There is an old adage in our business that the news never stops on the weekend. In the past year alone, we've gone from the tsunami, to the Iraqi elections, and to the first winds of Hurricane Katrina all happening on our watch. Nightly News is a seven-night-a-week broadcast (except for those occasional days when we are pre-empted by sports in some time zones), but we know everyone's lives are different on the weekends, and you may not be quite as plugged into the Web, cable and all-news radio during the day as you are during the week. So our staff here in New York, and our NBC News colleagues around the world, work hard to bring you as comprehensive a report of the day's news as we can, as well as those stories that take you someplace you haven't been, or tell you something you may not know. Our broadcast may be the one time of the day you have the time to check-in on the world over the weekend, and we want to make it worthwhile.

Which brings us to this weekend. The war, the war of words, the upcoming holiday season, and (gasp), another storm brewing in the Caribbean are all on the table. President Bush continues his Asia trip, with another big speech defending the administration's policy on Iraq, this one planned at Osan Air Base in Korea. Then it's off to China, where North Korea and bird flu will be major topics. The political fire in Washington will continue all through the news cycles of the next 48 hours around the country and on the Sunday talk shows, and our national editor, Robert Dembo, is flagging us to keep an eye on Tropical Storm Gamma. It's almost Thanksgiving, and we still are worrying about hurricanes. And if you have ever heard the expression Black Friday, you know it's the day after Thanksgiving for the nation's retailers. You'll hear reporters call it the busiest shopping day of the year (although I think there is some dispute about that). We'll take a look at what you can expect, and introduce you to a college student with a Web site that reveals what stores are planning to put on sale, before their circulars show up in the newspaper.

Saturday's broadcast will be seen around the country, unless the Notre Dame game runs long, and Sunday's broadcast will just air on the West Coast, due to the final NASCAR race of the year, which is scheduled to end at 8 p.m. ET.

John Seigenthaler and I will be posting every weekend. Let us know what you think.

It's the kind of wake-up call everyone who works in Baghdad hopes they never get. For me, it was the second time. I was dozing after my alarm had gone off at 8 a.m. The loud BANG was unmistakably close. I recognized it and knew immediately what it was. I stayed put, like last time, and listened. First nothing, then small arms fire... I knew I had to get out into the hallway, and started to get up... Another blast, even louder, threw me back onto the bed... Now I knew I had to get out fast... The next few minutes went by in a haze... almost on automatic pilot, remembering the things we were told to do in an emergency. I got up, walked into the living room and to the door... then realized I was barefoot,and there was glass shattered on the ground. Dale walked through the door: "Are you all right? Get your shoes on, take your phone, your bag." I scrambled, following his orders... back into the bedroom, shoes on, phone, handbag with important stuff. "Count your people"... made me remember I'm in charge of this group of people. New to the job of bureau chief, I'd forgotten that for a moment. Will I remember everybody? Up the flight of stairs to our office, where my colleagues and some other journalists who stay in the building were gathering. "Get down on the floor!" I started counting, but didn't know how many I was supposed to have. Is everybody here? The phones on the desk kept ringing, but when someone reached out and grabbed one there was no one at the other end. It added an unnerving touch to an already tense situation. We may be evacuating... I'd better tell someone on the foreign desk... the cell phone worked.  A camera in my face. Kevin Burke, behind it, asking questions... I'm supposed to give him a soundbite... my thoughts are still scrambled: "Don't do this to me!" I must look terrible, pull myself together, say something.

After a while, I've lost track of time, no more blasts, no gunfire, we relax a little. I pull trousers from my bag and put them on. The phones start working. Kevin, Rob Moro and Mike Boettcher are heading out to the street with an escort. They've started working. No structural damage to our building. I look out the window and see the blast site, the dust has settled. A large piece of the wall has fallen onto a car. Beyond it a building has been reduced to rubble. The walls worked, they did not get past them... they protected us. But the people in the buildings next to the wall were too close.

I should take a closer look, can I go down? Some of us are escorted down... a water main has burst. I'll have to wade through a pool of water. Wish I had my boots on. But when we get closer to the blast site... "go back, there's someone in the crowd wearing a suicide vest!" We turn back. Back in the office I get into work mode. Can we feed tape? Is the live position working? Did our security camera catch the blast? Local employees start coming in, their faces worried, shocked. "We're all right, we're fine." The first tape comes in, the feed is up... and it's business as usual. Except... we've become part of the story.

When our BlackBerries vibrated on bedside tables in the homes of employees throughout the News Division, they were carrying word from Baghdad that our facility had been bombed...once, then twice.  Our correspondent Mike Boettcher knew that the first thing to do after a bombing in Iraq...is to prepare for the second bombing, often just seconds later. He did exactly as he was trained to do. While our folks are all fine, while our facility is damaged, we mourn for the civilian loss in this bombing. We have a first-person account of a terrorist attack on our air tonight that we wish we didn't have.

