All Blog Posts from Couric & Co.

Mark Strassmann is a CBS News Correspondent based in Atlanta.

I liked the guy from the moment I met him.

His name was Nick Xiarhos, a tall, dark-haired Marine. He projected physical strength, maturity, decency, and a self-confidence without bluster or bravado. He was a lot of the things any parent would want their kid to be at twenty-one.

Like me, Nick grew up in the Boston area. Talking like a couple of townies was part of our easy rapport, even though what we were talking about was difficult.

Cost of the War Hits Home for the President

Nick had been deployed near Ramadi, Iraq back in April 2008. A suicide truck bomber had barreled toward the gate of a Marine compound, intent on killing as many people as he could. Two Marine guards at the front checkpoint stood their ground, and kept firing at the truck, trying to slow its driver and save their mostly sleeping buddies. The truck stopped short of the compound and exploded. The two guards were killed. But their bravery saved the lives of everyone else – including Xiarhos. Like a handful of other Marines who were there and told us the story back in January, he was humbled by this act of bravery.

In August I heard that Nick Xiarhos had been killed. He had come home from Iraq, and switched units for the chance to fight in Afghanistan. And there, on July 23rd, 2009, he and another Marine were killed by a roadside bomb.

Nick had this knack. The memory of him hung with you. President Obama had shaken hands with Xiarhos in passing after a speech this past April at Camp LeJeune, North Carolina. When the president heard that a young Marine whom he had met had been killed, he wanted to meet the Xiarhos family. Mr. Obama’s facing a tough decision whether to risk more American lives by increasing troop levels in Afghanistan. When he finally met Steve and Lisa Xiarhos, Nick’s parents, he told them that Nick would stay in his mind as the face of sacrifice and the cost of freedom. Hearing that meant a lot to the family.

Nick’s father is a police lieutenant in Yarmouth, Massachusetts. When Nick’s body came home, he described himself as the “saddest – and the proudest --- man in the world.” All of Yarmouth grieves the loss. There are two entrances to the town in the middle of Cape Cod. Each one of them has a memorial sign saluting Nick Xiarhos.

Wherever he went, Nick Xiarhos made his mark and left an impression.

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Believe it or not, there’s a place on the planet that sees one inch of rain every thirteen years. It’s a desert in Chile called Salar de Atacama. It’s the driest place on earth – a fact even introduced once on "Jeopardy" -- but for producers of lithium, this desert is one of the richest. Above ground is a vast wasteland of dried clumps of clay, some the size of a child’s bicycle. Nothing grows out here. Below ground, though, is a different story.

“This is the best place on earth," Ron France told me in the middle of the desert. Neither of us could have traveled to many places that were more remote. France is president of Chemetall, an American company that produces lithium. Lithium is the world’s lightest metal, and the energy source in the batteries of cell phones, laptops and Blackberrys.

Snow melts off the nearby Andes mountains and is trapped underground is this closed basin. One-hundred thirty feet below the surface, the water gathers in salt water brines. Chemetall, France’s company, pumps the brine above ground into a series of ponds. In a process that lasts eighteen months, the desert sun evaporates out other salts. The beauty is that the sun does almost all the work. What’s left is lithium brine, which is shipped to a nearby factory for processing into lithium carbonate powder and shipped to battery-makers, mostly in Asia.

Demand for lithium is about to soar. This fall, Mercedes will introduce into showrooms its first plug-in hybrid car. Its power will come from a lithium ion battery and the lithium alone in that battery will weigh twenty pounds. (The lithium in a cell phone weighs one-tenth of an ounce.) A half-dozen other carmakers have plans for their own plug-in models, powered by lithium. Chevy claims its new Volt will get at least 250 miles per gallon.

Three major companies dominate the world’s lithium market. The metal itself is produced in only a half-dozen countries, including a small site in Nevada, but half the world’s lithium comes from the Salar de Atacama. That’s why Ron France thinks of this remote place in Chile as the best on earth.

