sense of timing. My wife, who has finally given up on ever teaching me to line dance without knocking over and hurting long lines of innocent line-dancing people, could tell you about my timing. And anyone who has watched me try any sports involving a ball can tell you about my reflexes. But I have persevered.

Now jump ahead a few years. I take banjo lessons from a mandolin player, Brad Laird, one of those guys who can not only play anything with strings but can teach them all, too. Brad was talking with one of the guys who runs banjo-dot-com, a store and website selling banjos and unicycles (loosely joined, I think, under the category of “things Jeff is too uncoordinated to do”). The banjo-dot-com guy was asking about ideas to promote the business, and Brad, who is always awash in ideas, suggested a tribute to the great bluegrass banjo player Earl Scruggs, in which we would assemble the largest collection of banjo pickers ever gathered and, all at the same time, play the great Earl Scruggs tune, “Foggy Mountain Breakdown.” John at Banjo-dot-com ran with the idea, which evolved into all the banjo players meeting at Turner Field, gathering along the base lines before the game, and playing a very fast banjo piece together.

So I found myself with my banjo in a tent before the game. Most banjos are carried around in black cases, so strewn all around this tent were identical, black, banjo-shaped cases, like so many sleeping penguins on an ice floe. The problem was that the banjos were not in the cases, but were in the hands of 230 banjo players all practicing their licks and rolls before the big event.

At 4:30 we crowded around the leader for a rehearsal. Just getting everyone to stop picking long enough for him to shout out the directions took awhile. Then he explained that a base player would thump out a few notes, the leader would play the first few bars that call for a G chord, and everyone would jump in at the moment it switched to E-minor. Good plan. But could it possibly work?

Amazingly, it did. When the song switched to that E-minor, 230 left-hand middle fingers hammered down on the fourth string, second fret at precisely the same instant, followed by the middle finger of the right hand picking the first string while the ring finer of 230 left hands mashed down on the first string, second fret. And so it continued.

The rules for The Guinness Book of Records say an ensemble has to play for five minutes for it to count, and must be lead by a real conductor. Up in front of the assemblage was a conductor, wearing a real, button-down shirt with a tie. I asked him how he happened to be there. He knew somebody who knew somebody, short answer. He is also a legitimate band leader from Cobb County, whose day job is leading school bands. He’s horn player, the only member of his family who doesn’t play the banjo, as it turns out. But he kept the beat and watched the clock, and signaled for everyone to stop playing together.

There’s a joke about banjo players. If you want to make a banjo player play slower, put sheet music in front of him. If you want him to slow WAY down, put notes on the sheet. Having a conductor didn’t seem to hurt the process any. I realized that by the first run-through, we should already have qualified for the world record for the most really, really white guys under one tent.

The challenge with doing the same song bunched up along the first and third base lines on the field was that we were spread out, we didn’t have a tent over our heads to contain the sound so we could all hear each other, and the public address system was likely to pick up what we were doing and send it back to us about a second late, further throwing us off. But they lined us up, we walked out onto the field, some of us waving grandly to a sparse crowd between double headers with the Phillies, they showed a camera shot of Earl Scruggs himself on the giant, jumbo-mega-gargantuan-tron TV. screen perched over Center Field (he was in one of the Lexus-level suites watching) and we all cheered madly for him, and then the conductor raised his baton, the bass player began the lead-in, and the lead banjo player started up on that G-chord part.

Unfortunately, those of us just part way down the first-base line couldn’t hear a thing, and judging by how slowly the ensemble joined in, I’m not sure anyone else, could, either. But the sound was sort of relayed down the base-lines until eventually everyone was in synch. And what a marvelous thing it, was. The crowd was grinning and clapping, people were taking pictures, and we could only imagine that Earl Scruggs was enjoying the effort and not suffering brain injuries from the noise. It was, to banjo players, a glorious sound.

I don’t normally like the inconveniences of big crowds and lock-step activities. And I will confess here that I was one of the few banjo players there who couldn’t keep up with the finger-picking and just hit the chords, although every now and then I took a stab at it, failed miserably, and was comforted that in all the noise, no one could possibly have heard me screwing everything up. This was a very, very fun event, and now I am part of a world-record setting event. For the record, there was no previous record for most banjo players playing a song at the same time.

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7/17

We actually made a difference!

Not a big difference, but it feels pretty good, anyway.