In Washington, the words of a 37-year Marine Corps veteran echoed through the city today. Yesterday, Congressman Jack Murtha, D-Pa., made news (and led the broadcast) with his demand that the U.S. get out of Iraq. The White House (via temporary quarters in South Korea) issued a strong statement linking him with Michael Moore, and today Murtha was having none of that. We'll cover the state of the argument, the policy and the politics of it.

Then there's the budget and a massive fight over just what the priorities should be. The Fitzgerald/Grand Jury story deserves watching, and may just be the news item today that sneaks up on all of us in importance.

Speaking of a situation that deserves watching: I'm watching KNBC-TV's live coverage of the fires in Ventura, Calif. right now, and it's getting a little sporty... though there's now more white smoke than orange flame, due to the aggressive firefighting by air all day. They are the best at what they do, and that's some dangerous flying.

Also tonight: installment #5 in our MAKING A DIFFERENCE series for this week. As our Executive Producer said in this space earlier today, the reaction to this series continues to be enormous and gratifying.

We hope you can join us for tonight's broadcast. Have a good weekend.

So I'm standing around waiting for an elevator in the basement of the Capitol early this afternoon when erstwhile majority leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas, and a phalanx of fellow House conservatives walk up behind.

The big question of the day for me is about the pending tax cut legislation that Republicans are struggling to bring to a vote before leaving this afternoon for a two-week Thanksgiving recess. So I ask him about the floor schedule. Even though he isn't technically in charge anymore, it's obvious to everyone around here that he's still deeply involved in running the place.

"Two conference reports, the tax bill and an anti-Murtha resolution," he tells me in a voice raspy from a late night of twisting arms on the budget bill and a cold that he picked up along the way. "Anti-Murtha?" says I. "A 'no retreat' resolution," he confirms.

The half-dozen or so Republicans who had shoe-horned aboard the elevator are apparently hearing this for the first time, too. "Oh Tom, that would be great," says Rep. Don Sherwood, R-Pa. "We should really do that," agrees Rep. John Doolittle, R-Calif. Doolittle sports a small hammer-shaped lapel pin on his suit, a symbol of solidarity with the embattled DeLay.

I thought he was joking. Until I had the chance to interview Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., himself for Andrea Mitchell's spot in this evening's broadcast. Before we began I asked Murtha if he had heard anything about it. "Yes, I will debate them on the floor if that's what they want to do," says Murtha.

It turns out that the plan is to put a non-binding resolution on the floor demanding an immediate withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq, and dare Democrats gleeful over what Murtha has done to put their vote where their smile is.

We get a lot of e-mail. On a typical day we receive about 500 e-mails, and it pretty much breaks down into three categories. We get a fairly large chunk from liberals, many of whom accuse us of being lapdogs for the Bush administration, and wonder openly when we gave up our duty to ask tough questions and be journalists. We get a somewhat larger chunk from conservatives, many of whom question our patriotism and wonder openly whether we wouldn't be more comfortable living in Saddam Hussein's Iraq. And we get yet another large chunk from people not guided by ideology, who simply ask, "Why don't you air more good news?" Now that's an interesting question, and journalists, who are among the most defensive people I know, tend to have a fairly defensive answer, and it is that we're not in the business of reporting that all the planes landed safely today. News, sadly, is often bad, and we are generally more concerned with bringing viewers the news we think they need to know, not the news they want to know.

Back to our mail. Throw in a few story suggestions, an e-mail campaign ("Why aren't you covering fill-in-the-blank?") and an "attaboy" or two and that about does it. Frankly, we don't get nearly as many "attaboys" as "what-were-you-thinking?" e-mails because, I suppose, people are more inclined to write when they're upset, and that's just fine. We want to hear what you have to say, and to be fair, our critics often have a point. We really are listening. But, yes, I've often thought it would be nice to get a little more encouraging mail. Put another way, I've been eager to hear some good news.

And then came "Making a Difference."

Since we began this series of good news stories about people who are selflessly helping others, we have been utterly overwhelmed by herograms from viewers. In my time at NBC Nightly News I have never, ever, seen anything like it. Most of the e-mails are brief and to the point; they simply thank us for finally -- finally -- airing some good news. In fact, of the more than 1,000 e-mails we've received on this subject alone, there have been only a few sour notes that I have seen, including one that asked, "what, only one piece of good news today?"

"Making a Difference" didn't happen by accident. It happened because we saw a need, and we saw that need because we heard you. Senior Producer Sharon Hoffman pitched some story ideas about individuals who were changing people's lives for the better. The more the staff talked about the stories, the more we realized we had something special: legitimate good news stories, stories that were not about planes landing safely, but were about people who were, yes, making a difference. Did we think we had something that would resonate? Sure. Did we have any idea we'd get this kind of reaction? No way. The response has been gratifying, not because we crave praise (Well, OK, we do, but that's another story), but because we think we've identified the place where what viewers need to know intersects with what viewers want to know.

The series runs all week, but we're going to keep at it after that. We won't run "Making a Difference" stories every day, but I suspect you won't have to wait too long to see another one. There are plenty of these stories out there. And that's where you come in. If you know about a story that you think would fit into this series, please click here and e-mail us. The more "Making a Difference" stories you tell us about, the more stories we can air. And that's good news.

