Tag: Today Show

Big Birthday Memory #7: Will You Still Need Me, Will You Still ….??

NOTE: As I approach my 70th birthday, I’ll reprise a milestone post here each day until the end of May. Today – from April 17, 2007. 

Cindy Rona Coby2Saturday night we went to my friend Rona’s 60th birthday party in LA.  The photo is me, Rona and our Today Show colleague Coby. It was really fun – how often does Famous Amos bake you cookies and Brian Wilson sing to you on a Bel Air tennis court turned party heaven?  How often do you see photos of yourself, your friend and your husband at Today Show shoots and crazy parties?  And how often, in the unexpected chill of an April Los Angeles evening, do you see a pile of blankets for guests that includes the one you made their now 14-year-old son when he was born?

I’ve written about Rona before but Saturday night was a real reminder of the nature of a gifted friend.  She asked everyone to stand up.  Those who knew her 5 years or less, sit down.  Then ten years.  Then fifteen.  We were feeling pretty cocky since we were in the 20 years or less category – until we saw how many people – from New York, DC, Hawaii, San Francisco, LA and God knows where else – were standing at 30 – and even 40 years!  And Rick and I knew many of them; we’d been to birthday parties or holiday events or just dinner with them over the years. I once heard someone quote Wendy Wasserstein as saying that you could judge someone’s character by how well they kept their friends.  In that as in so many other ways she was a star.

On the tables were CDs for all of us – with a photo of her at Woodstock on the cover (one that I’d used in our 20 year anniversary piece (it was really great) to close it out.  Sunday I was driving around LA while my husband was at his conference so I stuck the CD into the player.  The next thing I knew I was driving down the 10 Freeway in tears — not sweet little showers but huge wracking sobs.  Not really sadness, it was more a recognition of all the treasured time that has passed – of how much I loved so much of it and how real it still feels to me.  I’ve never read Remembrance of Things Past but I’m told that the entire epic emerges from memories evoked from the smell of a Madeline (a kind of French cookie – they sell them at Starbucks I think.)

Well each song – Van Morrison or Bob Dylan or Paul Simon or Marvin Gaye took me someplace.  The thing is – sad as I was, I was also absurdly grateful to have the memories and moments so powerfully evoked by the music.  Not until I hit 60 did I realize you really DO get older – that some things are in the past for good.  When the music is there, though, nothing’s really gone.  Memories and senses arise in all their glory and float me back where I came from.  Not for long – and not entirely – but enough to remind me of the privileges of my life and the wonders of life itself.  Corny but oh so true – music brings the gift of memory and joy.  Yet another thing to thank birthday girl Rona for adding to my life.  Happy birthday one more time, my sister.

Grazie Roma

arco with menorah fixed
Two very full days in Rome, jet lagged but determined. The Coliseum and the Forum captured our imagination in new ways as we learned more about the lives of early Romans, their gladiators and their rulers. Jewish slaves helped to build the deadly theater. The famous Arco di Tito – Arch of Titus – bears images of a menorah because along with those Jewish slaves, captured at the fall of the Second Temple in Jerusalem, the conquering Romans brought treasure, including Jewish artifacts, and chose to represent them on Titus’ arch.

ROME COLLISEUM 1

We did so much more but our first night on the Sojourn is almost upon us and we need to be up early to see Napoleon’s summer home.  Here are a few more pix of Rome.   ROME CHRISTMAS WINDOW ROME a shop

 

ROME bike skeleton 1

OH and Grazie Roma? It’s the best sports anthem ever, and the TODAY SHOW’s 1985 Rome week closed with Antonelo Venditti singing it, along with huge crowd of happy Rome residents, as we all celebrated on the Spanish Steps.

 

 

My BB King Story – Farewell to Such a Lovely Man


BB King carried music in his hands and in his heart, joy at the sound of it and commitment to the making of it.  All you had to do was hear him for three minutes and you knew that.  And he faced down plenty to keep doing it. As the BBC tells it:

He played more than 300 gigs on the so-called Chitlin’ Circuit, the collection of performance venues in what were then racially segregated southern states where it was safe for black musicians to perform.

King said: “I have put up with more humiliation than I care to remember.

“Touring a segregated America, forever being stopped and harassed by white cops hurt you most ‘cos you didn’t realise the damage. You hold it in.”

I met him once, and the memory of that morning haunts me still.

It was, of course, when I worked at the TODAY SHOW (are you sick of those stories yet?)  I used to go in early to hang out in the green room when someone I admired was going to be there.  Of course, that included the morning BB was coming.  He arrived with his musicians – no entourage, no fuss.