A man named James Treece who lives on Old Jonesboro Road down in south Fulton County called to tell me there was an illegal dump near his house, and not only was Fulton County government failing to do anything about it, Fulton County government owned the land!

The county had used it for a water and sewer project.

They’d set up office in a nice house with wood floors on the property, put some storage sheds out back, made big piles of crushed rock and river gravel, put lots of sections of concrete drain pipes and manhole flanges and water pipes around, and worked from there for some years.

Then, work done, the county moved out.

They left all that stuff behind, though, moved in some dumpsters, left the house to be broken into and vandalized, windows broken, walls gouged, and basically the whole site was a dump!

Mr. Treece said he kept calling the county, going through the phone book, he said, and everyone gave a variation on “not my job.”

So he called us.

The day after we did the story, the county came out, documented the mess, hauled off the dumpsters and most of the trash and made plans to clean up the rest of the stuff. So we made a difference!

Okay, it’s not like when Dale Cardwell or Richard Belcher exposes corruption and government employees get tossed out.

Now, THAT’S some good stuff!

I’m glad they do that, but frankly I’m a little shy about that sort of thing.

As a spiritual exercise, I try to avoid saying bad things about people.

That may go over well at church, but it is not a good trait for an investigative reporter.

I tend to point out problems and let the people involved try to explain themselves. You either buy their stories or you don’t; it’s up to you, our viewers, and I suspect that most times, most people get it.

I didn’t assume the problem of a dump on county property was because anyone at the county was evil, just that we had the ability to get the right people to become aware that they had a problem and were making it public and they had an opportunity to correct it.

That approach worked.

Some good people got right on the job, and tell us they formed an action plan and will follow up on it to clean up the remaining stuff.

All in all, it’s pretty satisfying for everyone involved.

I assume the county people will do what they told us they will do.

But I’ll call Mr. Treece in a few weeks, just in case. I don’t always hold true to my goal of not saying bad things about people.

Boy, I could tell you some stories!

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7/13

We see enough strange and interesting people covering day-to-day news. One day, the people-watching was right out the window of our news van as I was getting ready to do my live report.

He sat at the edge of the parking lot on one of those little concrete bumpers you park your tires against, alternately taking his baseball cap off and placing it carefully on the ground, smoothing out any possible wrinkles in its white cotton dome, then putting it neatly back atop his head, adjusting the bill left, then right, a little higher, back left, down some, to the right, wiggling the back until it was right enough to free his hands to gesture expressively in his non-stop conversation.

His hands flew like an Italian opera conductor’s, acting out every note and word with the verbs in his elbows, the nouns in his wrists, the nuanced adjectives in his fingers and the big questions and grand answers in the hunches and throws of his shoulders. He talked first to an audience up to his left, throwing his arms open in a wide embrace, the waffling one hand in skepticism about some point of contention. Whether he could see a person before him who I couldn’t I don’t know. I wondered if there was a way to ask him, “do you actually see someone you’re talking to? Do you hear their side of the conversation? Or do you just feel compelled to talk as-if, satisfied to fill in the other half of the conversation yourself?”

I talk to my dog sometimes. I ask him questions. How you doing, big boy? You guard the house while I was gone? But I don’t expect answers or carry on conversations. I know this game is only serve, not volley.

Some people talk to God or to a spouse, with all the gestures and, without hearing an answer, fill in the hollow, voiceless spaces themselves. They aren’t crazy. They’re just trying. The need to touch outweighs the need to know they’re getting through. You don’t stop the car if you’re going with the arrow on a one-way street. You step on the pedals, turn the wheel, fiddle with the radio and sing with the tunes.

Maybe he was more like a shower singer belting out Broadway tunes into a Soap-On-A-Rope. The sounds of a great, screaming, hand-clapping audience stream through the hiss of the shower head. Tile walls echo lyrics like a bar mirror lined with tequila bottles in a back-road honky-tonk. Young women in black halter-tops with heavy-lidded eyes for the singer perch on tall bar stools, ignoring men in Western shirts offering starlit nights in pickup trucks. You wash under your arms with your soap microphone during the instrumental bridges, then croon the chorus to a thousand fans sharing your shower. Life is good, your voice is at the top of its form and you’re a star.