Our featured story tonight started with someone who saw the need for others to be able to see. Find out how one American is reaching out to those who might have gone their whole lives without something the rest of us take for granted. Hear how he is empowering the poor, improving lives and truly "Making a Difference."

We saw something in the House today that provides more evidence that the congressional GOP has some serious problems. The final version of a bill funding the departments of Labor and HHS went down to a completely unexpected defeat on the House floor due to the defections of 22 Republicans and a solid wall of Democratic opposition. It was the first time in a decade that it has happened, and it indicates a GOP majority that is adrift.

Normally, leaders would have some idea where the votes were and weren't on a routine piece of business like this. But somehow this time they did not, and subsequently got blindsided by an unusual coalition of conservatives and moderates. That does not reflect well on the man running the floor in the absence of Rep. Tom DeLay, R-Texas, Rep. Roy Blunt, R-Mo.

Meanwhile, the House is in recess once more late this afternoon as leaders struggle to find the votes necessary to pass its budget cutting package. The measure would trim funds from entitlement programs like Medicaid and food stamps, as well as raise revenues in other areas. The ultimate aim is to pay for Katrina relief, but moderates have balked at the targeting of programs that mostly affect the poor. The bill had to be yanked from the House floor last week for lack of GOP support.

It's hard to say whether these failures are due to the absence of DeLay and his vaunted ability to count votes and invoke discipline, or whether DeLay's many controversies themselves have led to a breakdown in unity: Many moderates have been spooked by the GOP's low standing in the polls, as well last week's elections. It could be argued that DeLay's problems have contributed to both. At any rate, GOP unity, especially in the House, is threatened for the first time since the Gingrich era.

Not much time today. Had an hour-long print interview this morning, then lunch with the Executive Producer, and had to finish tonight's featured piece (on the star of the new Andrew Lloyd Webber musical who will be on stage tonight despite having had breast cancer surgery 15 days ago). Then came the editorial meeting, calls to return, blog postings to write, and there you have it.

On tonight's broadcast, the heightened debate over the Iraq war. While the President was in Asia today, a member of Congress spoke up for a draw-down of troops, and in doing so sparked new debate. There's no question that last night's speech by Vice President Cheney marked a change in tone for the administration. Andrea Mitchell will take on the task of explaining Bob Woodward's newly-disclosed involvement in the Plame mess. And Janet Shamlian will update us on FEMA's plans for storm victims living in hotels. My interview with Maria Friedman, star of the new musical THE WOMAN IN WHITE, will come at the end of the broadcast.

And finally: my personal thanks to all the viewers who have responded so overwhelmingly to our series MAKING A DIFFERENCE. If there is one anecdotal comment I get in public more than any other, it's the complaint about the lack of any good news on broadcasts like ours. While some nights the events on this planet prevent it, this has been an instructive experiment for us... and just as newspapers have different sections, newscasts can find the time and space to point out the bright lights among us. 

Many of you also wrote asking how to get Christmas gifts to those who face bleak holidays in the storm zone. We are working on various links and methods to help facilitate such a thing. Those of us who are among the truly blessed are looking for a way to help those who are dealing with colossal loss and sadness at this time of year.

We hope you'll join us tonight.

One week ago, today, Nov. 10, was the 30th anniversary of the sinking of the Edmund Fitzgerald. At the Mariners' Church of Detroit 29 names were read, each echoed by the tolling of a bell to memorialize the crew members who were lost in a vicious storm on Lake Superior.

Of course, the reason many of us know about the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald is because of the six-and-a-half minute Gordon Lightfoot song of the same name. The single reached No. 2 on the charts in November 1976.

Why am I writing this in the NBC Nightly News blog? Because it's an opportunity to remind folks that journalists are people, too.

No, really.

This newsroom buzzed about "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald" all day. We considered running an item in our broadcast about the memorial service in Detroit. (It was deleted for time.) But mostly we spoke of Gordon Lightfoot and his greatest hits collections (called "Gord's Gold, vol. I & II"), and we tried to name his other beloved hits (including "If You Could Read My Mind" and "Sundown"), and we discussed whether he was Canadian (he is), and someone thought he might have died (indeed, he recently survived a near terminal illness described as an "abdominal aneurysm").

So while this is a serious business -- now, more than ever -- pop culture enters our editorial meetings just as it would in the water cooler conversations taking place in offices of all kinds across America.

Remember, our Anchor/Managing Editor is a dad and has an iPod and a brother who makes him mix CDs. He has terrific and varied tastes with a weakness for Mark Knopfler guitar solos. Our Executive Producer has a Beatles screen saver. Both our News President and our Senior Producer (in charge of serious matters like "The Fleecing of America") could talk endlessly about the liner notes from their favorite Frank Zappa CDs. (Yes, I have discussed "Hot Rats" with both of them.)

