Defense Mechanism

I was just sending my end of the day wrap to the boss, having just landed at home after a long day in the field, when the magnitude of what I was a part of today hit me like a ton of bricks.

When I got paged out to cover the massive police sweep of Hoyt Park early this afternoon, I guess I went into the story with my "happy ending" sights set pretty low. Let's face it -- Steven Weber, the guy police were searching the heavily forested, cave-ridden, 27-acre park for, had already murdered his ex-wife before going on the lam. When cops found his truck at the park this morning, the best case scenario we could hope for was that they would find him alive and he could be tried for his heinous act.

From there, the possible scenarios got grimmer. Police could find Weber dead by his own hand, which they eventually did, but at least the situation is resolved now and no one else has been hurt. But police could also have found nothing, leaving an armed and dangerous fugitive on the loose. Or, there were the nightmare scenarios, where Weber could have elected to take a hostage or shoot it out with the cops.

So yeah, I went into my work day today with some low expectations.

Nothing that happened today could undo Francie Weber's murder. Nothing could erase the years of domestic abuse that lead up to it or the impact it had on the couple's children. As a reporter on a breaking story, I have to accept the old facts and focus on getting the new ones straight so I can relay them to the public. I have to push the tragedy that has already unfolded out of my mind long enough to do my part to keep it from turning into a bigger tragedy.

Duty is a fine defense mechanism, though anyone who's seen me in a tense situation will tell you I rely just as heavily on a dark sense of humor which sometimes verges on inappropriate. I get that from my Dad, who once quipped, "This is great, I've always wanted a convertible," as paramedics cut away the roof of the car that was literally wrapped around him, mangled when another vehicle ran a stop sign at 70 miles an hour and broadsided my Dad in his driver's side door.

In a standoff or other "hurry up and wait" situations like today, there's ample time to yuck it up with cops and other reporters stuck at the same scene. There's nothing disrespectful intended in it, and I opine that there's nothing wrong with it if it's done discreetly and without crossing the line. Many in law enforcement and the press share that same strong defense mechanism, I've learned, and as they say, misery loves company.

For instance, I was part of a cadre of press and cops that spent 15 minutes or so delighting in the predicament of a pizza delivery driver this afternoon who had a delivery assigned to him within the police perimeter and couldn't get the deliveree to answer his or her cell phone. After all of our snickering and goading, the driver actually took us up on our offer, and we bought the pizza off him on the cheap and tipped generously.

Eating Glass Nickle pizza out the back of Channel 3's news van was as surreal as it was hilarious -- and necessary too, because most of us hadn't eaten in quite some time.

And as long as we're on the subject of food, I found something else to be particularly heartening today. I eventually settled on a vantage point a little further down the block, with another police officer and a few other reporters, and we spent most of the afternoon camped on that corner. Elation is the best way to describe the reaction when a neighbor brought out, first, a tray of drinks and, later, a plate of elaborately constructed ham sandwiches.

The random generosity of the kindly woman who lives next to Capital City Church on Blackhawk Avenue felt, at the time, like the stuff of legends.

But it was at that corner that I met Madison Police Officer Jxxxxxk, who had been on duty since 5:30 in the morning. After sharing that corner for only a couple hours, we were delighting not only in speculating what grim scenarios might be unfolding in the hills and houses to our west, but also in ripping on each other relentlessly.

When a series of loud pops echoed out of the bluffs around 6:35 PM, Jxxxxxk instinctively dropped to a crouch, hand on his gun butt, and I drew pen and microphone with equal ferocity. The moment passed, and we determined the sound was gas canisters discharging in the park's caves, designed to smoke a suspect out of hiding.

But that's the way the mechanism is supposed to work. It doesn't interfere with the job, it just keeps you from losing your head while you're doing it. If we had spent the day focusing on the horrors of a repeated domestic abuse case taken to the final extreme, we'd have been miserable, and not very capable of doing our jobs.

So I survived the day with nothing more harrowing than a serious sunburn, and Jxxxxxk eventually got home to his three kids. And this is where the tough part begins, because now we have to turn the defense mechanisms off.

We have to do that because to neglect to do so does a disservice to the two people who weren't dead three days ago but are now. It's disrespectful to their families, for whom the real suffering is only just beginning. And leaving those defense mechanisms on all the time is not healthy for us, could in fact choke the humanity out of us eventually, turning us into the worst incarnations of our respective professions.

Tomorrow, back in the shelter of the news room, we start the task of asking the bigger questions. Why did this slimeball Weber think it was okay to beat on his wife and kids the way he did? Why was he allowed out on a measly 500 dollars bail after he was charged with one particularly awful case of domestic violence? How many other Webers are there out there committing atrocities we don't even know about?

