This train travels the longest stretch of railroad track on earth without a turn — 299 miles. There’s a bank car, theater car, grocery store car, a car filled with doctor’s offices, one that has a chapel. Sixty train cars. A mile long. Most do not have a passage way between them, so people who work in one seldom see those who work in another. The “Tea and Sugar” meanders more than a thousand miles across South Australia, stopping whenever someone waves it down. Its arrival in remote places is the social event of the week. All the families linger for hours buying impulsively, trying to extend the moment when there is laughter and community.
- The Man Who Made a National ParkPhotographer Rex Ziak (pronounced Zeek) spent almost a decade trying to get a new National Park at the point where American explorers Lewis and Clark ended their westward journey. He tramped along the last bit of trail they blazed near his home in Southwestern Washington, studied their journals and discovered no one had accurately pinpointed… Read more: The Man Who Made a National Park
- Finding HopeFinding Hope Every generation faces terrible challenges. Wars, depressions, holocausts. Polio, Aids, pandemics. We cannot predict what will come, but it is well to remember people who play a bad hand well, over and over again. They are why America not only survives, but thrives. Let me share with you one of my TODAY Show reports that was so much more than a weather story.
- Doctor Will Come to YouI remember when milk and doctors came to your house. Fred Richardson still does — in one of the toughest neighborhoods in Chicago. He is a brave man with a big heart. Dr. Richardson returned to his old neighborhood to open a one-man practice. Scary? No. His neighbors keep him safe.
- 40 Acres and a MuleThe Federal government gave some starving folks 40 acres and a mule during the Great Depression of the 1930’s. It saved them. I found them 50 years later.
- Mother’s Day DadThe Alonso’s lost their mother during the 9/11 attack in 2001. Janet went to work at the World Trade Center that morning and never returned. Robert was left to care for a 2-year-old daughter and a baby boy with Down syndrome. “If I was to tell you I did this by myself, I’d be a liar; I’d be a flat-out liar,” Robert said. “I got my mom, my aunt, my pop to help.” But he never returned to work at the pizza place he owned in Stony Point, New York. His family substituted for him. “I owe it to my children to be around,” Robert explained. “If I buried my grief in work, my kids would lose both their parents.” How’d they turn out?