Another of our Senior Producers -- this one in charge of all things foreign -- spends much of her time these days supervising stories out of the Middle East. But she has strong Texas roots, leading her to listen to lots of America's best music from the southwest, great bands like the Flatlanders. (If you've never heard their first album, "More a Legend Than a Band,"you're missing out on an extraordinary collection of truly American songs.)

It was a busy news day late last year when "Rolling Stone" released their issue listing the "500 Greatest Songs Of All Time." But, boy, did we find the time to debate their findings. The newsroom was filled with vigorous votes for "Johnny B. Goode" and "Sitting On The Dock Of The Bay." Serious music fan Tom Brokaw was floored that "American Pie" was nowhere to be found. By the way, "Rolling Stone" chose Bob Dylan's "Like a Rolling Stone" as number one -- and as far as THIS music snob is concerned: they got it right.

In a world at war, a year when Mother Nature continues to remind us of her awesome power, when gas prices are too high and polls show confidence in our government is too low -- thank goodness for the welcome presence and distraction of pop music and pop culture in general.

By the way, "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald" did NOT make The "Rolling Stone" top 500. That is all wrong.

You've now seen the first three stories in our series "Making a Difference:"

Kerry Sanders on Joseph Lekuton and his "Cows for Kids";
Ron Allen on Sister Mary Scullion's fight against homelessness;
Kevin Tibbles on former Army Capt. Jonathan Powers' work with Iraqi orphans

The goal of the series, as mentioned Monday in this post by Senior Producer Sharon Hoffman, is to highlight some good news in the world by introducing you to people who are truly making a difference. We're always looking for inspiration. Click here to nominate someone you know who fits the bill.   

The children of Iraq are living in the midst of war for the third time in 20 years. According to UNICEF, children under the age of 18 make up nearly half of Iraq's 24 million people. One in four children under the age of five is chronically malnourished, and one in eight children dies before his or her fifth birthday.

In tonight's edition of our "Making a Difference" series, you met former Army Capt. Jonathan Powers, who is leading the efforts to give these children what the war has stolen from them: nourishment, shelter, education and hope. With the help of the Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation, Powers developed the War Kids Relief program.

War Kids Relief hopes to raise $7 million to help the innocent victims of the Iraq war. The organization's top priorities include: creating a network of safe havens with existing orphanages, launching a family program to reintegrate children into family programs, improving education and training and empowering the children's caretakers.

If you would like to help, please visit www.vvaf.org. To contact Jonathan Powers specifically, feel free to e-mail him at jpowers@vi.org  or call him at (202) 557-7575.

If we do our jobs correctly and well, we never impart on the air whatever craziness is going on behind the scenes. Last night was one of those nights. Loyal blog readers will remember that I went on at some length about the weather in this space 24 hours ago. All of it was going on right then, and weather truly turned out to be a big story. But GATHERING that story was another matter. Our affiliated stations along the storm belt were scurrying to cover a truly big local story... crews were dispatched... and by the time the broadcast began, pictures of the damage that we knew to exist had yet to materialize. So with 10 minutes to air, our Executive Producer John Reiss called an audible and changed the lead to Chip Reid's report on the war debate in the Senate. If everything is working properly behind the scenes, such a lead change isn't supposed to be detectable on the air. Last night, thankfully, everything was working properly behind the scenes. We moved weather down in the broadcast until we had more to go on. Chip had a solid story and was ready to go.

Tonight FEMA is back in the news, as hotel eviction notices have gone out to upwards of 150,000 people or more, some of whom don't have any other immediate option. As a lower-third headline on MSNBC-TV put it a bit less gently, "FEMA SAYS GET LOST." As Joe Scarborough just put it, even less delicately but with an added holiday theme, "Ho, ho, ho...get OUT."

Also tonight, President Bush's trip lands in South Korea, and so does our own David Gregory. We have an interesting piece on a diet drug tonight, and another story in our series on those who are MAKING A DIFFERENCE.

If I may preview an interview I did today for tomorrow night's broadcast, read the following story in the New York Times from this past Saturday. It was an honor and an inspiration to meet Maria Friedman, and I cannot wait to see her on stage. I'm proud of the story for tomorrow, at least as much of it as I've been able to write so far.

A few other housekeeping items: first, many of you e-mailed me about our segment last night on "Ferberizing" young children to develop sleep patterns. Our piece on said subject was not without its flaws... chief among them our choice of a child to videotape. The baby we showed was 7-and-a-half-weeks-old. Even though those of us who are parents KNOW full well that such a sleep-conditioning practice should IN NO WAY pertain to such a tiny infant (as one e-mailer pointed out, that would be "cruel and stupid"), and even though we took pains via Rehema Ellis'narration in the story to point that out, apparently the pictures spoke louder than words for many viewers, who nonetheless thought we sent an incorrect message. My apologies if that was indeed the case.

To those of you who have sampled our NBC Nightly News Netcast on the Web at night: we know there have been issues with loading times, commercial breaks and "black holes" where narration is heard but no pictures can be seen. The tech folks (and we have an amazing team putting this together and online each night) assure me things are being ironed out.

