It's been an interesting week!

On Tuesday, I flew to Albuquerqie, NM and drove up to Tesuque, NM. That's five miles north of Sante Fe. I found the home of William Stewart, former Time correspondent and now a freelance journalist. Bill turned out to be a very interesting man to talk with and I enjoyed my visit. I did a live-shot with him for the Deborah Norville show on MSNBC. Bill lives at the top of a hill in Tesuque that is served by a narrow dirt road. I was amazed that the satellite truck made it!

I stayed overnight in Albuquerque and flew out VERY EARLY the next morning. I landed in Dallas, got into my Suburban, and drove directly to Minute Maid Park in Houston for the Astro's baseball game. I shot Thoms Hamill and his family watching batting practice and throwing out the first pitch. Hamill was the guy captured by terrorists in Iraq and who escape some days later.

I stayed in Houston that night and left early Thursday morning to drive back to Dallas. My wife works at a Dallas radio station and had tickets to a media screening of Shrek 2. As I approached Huntsville, TX, NBC called to divert me to Bryan, TX where a tornado was reported to have touched down. I was so close to Bryan that the storm was still raging when I got there. I shot video in an intense storm. Lightning was striking all around me. The satellite truck met me and we sent the footage back to New York. Then, a police call came in that a woman had been struck in the head by a collapsing roof. It was the same house I had shot in shortly before! I had walked all under that roof!

I spent the rest of the day doing live-shots for affilates around the country. Late in the day, NBC called to say that I was shooting a live-shot the next morning for the Today Show.

VERY EARLY the next morning (I arrived on site at 4am), I set up in front of a house that had been split by a falling tree and did the shot on the Today Show at 6am Central Time. The shot was live on the East Coast, and was delayed to other time zones.

Still, there was no going home yet.

Later that day (Friday), I had to go to Texas A&M where the commencement speaker was George Tenet, the director of the C.I.A. NBC wanted him live on the satellite in case he said something interesting.

He didn't.

I finally got home late Friday night. Still my week compares to what happened to me in 1987. ABC News called to get me on a plane within an hour (you could do that then). I didn't see my home for THREE MONTHS!

I continue to work on a freelance basis for NBC News and I continue to work part-time on the radio. I may have mentioned that I do 90-second radio features on the Internet called "Window to the Web" that airs on about 400 ground radio stations. In addition, I am the back-up host on a trucking morning show called Open Road Cafe that is on Sirius satellite radio channel 141.

Let's see. recently I was at Ft. Hood in Killeeen, TX doing live shots for MSNBC all day long. It was a day-long celebration in honor of the 4th I.D. (Infantry Division) coming home from Iraq. It was the 4th I.D. that pulled Saddam out of his rabbit hole. What a dishonorable and shameful ending for Saddam, doncha think? I'm just all broken up about it. Yeah.

I've been a journalist all my life. I've never registered as Republican or Democrat. I consider myself an independent thinker and I don't subscribe to the dogma of any party. Some years I've voted Democrat and some years I've voted Republican. I think for myself.

I bristle at the suggesting that the media is liberal and biased. I wish you could walk a mile in my shoes as I witness correspondents working hard to balance balance a story. "Biased" is an easy charge when you don't agree with the coverage.

I like to tell about the time, in the late 80's, when a woman I knew complained to me about the coverage of a day-care facility on the west coast where the adults were accused of abusing and neglecting the children. She felt that the media should have CENSORED that story and not run it because, she says, it makes day-care centers suspect. She ran a day-care center and objected to the questions that parents would ask of her as a result of that story. I asked her if she had a problem with the way the media covered guns and she said "no".

About the same time, a man I know was complaining to me about the way the media covered guns. He didn't like it when we reported that someone went crazy with an automatic weapon and mowed down people. He wasn't denying the truth of the stories, he just thought that it was a sign of bias to report the stories. I asked him if he had a problem with the coverage of the day-care story and he said "no".

I've often said that we are the sum of our experiences. I don't know who said that, but it's so very true. Our experiences often color our perspective.