So remember the Salar de Atacama. If plug-in hybrid cars catch on, the focus of America’s energy policy could start to shift away from OPEC pipelines in the Middle East to lithium brine pools and Chile. And you never know when the name might come in handy as an answer on a “Jeopardy” re-run.”

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Mark Strassmann is a CBS News correspondent stationed in Iraq.

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Business travelers griping about flight delays should try getting around Iraq.

To get around this country as an American civilian, you often have to improvise. Travel here is a nightmare. Driving any distance is still too risky. Commercial aviation is non-existent. So any chance at flying means asking the U.S. military for an open seat on one of their helicopters, usually a cramped, noisy Blackhawk. Often you’re grateful to wedge into a middle seat.

Over the weekend, we were stuck at a military airstrip in Mosul, in northern Iraq. That's not a good situation for anyone with someplace to go. Our trip up to Mosul from Baghdad had involved three separate Blackhawks, 11 hours of travel, and a good bit of luck just to make it that far, that fast.

Everything about our chances of returning to Baghdad looked grim. Our four-man CBS News team of travelers was way low on the military’s waiting list to fly. Not that it mattered. Storm clouds had moved in, so nothing was moving out. And in Iraq, bad weather can mean delays of days, not hours.

Most of the other glum-faced passengers, mostly U.S. soldiers and contractors, filed inside the makeshift terminal. Some of them began long naps. Why not?

But outside, sitting on the otherwise empty tarmac was a C-130, a military cargo plane. This one belonged to the Iraqi Air Force, and was carrying some of the Prime Minister’s staff. And standing just off the tarmac, smoking and scheming between long drags of his Marlboro Lights, was Larry Doyle. No one else knew it. But a genius idea was hatching.

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Mark Strassmann is a CBS News correspondent based in Atlanta.

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Lots of kids look forward to a parent coming home from a business trip. My small kids do, when I finally get back from someplace. For me and for them, there's just something special about each reunion -- the smiles, the hugs, the warmth. (And for my kids, the best part is the little gift each of them gets -- a Beanie Baby, an action figure etc -- whenever I come home after an overnight trip.)

So take all the emotions of that experience, and multiply it exponentially when you had two other factors into the mix: this homecoming involves a returning soldier from Iraq. And the homecoming is a total surprise to the kids.

In Columbia, South Carolina, Bill and Tina Moorehead created a moment of magic for their three kids. He's an Army Reservist on deployment in Iraq. After September 11th, he heard the call to duty again, and put his name back in the mix for military service. This June, he left his job as manager of a Toys-R-Us store and went overseas, to work at civil affairs projects in and around Baghdad.

When it came time for his mid-tour trip back home, he and his wife decided not to tell the kids. Part of the reason was practical: for a variety of reasons, the Pentagon sometimes changes a returning soldier's actual return date. The Mooreheads didn't want to promise their kids a particular day, and then have them be disappointed when their father was held up for whatever reason.

But another reason they kept his return a surprise was the chance to create a moment their kids would always remember.

So on Monday, their grandmother piled all three kids into the family's mini-van and drove them to the airport. The kids thought they were just going to pick up their mother from a separate trip she had taken. It all seemed very routine, very ho-hum, to eight year-old Ana, four year-old Isabelle, and little Joe, all of eighteen months.

So imagine their surprise as they waited in the baggage claim of the Charlotte airport, and saw their mother walking toward them -- and saw their father, too...

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Mark Strassmann is a CBS News correspondent based in Atlanta.

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In some pockets of America, compassion never goes out of season. Cayuga, Indiana -- to the rest of us, one more kernel of America's corn country -- is one of those places.

One of their own, a fourth-generation family farmer named Darrin Hartman, wasn't feeling well. For one thing, he was having trouble swallowing. He was also losing a lot of weight. Hartman shrugged it off. Between his corn and bean fields, and his family, he had other things to tend to.

In July, after he had lost 45 pounds, doctors discovered Darrin had cancer. They found an inoperable mass behind his stomach that was only getting bigger. Suddenly his family's life was focused on the fields, but on his regimen of chemo and radiation. The crops would have to wait.

