erica zucco.

We launched  a new segment called ‘Life Illustrated’ on Weekend TODAY this Sunday, collecting photos from viewers about memorable moments in their lives, and I spent most of the morning scrolling through the amazing photos viewers posted with the hashtag #mylifeTODAY (there’s a post about it here). There have already been some really amazing photos submitted, and I’m looking forward to seeing which ones the segment producer decides to use in next week’s segment. For the first edition, we used anchor and staff photos… you can see it here:

Speaking of memorable moments and beautiful images… check out this gorgeous promo for the True/False Film Festival in Columbia, Mo (home to M-I-Z-Z-O-U!). I attended True/False when I lived in Columbia and it was an awesome experience packed with eye-opening documentaries. I’d love to go again soon. If you ever have the chance to, I’d recommend it:

Another video I came across yesterday… posted by my former journalism professor Karen Mitchell… NPR personalities spoofing “Telephone!” (Robert Siegel’s portion is my favorite.) A fun watch for public radio fans:

And finally… TODAY is celebrating its 60th anniversary all week and sharing lots of our memorable moments. I think this video was shared on-air last week, but there’s also a blog post with it here. Check out the beginning of the first ever TODAY show broadcast — very cool!

Happy New Year! It’s officially “2012″… crazy to think about!
2011 was a year FULL of ups and downs (and sideways turns, for that matter) news-wise. This made it an amazing year to work at NBC News, and specifically at the Weekend Editions of the TODAY Show. (An extraordinary amount of news happened on Friday and Saturday overnights this year… which made for some exciting shows!)

Several TODAY producers put together a spectacular “year-in-review” looking back at the moments that made 2011 so memorable. Just wanted to share it here – it’s 15:00, but worth the watch and it feels like it goes by in a blink of an eye… just like this year did.

And while we’re talking 2011, check out the Weekend TODAY year-ender below… put together by amazing producer Robert Ciridon and editor Fred Staab. It’s a fun look at some of the most memorable stories of the year.

Longform journalism, creative nonfiction, and memoirs/essays are my favorite types of writing to read– which is why I’m addicted to Longreads, a well-curated and diverse collection of contemporary articles and the like that are… well… “long.” Lately I’ve had time to catch up on some articles I’d been meaning to dig into, and just thought I’d share a few I found fascinating.

The People V. Football, by Jeanne Marie Laskas, via GQ: This is a story that draws you in at the top with powerful, personal narrative and doesn’t let you go until you’ve learn a lot, almost on accident! It’s a story about the dangers of hitting in football, and the controversy surrounding making changes to the game– but it’s also a story about what happens to a marriage and to a family when the consequences of consistent and brutal concussions set in.

Dangerous Worlds: Teaching Film in Prison, by Ann Snitow, via Dissent: A gender studies professor teaches a cinema course called “Express Yourself” at a nearby prison and provides a detailed account of the experience. It touches on themes of identity, equality, feminism and the potential impacs liberal education could have in prison settings.

The Girl from Trails End, by Kathie Dobie, via GQ: It was a horrific story that shocked and disgusted the nation when it came out — an 11-year-old girl gang raped repeatedly by nineteen men and boys. But initial reports didn’t investigate and share the entire story — one that when fully told, opens our eyes to many of the societal and legal issues that need to be addressed to prevent anything like this from happening again.

Kiki Kannibal: The Girl Who Played with Fire, by Sabrina Rubin Erdely, via Rolling Stone: This story touches on similar themes of childhood and adolescent identity, sexuality and exploitation, as well as the consequences of certain uses of the Internet and social media. It raises questions about what constitutes artistic expression, whether there are lines between our offline and online lives and when and how they’re blurred, what a parent’s role should be in terms of monitoring or restricting access to the Internet, and whether new regulations need to be put into place regarding what is and what is not fair use, especially when the content or themes involve minors.

Teaching Good Sex, by Laurie Abraham, via the New York Times: When we think “comprehensive sex ed”, we often think “sex ed that’s more than abstinence-only”…. but the course featured in this article is comprehensive to it’s definition, covering concepts such as sexual identity, orientation and pleasure, not just mechanics, from the get-go. The goal is to make students both physically and psychologically healthy when it comes to sex. A quote that asks the question this course could be the answer to: “Porn is the model for today’s middle-school and high-school students,” Paul Joannides said in the keynote speech. “And none of us is offering an alternative that’s even remotely appealing.”  