That morning, the Canadian singer Anne Murray was also on the show, appearing earlier than Mr. King.   As we sat there quietly, watching the show, she told Bryant Gumbel that she was taking “a few months” off from her touring schedule to “recharge.”

King glanced up at the screen, looking sort of sad.  “A few months” he said. “I could never do that.  I can’t do that.” The disparity of income between blues musicians and the rockers they inspired was well-known, so much so that a foundation was established to help those who never made a dime from their royalties.

Even so, although he told the BBC in 2009, at the age of 83 “I can’t retire, I need the money,” I was never sure if his reason that day was money, or love of the road, but he said it with such longing, and with such an expression of regret, that I can see it right now.  Clear as day.

I will always love his music and love his spirit and humor and warmth, and be grateful for his legacy.    In my mind though, as he leaves us, it’s that peek into the life of a blues man – even a great one – as he made his way that I remember most.

 

My Miscarriage: Memories that Don’t Fade

A Lost Possibility: Women on Miscarriage - from The Nib
A Lost Possibility: Women on Miscarriage – by Ryan Alexander-Tanner, from The Nib

NOTE: In a newsletter,  Nona Willis Aronowitz posted two stories about miscarriages.  As I began to respond, this emerged:

My sons are 40 and 35.  Between them I had a miscarriage.  She was a girl.  It was the first day I had told anyone I was pregnant and begun wearing maternity clothes.

It happened on Election Night 1978 and I was in the studio producing the “house desk” results.

When the pain got serious I raced home, lost most of the fetus in the bathroom, and called our OB.  We went immediately to the hospital; in the morning I had a D and C.   It was devastating.

Then came the reaction:
VP of News:  You work too hard.
Secretary to Pres of News:  What were you doing working all night?  Didn’t you want this baby?

On the other hand, I also got notes from people ranging from my aunt to a colleague, all with the same message:  “I’ve never told anyone before but I had a miscarriage (anywhere from 1 to 30) years ago.”  The pain for each was still real.

I was lucky though.  My OB was from Czechoslovakia.   He had a real (maybe European, maybe Socialist, maybe just father of daughters) respect for professional women and, as he had been in my first pregnancy was wonderfully supportive.  He ran a cell test to determine whether there was a distinguishable cause (there was – a serious genetic issue – although we didn’t learn that for months, it has been a comfort.)  He explained the D and C, urged us to take time to grieve but also reminded us that we were far from finished with efforts to have more kids, kept me in the hospital an extra day so I could pull myself together before I went home and had to tell our nearly-three-year-old son.

He wanted to know where the baby went.  I just couldn’t handle a literal answer so even though I wasn’t at that time religious at all I told him the baby was with God.  I needed him to understand that she was somewhere where she would be as loved as he was on 79th and Broadway.

Several years later when I worked at TODAY, with the support of our Executive Producer,  I produced a series about miscarriages.  The narrator was an OB himself, one of the TODAY stable of experts.  I’m not naming him because this is what he told me (to his credit:)   “Thank you so much for doing this series with me.  I’ve been an OB for 25 years and I never realized the pain that this causes women.”  Seriously.  I was grateful that he was emotionally available to admit this but can you imagine?  Never realized.

One more thing – partners are NOT sufficiently supported when this happens. They need FAR more attention than they usually receive.  My husband has said for years that he wished we could have had a funeral or some sort of service so he too could have a vehicle to grieve.

NONA thank you so much for raising this and for the links to those powerful pieces.  The graphic one was particularly evocative as it reminded me of small moments I’d forgotten.

For the record – our second son was born 2 years later.  Both my boys are fabulous men and exquisite spouses and dads.  I am grateful for them both and the sorrow of our loss is not in any way linked to how I define my unambiguous and grateful love of them.

Even so – the fact that, 32 years later, the silence and shame and insensitivity remains is a travesty.  Please share this with doctors, nurses, midwives, preschool teachers and others who are on the “front lines.”  Maybe we can help to break the chain.,

iVillage Heard Women’s Voices Before Anybody Else Knew How to Listen

Edcentral sized

 

 

Women need tribes.  Need each other.  

Two of the first online people to figure that out were Nancy Evans and Candace Carpenter Olson, the co-founders, along with two others, of iVillage.  Together they built the best online home women will ever have.  Parent Soup, where I worked for four years, was a mommy site before mommy bloggers or Babble or BlogHer.  Vibrant, warm and well-led, it served – and listened to – women with inclusiveness and respect.   

Well before blogs or social media, iVillage's topical message boards,  conceived as support communities like those in AA, engaged the site's visitors and provided a sense of home and ownership that didn't seem to appear anywhere else online.  They shared parenting and relationship advice and once, right before my eyes, rescued a woman from a terribly abusive relationship as all the members of the board came together to support her.

