Because so many people have responded to the John Hartford music selection I decided to add a four and a half minute interview with John that was done at the same time. The subject of my Today show story was riverboats so that’s what John and I talked about. Listening to his answers you get a pretty good idea of what John was like as a person. I found him to be smart, humble and funny. The interview was conducted on the side of the river. We didn’t have time to compensate for the overhead sun or the wind but we made do. John was gracious and open…a good man.

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Quicktime | Windows

I spent the week traveling to San Diego and Nashville for a Today show story and then drove to Cleveland for the wedding of a friend and former colleague who left NBC last year. Her name is Amy Wasserstrom and I loved working with her because she was always prepared and always ready to have some laughs. This is my behind-the-scenes video tribute to “The Amy Years.”

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My job as a network feature reporter is unique in that I get to choose most of my stories while other correspondents are assigned topics, usually ripped from the pages of newspapers and magazines. I owe my freedom to Steve Friedman, executive producer of the Today show at the time of my hiring back in 1980. Steve liked to shake things up and wasn’t afraid of taking chances. He took a chance on me, a newcomer to TV work at the age of thirty, then gave me enough rope to either hang myself or swing free of the normal story confines. Somehow I managed to clear the barriers and have happily wandered outside the borders ever since. And that’s where you find them - life’s great characters - way out there on the fringes. One such character looms above all others. Tex Cobb. If you Google Tex you’ll find the background details of his life; the movies he’s been in, the people he’s fought but words and photos can’t adequately describe what it’s like to be in Cobbworld. I was there, almost fifteen years ago, and lived to tell the tale.

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On April 18th Random House/Ballantine will release The Ride of Our Lives - Roadside Lessons of an American Family. It’s my first book so I have no idea what to expect when the twenty city book tour kicks off on that same date…other than getting my ass kicked by the crazy travel schedule. The book is based on an RV trip taken with my goof-ball parents and three of my four children and a daughter-in-law. Here’s another clip taken from the first episode of a four part series that aired on Today in July of 2004.

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In May of 1991 I did a story on a great public radio show called Mountain Stage. It’s recored in Charleston, West Virginia in front of a live audience. The show has attracted a huge number of well known musicians including - on the day of our taping - REM, Billy Bragg and today’s musical guest Robin Hitchcock.

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