Victory

Usually when I'm hired by The Yakima Herald-Republic (my hometown paper) to cover prep sports, the team I'm shooting does really well until the championship game. Then they always lose.

Little do they know - my opportunity to shoot post-game jubilation is gone.

Tonight, something in the chilly fall air erased that bad luck spell. Hopefully, for good.

The La Salle girls soccer defeated Evergreen Lutheran 1-0. (Thank God!) And I got to shoot the party.

Rotten apples

Brandon Evans, left to right, Garret Ward, and Katie Loiland watch the Husky lead over the Cougs disappear in the final seconds of the Apple Cup. They lost in double overtime by a final score of 16-13.

The Huskies lost to the Cougs in the Apple Cup. Now they are 0-11 in 2008 with only one game left to play. Horrible.

The Blounts

Today, I received an assignment to photograph two victims of a horrific crime.

On Thanksgiving Day of 1985, Susan Blount and her son Robert, said goodbye to their husband and father, daughter and sister, nephew and cousin when a briefcase bomb tore apart their trailer in Ft. Worth, Texas.

The bomb was placed on the Blount's porch by mistake. It was meant for someone else. Now, Michael Toney - the accused killer who is on death row in Texas - is likely to see his sentence overturned because apparently, the prosecution withheld evidence.

For 23 years Mrs. Blount has endured the heartache of her loss - today she told me she just wants some closure.

Here's an excerpt from a story published in The Dallas Morning News in 2005:

The trial started in May 1999 in Fort Worth.

Susan Blount testified, telling her story of escaping from her burning trailer out the back door. Her son, Robert Blount, told of finding the briefcase on the front porch, and of his 15-year-old sister taking it inside.

"Angela flipped the latches and it exploded, and that's the last I remember," Mr. Blount testified.

The blast killed his father, sister and cousin and blew him out the front door.

"There isn't a day that goes by," Mr. Blount said in court, "that I don't think about that day."

Susan Blount, left, and her son, Robert, pose for a portrait in the dining room of their Auburn, Wash., home Nov. 21, 2008. Susan's daughter, husband, and nephew, (L-R foreground photos) were killed by a bomb on Thanksgiving Day in 1985 in Ft. Worth. INGRID BARRENTINE Special to The Dallas Morning News

As I left the Blount's Auburn, Wash., home today, I felt extremely lucky and sorrowful at the same time. I thought about the freak things that happen in a moment and forever change the course of our lives. For me, most of those "freak things" have turned out to be good.

When I sit down to turkey this year, I'm going to pause for a moment to say "thanks."

Post election night

I spent the night of November 4, 2008 at The News Tribune with Joe. He told me I had to experience an election night at least once in a newsroom - so I decided to do so.

Regardless of your political stance, there's no denying the historic nature of the Obama victory. In the future, when I have children, I'm sure I'll tell them the story of the evening I watched the first black man win election to the highest office in the land.

I was sitting at Joe's desk when MSNBC called the race.
The "dummy page" prior to the victory announcement.
Jeremy Harrison, TNT photo editor, puts together his top picks from the evening.
The front page.

The people's choice

I voted

I voted at a polling station for the first time ever today. It was rather exciting - despite the 1.5 hour wait.

Running and Rossi

I shot two assignments yesterday. One for the Peninsula Daily News - x-country. And the other for The Olympian - Republican gubernatorial candidate Dino Rossi.