And just for fun…

Taste Has Never Met Shame: I Love You, Conor Oberst!, by Ben Dolnick, via The Awl: We all have a one (or a couple…or more) of these music favorites: you’re a little ashamed to love them so much, not least because you look different than the rest of the fans at a show, but you still do. I don’t mean the pop acts you pretend you’re embarrassed to like – the Biebers and the Britneys and the former Disney stars – but the acts whose music emotionally moved you in your adolescence and that you haven’t and won’t let go of, but that you feel like you should have “grown out of.” And whether it’s Conor Oberst or not, this quote rings true: “Sometimes I think there ought to be a coat of arms for all of us who listen to Oberst’s band Bright Eyes past the age of twenty-six. WITH LOVE AND SHAME, the motto would read. The handwriting would be the cramped and tortured scribble of a high school freshman.”

You Blow My Mind. Hey Mickey!, by John Jeremiah Sullivan, via NYT Magazine: I read this earlier this year but came across it again and had to post… I was kind of shocked to find it printed in that specific magazine, because it’s about two dads getting high in Disney World out of what’s essentially described as a survival necessity, which is, well, illegal. But it’s a funny read, and also an introspective one — a look at the concept of a family vacation, the tradition of Disney World, and a theme I can’t quite describe but is shared by entities like Dad Rock.

And finally…

The Second Second Date Story, by Todd Kelly via The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: This is one isn’t really “long”, perse, but it’s just plain sweet.

In some ways I feel like I missed the “holiday season” this year — I crammed all my shopping in last week and just got around to baking Christmas cookies on Thursday. But this morning I all of a sudden snapped into the spirit and couldn’t be more excited to head home to Illinois tomorrow and take in the colored lights, jingle bells and family time. Before I do, just wanted to share…

A video that would melt even the Grinch’s heart to pieces:

A co-worker and I in our Rudolph best…

And perhaps the best family Christmas cards I’ve ever seen.

And with that…Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

I do love this song. I think the best word I’d use to describe it is “sincere”… it feels sincere. Plain and simple. Below, you can read the lyrics — they, too, are so simple. There’s no complicated imagery or hidden message– there’s the truth, and that’s about it. It’s a nice interview, and Ben Folds plays the song beautifully afterwards. It’s interesting because the live performance sounds and feels pretty much just like the studio version.

“I don’t get many things right the first time…in fact, I am told that a lot. Now I know all the wrong turns, the stumbles and falls brought me here…
And where was I before the day that I first saw your lovely face? Now I see it everyday, and I know that I am…I am the luckiest.
What if I’d been born fifty years before you in a house on a street where you lived? Maybe I’d be outside as you passed on your bike… Would I know?
And in a white sea of eyes I see one pair that I recognize and I know that I am the luckiest.
I love you more than I have ever found a way to say to you…
Next door there’s an old man who lived to his nineties and one day passed away in his sleep. And his wife; she stayed for a couple of days and passed away… I’m sorry, I know that’s a strange way to tell you that I know we belong… that I know that I am the luckiest.”

Here’s a quote from the interview. After the interview plays out, you can also hear Ben Folds play the song. It’s a nice story…just thought I’d share.
“I kept thinking, you know, there aren’t any convincing love songs in my generation… so I kept thinking, people still fall in love, they still need songs. Can I do this? So I waited for months because sometimes if you’re stumped on a verse, something will happen. And what happened was the next door neighbor, the old man died, and the wife died a week later. I did want to crack the code in a way that would be realistic…so this is realistic, people do live together til they’re old and the other just can’t go on because their life was with that person. I don’t think there’s anything more romantic than that.”

A few of the stories that stuck out to me the most this week had to do with “knowing” yourself in the context of love and “knowing” the people that you love so well that it gives you strength and power to effect change (or, conversely, gaining knowledge that effects love). They were stories that, on the surface level, didn’t deal with public policy or the economy or “hard news”– but that obviously were lifechangers and gamechangers. Here were the stories I read, listened to and watched this week and needed to share.

Benny Takes a Jet (So Crazy it Just Might Work), This American Life
This story was actually on This American Life a few weeks ago, but I just got around to listening to it earlier this week. It’s the second act in a series of stories under the topic “So Crazy it Just Might Work.” Sometimes that’s what it takes — doing something that might seem crazy — to come to a realization about who you are, what or whom you love or what needs to come next.

