Although there are a million knock-offs and wannabes, 60 Minutes is still the best magazine show alive. I’ll admit I don’t clear my calendar like I once did, to make sure that I catch it, but I watched it last night and it’s still just as smart and fresh as it always was.

I used to watch this show every Sunday night. Having studied journalism, I’m always interested in how a reporter chooses to put a story together. Do you start in the middle? Do you bury the lead, but focus on it at the conclusion? Do you go traditional and begin at, well the beginning? 60 Minutes has always had the knack for choosing interesting topics and covering them in a way that allows you to learn, while all at the same time, sort of challenging you, in a provocative way. My parents always watched this show. But my enduring memory of it is that during football season, it was always delayed and that was really upsetting to me. When I would nag my avid football watching father to tell me how much time was left in the game, he would tell me there was just two minutes. Of course, he didn’t tell me that the two minutes left could and would likely be more like 20 minutes with all the stupid time outs, so I would sit and wait, wondering if my internal clock was off, or my dad was fucking with me. This is one of the possible roots to my intense dislike of football. When I was young, we had only one tv and on Sundays, it was all football, all the time. I remember the game back in 1968, when the Oakland Raiders defeated the New York Jets. My dad was a Jets fan and they were winning with one minute to go, when CBS ended their coverage of the game to air the film Heidi. The Jets hadn’t won, but I had! It was totally awesome. My dad totally flipped when he found out the Raiders scored two touchdowns in the last 60 seconds of the game.

Anyway, there are still great reporters on 60 minutes, but not like Harry Reasoner, Mike Wallace and Morley Safer. I can still conjure up each of their voices perfectly. They were a familiar and soothing part of my childhood.

Last night there was an intensely sad story about a North Korean political prison called Camp 14. By all accounts it’s like a concentration camp for those who have committed political crimes. The person accused of the crime isn’t just sent there, their whole family is whisked away to this horrible place where the treatment is inhumane, the days are filled with hard labor, and there is little to eat. The interview was with a boy named Shin Dong-hyuk who was actually born in Camp 14, but escaped at 23. He didn’t know anything about the bigger world. When asked if he knew about America or whether the world was round or flat, he said, he was unaware of either. He believed the camp was what life was. When Anderson Cooper asked him if he knew what love was in the first 23 years of his life, he answered he still didn’t know what it was. He was told what to do every moment of the day and he was hungry for the entire 23 years he was imprisoned. He talks a lot about this hunger and that it was the focus of him wanting to escape when he met a new prisoner who had lived in the outside world. This is when he began to think of a finding a way to leave. What drove him to find a way out? His dream of eating chicken and pork, of no longer being hungry. While this sounds somewhat comical, delivered by a boy void of any emotion, it was one of the saddest things I’ve ever seen. If you need some gratitude today, you should watch this story. It rocked my core.

And that’s what 60 Minutes has always done. Moved me, informed me, challenged me. I’m grateful for anything that does that.

There are lots of things I like about blogging. I have always felt happier when I write everyday. I feel better when I am, at least, noticing one thing every 24 hours and really appreciating the hell out of it. And it has allowed me to meet some really super cool women.

I don’t know the statistical breakdown, but I’m guessing maybe more women than men read blogs, and probably more women than men read my blog. And while the WordPress numbers tell you how many people are reading your blog, and what country they’re from, they don’t tell you stuff like gender, age, or whether they dye their hair (which would just be fun to know for absolutely no reason).

Anyway, I re-connected with a mom I met through soccer many years ago, because of this here blog. I always really liked her when I sat with her on the sidelines screaming for our daughters, but with kids in different schools, we didn’t get to see each other much. She is an exceptional photographer. And several years ago she was telling me about a project, in which she was going to do a photo exhibit of teenage girls in their rooms. We were brainstorming names on the soccer field, when I told her about one of my most favorite books when I was little–“A Girl and Her Room.” She loved it. (And actually went on to use it when the exhibit was published as a book years later.) I loved the idea of capturing girls in their most private place. And although my daughter Ally was only 11 at the time, I gave Rania a bunch of names of girls I knew who were teenagers that I thought would be interesting subjects for her project. Then our girls pursued different teams, and I never saw her anymore, even though we live five minutes from each other. Not even at Whole Foods, my home away from home. But I did ask her for one of her books for an auction I was working on and she generously donated one. Anyway, our re-connection was really because of Facebook and then the blog on Facebook. One day I got a message from her asking me if I might be interested in being part of her new project which was like the “girl” project, but instead of girls, it was going to feature  women smack in the middle of their lives. Of course I said yes, because 1) I’m mad for her work. 2) I’ve always really liked her. 3) I am smack in the middle of my iife.

And so I went about finding a bunch of friends and acquaintances that I thought might be up for a little photo session with Rania also. She was really happy I was sending her names, and a little surprised by my help, but I was excited by the whole idea and felt inspired by it, so I wanted to get other women involved. Middle age power!

One of the women I suggested,  was again, a sort of mutual acquaintance that I knew through many people, but didn’t really know at all until she started reading the blog on Facebook and commenting.  I found her to be really funny, and well, we all know how I feel about funny. Anyway, I gave Rania her name and they met, and as I predicted, they hit it off from the minute they laid eyes on each other.

Monday we decided we should all have lunch together. And so we met at Pomodoro, one of my most favorite restaurants ever, and instantly we were into three conversations at the same time. Rania was born in Lebanon and has a beautiful voice with an accent. And Luciana is Brazilian and also has a gorgeous accent (I was born in Connecticut, so no matter what I say doesn’t sound as good as what they say, but that’s just the geographical cards I got dealt!)  Anyway, we were talking about Rania’s project, and the blog and how both had created situations in which we got to know each other. We hit a bunch of other subjects in rapid fire, and then, I told them about the fact that I’d been very upset that day because my husband who has an autoimmune arthritis had been having a particularly difficult flare (I told them not so much because I had that level of intimacy with them, but more because I felt so off, and like I wasn’t really being myself.)I might have cried a little, too (I cried a river to one of my close friends in the morning, while walking around the reservoir, so my tear ducts were primed). I knew I shouldn’t have shared so much the minute I did, but their response was so warm, and so loving, you’d think I’d have known them all my damn life. Walks and wine and calls and support were generously and genuinely offered, like the plates of bread the waiter kept bringing and we kept eating. (Did we eat two plate of bread, ladies, or is it my imagination?!) It was kind of extraordinary. But in a way it wasn’t extraordinary, because the very reason that these women appreciated a blog about being grateful, and that Rania had this idea of doing a photo essay on women who were in the middle, and that Luciana and I were open to being photographed for this project, said something about all us. And that something was the very reason they could rally around me, a new friend, with such compassion.

I’ve also had some other encounters with awesome women because of the blog. Some that I knew slightly, and some that i didn’t know at all.

Anyway, today I’m grateful to the gratide-a-thon.  Because it’s helped me get to know lots of new and interesting girls. I’ve always said that I think, life is all about the connections we make and the relationships we create. They are everything. Without knowing it, my gratitude, has helped me to create more of them. And for me, I’m not sure there’s anything I could appreciate more.