Ease up - tourists are people, too

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Ease up - tourists are people, too

It's late July and time, it seems, for tourist-bashing. Last week in this paper, Joe Sciacca got all a-flutter over the Old Town Trolley and Beantown Trolley and the new Duck Tours, which he says are the reason you can't get from point A to point B anywhere in this city. Congestion and gridlock are the fault of trolleys and "lard butts from Nebraska," don't you know?

This week, in Boston's other major daily, columnist Patricia Smith wrote that tourists "clog the Artery, babble over maps in restaurants, snap endless pictures of sunbleached gravestones" (why this would bother anyone puzzles me), and continues on to bemoan their "maddening practice of standing directly in the middle of a downtown sidewalk at 5 p.m., their heads upturned and mouths open, gazing reverently at 'Look, another old building!' while juggling camcorder, bottles of Evian, and several hot squiggling children." Huh?

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Being on the Internet is more addictive than smoking

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Being on the Internet is more addictive than smoking

It reminds me of when I was a little kid, stealing a snuffed-out cigarette from my father's ashtray, lighting up, taking a puff and feeling dizzy and giddy and grown up all at once. I hated the taste of cigarettes. I have always preferred Oreos and ice cream. But there was something so seductive about the idea of smoking that I worked on liking it for a while. This was what grown-ups did and I wanted to be a grown-up. Logging on to the Internet the first time gave me that same heady feeling…

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Real life vs. fantasy land

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Real life vs. fantasy land

The other paper in town ran an ad Monday, which outlined a week in the life of its typical reader.

'Monday Stopped at Strata in Wellesley for an umbrella. Also bought an Appalachian bird house and a sand picture (today's answer to the lava lamp) . . . Then on to supper with Marie at Caffe Lampara.

'Tuesday Lecture in Cambridge. Dinner before with four friends at Cafe of India.

'Wednesday Yummy Indian recipes in Globe food pages. Over to Shalimar India Food & Spices for pappadums, chutney and assorted curry spices.

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Giving condoms to kids is taking the easy, irresponsible way out

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There were two of them, one about 9, the other 11 or 12. Brothers seeing a baseball game. They sat in front of us, beside their parents in a front row. They were nasty kids, poking at each other, spilling their drinks, yelling insults at the players, throwing their candy, getting ice cream all over the place.

When they got their Cokes, they put them on the wall in front of them. An usher came along and told them food wasn't allowed there. The 9-year-old put his Coke right back where he had it seconds after the usher walked away. His parents looked and said nothing. When the usher returned and told the kid once again to move his Coke, his mother just rolled her eyes.

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These kids give of themselves

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I open the door expecting to hear laughter and chatter, the usual noises that accompany a group of young people. But they are quiet. Some are sitting in chairs; others are sprawled on the floor. Only a few are talking, and that's in a whisper. After some questions, they loosen up. Still you can feel their apprehension. It's justified. Most have never given blood before.

'I'm a big wimp. I hate needles,' Bob Smith admits. He gave blood last year and passed out. Needles, he says, have that effect on him. 'But anything you can do, you know?' Kerry Jacobs groans that she's 'a baby,' too. Ashley Dizel confesses she's 'a little nervous.' Phaly Walker just smiles and says, 'I'm really not nervous at all.'

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We are all to blame for death of Samore

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I'm looking for someone to blame. If I can blame someone or something, then I can put the death of 13-year-old Samore Vassel out of my head and get on with the pretense that life is manageable, and we can keep the wolves from our doors.

Samore Vassel lived in Dorchester with his father and younger brother and sister. Last week he was in Brooklyn, visiting his mother, when he was shot and killed. The boy had told his mother he was going to a movie with a friend. But he and his buddy went off to meet a couple of girls instead.

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Just another day in TV `news'

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Just what we need. This one is called "Now" and airs Wednesday nights. First there was "60 Minutes" Now there are 60 clones.

What's the purpose of all this purported news?

The premiere of "Now" featured an interview with Bette Midler and a report on the case against the Idaho white supremacist, Randy Weaver. No points here for originality - or depth.