Finally, we paid tribute once again here in New York last night to a great former news writer for Nightly News, Joan Scarangello. Joan, a non-smoker, died of lung cancer, and the annual Joan's Legacy charity event was last evening. Joan was a wonderful person and this has become an important annual gathering. Special thanks to our friend Don Imus for his generous bid of $50,000 at the silent auction for the anchor chair from the set of Nightly News that was used by both Tom Brokaw and yours truly.  Don didn't seem fazed when I broke it to him on the air this morning that I believe the chair is from Office Depot. Delbert McClinton showed up to perform last night, just as he has every year. I believe I was the winner of a different silent auction item: dinner with actor and comedian Steve Carell.  Sure, it felt weird bidding on him. But it's for a charity I believe in. He knows I'm married. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

We hope you'll join us tonight.

It never ceases to amaze me how young the faces of so many U.S. soldiers are, and the boyish grin of Jonathan Powers is no exception. How can a kid from the suburbs of Buffalo spend a year on the mean streets of Baghdad, with its roadside bombs and untold dangers, and return home to his mom and dad not grizzled or twisted in some way?

Maybe Jon Powers hides it well, but instead of letting the nightmare of post-Saddam Iraq destroy his boyhood dreams, Powers has combined the two. A young man who always wanted to teach kids, he returns stateside from serving his country in the war zone and cannot forget the faces of the Iraqi orphans he left behind.

So in the face of so much untold danger (and let's face it, Powers is a soldier, so he knows what's really going on on the ground) he raises money to GO BACK and assist the street kids of Iraq. As you'll see in tonight's "Making a Difference" profile, this young man, the one who wanted to be a teacher, wound up teaching me a lot about what service is all about.

Capt. Jonathan Powers with children and caretakers at the Adhamiya Orphanage in Baghdad, Jan. 2004.

Since returning from combat in Iraq, my life has taken many strange and unexpected turns as a result of my experiences in Baghdad. Earlier this year, I was able to meet the Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation and we have worked together to develop War Kids Relief to assist the children who I saw as the most innocent victims of this war.

I was blessed to have NBC follow with interest as this organization became a reality. It was obviously a unique experience to work closely with correspondent Kevin Tibbles and producer Roxanne Garcia as cameras captured my story. During an interview in Buffalo, unbeknownst to me, my parents sat in the background and listened to my conversation with Kevin. This was the first time since I began these efforts that my mom truly understood why I was returning to Iraq, a country that had caused both her and my family unbelievable anguish as they awaited word from me every time a bomb exploded in Baghdad.

While the piece was developing, I made my return to Baghdad and, ironically enough, met another NBC producer, Paul Nassar, waiting in line at the Baghdad International Airport. He and I discussed what we had been doing in Iraq and when I mentioned my work with orphans he responded about a NBC Nightly News piece he had contributed to in Baghdad over the last five weeks. Some of the pictures of Iraqi children you'll see tonight he shot there with a crew. That conversation led to a small adventure of sorts as  he and I worked our way out of Baghdad and into Amman, Jordan. We keep in contact and hope to meet up again in Baghdad in the near future.

In tonight's broadcast, NBC Nightly News gives me a wonderful platform to officially launch War Kids Relief in partnership with the Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation. Our goal is to help the most innocent victims of war -- children. Please support our efforts.

Editor's note: Jonathan Powers, a former Army captain who served in Baghdad for more than a year, is the subject of tonight's "Making a Difference" series on the broadcast. He filed this post at our request.

Could diet pills soon be making a comeback? It's been eight years since Fen-Phen was found to cause heart damage, and there's new evidence that new and better medicines may help people lose weight...  safely. Chief Science Correspondent Robert Bazell looks at what makes the drugs different from their predecessors.

We are traveling in the mountains of Guatemala for a story to air this Friday as part of our "Making a Difference" series. You´ll see much more about the great program we are here to cover then. But as we drove from Antigua (at the base of the mountains just outside Guatemala City) to Lake Atitlan Tuesday, another story was very apparent. That´s the effects of Hurricane Stan. Stan hit this area this fall, just a few days before the devastating earthquake in Pakistan. In the midst of a very busy hurricane season and then a much more deadly event in South Asia, Stan got very little attention. But for those who live here, it has over taken their lives. In terms of deaths, people here say Stan wasn't all that bad. In this part of the world, that means the loss of life is measured in the thousands rather than the tens of thousands.

And Stan didn't bring incredibly strong winds. But the storm parked over this region and dumped rain for nearly a week. As we drove through the mountains, the results were everywhere you looked. Mountain sides striped bare from landslides, river valleys are now mud flats. Those mountain sides are somebody´s fields. Here they terrace and farm every inch on land they can. You can see a hillside covered with corn, coffee, bananas...  and then it just drops away in a wall of dirt mid-field. And those river valleys were villages. We saw areas with fancy homes belonging to foreigners and poor farming villages alike now sitting amidst the hardened mud. The tiny river that trickled by us just about a month ago was a raging river that broke its banks and wiped out entire towns in its path. This is the time of year when the farmers should be harvesting their crops... they've already paid for their seeds and a season's worth of fertilizer. And now much of the year´s investment and expected returns are washed away.