Led by the child who simply knew, via The Boston Globe  This is the story of a brother’s knowledge, a family’s strength, a young girl’s spirit and the power that comes with loving one’s family unconditionally. Nicole and Jonas Maines, 14 were born as physically identical twin boys (Nicole was originally named Wyatt), but Nicole was always innately attracted to Barbies, mermaids, sequins and heels — and after Jonas said to his father, “Dad, face it, you have a son and a daughter,” the Maines parents knew what that meant for their family and what they needed to do. You should read the whole story here; here’s one of the most poignant passages; Wayne was nervous. Could he call his son Nicole? As usual, he relied on his wife’s instincts. “I have to tell you, Kelly’s the leader in our family,’’ he says. “Both she and Nicole are extremely strong-willed, and I went with the flow.’’ At first, though, he couldn’t bring himself to use the new name. An Air Force veteran and former Republican, he realizes now he was grieving the loss of a son. “But once you get past that, I realize I never had a son,’’ he says. From this story, I also learned that in 2007, Children’s Hospital in Boston opened the first Gender Management Services Clinic for children, which can halt the changes of puberty so that the eventual transition to the other gender isn’t as difficult, physically.

StoryCorps: After Decades, a Couple Reconnects (NPR)
I love StoryCorps– the concept of the project and the stories that are told. The idea of sharing simple stories about our lives — the monumental and the everyday — and archiving them so we don’t lose them… I could spend hours listening. One posted this week was one of those everyday “well, look at that” stories… about a high school couple that reconnected 20 years later. It’s sweet. Listen here.

Jason Witten’s SCORE Foundation (TODAY)

It’s always great to see people that can give back do so — but sometimes there’s a story or an action that really sticks with you. This is the story of Jason Witten’s SCORE Foundation – how his experiences growing up led him to form his own organization… and how he’s trying to help create moments of hope and love for children today. He’s also doing a lot of work to provide male mentors for children in women’s shelters — an important cause, especially since male figures are crucial in the movement to prevent and heal in situations of domestic violence. You can read more about Jason Witten’s foundation here. The majority of the work done with his foundation is in Tennessee and Texas, but it shows a model that could be replicated and work that could be done to help anywhere.

Searching for Gold, Paid with Bags of Dirt; Rock Center NBC

This story doesn’t necessarily fit along with the theme I mentioned above, but it’s (as usual) an artfully told story by Richard Engel on Rock Center…an eye-opener that’s also visually compelling and a potential call to action – or at least to attention. Read more here. Rock Center’s also been doing a lot of cool things on its blog… there are more video elements and blog posts that make stories in a way accessible. One of the videos, located here, explores the topic of fair trade gold– is it possible to determine whether the gold you want to buy is fair trade? And what does it mean if gold is or is not fair trade? An interesting story as well.

I’m no music expert and the year isn’t over and this list is in no way definitive, but it’s raining outside and that means it’s probably a great time for a top ten list. Unfortunately, in retrospect, I didn’t really open my ears to much new or unfamiliar music, and for some reason everything I heard this year kind of sounded like I’d heard it before…so sorry if this list feels tired. I probably missed a couple favorites, but here’s what I remember most from this year. It’s not in the order of what I liked the most – it’s in order of how it sounded best when collated.

Monday Morning, Death Cab for Cutie: Codes and Keys was an interesting album in that it felt like Death Cab was finally all grown up. And settled down. With two kids and a dog and a fence. And no angst (okay, maybe a tiny bit of angst). It was, well, happy… and while it may not have been as “interesting,” was still a pretty good listen. This song, for one, was adorable.

Otis, Kanye West & Jay-Z: When this song came out I probably listened to it 100 times in a row 7 days a week for two weeks because it was perfect for walking outside, in the background at work, while drinking wine and cooking dinner, before going to bed, while getting ready in the morning…God I love this song (and Otis’ music, so that helps). My only complaint is that it was only 3:00.

Limit to your Love, James Blake: Holy ghost, Blake’s voice is beautiful. Also, his face is beautiful. Ha. But this whole album is great… and while it’s dangerously close to having a haunting, sad tone to it, there’s something that makes it more hopeful; maybe a better word is wistful. But this song is the kind that’s worth listening to while you do nothing else, but listen.

The Rip Tide, Beirut: I was originally going to put the song “East Harlem,” which isn’t actually from 2011 because I remember hearing a live version of it last summer, on this list… it was what originally convinced me that I needed to buy this album. But it sounded so much better live than studio, and I kind of want to keep this to on-the-disc versions… and The Rip Tide, the title track for this album, is absolutely gorgeous.

Just Before we Met, Noah & the Whale: This song is pretty light; this whole album is pretty light. It’s pleasant, basically. But not boring pleasant, just…pleasant.

There will be Tears, Frank Ocean: Ocean’s Nostalgia,Ultra mixtape is so, so underrated. By which I mean, I hardly heard anything about it over the past year, nor do I have many friends who’ve mentioned Frank Ocean’s name. I guess he’s part of OFWGKTA, which for whatever reason I haven’t gotten into. But this is more than just a mixtape — his voice is amazing. And while the mix gets you moving a little, it’s also just…it’s romantic, in a way. Kind of sweet.