But for farmers, work doesn't pile up at the office for whenever they can get to it. There's only one pay day a year, at the end of harvest. In the back of the Hartman's' minds, they squeezed in some worry about how they were going to make it financially if this year's crop went unharvested.

Cayuga's a small town. And in a small town, word travels fast. By the time Darrin came home from the hospital, his farming community already had a plan. His fellow farmers would leave their own fields to harvest Darrin's crops for him...

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Mark Strassmann is a CBS News correspondent based in Atlanta.

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Lots of people travel for work, and sacrifice family time. But especially on Veterans Day, here's a salute to working Americans who really have to spend time on the road.

The U.S. military calls them "dual military families" -- husbands and wives, both serving in uniform. There are roughly 84 thousand of these families, and many of them now find themselves taking turns going to Iraq.

Take Charles and Barbara McCottry and their family in San Antonio. They're both serving in the U.S. Army. He's a master sergeant, she's a captain and nurse.

He's already done one tour in in Iraq. She's still in Baghdad, working in a military hospital in the Green Zone. In the last three years, the McCottrys have spent a total of only eight months together.

They have four children, but two year-old Jordan is the baby. To serve her country overseas, his mother has missed both his birthdays. That's hard on her, but soldiers on deployment have to get used to missing family moments. Barbara knows what she has missed and can never get back. As she told us at her post in Baghdad, "Do I want to be here? Not necessarily. No I’d much rather be at home. But we’re here for a mission." We showed her a video of her family. She said, "I'm amazed at how all of them have grown. I'm going to feel like a stranger when I get home."

Capt. McCottry has been away for so much of little Jordan's life, he really has no idea that he even has a mother. She tries to talk to him on the phone, but he doesn't really understand who she is. He can't really identify who she is in photographs.

All of that's painful for Charles, the tough master sergeant at work, but "Daddy" at home. And a single father at that.

He has to take all four kids on the endless round of school bus stops, soccer games, doctor's appointments and emergency room visits. He can handle the fact that he has zero time to himself. What he can't come to grips with his that little Jordan doesn't know his own mother. It drives him crazy. And any parent could relate.

He says his kids ask him all the time, "When are Mom and dad going to be together again? When are we going to be a family again?"

Here's the good news. Barbara McCottry's tour ends late this month. She'll head home to San Antonio. But when she gets back, how long will the McCottrys stay a family...?

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Mark Strassmann is a CBS News correspondent based in Atlanta.

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Mitch Peterson has a new leash on independence. And for that, he can thank Jennifer Arnold.

In Monmouth, Illinois, Peterson's one of three million Americans with epilepsy. First diagnosed when he was fourteen, his seizures became so regular, and so severe, he became a suicidal shut-in. Two years ago, one gift turned his life around. His gift was London, a four-pawed mix of golden retriever and labrador. London's no ordinary pet. He's a "seizure-response dog," specially trained to help someone with epilepsy. London helps Mitch with everyday tasks, like turning lights off and on, and carrying wallet on shopping trips. But whenever Mitch has seizures, London's trained to fetch Mitch's medication, stand guard, even bark for help. No wonder Mitch calls London his "guardian angel."

If Mitch's "angel" was heaven-sent, but Jennifer Arnold bred, raised and trained him. She founded a special kennel, "Canine Assistants," in Alpharetta, Georgia, a suburb of Atlanta. For the last twenty years, Arnold's team has turned puppies into dogs that have given seizure patients not just companionship, but a future and independence they once thought unimaginable. The dogs are usually labradors or golden retrievers or some mix of the breeds.

As a teenager, Arnold herself was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. She and her father heard of seizure dogs, which were even more rare back then. But before he could find one for his daughter, Arnold's father was killed walking on a sidewalk by a drunk driver. Arnold never got her dog. But she never forgot about the possibility, either. Her experience with MS as a teenager, she says today, is "what drives me very single day of my life to get up and try to get the people who need the dogs, dogs..."