We certainly had our share of natural disasters in the U.S. this year. And we had our share of issues in dealing with them. But seeing what the people in this part of Guatemala are dealing with, it somehow puts all that in perspective. They have no FEMA here. And forget the arguments about wind vs. flood, they don't have insurance either. Other countries are helping some - including USAID. And there are a few micro-loan programs set up to help people rebuild. But these are people who were just scraping by to begin with have yet another huge challenge before them. I have no doubt they'll fight on and restore their lives, but it's a tough go in an already not-so-easy part of the world.

Editor's note: You can see some of the devastation caused by Hurricane Stan in Central America in this MSNBC.com slide show.

Every once in a while, we meet someone who really has made a difference. Sister Mary Scullion, of the Sisters of Mercy, has been called Philadelphia's Mother Theresa. In the course of reporting tonight's profile of her, she tried to introduce us to, and have us interview, everyone but herself about the homeless problem.

She began her efforts about 20 years ago, when homelessness became a problem that really riveted the nation's attention. She started an organization called Project H.O.M.E. Just doing that was a huge problem because she wanted to open a shelter in an abandoned casket factory close to Center City. No one wanted any homeless people anywhere downtown, and certainly not a shelter where homeless people would live.

But sister Mary wouldn't take no for an answer. The shelter opened, as did several other buildings offering shelter and services close to the heart of the city.

Today, Project H.O.M.E. is an $11-million-a-year non-profit. It has built 60 units of rental housing and renovated 19 abandoned homes, with nine more under construction. It also has helped build the Honickman Learning Center and Comcast Technology Labs, a state-of-the-art digital learning center that's the envy of even the best private schools. The goal is to build up to 100 homes during the next few years.

Clearly, Sister Mary did not do all of that by herself. But what started as something very small has turned into a program that cities across the nation want to emulate.

Sister Mary is persistent, passionate and firmly in control of what she's doing. The key, she says, is connecting with people on the street at a down-to-earth, real, unpretentious level. There's nothing phony about her. She says meeting and getting to know homeless people has made her a better person. She admires their courage and their dignity under such dire conditions. She says most people dismiss the homeless as invisible or unworthy, with no one but themselves to blame for their plight. Obviously, she doesn't see or relate to them in that way.

While we were following her around with a TV camera, she insisted on speaking to the people we encountered first, and making sure they did not mind being photographed. Her honor, her word, her credibility were at stake. One of the biggest problems she encounters in trying to get people to trust her, or anyone, for that matter.

She's a very humble, understated woman, who truly has inspired quite a difference here, and created an organization that seems well on its way to its goal -- ending homelessness on the streets of Philadelphia.

First of all, welcome to all of you who are reading this for the first time, perhaps after reading today's piece in the Los Angeles Times about this entire genre of writing -- in our case, an accompaniment to our broadcast. Speaking of which: what a day to be a weather buff -- I'm right now watching a daisy chain of severe weather that stretches over several states and is moving quickly (some storms have a forward speed of 60 mph), pounding several population centers along the way. Technology has completely changed the game, and now television coverage can switch from radar to local Doppler (isolating an area as small as a few city blocks), to television cameras set up by local stations to check on live conditions. We're keeping an eye on it all. The weather threat actually runs directly through the United States, from the Gulf of Mexico north to Lake Erie... water to water... and as I write this there are 15 separate warning areas and five separate tornadoes reported on the ground -- including a monster storm approaching Evansville, Indiana, which was so hard hit just a few days ago. The possibility exists that today may spawn as many as 50 separate tornadoes. Indianapolis is in for a big storm before the afternoon is out. The reason for this weather is simple: hot and cold.  As CNN just reported, it's 30 degrees in Denver, 80 in Memphis. It's snowing right now in Kansas City.

To our other news of the day: it's all about a possible "exit strategy" in Iraq, something veteran military commanders will tell you is always a tricky proposition and a dangerous game. Then you add in the factors in Iraq. The military got a rough lesson in expectations-management (and so did our military families) back in the beginning of the war, when many deployments were extended. Chip Reid will report from the Hill on today's goings-on. Pete Williams has an interesting Supreme Court report tonight also having to do with the war.

Ann Curry of the "Today" show has filed a report for us tonight from Pakistan, where she traveled as part of  a U.S. government and corporate delegation. And having been in e-mail touch with her today I can tell you the situation is grim, especially where many children in the affected area are concerned.  We look forward to airing her report tonight. In the meantime, you can read her Dateline blog post here.

Rehema Ellis, who, like a lot of us around here, is a parent, will do the story a lot of us parents found maddening today: Remember the first time you heard the theory that children had to be "conditioned" to sleep, and that there were times when parents should not pick them up and comfort them? Well, you'll want to see this story tonight. And we'll continue our series called MAKING A DIFFERENCE with a great story out of Philadelphia. Keep those nominations coming via e-mail... we had an overwhelming response overnight.

We hope you can join us.