Today we learned the site will "be shuttered" and folded into the TODAY SHOW Online  under its current owner, NBC News.  

It's sad.  To get an idea of how wonderful it was to be part of what we created there, consider the deluge of comments  that followed a single post earlier today.  All of us are, I suspect, as surprised as I am at the depth of emotion this news has evoked.  We were all so proud to be part of what we knew was a remarkable creation.   And we learned so much.

My own first assignment was to design an education site for parents.  (The logo for "Education Central" appears at the top of this post.)  I took the initial outline to Nancy, who was Editor-in-Chief.  Looking up from her desk, she asked  "Have you looked at the message boards?"  I shook my head.  "Well go read the message boards, use what you find there, and then bring me what you have" she said.  She wouldn't even look at it I did that, and she was right.  

Rule one: listen to the community.  There was so much within those conversations that revealed what should appear on the site.  I've been preaching that lesson ever since.

iVillage believed in its communities, in their hearts and minds.  It gave countless women voices they would never have otherwise had and paved the way for the powerful women bloggers who have emerged after them.

Its leaders also believed in us, from novices to old hands like me, and in our mission: give women a home online and hear what they say there.  Believe, more than anything, in them.

 

 

 

 

 

9/11 Predicted the Role of Bloggers (I’m Not Kidding)

911 by Macten I don't know about you, but 9/11 footage still wipes me out.  It doesn't get any easier to watch.  But this morning MSNBC was running the first few hours of coverage from the TODAY SHOW in real time and I watched a couple of hours.

It was like watching a horror movie as Katie and Matt started out so cheerily, then began reporting a "small plane" flying into the first Tower.  Then, gradually, the awful reality began to emerge.  And for a good long time, and intermittently thereafter, it was "eye witnesses" and "neighborhood residents" and other information "civilians" who delivered the best information. 

I listened as a young woman on the telephone, on her way to work at a downtown hotel and having just emerged from the subway just below the Trade Center, described the early sights of the attack.  She calmly detailed what she saw, at least until the second plane hit when she responded with understandable emotion.  Even then, she was able to carefully report developments – even putting her questioners on hold to check with a local policeman.  No seasoned reporter could have done it better.

Later, other eyewitnesses appeared, one after the other.  They used words like "reportedly," were very careful as they described what they saw, and offered careful, tempered accounts.  This went on all day.  Of course those closer to the real product of the attacks, the bodies, the people jumping out of the windows – civilian and reporter alike – were deeply moved and it showed. 

So fast-forward to today.  As the mainstream media fights for its life, as programs like my alma mater (9 years) the TODAY SHOW move more and more toward infotainment, the serious, thoughtful and original journalism is done as often on blogs as it is anywhere else.  Of course there are impulsive writers and rumor mongers and gossip tramps but that's true everywhere and, as the witnesses demonstrated eight years ago, you don't need a network paycheck to deliver reliable and well-presented information.  The citizen army of bloggers today is validated every time a caring and thoughtful eyewitness offers mainstream media a sane, helpful description of what's happening, or has happened.

So next time you hear someone going on about "those bloggers" and their untrustworthy nature, take it from a long-time broadcast journalist turned blogger:  it's the content of character, not the brand of employer, that makes a journalist.

Photo via Creative Commons by macten

SARAH PALIN SPEAKS: WHAT DO WE THINK OF THIS TODAY INTERVIEW?

This segment of the interview, particularly, struck me as very interesting.  What do we think?  I was intrigued by Piper’s reactions — clearly she felt comfortable speaking her mind – but I wonder why her mom called her "sister?" Nickname?  It’s something I’ve only seen in old-fashioned rural families.

Except for that perhaps odd moment though, she could be formidable if she maintains this sort of posture and intelligent visibility over the next years, no?

NEW FRIENDS ON MY OLD TURF: MOMMY BLOGGERS VISIT KATIE AT CBS NEWS

Katie_shakes_hands
What are the odds?  I spent what would have been my prime mommy-blogging years, before the Interweb was anyone’s darling, working at CBS News at 524 West 57th St.  Now, some of my sweet, funny mommy blogging friends went through the same door I used every day for 7 years to meet with Katie Couric.  Here’s what happened:

Pretty cool, huh?  My 9 years at TODAY never crossed with Katie and clearly my CBS years were the "Place to Be" years, well before hers but it sure was fun to see the girlfriends sashay on in and charm her to pieces.  But then, that’s what they do.

Blogger roll call for The Visit – drawn from original host SV(Silicon Valley) Moms:

WILL YOU STILL NEED ME, WILL YOU STILL….??