And how do we stop this from happening?

Moving, Sans the Shaking

There are few things I detest more than moving, because it's like a hybrid of some of my least favorite things in existence. It combines all the heavy lifting and elevated heartrates of exercise with the forced anal retentiveness of getting organized. Scrubbing toilets down with bleach when you've got an open drummer blister (thumb side of the index finger...it's how you pick drummers out of a hand line-up) is at once more painful and possibly more dangerous than regular cleaning, which is bad enough on its own. And then there's all that dust that gets kicked up into the air, which is enough to have anyone wheezing like an asthmatic pack-a-day smoker.

Oh, and it takes up all of one's time as well, which is why I've been light on posts lately. I've got some good ones in queue, so you'll just have to take my word for it that they're golden.

I will share a couple of anecdotes about this move, however. When I started my packing over the weekend, I discovered, buried deep beneath my stairwell, about a box and a half a stuff that I had NEVER UNPACKED from my previous move. It was maybe the most depressing moment of the summer. I think the general rule of thumb is that's the stuff you're supposed to throw away before making the next move, but A) I only lived in this last house for a year, and B) it was stuff I'd been looking for that entire damn year...some of it anyway, and I did throw the rest of it out.

So that was frustrating, but I also had the occasion to do a little gleeful dance as I packed as well. Dork that I am, I have a very large bookshelf I keep stacked from top to bottom with my collection of reading material. The only time of the year I regret having that bookshelf is when the time comes to move, because packing books is a real damn chore.

As I muttered and grumbled my way through that chore last weekend, a few leafs of paper fell out of an old textbook and fluttered to the ground. I gaped for a minute, then siezed them up. It was the letter my Dad had written to me the night before I left home for college, which I had been convinced got lost when I moved out of the dorms freshman year. Packing and cleaning dropped from my mind as I plunked down on the hardwood to read the words of wisdom my Dad had written to me five years ago.

Some of them don't apply any more - I've outgrown them. Some of them will always shape my life. And some of them are probably partly responsible for getting me where I am today.

At any rate, I'm glad to have that letter back...if only I can remember where I bloody packed it.

Posts will be hit or miss for the next couple days. Between the unpacking and getting the internet set up at my new place, I'll try and sneak a few in where I can steal wireless.

Tearjerker

My father, Chris Weis, is an amazingly talented man.

I guess it’s something I’ve known all along. I credit him for both my love of the dramatic arts and my relationship with the Monroe Theater Guild, among a great many other things. But up until recently, it’s nothing I’ve been able to appreciate as clearly as I did this past weekend.

I went to see Dad in the local theater guild’s production of The Drawer Boy. I had never heard of the show before, nor did I have much of an idea what it entailed. Dad had told me he played a mentally-challenged Canadian farmer with no short-term memory, and I wasn’t wrong in assuming the comedic potential of the character was ripe. But I certainly didn’t walk into the Monroe Arts Center expecting to be moved nearly to tears.

I’ve seen him in a number of dramatic productions before, but The Drawer Boy was different. Certainly it helps that I’ve reached adulthood, and my vision is no longer limited by the blinders of childhood egocentrism. I know Dad as a person now, not just as an authority figure, and so it was all the more striking to watch the transformation that took place on stage Friday night.

But it wasn’t just because I’ve stopped turning to Dad for praise and discipline that I was able to comprehend the depth of his skill as an actor. Quite the opposite, if I had stopped to think that it was my father on stage, I think the feelings his performance evoked in me would have been somewhat dulled.

Instead, I was fully immersed in the story that unfolded, alternately overcome with pity for the aged, well-intentioned yet dangerously aloof farmer, and fist-clenching anger at the men who mistreated him, albeit with the best of intentions. Dad later told me this was the most difficult role he’s ever undertaken, and with more productions than I could count in an evening under his belt, that’s saying something. But he made it look effortless. Every breath he drew was taken in character, every step he took was executed with the ginger care of a man in his sixties (Dad’s fifty), and he carried himself with the unblinking good nature of the simple man he was portraying.

I wasn’t watching my father on stage. I was watching "Angus," a person with broken dreams and all the accompanying baggage just beyond his shattered mind’s feeble grasp, trundle about his kitchen in the midst of his day-to-day affairs. And when he cried out in anguish, I wanted nothing more than to comfort him. Instead, the rest of the audience and I sat uncomfortably in the dark, gawking like outsiders at the spectacle of one mind’s tragic self-destruction.

It was, simply put, an inspired performance by the entire cast and crew. But Friday night, I realized for the first time not only that I’m proud of my Dad, but that I always have been.