We had a girl in the show last night named India Mahoney. She was a student who appeared in Mike Taibbi's piece on the first day of school in St. Bernard Parish. You would have never known her name except that when she appeared on screen, we put up a lower third graphic which said "India Mahoney/student."

I first saw her name around 4:45 p.m. when the producer, Kelly Venardos, put her name into our script file (exactly what it sounds like -- a public file where correspondents and producers put scripts throughout the day so everyone can read them). As the production assistant, it is my job to take the name from the script, verify spelling and title, format it correctly and assign the name a number. India was number 13.

I then call Nancy Pinto. It's her job to make the physical lower-third graphic you see on screen. When she's done, she calls  Assistant Director Judy Farinet. Judy and another producer double-check the lower-third and make sure the number corresponds to the graphic. While that's happening, Kelly and her editor are checking India's "hit time," the number of seconds into the piece before she appears on screen. Kelly then gives those times to me. When the piece is finished, it's timed again by the Tape Assistant Director. That hit time is given to Judy. During the show, right before the piece airs, Judy and I compare our hit times. India appeared 1 minute and 34 seconds into the piece. She's done talking at 1:36. The piece begins, Judy starts her stop watch, Nancy calls up graphic number 13 and at 1:34 Judy tells the Technical Director to insert the graphic. Seconds later he pulls it out at her direction. That's two seconds on-air and eight people to get it there.

India, I hope you were watching.

If you've ever called us here at Nightly News with a question or comment about the broadcast, chances are one in three that you've spoken with me.

As a desk assistant, I have the quintessential entry-level newsroom position. Three of us share the job of answering the phone, signing for FedEx packages, ordering office supplies, changing toner in the printers and clearing jams in the Xerox machine. We bring in the newspapers in the morning and print scripts and the rundown in the afternoon. During the show we run into the studio to give Brian the pink pages you see him holding every night. (Those are his scripts.)

The job description, on paper, seems mostly administrative. But like most jobs, it is what you make of it. And over the past year this job has become my dream First Job.

One of us desk assistants is in the door at 7:45 a.m. (we take turns), and the other two come in at 9. The morning meeting is at 9:30 and by 10 a.m. the day is in full swing. Producers get their assignments and come looking for help. Depending on the story, they usually need us to gather relevant footage or help find people to interview on the topic (experts, characters and people otherwise involved). If the interviews have already been conducted, the first rule of business is to get everything transcribed (or "verbated," which is the vernacular around here) so the correspondent can begin writing the script.

If the interviews are done that day, it usually means verbating them live as they come in via satellite. I sit at a computer next to a small television and type as fast as I can while the person is speaking. It's not always perfect (especially if the person talks fast), but it's helpful for the producer and correspondent to have it as quickly as possible.

In between interviews, producers may also need facts or statistics related to the story (www.census.gov is one favorite resource). I also watch raw footage as it comes in throughout the day and point out good shots to the producer, who may be juggling so many things that he/she can't see every frame of video.

At the end of the day, it's satisfying to see a story air and know that I picked out a certain shot or got an important statistic to include in the piece, assuming that there's time to sit back and admire our work. Sometimes news breaks late and stories get launched at 3 or 4 p.m. for a 6:30 broadcast. In the news business, that's called a "crash"... and we'll save that for next time.

An inside look at a heartbreaking problem that most urban leaders try to go after without success. Yet one big city has had huge successes, and the people there are crediting one woman for making the difference.  Our week-long series "Making a Difference" continues. Read part one of the series from Monday night here.

Do you remember what you were doing on September 1? I do. I was sitting here in the newsroom, overseeing our coverage of the massive story Hurricane Katrina had turned out to be... when we got word there was something extraordinary going on at the Convention Center in New Orleans. The pictures started coming in... and for well over an hour, I watched an unedited feed of the faces and cries of poor, hungry and angry people wondering why their government had, in their eyes, left them to die.  Those images affected us greatly; they're one of the many reasons we continue to cover the impact of the 2005 hurricane season, and Katrina in particular, as intensely as we do. In a strange way, they also helped inspire the new series we're launching tonight called "Making a Difference."

Here's why: Sometimes, when the problems of the world loom large -- as they often do when we're putting together a rundown for the show -- it seems as though there's not a lot of good news out there. As you all know (and often remind us), that's just not true. There are a lot of people around who, by their very actions, show us all that individual people can do things that make the world a better place. In their communities, in their schools... in areas large and small... they show that you don't have to write a big check to make a difference. We're going to tell you about people like that all this week, and after that, every chance we get.

We'd love to hear from you about people you think we ought to report on. You can click the "Discuss" link below or click here to e-mail us. Meantime, thanks for watching... and thanks for writing, too. As Brian often says, we really do read all your e-mails and letters.