Dscn0544_3 Saturday night we went to my friend Rona’s 60th birthday party in LA.  The photo is me, Rona and our Today Show colleague Coby. It was really fun – how often does Famous Amos bake you cookies and Brian Wilson sing to you on a Bel Air tennis court turned party heaven?  How often do you see photos of yourself, your friend and your husband at Today Show shoots and crazy parties?  And how often, in the unexpected chill of an April Los Angeles evening, do you see a pile of blankets for guests that includes the one you made their now 14-year-old son when he was born? 

I’ve written about Rona before but Saturday night was a real reminder of the nature of a gifted friend.  She asked everyone to stand up.  Those who knew her 5 years or less, sit down.  Then ten years.  Then fifteen.  We were feeling pretty cocky since we were in the 20 years or less category – until we saw how many people – from New York, DC, Hawaii, San Francisco, LA and God knows where else – were standing at 30 – and even 40 years!  And Rick and I knew many of them; we’d been to birthday parties or holiday events or just dinner with them over the years. I once heard someone quote Wendy Wasserstein as saying that you could judge someone’s character by how well they kept their friends.  In that as in so many other ways she was a star.

On the tables were CDs for all of us – with a photo of her at Woodstock on the cover (one that I’d used in our 20 year anniversary piece (it was really great) to close it out.  Sunday I was driving around LA while my husband was at his conference so I stuck the CD into the player.  The next thing I knew I was driving down the 10 Freeway in tears — not sweet little showers but huge wracking sobs.  Not really sadness, it was more a recognition of all the treasured time that has passed – of how much I loved so much of it and how real it still feels to me.  I’ve never read Remembrance of Things Past but I’m told that the entire epic emerges from memories evoked from the smell of a Madeline (a kind of French cookie – they sell them at Starbucks I think.) 

Well each song – Van Morrison or Bob Dylan or Paul Simon or Marvin Gaye took me someplace.  The thing is – sad as I was, I was also absurdly grateful to have the memories and moments so powerfully evoked by the music.  Not until I hit 60 did I realize you really DO get older – that some things are in the past for good.  When the music is there, though, nothing's really gone.  Memories and senses arise in all their glory and float me back where I came from.  Not for long – and not entirely – but enough to remind me of the privileges of my life and the wonders of life itself.  Corny but oh so true – music brings the gift of memory and joy.  Yet another thing to thank birthday girl Rona for adding to my life.  Happy birthday one more time, my sister.

HOW ELSE WOULD I GET TO JOHN MELLENKAMP’S HOUSE?

Rona_cindy_mellenkamp February 22nd is Rona Elliot’s birthday.  She’s the one in the red dress next to John Mellenkamp – I’m the one on the right in the weird shirt.  The woman in the middle is Kathy Schenker, a wonderful person who was then his publicist.  We were in Bloomington Indiana, at Mellenkamp’s house (honest!) to interview him about his new album (I think they were still albums then.)

This kind of adventure is what Rona has brought into my life, along with a deep abiding friendship and a sense of respect for her that I feel for few others.  She is courageous, funny, smart, cool, great, did I say smart?, and the best production partner I ever had.  We both worked for the TODAY SHOW.  In 1988 I was told I wasn’t assigned to cover the New Hampshire primary and was really – really – upset.  Rona laughed – "I have something so much better for you", she said.  And she did. 

We went to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction in Manhattan.  Bruce Springsteen inducted Bob Dylan, Elton John inducted the Drifters.  Also honored and present, the three surviving Beatles, the Rolling Stones, the Beach Boys and more.  AND they all sang together.  AND we stayed up all night and cut a piece about it for the show.  A good one.  I don’t think I have had many experiences that were that thrilling – professionally or as an audience member.  But what’s really important about it is that that sort of joyous event — and the desire to share it — is part of the package that is Rona.

A friend for all seasons, she never forgets or loses someone she loves — and believe me when she’s in your life you’re glad she’s there. Not just for Rock and Roll shows (although we’ve shared many amazing times) but also for giving my kids "I Love Heavy Metal" shirts to "scare your mom" and volunteering at an orphanage and being a spectacular mother and wife and always open to new ideas and experiences every moment she’s alive. I’m so so grateful to share the brief times in our life that are still available in our coast-to-coast lives.  That night we saw Bruce Springsteen induct Bob Dylan into the Hall of Fame, he ended by saying – "and to quote one of your songs, ‘You was the brother that I never had.’"   Well I have two wonderful sisters but Rona – you’re the other amazing — as you call it — sistah — that I’m glad I have.  Happy Birthday.