Soon after the big open-arm gesture, the man sitting on the concrete bumper shifted his attention to an audience above him, gesturing skyward with an open palm up as if weighing an opinion like a bag of rare, black pearls. He paused, respectfully considering what the person above had to offer, shook his head, explained his position, laughed at the response and held up both hands, waving them like a cop saying let’s not go there. His partner in conversation seemed to agree and listen patiently as the man sitting on the concrete block presented a newer and more amusing point of information.

I marveled at the man’s open joy at carrying on such a wide-ranging, lively and animated discussion with someone he could neither see nor hear. Schizophrenia, I guessed, exacerbated by the bottle of clear booze the man snuck out of his waistband and set carefully on the uneven asphalt close to his leg. The man didn’t look like some of the crazies you see wandering the streets, too far removed from the common cares of the city to rinse off or maybe even notice the growing layers of grime on their bodies and clothes. This man was clean with hair that drifted easily in a light breeze and a white t-shirt and jeans fit for a detergent commercial. I heard him say, in fact, “I may be homeless, but I’m not dirty.” He had that going for him.

It was about time for the news. I ran a thin microphone cable up my shirt and out my collar, where I clipped on an audio pickup no bigger than a white lie, and tucked the transmitter to my belt around back where it wouldn’t show. Then I stepped before the camera and rehearsed what I would say in my brief spot on the newscast. This is where it happened, I would say, where the people were gathered, and I practiced a nonchalant gesture to show where the people had been, then rehearsed looking back knowingly at the camera, strode a few steps to the left to show where a bomb had once exploded. The audience loves movement in these things, so I practiced the movement until I got it just right. When the news anchor announced I was giving my live report, I ran through the whole routine, just like I’d practiced it, imagining someone at home in front of a television set listening, fascinated by my recreation of events, by the nouns in my hands and the action verbs in my movements. What a day for that audience!

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4/28---I keep thinking, “This will just be another assignment,” but my eyes ruin it. After 29 years reporting, my eyes keep surprising me.

The assignment today, troops return from Iraq. We’ve covered lots of these over the years, soldiers coming home from war zones. We know the drill, photographer Don Franklin and I, and know it’s a logistical planning challenge to do the news coverage; find out where the soldiers will drive past, where they will march and sit, set up our audio connection from the speakers’ podium, find a good camera angle to see smiles, tears and hugs.

There’s a mechanical familiarity to it all, a big jigsaw puzzle to put together. It’s a job. Then we find people waiting eagerly for a loved one to arrive, do some interviews about how excited they’ve been, and wait for the arriving caravan. All routine, a matter of covering all the angles, getting the job done. Logistics. We get their emotions; they don’t get ours.

And just as routine, when the soldiers arrive and the wives and girlfriends scream and the children wave flags and the police whoop their sirens and veterans hold their grandchildren up for the view of a lifetime, I tear up, my chest swells, I stand up straighter, my throat tightens, and once again I am surprised by my emotion.

It’s just another story. Just another day to get the interviews, shoot the pictures, take the notes, write the story, edit it all together, do the live reports and go home to another late dinner. But like most stories on most days, it’s not just another story, not once we get into it, once we meet the people, feel the emotion, see the drama before us. It’s amazing how rarely “the same old story” ever is. They’re always unique and they always catch me by surprise.

The crowd built up along the edges of Jesse Jewel Parkway through the center of Gainesville. A veteran of the Vietnam War, Bill, was among the people handing out a thousand small flags that spectators grabbed enthusiastically, swishing them through some practice waves right away.

Being a reporter gives one a wonderful opportunity to just butt into people’s business and ask them question.

Are you meeting a relative? Have you been anxious? What are your plans? We talked with Amanda, a pretty young woman waiting for her boyfriend, Kevin. And we talked with a father, Alvin, a truck driver disabled by a brain tumor, who rested up for three days before heading out alone from Memphis at three in the morning to reach Gainesville before his son, Andrew, returned from a year at war. His wife couldn’t get off work. His son went off a college boy playing soldier in ROTC and was about to return a battle-hardened man. Dad had prayed every day for his son and all the other soldiers.

So when the sheriff’s department motorcycle escort roared past with sirens screaming, the crowds screamed even louder.

A long line of cars passed, soldiers still in desert uniforms waved out the windows like homecoming queens, Amanda spotted Kevin and blew him a kiss and a squealing “Kevinnnnn,” and my eyes unexpectedly filled with tears at the wonderful emotion of it all. I don’t know why I didn’t see that coming. The damn eyes do it every time.