NPR News

This month we are collecting your stories about the good things Americans are doing to make their community a better place. Some of your contributions will become blog posts and the project will end with a story that weaves together submissions to make a story of Americans by Americans for Americans.

The Mom and Dad's Record Collection series on All Things Considered continues with a memory of music and family from the Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist and author Leonard Pitts.

Pitts says his childhood mischief was set to the music of Nat King Cole, often courtesy of his mother's own voice. One afternoon, he remembers, she was singing "Don't Get Around Much Anymore" while he played out back.

(Revised and updated @ 5:55 pm ET)

Jared Loughner, the man accused of going on a shooting spree during a meet-and-greet held by former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords in Tucson, Ariz., pleaded guilty today. The shooting spree left six people dead and 13 others wounded.

The AP adds:

"Loughner's plea Tuesday allows him to avoid the death penalty in a mass shooting that gained worldwide attention in January 2011 because his intended target was the congresswoman. Among the dead were Arizona's chief federal judge and a Giffords aide.

Sports injuries are as much a part of the Olympic Games as gold medals and doping allegations.

Will the London 2012 Games be remembered as the last Olympics of the pre-clone era? The answer is maybe — because the group that oversees equestrian events has given its OK to allowing cloned horses to compete in the Summer Olympics.

Barry Bonds will be in the Hall of Fame ballot for the first time this November. Whether he deserves a spot in Cooperstown will no doubt be debated endlessly. One side are those who say you can't take away the 762 home runs that made Bonds the sport's most successful slugger. Others will say that he and others like Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa are forever tarnished because of their connection to performance enhancing drugs.

We'll leave that debate for another day.

Transcript

TOM GJELTEN, HOST:

This is TALK OF THE NATION. I'm Tom Gjelten, in Washington, sitting in for Neal Conan. It's bad enough that a visit to the doctor's office can be expensive. Maybe you worry about the quality of care you'll receive. But that's not all. A common complaint these days is the length of time we have to wait before we see someone who can help us.