A Reminder of What Can Be Lost

A Reminder of What Can Be Lost

It's a little book called "Yellow Star." Not many words. Written for young adults. I found it at a book sale at Rockport Public Library in October. The cover lassoed me. It's a photo of a small, somber child with cropped brown hair and clear brown eyes wearing a double-breasted pinkish coat trimmed in brown velvet. When I was small, I had a similar coat. It was plaid, but the same style and the same kind of collar. It itched my neck. I wore it the Christmas Day I was 5. I know this because my father dated the photo he took…

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Yes, Manners Still Matter

You can't make up these things. It was last month. A weekday. I was meeting Rosanne Thomas for lunch to talk about her new book, "Excuse Me — The Survival Guide to Modern Business Etiquette," because Thomas teaches manners in these mannerless times, and, God knows, a course in civility and kindness and an awareness of others are things our culture could use a dose of right now…

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Learning to Look a Little Deeper to Discover a True Treasure

Learning to Look a Little Deeper to Discover a True Treasure

'You plant black-eyed peas, that's what you git," my daughter's friend says in an Oklahoma drawl she exaggerates whenever she wants to make a point. I laughed when I first heard this phrase some 20 years ago, but it's a saying our family quickly adopted.

I found myself thinking these words while listening to my granddaughter Lucy belt out the score from "Gypsy" on our drive home from seeing…

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Our Lives Can Turn on a Dime — Just Look at History

You'd think, having lived a long life, that I would know some things. And I do. I know facts. Lots of them. But not nearly enough. And I understand so few of the "why's" behind what I know.

For example: I have been reading about the Second World War since I was a child, both fact and fiction, and still I don't understand the reasons for all that happened. Last month, I read yet another book, "The Holocaust — A New History," by British historian Laurence Rees…

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A place for men to talk about cancer

The room looks like a private lounge at an airport. Nice carpet, good lighting, soft chairs, bright, colorful paintings, magazines and books, coffee and cookies. The dozen men who sit here, all neatly dressed, look typical. They talk. They laugh. They listen. They look as if they are discussing sports or politics or pubs in Dublin.They are, in fact, discussing cancer. Their cancer…

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It takes a face to change a heart

A few days ago, six of us were eating and talking about Rob Portman, the US senator from Ohio who had just announced that after a lifetime of opposing gay marriage, he had changed his mind.

His son had come out, and he had given gay marriage more thought, and I was dissing him for this, not for his change of opinion but for seeing the light only because his son, not someone else's, was gay.

And that's when my friend and teacher John O'Neil made me see the light. "It takes a face to change a heart," he said quietly.

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Sometimes you need to shout

Here's what we've all been taught. To be polite. To be quiet. To not make a scene. To go with the flow. To be aware of other people's feelings.

Here's what we teach our children: To acknowledge a person's presence. To look someone in the eye. To say "please" and "thank you." To not interrupt. To say "excuse me." To be respectful.

And it's all good advice. Until it isn't.

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Learning to accept imperfection

When a doctor at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia told New Jersey mother Chrissy Rivera last month that her 3-year-old daughter was ineligible for a kidney transplant, she was incredulous and furious.

``Did you just say that Amelia shouldn't have the transplant done because she is mentally retarded. I am confused. Did you really just say that?'' she wrote in her blog on wolfhirschhorn.org describing the meeting.

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Lingering sting, and a vote for change in attitudes

I thought I would never forget the time, the place, the season. What I wore. What she wore. The faces of the people I met that day.

But I have forgotten. It's a blur. The only thing I remember is wanting to cry.

I had taken my granddaughter, Lucy, into Boston to a modeling agency. She was 17 months old. My grandson Adam, Lucy's cousin, was barely 7 months. It was his mother's idea.

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Smiles and songs for a happy granddaughter

Five hours in a car. It's a long time for a 5-year-old to be confined. But Lucy never complained. Not a tear. Not a tantrum. Not even a pout.

My granddaughter was happy, listening to Rodgers and Hammerstein's "Cinderella," (sung by Julie Andrews; the child has good taste) and singing along. She ate chicken fingers in a nice restaurant overlooking the water, then she was back in her car seat, singing again.

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Drop-in child-care convenient, but fraught with hidden danger

Judith Melisi has been on a mission for more than a year now. But last June it became personal.

For months the Halifax mother had been trying to alert the owners of the health club where she works out to the dangers she saw in the child-care room. Candy that little ones could choke on brought in by older kids. Hot coffee brought in by a worker. The bathroom door left open. An electric outlet exposed.

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Not just crass, but hurtful

First things first: "Tropic Thunder" is not an intentionally mean movie that denigrates the developmentally delayed. It is a comedy that pokes fun at Hollywood's preposterous and stereotypical portrayal of all the people Hollywood thinks it knows but doesn't. A big vulgar, way over-the-top film, it's a series of fun-house mirrors exaggerating the bloated egos of actors, producers, agents, and the never-ending sham that is pretense.

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Learning love from Baby Grace

She wasn't the prettiest child in the room, because they were all the prettiest, babies still, not one of them over 3, flawless skin, bright eyes, shy, sweet smiles. But my daughter and I were drawn to this particular baby because she reminded us of Lucy, my daughter's little girl, with her sweet round face and her light wispy hair and the thin pale line on her breastbone that told us she had had heart surgery, too.

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Bullock should have condemned drunken driving

Bullock should have condemned drunken driving

I've listened to their stories - the painful tales of loss that parents, daughters, husbands, and wives tell. I've looked through thick photo albums they've placed in my hands and at pictures on mantels and walls. I've followed their slouched shoulders down narrow halls, or up a few stairs into bedrooms, where memories live. These rooms are full of intimate things - sweaters hung in closets, banners tacked over beds, books, tapes, magazines, stuffed animals, trophies, a football jacket tossed on a chair, a guitar in its case, a child's flannel pajamas, sneakers in the middle of the floor as if the wearer has just stepped out of them and will be back to claim them sometime soon.

But the wearer will never be back.

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Ah, peace aboard the Quiet Car

The Quiet Car. Quiet. Even the word is hushed. Silent. Calm. Not busy or active. No talking in a LOUD voice to the person next to you. No talking on the phone. No radios blaring. No movies. No TV. No intrusive sounds at all.

The Quiet Car is Amtrak Acela's semisecret sanctum, and my once-in-a-while refuge, a place where noise of any kind is not allowed. Which is not always what I want, to be unplugged and silent and still, not when I'm traveling with friends or family or children. "Want some M&Ms? Want to play `Go Fish'? You really want me to read `Bear Snores On' again?" Sometimes noise is important.

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