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McGinniss regales with scissors, glue

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Listen up, folks. Have I got a hot tip for you. Forget about those lottery tickets. Forget about Suffolk Downs. You want to strike it rich? Here's how.

Go to the library, borrow "Gone With the Wind" or "The Firm" - pick a book, any book you choose, but make sure it's popular - copy the words in a notebook and then move them around a little. Change a verb here, a noun there, embellish, enhance. Invert a couple sentences, but don't deviate too much. You don't want to mess with a winner.

And you don't have to. Plagiarism isn't a bad word anymore. It's a way to fame and fortune.

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Rating the ratings

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So what is the American media telling the American public about the agreement - worked out with Congress - of four major broadcast networks to voluntarily provide warnings prior to violent television shows beginning in the fall?

"The networks' new parental advisories are almost pathetically beside the point," writes Kurt Andersen in "Time."

"All they're doing is applying a Band-Aid. It's just a sham," says Dr. Carole Lieberman, a psychiatrist who heads the National Coalition on Television Violence, in "Newsweek."

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Nuke test return will poison earth

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Tuesday, June 8: I am at my computer moving words around a screen, but not seeing them. My mind is fixed on three people I know, at three different hospitals, all seeing doctors, all undergoing tests and procedures, all doing battle with cancer.

Caryn is having a check-up. She's examined every six months now. Three and a half years ago she found a lump, was diagnosed, had surgery and months of radiation and chemotherapy.

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A place that gave women a chance closes shop

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Celeste House is quiet these days. The old convent, converted four years ago into a home for recovering homeless substance-abusing women and their children, is closing shop.

Most of the beds on the second floor have been stripped clean. Photographs that once covered the walls are gone. In the playroom there is just one child, for only one mother remains here. All the others have been transferred to other homes for substance-abusing women throughout the state.

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Hate speech, yes; but God, no

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Let me see if I've got this straight: I live in a country in which it's perfectly OK for college professors speaking in classrooms or graduations or anywhere else they choose, to promote hate and racism; but where clergy are warned, when they take the podium at school events, that if they say the G word they're breaking the law.

No wonder this country is so messed up.

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Once the finger is pointed, the accused always is guilty

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Once the finger is pointed, the accused always is guilty

All it takes is an accusation. "He did it," someone says, and he did it. That's it. End of story. He can deny doing it. He can say, "It never happened. It wasn't like that. Let me tell you my side." But no one will listen. He's this century's witch. Once someone points a finger, once someone even hints, he's guilty as charged…

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We lie about it all, sex too

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People lie. This is fact. You lie. I lie. We all lie.

"Thank you very much," we might say to a rude young woman who begrudgingly slices us a half-pound of white American cheese, wraps it in waxed paper and thrusts it at us, all the while huffing and puffing as if we had asked her to change a flat tire in the middle of a highway in the middle of a storm.

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AIDS cards: just another child's plaything?

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Cat made it sound quite aboveboard. Purely educational. AIDS Awareness Trading Cards, featuring people with AIDS, hotline numbers, plus a condom instead of bubble gum in each package, she explained long distance from Eclipse Comics in Forestville, Calif., were designed to educate people and to help stop AIDS.

Cat edited these cards, and she's proud of them. There are 110 in all and they sell for just 99 cents for a pack of 12. They don't just feature people who've died of AIDS. There are AIDS Facts cards, and AIDS Myths cards, and cards showing the Demographics of AIDS, the effect of AIDS on the world, descriptions of other sexually transmitted diseases such as syphilis and herpes, as well as the AIDS hotline numbers for 25 major U.S. cities.

They are not, as you can see, kid's play.

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Family leave bill's a sham

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You would think it was this great, magnanimous thing. "Family leave" - it has the ring of a papal dispensation. It has the sound of charity.

But it is neither. The much-debated bill finally working its way through Congress is crumbs from the table. It's much ado about nothing. Workers, primarily women, if the great and glorious Senate approves and the president signs, will be entitled to take off 12 whole weeks from work without pay to stay home and care for their infants.

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