Earlier today I was pleased to take part, for the second straight year, in TIME magazine's annual luncheon panel to nominate what used to be called MAN OF THE YEAR cover topics... thankfully changed years ago to PERSON OF THE YEAR (but more appropriately should be "ENTITY" of the year, as subjects other than individuals have been chosen 12 times in the past). It's always an interesting and fun exercise. My nomination is a woman, a mom, who has been assaulted on a near-constant basis going back many years and yet she routinely finds ways to prove how strong and resilient she is. Mother Nature.  My argument for this nomination goes: this ONE topic (and there are so many examples, from the tsunami to this year's awful hurricane season to the Pakistan quake) touches on so many others when viewed through the tragic prism of this past year: poverty, charity, race, oil, Presidential politics, government, global warming, class, infrastructure and more. While some of the others on our panel of mostly journalists and politicos agreed, we'll have to wait and see when the annual issue comes out just before Christmas. Many forget that Adolf Hitler is a former MAN OF THE YEAR, in keeping with the standard that it be the person or thing that affected our world the most, for better or worse, over the past year.

And one more thing: who do I complain to that the "media" got my nomination wrong?  I see that it's being incorrectly reported by the Associated Press that I nominated "Hurricane Katrina."

THE MONDAY SALVO

Tonight we'll begin the broadcast with the latest piece of the past that has been discovered in the vetting process surrounding the nomination of Judge Alito to the Supreme Court.  Pete Williams will have that story from Washington.  Also tonight, Andrea Mitchell will offer us a reality check on what the Democrats really knew during the build-up to war...vis-a-vis President Bush's assertion that they had access to the very same intelligence that he did.  Mike Taibbi was there for the first day of school this morning for a particularly hard-hit Parish in Louisiana...and we'll take a look at the fascinating and frightening amateur videotape of this weekend's tornado strike in Iowa.  We'll end the broadcast with our first installment in a series we're calling "Making a Difference" (with periodic features in the future all bearing this title) -- focusing on people who are doing just that.

A GREAT MOMENT IN TELEVISION

There are checks and balances built into the television business to ensure that those of us who have on-air jobs don't get too full of ourselves. I consider myself blessed to have a robust home life to go home to each night -- a busy place where any self-importance is forced to give way upon crossing the threshold. There was also this scene in the hallway outside our newsroom recently: While en route to the studio at 6:25 p.m. to do the newscast one evening last week, I passed a tour group going in the other direction. We often encounter these groups (they are led by a consistently bright, cheerful and able fleet of NBC Pages) as they file through our hallways every few minutes each day. We often have very pleasant encounters with members of the public who are taking the tour. On this particular day, one man in the group paused as I entered the Nightly News studio. He gave me a look of recognition, he half-waved and smiled... clearly understanding that I was moments away from anchoring this nation's highest-rated evening newscast. It was obviously important to him to say something that took advantage of the moment, and he did: "Go get 'em, Tom!"

We hope you'll join us tonight.

I am one of those people lucky enough to get paid for being a news junkie. Proof of my intractable addiction can be found just about any weekend, when you're likely to find me glued to the ultimate Reality TV: C-SPAN. (When people tell me I have "no life," I correct them: no, I have C-SPAN.) C-SPAN has come a very long way since the day in March 1979 when it began televising gavel-to-gavel coverage of the U.S. House of Representatives to a handful of households.

Saturday night, as I flipped around the C-SPAN dial (there are now three C-SPAN channels -— so much to watch, so little time!), I stumbled upon the original Supreme Court oral arguments from December 13, 1971 in Roe v. Wade, the case that, in 1973, secured a woman's constitutional right to an abortion.

With America's and the news media's attention so focused on the abortion debate –- and today's new revelations, which Justice Correspondent Pete Williams will be covering for us tonight, about Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito's 1985 memo in which he reportedly stated that "the Constitution does not protect a right to an abortion" --  it was fascinating to hear the audio file of the original case. (Television cameras were not then, and still are not now, permitted to record the Court's proceedings).

"It's an old joke, but when a man argues against two beautiful ladies like this, they are going to have the last word," is how Jay Floyd, representing the state of Texas, opened his arguments. He was referring to Sarah Weddington and Linda Coffee, the lawyers for Jane Roe (later identified as Norma McCorvey), an unmarried pregnant woman who had gone to several Dallas doctors seeking an abortion, but had been unable to attain one legally because her life was not at risk. Floyd's one-liner was perhaps not the best way to begin; nobody laughed at his joke.

Laughter did, however, nearly drown out the proceedings several minutes later, when, engaging on the issue of "choice," Floyd contended that a woman "makes her choice prior to the time she becomes pregnant," prompting  Justice Potter Stewart to interrupt: "Maybe she makes her choice when she decides to live in Texas."

As it turned out, attorneys would argue the case a second time – on October 11, 1972 – and on January 22, 1973, by a vote of 7-2, the Court declared the Texas law unconstitutional, thus invalidating abortion laws in nearly all the other states, and triggering the controversy that is still alive and well today.

Oh, and proving Jay Floyd right.

A twist of fate spun him from a hut in Kenya to the halls of Harvard. Now, this inspiring teacher is a role model on two continents, reaching out to change the lives of American kids and kids halfway around the globe. Don't miss part one of our week-long series "Making a Difference."