The noise has stopped, finally. Or is it only an intermission?
I look out the window and see the men across the street, talking together. Half the yard is still covered with leaves. They and The Machine have been working for hours. The whining, unremitting drone awakened me early, far too early on a non-work day. The sound was like pain. I wanted to run from it. But I couldn't. It filled the house. It filled me.
Read MoreFact and fiction. They blend. A person steps into the sun at high noon and he and his shadow are one. Both exist. Both are seperate entities, but for a moment they merge.
Schuyler, population 400, is fact. It's a tiny town nestled among the mountains in Nelson County, Virginia. Walton's Mountain is but a shadow of Schuyler, a creation of its most famous son, novelist and screen writer Earl Hamner.
Read MoreNo except here. Just a well-I-was-really-off-the-mark-with-this-prediction! The anything goes era continues.
Read MoreI phoned her the other day to ask how her pregnancy is coming along.
"I'll be glad when it's over," she said in a weary voice. "I'm a nervous wreck. There are so many things that can go wrong. I can't wait for this baby to be born."
My friend is having her second child, but this is her third pregnancy. A year ago she miscarried, so all during the early weeks of this pregnancy the possibility that she might again miscarry kept her joy on hold.
Read MoreIt's here somewhere, I know it. I put it in a safe place on my desk. In the letters to be answered pile? In the pocket of my daily planner? In my notebook?
No, it's in none of these places.
Read Moret shouldn't have happened. This is an unarguable fact. Julie Tobin, of West Roxbury, should be alive, not dead.
She was killed on Sept. 6, 1987. The 17-year-old had spent the afternoon at a family reunion of a friend held at Norwood Country Club. Shortly after midnight, she left the reunion on foot and was standing in the breakdown lane of Route 1 talking to some friends in a van when she suddenly ran around the front of the van and onto the road. She was hit by a car and died the next day.
Read MoreIn pictures they're smiling. Check out the magazines. Notice the ads. Look at the pretty girl with the good-looking guy - no worry on her face, only a smile.
On TV it's the same, and in movies. Smiles, smiles everywhere. Everyone is grinning. Everyone is cheerful. Everyone is having a good time. This is what we are supposed to be doing - smiling, connecting, enjoying life.
Read MoreIt began with a sign - not a spiritual one, but a billboard. At least that's how I think it began. The billboard was at Disney World, and it asked visitors to consider who they believe had made the greatest contribution to the 20th Century.
Maybe the wording was different. Maybe it was vote for the man of the century. I don't remember. But I found myself mulling over the question, then posing it to everyone I knew.
Read MoreThey don't want to believe it. Or if they believe it, they want to forget.
"Why do you have to keep bringing this up? Why do you continually talk about it? It does no good. It's over. It's in the past. Why can't you just get on with your life?"
They don't understand why at birthdays and holidays and christenings and baptisms, she continues to arrive late - after he's gone. They don't understand why she refuses his gifts, why she's still in therapy, why she has night sweats. They don't understand why sometimes in the middle of the day, when it all comes back to her, she sits and sobs.
Read MoreThe reason that pigs wallow in mud is because their skin is fair and thin and the hair covering their bodies is sparse and offers little protection from the sun. During the day, pigs burrow in the ground to keep cool. At night they find a stream or a puddle and clean themselves. There is a purpose for what they do.
What, I wonder, is our purpose?
Read MoreEveryone recognized him but no one knew who he was.
"Well-known Quincy man dies unknown," the headline said in Saturday's Patriot Ledger.
The story that followed told of a man who frequented Wollaston's businesses, who, every weekday bought the $1 breakfast special at Newcomb Farms; who, every weekend sat at O'Brien's bakery and drank coffee and ate pastry; who talked with clerks and nodded at passersby and bought scratch tickets at the Hancock Street Pharmacy and even shared, when he won, part of his $400 with the girl who'd sold him his lucky ticket.
Read MoreI didn't even notice it. I was sitting there watching the summer premiere of "Beverly Hills 90210" with my two daughters, one 15, one 20, when the 20-year-old exploded.
"Did you ever notice how the only ones on this show with a life are the guys? They have jobs. They have interests.
Read MoreI used to play this game all the time. I used to excel at it: I can't do this because I don’t have that. For example I used to tell myself, I can’t write because I don't have a typewriter. That was my reasoning when I was 14.
Read MoreI bought the book - a small book stuffed with 19th century wisdom on ways to economize - at Sturbridge Village, because when I opened it, there was a suggestion on using ear wax as lip balm and I thought: This is disgusting.
There's got to be a column in it.
And there is, I know. The book would make a great column. But guess what? I can't find it. The book has disappeared.
Read MoreAll they're looking for is courtesy. An acknowledgment that they exist. A polite word. A smile.
"A smile is a frown turned upside down,' went the lyric of a somewhat hokey old song.
Well, hokey or not, the phrase needs resurrecting.
Something needs to be done to make everyday encounters between strangers a little more pleasant.
Read MoreThere is not even an attempt to keep them quiet. They swarm into Concord's Alcott School auditorium, at 10 o'clock on a Friday morning, all of them happy because they're missing something - arithmetic or social studies or science; most of them chatting, a few of them shouting. The din is festive, chirpy, happy, full of kids' sounds.
Read MoreThe 21st Century is not a typical newspaper. It isn't full of murders, thefts, fires, scandals, betrayals, bankruptcies and national and international conflicts.
It is instead a kind of journal, an introspective and reflective compilation of essays, stories,letters, poems, reviews, photos and cartoons written and captured by teen-agers throughout New England.
Each month when the paper arrives, I look through it and think: This stuff is good. These kids can write. They can take pictures. They're aware. They think. They worry. They care.
Read MoreI was driving to Beverly a few weeks ago and listening to a tape I'd borrowed from the library, a book tape. The tape "Joshua" was a religious parable, which I hadn't realized when I'd checked it out. It was preachy and overly dramatic and tacky.
But I was on a long drive in a car with a broken antenna, and it was this tape or nothing, so I listened.
Read MoreThey wanted me to write about them.
I said no because I generally don't. Really, where's the story, I thought?
I go into schools now and then and talk about how I got started as a writer. I tell a couple dozen kids that if you do something long enough, if you try hard enough, you eventually get better at it.
Read MoreThe station is WWOR, Channel 9, from New York, now delivered to us through our cable system.
It's not an x-rated station. We don't subscribe to it. It comes free with our basic package, and like most every other TV station, it's packed full of news and talk shows and re-runs.
Last Thursday at 7 a.m. the station showed "James Bond Jr.," followed by "Widget," "Head of the Class," "It's a Living," "Jenny Jones" and "Nine Broadcast Live."
Nine Broadcast Live is the subject of this column.
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