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Mark Strassmann is a CBS News correspondent based in Atlanta.

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Sure, they’re the cutest things on the planet. Next to my kids, of course. But my kids are better eaters.

I’m talking about pandas. They’re considered an endangered animal. Fewer than 1800 of them live in the wild in southwestern China. While every zoo in America would like to have a pair in its menagerie, only four of them actually do. (Zoos in Atlanta, San Diego, Washington, D.C. and Memphis) And these zoos each pay the Chinese government around a million dollars a year for the privilege of borrowing pandas to put on exhibit.

But come mealtime, the pandas make these zoos pay, too. They are among the pickiest eaters anywhere. Keeping them fed can become maddening for zookeepers.

Here’s the issue. Pandas eat bamboo almost exclusively, on average, 40 pounds of bamboo a day. Bamboo comes in dozens of varieties. But the food mood of pandas can change day to day, even hour to hour. Zookeepers have to guess which variety the pandas want on the menu at any given moment. And if it’s not absolutely fresh, they’ll walk away. The classic parental tough-love approach of “You’ll eat what’s put in front of you” never hit home with pandas.

ZooAtlanta’s experience is the story of The Three Pandas Bears. Lun Lun and Yang Yang are the two adult pandas, and Mei Lan is the infant cub. The zoo doesn’t have the money or the land to grow all the bamboo it needs. So within a two-hour radius of Atlanta, dozens of people who own homes donate whatever bamboo is growing on their property to feed the pandas. ZooAtlanta keeps a list of donors, and sends out its bamboo crew to those properties. The crew cuts down stands of bamboo trees, loads the harvest back in the truck, and heads back to the panda exhibit. To keep their prized exhibit well-fed, and account for the “rejection factor,” the bamboo crew needs to harvest four-hundred pounds of it every day...

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Mark Strassmann is a CBS News correspondent based in Atlanta.

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Summer’s a sweat-fest in most places. For many news outlets, it's a chance to do easy stories about people wilting and miserable. We’re in one of those times.

But sometimes extreme weather, and stories about it, really means something.

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It's healthy. It's all-American. And now it's striking fear in the hearts of some American mothers -- and a different kind of feeling in their stomachs, and those of their kids.

Peanut butter. Suddenly, eating it is apparently making hundreds of Americans sick.

In Oklahoma City, after Chantel Gilbert fed her six kids peanut butter, they all got sick. When she ate it, she got sick, too. She's pregnant, and her stomach issues got her so dehydrated, she had to be hospitalized twice. Chantel just assumed a virus was knocking down her family like bowling pins. Then she happened to read on-line about an on-going recall involving an unlikely source of thte food poisoning: peanut butter. In fact, salmonella poisoning in peanut butter was found once in Austrailia, but never before in America. Sure enough, the jars of peanut butter in Chantel's pantry matched the serial numbers in the recall.

The brands of tainted peanut butter are Peter Pan, and Great Value (sold only at Wal-Mart). All the jars suspected in the outbreak of food poisoning have the serial number 2-1-1-1. Grocers started pulling jars from the shelves on Wednesday morning, after the Food and Drug Administration gave notice about the potential health worry. It took health inspectors six months to trace the suspected source. The type of salmonella was unusual. The poisoning spread slowly to thirty-nine states. And most of us can barely remember what we ate yesterday. Inspectors were asking people who got sick to try to remember what they had been eating weeks earlier. There were plenty of people to ask. Since last August, nearly three-hundred people coast-to-coast have become sick after eating the brands now being recalled.

Salmonella poisoning usually happens in animal products. It's potentially fatal, but usually you just spend an uncomfortable week shuttling back and forth to the bathroom. Everyone involved -- from the sickened families to the health inspectors -- was surprised to learn of all places, peanut butter was the suspected problem.

Then there's this. First we had the consumer recall. And now, another response that's as American today as peanut butter itself. First thing Friday morning, lawyers in Minnestoa are filing the first lawsuit on behalf of a sickened family.