Don’t Carry it All, The Decemberists: The Decemberists have a very distinct sound. I like them, I do, but I feel pretty equally about all of their music aside from a select few favorites. I liked this one best from this year’s album. For some reason it reminded me of (even though it didn’t really sound like) Sixteen Military Wives.

Whole Love, Wilco: I had a love/eh relationship with this album. Not love/hate cause I didn’t hate anything about it, just love/eh. I’ve always loved Wilco, and I couldn’t not like this album, but it sounded different….kind of tired. Eh. It just didn’t totally work for me. Even this song I wasn’t crazy crazy about….but I’m crazy crazy about Wilco, so I had to include something at least. Silver star.

How Come You Never Go There, Feist: I like Feist. Feist makes me feel like I’m walking around Florida at sunset. Maybe because the first time I ever listened to Feist I was walking around Florida at sunset (the first song I heard was “Secret Love”) and talking to the first boy I ever “fell in love with” (obviously this was years ago). Feist — and I — have grown up a lot since then… and her music speaks to me in a different way and makes me feel a different way. Metals was a good album.

That Power, Childish Gambino: Ahh, it was hard to pick the right song from this album. I wanted to add “Heartbeat” or “You See Me,” but the end of this song– and the album — is so good. You need to get to the second half of this song to really “get it.” But you have to really listen to the album in its entirety to “get” this song, so probably just turn off this playlist and go check it out. It’s called “Camp.”

Oh Christmas Tree, Oh Christmas Tree, how busy 30 Rock gets with thee… yes, the crowds at Rockefeller Plaza get insane starting with the day the tree is lit, but I’ve come to the conclusion (only after spending one full holiday season here, sure, but still) that it’s definitely worth it. That tree is beautiful. Every time I walk to work in the morning or leave at night and see it sparkling and people taking pictures and craning their necks up to see the tops, I feel a little warm and fuzzy inside. Part of it is that it reminds me of our tree at home, sure — but it’s also just nice to see people excited. So. That all said — the holiday season is here!

But — and don’t get me wrong, I’m not complaining — It doesn’t “look a lot like Christmas”…nor does it feel that way. Temps hit the 60s in New York this week and I’ve yet to break out the boots or don a scarf. While I’ll certainly take this weather now (we’ll have three cold winter months ahead anyway, so putting it off a bit is fine with me), it makes Vince Guaraldi’s Charlie Brown Christmas album feel a little off. Like it’s meant to be played when snowflakes are falling, but they aren’t. If you’re anything like me, music’s got to fit a feeling — but luckily, my trusty “Music from the OC Mix 3″ is filling the void.

If you aren’t familiar with The OC, it’s a brilliant (now defunct) sitcom about high schoolers and their families living up in Orange County with an even more brilliant soundtrack. (Also, teen hero Seth Cohen really should be credited with making geek chic, but that’s another story.) Anyway, every year the Cohen family celebrates Chrismukkah, as many families do even if they don’t call it that — a mixture of Christmas and Hanukkah. One year, Seth is somehow dating two girls at once, and needs the perfect gift to get both…. so he makes a series of mix CDs. Technically, he basically copies his entire music library for both of them… but I imagine that he also made them a specific Chrismukkah mix. And apparently the music liaisons for the show did too, because they actually compiled and sold said album. The unfortunate part is that it’s really all Christmas-centric music…. but the fortunate part is that it’s AWESOME. It’s got this west coasty kind of vibe that makes it fine to listen to whether it really feels like winter or not, and it’s a fresh alternative to the tried and true. My favorite tracks are “Just Like Christmas” by Low, “Maybe this Christmas” by Ron Sexsmith, and “Rock of Ages by Ben Kweller. I’ve compiled them in a Grooveshark playlist to the left — take a listen and you’ll see — it’s the perfect soundtrack for walking home past brightly colored lights or while cooking dinner with frosty windows or, in my case as of late, keeping up the cheer while riding the M79 to work.

Also in holiday related news, I received a chocolate Advent calendar today. YES.

Check out this video — it’s only 60 seconds long, but it’s chock full of stunning, interesting, beginning-of-a-story moments… literally. Each shot is only a second long, showing how beautiful a “moment” really can be.

It’s a compilation of 60 entries to the Montblanc “Beauty of a Second” short film contest. Entrants submitted a video that represented a second of beauty and as you can see, the subjects ranged from people to pianos (and there’s even a tiger in there somewhere…love it). You can make your own compilation of your favorite submissions… click here to string together a playlist, and today keep an eye out for the moments in your life that would fit the bill.